Each year on the Sunday between the Ascension and Pentecost we have a passage from the seventeenth Chapter of St. John’s Gospel. This is the Prayer of Jesus, concluding the great final discourse, according to St. John. Our three-year lectionary cycle divides this Prayer up into three sections: so this year we have the middle section.
Our celebration of Ascension-tide prompts us in a special way to raise our minds and hearts towards heaven. Jesus does that at the beginning of his Prayer, when he lifts his eyes up to heaven and addresses his Father (Jn 17:1). Our Eucharistic Prayer begins with this. Sursum corda! Lift up your hearts! Let your thoughts be on things above, says St. Paul. And because of this, the contrary is also true. Let your thoughts not be on things that are on the earth, Paul continues, because you have died, and now your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:2).
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus prays for his disciples, who very soon will be left without his physical presence. Although he seems to leave them, Jesus insists: they belong to him, and to God; and, therefore, not to this world. The word “world” - κοσμος in Greek - is not always negative in St. John. God loved the world, he says (3:16); or again: The Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world (1 Jn 4:14). More frequently though, the word “world” in John has strongly negative connotations. It means precisely that which is closed to God; that which refuses belief in Jesus; that which opposes itself to life in him. This word occurs no fewer than nine times in the few verses of today’s Gospel. The world has hated them, says Jesus, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world (v 14).
This is the Gospel, and it does not change! So no authentic Christian preaching can be complete without a strong warning against worldliness. We are worldly when we live as if God did not exist, or as if Christ had not died and risen again; when we choose to value what is ephemeral and passing over what lasts forever; when we prefer the creature to the Creator, or God’s gifts to God Himself. Worldliness is always ultimately selfish, and narrow, and demeaning, and foolhardy. Throughout holy Scripture we find the idea of a necessary separation between God’s people and this world. The children of Israel were called out of Egypt not just because they were enslaved there: even more so, it was because the Egyptians worshipped false gods. Therefore come out from them, be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean (Is 52:11; also 2 Cor 6:17). So St. Peter addresses all Christians: You are a chosen race, a royal Priesthood, a holy Nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Pt 2:9). So Paul writes to the Corinthians: What partnership have righteousness and iniquity? ... What accord has Christ with Belial? ... Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? (2 Cor 6:14). Or James: Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (4:4).
In recent decades the idea of Christian unworldliness has tended to be less well regarded. Especially in the 1960's there was a tremendous sense that Christians need to commit themselves with all men of good will into building a better world; promoting peace and cooperation, and joining the common fight against hunger, disease, poverty, ignorance, conflict and oppression. Preachers also are expected nowadays to be always inclusive, and friendly, and welcoming, and nice.
We’ve just finished reading in the refectory a life of Marshal Philippe Pétain, who found himself head of State in France when Nazi Germany invaded in 1940. Pétain signed an armistice with the Germans, hoping that by cooperating with them, he would be able to influence them, and work with them, for the good of his country. Unfortunately, cooperation turned ever more towards collaboration. The Nazis wanted to take, but not to give; and tens of thousands of French Jews, or Resistance fighters, or other undesirables, including Priests, were sent, under Pétain’s signature, to the death camps. Poor old Pétain surely meant well, but he was not a virtuous man. Also he lacked strong principles: so history has not judged him kindly. I wonder a bit if a parallel can’t be drawn with the Church trying too hard to be friendly with the world: surely with the best possible intentions? In our day anyway the gloves are coming off ever more clearly. Aggressive modern secularism does not like Christianity. It has values of its own, which are opposed to those of the Gospel. It is not interested in dialogue; it demands only capitulation.
So there is again a lot of discussion now about how Christians should live in such a world; how they should bring up their children; where compromise and accommodation is prudently necessary, and where it should stop. Here in the monastery we have our enclosure walls. They are a symbol, valid even in ages of Faith, of giving the primacy to God, of seeking his Kingdom above all other things (Mt 6:33); of the value of a completely Christian life, in a completely Christian environment. We say of course that our Monastic life is for the world, but definitely also it’s not of the world. Even inside the enclosure, though, monks, like everyone else, have to struggle to resist worldliness. We have to be detached from the pleasures and delights and allurements of this world. We also have to be detached from this world’s pains and griefs; from failure and loss and defeat and sorrow. Not that these things aren’t real, or don’t matter. On the contrary! But because of Christ we are able see through them, or beyond them. Christ’s Passion continues to the end of the world, but always we see through it, towards his Resurrection and Ascension.
As a pledge of his abiding presence with us, at the Last Supper Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist, and promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are able truly to love the world, as Jesus does. We are also able by the Spirit to resist the world’s temptations, not in regret or sadness, but in joy, and hope, and in true holiness of life. As for the Holy Eucharist: through it we are lifted up to heaven, where Jesus is; and Jesus is brought down to our world, where we are. At the meeting point of the two there is adoration, and thanksgiving, and praise, and communion, and love, and life. Here above all we see how everything else is relativised. Time is short; eternity is long. Christ is our all. Ultimately, all that matters, for us, is belonging to Jesus.