Stand Firm in Your Faith

Last Saturday, during my writer’s retreat at the Chapel of St. Anne in Arlington, I walked through their Garden of the Stations of the Cross.  It was a beautiful morning and much like this weekend, the autumn sun was bright and crisscrossed the pathway. The only rule for our morning retreats is this “quiet your heart so that the Spirit can come and speak.”

Their Stations of the Cross were sculpted by Angelo Lualdi.  Lualdi was a well known sculptor in New England in the early 20th century and is known in Cape Ann for the wood and painted sculpture of the Lady of Good Voyage now in the Cape Ann Museum.  This garden meanders through a pathway covered by trees.  As befits the content and context, it is more stark than the other gardens on the grounds. Because it is outdoors, it allows freedom of movement and freedom of time to stop, to focus, to listen.

At the very end of the walk, of course, is the last station, the tomb.  The figure of Jesus so intricately carved in the linden wood is no longer a man really.  Instead, a lifeless body draped onto a platform. To be put away, to be kept safe, to be sealed up behind a rock.  And it struck me, how many times have I laid him in a tomb?.

How many times do we–fallen humanity, struggling with his message of radical love for one another–how many times do we lay Jesus in a tomb?  To keep him safe. To take him out of our messy lives and away from our spiteful interactions.  To spare him from the complexities of human struggle and sin and fear. That tomb can never hold him; not then and not now.

Jesus is alive!  Jesus is here, now, present in our present. He is the power within us that strengthens us to do what we can never do on our own–Love all.

The power of Christ’s love releases us and sets us free from our tombs, from our fears to be love in all its power and glory. It urges us forward to keep telling his story with the actions of our very lives. 

Paul wrote of this to the Corinthians, the messy, undisciplined Corinthians in their new community.  He tries to straighten out misunderstandings, give them some advice, and recenter them on this joy, now lovingly carved in believers’ hearts, Love never fails.

Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.  Let all that you do be done in love. (16:13)

May we through the struggles of this season, live the truth of the radical love of our Savior.