Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-126 (Sermon)

Two great realities intersect at solemn moments like these:

TIME AND ETERNITY

(Archbishop Peter Jensen’s sermon from the Memorial Service for Sir John Gorton, former Prime Minister of Australia)

Two great realities intersect at solemn moments like these: time and eternity. As human beings, all we have is time: promising, sinuous, fruitful, but untenable time. Within our allotted time, we perform; we feel that we should make the most of time. Some fail to make much impression in time; to others is given the chance of shaping part of their time. Through a life of service to the Nation – in war with notable courage, and in peace with notable distinction – Sir John Gorton helped to shape his time. In April 1946, in a sort of personal manifesto, he said, ‘We must raise the spiritual standard of living so that we may get the spirit of service to the community?’ He not only exhorted others; I believe that it was to this laudable aim that he committed himself.

Mr Hughes has reminded us what Sir John did with his time and what sort of man that he was. As we express our sympathy to Lady Gorton and to other members of the family, so we express our thanks to God that he was granted long life and died full of honours, achievement and esteem. But every long, successful and notable life finishes its time; and then we are confronted with eternity. Therefore, Mr Hughes has spoken of his times, and it is my task to remind us of eternity.

We may be applauded in our time, but in the light of eternity, our lives are less impressive. Even the best life has its regrets, it failures, its follies, its sins. This is true of us all; and of course, we are too weak to stave off death. It means that ultimately we cannot glory in ourselves, that we must turn away from ourselves and seek God, ‘the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity’ (Is 57:15). When we seek him, however, we discover a miracle; we find that he has been seeking us, that he has made the first move. From out of eternity, into our time, accepting all its limitations and pains, has come Jesus Christ. His aim was to find us and bring us safely home to God.

Look, Jesus says with simple directness, ‘do not let your hearts be troubled’. He said it not to all, but to those who became his disciples, who had given themselves to him. They were in a turmoil of doubt, fear and uncertainty about the immediate future. He spoke a great word. First his invitation: ‘bring me your fears; bring me your grief; bring me your guilt; bring me your doubts’. Then his exhortation: ‘You trust God, trust me. For what you cannot see and cannot yet know, trust the one who will never fail and who has your best interests at heart’. Finally, his promise: ‘God the Father has a home for you; it is a house with many mansions, many apartments ? a home which is rich enough and large enough for you; a home from which you will not be turned away.’

What do we know of eternity? It is beyond all imagination. But Jesus meets our need; when he speaks of eternity, he invites us to come home. A home is not beyond us; we understand what it is to go home. Furthermore we all know what it is like to have a home prepared for us by someone who loves us. Jesus was leaving them; he was to pass through the agony of a cruel death; but this death was for them, it was by his death that he got the home ready: ‘I go to prepare a place for you’. But, more than that: because he rose from the dead, because he did exactly what we cannot do in conquering death, ‘I will come again and receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also’.

That’s eternity for you; it has a human face and it is the face of Jesus Christ. It has a feel, and the feel is of going home, of going to an entirely wonderful home, in the company of the one whom you admire and love beyond all others. Will we get there full of honours and achievements and with the praise of men ringing in our ears? Well, hardly; there comes a point when those things are more of a hindrance than a help; we are not that good – it has taken all the efforts of the Saviour of the world to secure our welcome. His word to us is not, come in you are so successful; it is really, come in, failure as you are; it is, trust me to see you home.

‘The way ye know’ said Jesus. Thomas, ever doubtful, and thus always helpful to we modern doubters, contradicts: Lord, we know not wither thou goest: and how can we know the way?’ Then the final and ever so clear invitation to trust: if you know me, Thomas, then you already know the way: ‘Jesus saith unto him: I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me’. It is a sharp word, a powerful word, but then we are touching the levers of the most powerful things in our lives; places and thoughts and experiences which are ours alone which only we know of; hopes and fears that are mine alone.

Most significantly, Jesus is saying to us, don’t imagine you can reach home on your own, clutching your achievements and your virtues. We are being asked to make the final sacrifice: to give up our pretensions to professional moral and spiritual grandeur, and to recognise that, like children, we are going to have to trust someone else for this eternity business. We would like to go home when eternity comes for us; we would like eternity to have the familiar face of Jesus Christ; but for this to be so, we are going to have to trust him; we have to walk across that narrow bridge which only is the way and the truth and the life. Jesus says, ‘trust me, trust only me for this’.

And that is as far as I can take any of us when it comes to eternity. Like you, I have no rights to be there in the home of God; like you, all I have to go on are these words of Jesus. But because they are the words of Jesus, we may trust ourselves to them. The eternity which seems full of threat then becomes full of comfort. To his disciples, these are words of great solace in grief, of great peace to the anxious, and of immense hope to all who will accept them as the truth. Jesus says: ‘ye believe in God, believe also in me’.

The text of this sermon is also available at http://www.anglicanmediasydney.asn.au/archbishop/gorton_memorial.htm