HEAVEN’S GATE

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON APRIL 22, 2007

1 Cor. 5:7-8 "Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us therefore let us keep the feast."

Just before Holy Week there was a news item here in San Diego that fascinated me. It was acknowledging the 10^th anniversary of the "Heaven's Gate" cult and their suicides.

To refresh your memory, in March 1997 an obscure religious science fiction cult called "Heaven's Gate" was living in Rancho Santa Fe. Dressed in purple shrouds with new tennis shoes beneath their beds, they committed suicide. At the time I was fascinated, thinking what do you expect in California all those nuts, freaks and flakes. The home of religious cults is surely in California. Now I find myself living in the very city where it happened!

What fascinated me at the time was the emphasis on science fiction that led to the mass suicides. I am a great lover of science fiction movies and regard them as pure fantasy. I wondered how anyone could believe such nonsense as propagated by the leader of Heaven's Gate. They believed that there was the comet that was coming across the northern hemisphere at that time was being followed by a UFO just waiting to take them all on board - having removed them from their bodies, which they referred to as 'containers'. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty"!

And of course it didn't happen - like all predictions of such groups. There are regular predictions of end times and the chosen few being taken by God - and they come from a desire for immortality. This longing for immortality is often expressed in scientific ways. For instance: the science of cryonics - the deep freezing of human bodies. The idea being that we can be brought back to life sometime in the future when mankind has solved all the diseases and limitations of human existence. So, for instance, at age 60 you can pay a half million dollars and be frozen until that golden time when all will be solved. Why would you want to come back at 60 and not 25 puzzles me, especially as I am fast approaching 60! And if you can't afford a half a million dollars perhaps you could preserve just a part of you - say your head, which could be teamed up with someone who could only afford a body or just a torso.

We can laugh, but 10 years ago that group of people were so keen for immortality they regarded their bodies as mere containers.

What a contrast such ideas of immortality are to the scene described in today's gospel. In the early morning light at daybreak the risen Lord Jesus appears to his apostles on the shore of Lake Tiberius. He is not a spirit looking like a body, nor a ghost, nor just an image - but a man in flesh and blood, cooking breakfast.

The Lord of Life who has just conquered death appears in the most normal circumstances. No bizarre appearance just the reassuring presence of one who is concerned with every aspect of life, and the everyday aspects of life.

Now that Jesus has revealed himself so dramatically as the all powerful son of God, risen from the dead he wants to reassure the apostles and us that the resurrection life is for this life as well as the next. That what happens in this life is important, and eventually leads to immortality. As he did most significantly on the night he was betrayed, when in the context of the Last Supper he did the most astounding thing, and washed the 12 feet of his apostles. On that night he established that the church is about service in this world as well as eternal joy in the next. And he established the Eucharist not only as the memorial of his suffering and death, but as the sign and reality of his abiding presence within his church. And as the means whereby we, and all his brothers and sisters, might still know his physical presence among us – as surely as they did at breakfast on the shore in those wonderful days after the resurrection.

The concern of Jesus for this life as well as the next is also taught in the Book of Revelation. Today we hear from chapter 5, where the resurrected Christ is portrayed as the Lamb of God enthroned in heaven. This may seem a bit ethereal - but what is going on around him is something we are all familiar with. Here is a great liturgy - we might say High Mass in Heaven. There is praise, there is the angels, there is the saints - and in the previous chapter it is more explicit. For there the whole company of heaven sings "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts" reminding us of the Sanctus in the Eucharist.

When we come in the Eucharist to that point of singing Holy, Holy, Holy we are there with the saints and the angels in the heavenly worship. Here is heaven's gate. Here we encounter Jesus at the shore saying, "Come and eat." And there on that shore on the fire are two significant signs: fish and bread - reminding us of the feeding of the 5,000, when Jesus fed a great crowd from the loaves and the fishes. There is an important relationship between that event and the breakfast on the beach because the church has always understood the feeding of the 5,000 to be an image of the Eucharist. So on the shore Jesus said to his disciples: "come and eat", just as he does at every Eucharist. Offering not fish and bread - but the bread of life and the food of immortality.

St Paul, of course, wasn't around on that morning - so his encounter with the risen Christ was more spectacular. So much so that our language freely uses the phrase "Damascus Road experience". The first reading today describes his remarkable and spectacular conversion. He went on to become the great apostle to the whole world and left us a library of letters. Even though he never touched Jesus physically he knew that faith in the risen Lord was for this physical world not some beaming up to immortality. He taught us that the church is the body of Christ. The church and the body of Christ - two physical realities. The risen Lord inhabits this world not just in the Eucharist but in his church, you and I, which is his risen body in the world.

And when St. Paul came to describe the risen Lord it was in a well known image. "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us", he said. Words which we hear at every Mass - calling to mind the great image of the Passover and the Lamb which was slain. This image of St. Paul is emphasized in Easter when we add "Alleluia" to it. It reminds us that it is the risen Christ we praise, and the risen Christ who comes to us in Holy Communion.

Indeed Christ can only come to us in the Eucharist because now He is risen he can be everywhere - both in heaven and in the Blessed Sacrament here in this church.

The Eucharist is not just a memorial sacrifice. it is not just a fellowship meal, it is not just a service of worship…….here we participate in the resurrection because Christ lives in glory and meets us here on earth at this altar. And he does that because he is already at the great altar in heaven.

Jesus who died on the cross is our paschal sacrifice.

· By his resurrection heaven's gate is open to all his faithful people

· In his resurrection death passes into life, and therefore we celebrate the feast.

He is risen and we are risen. And so we are called to live as people who are alive, and whose hope is both for this world and the next. We are called to be people who have hope not just in immortality but in a world which is constantly being renewed by love and new life.

Yes, Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us; there let us keep the feast. Alleluia!