SERMON FOR ST ALBAN 21st June 2020
I thought I might start this sermon by reflecting on that ancient motto extra ecclesiam nulla salus, which as of course you all know, is Latin for ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’. (I had to look it up as well, don’t worry!!). It’s an old saying, that can be traced back to St Cyprian of Carthage, who was martyred around the same time as our own St Alban, in the 250s probably, and if taken literally, it seems to mean, that unless you have been baptised and are a Christian, you cannot be saved, and are therefore presumably doomed to hell for eternity.
This belief, or some version of it, is the reason why, going back a few generations, babies were baptised as quickly as possible after they were born, and it is the reason also why the Church in the Middle Ages came to ‘invent’ or suggest the idea of Limbo: the part of hell where babies were said to go if they died before they were baptised, but also before they actually committed any sins, since the idea that tiny babies went to hell proper, seemed a bit much even for the most severe of mediaeval scholars.
Taken literally, extra ecclesiam nulla salus is indeed a somewhat ungenerous assertion, and perhaps implies a fairly simplistic view of God and of His mercy, Justice, and Love, not to mention of what we mean by heaven and hell. Like a lot of things, once you start thinking about them, much depends on what you think is meant by, for example, the word ‘church’, and indeed by the word ‘salvation’ as well. But extra ecclesiam nulla salus certainly reflects a view that is quite widespread, or has been, in times past.
The first thing I would say about it – and this is a general rule of thumb that applies to everything in theology and ethics, I think – is that anything we imagine or say about God that would make us uncomfortable if we said it about a human, is at the very least therefore questionable, and needs serious reflection. If something feels to us as though it is severe, ungenerous, and too legalistic, then it might be a sign that we just don’t understand matters sufficiently, but it also might very well be a sign that our view is wrong in this repsect. It is, after all, simply not possible: and I mean it is literally not possible, that we should be more loving than God. And if we cannot imagine doing something, because it is too unloving or harsh, then it is very dubious indeed to imagine that God does it. I say again: God is always more loving than we are.
Now this sometimes means, of course, that God will not shrink from hard decisions that are ultimately in our best interests, but that we as humans might shun because we are cowardly, or afraid of hard and difficult but right courses of action. God is absolutely Just as well as absolutely Loving. But He is Loving, and His anger, when it occurs, is caused by our own cruelty, hatred, and evil: not just because He is hurt by our behaviour or our rejection of Him. God does not have temper tantrums! His pain does not make Him angry, as is the case for us. His anger flows only from His love for us, and all that He has made, and His anger does not extinguish His love: the two work together, in service to a common goal and underlying intention to bring all things to that perfection for which and by which they were made.
And the next thing point I would make, is that it is vital that we always remember that it is God who does all the work. This is by far the most important point of all to make and remember. When it comes to salvation, this is not something we can earn or deserve, and we do not need to. We are saved because it is God's will that we should be saved. We are saved, because God loves us. We are saved, because He has come to earth to save us. We are not saved because we are good, or clever, or holy or pious or loving or kind or deserving: and sometimes, we ourselves and all other people are none of those things. But in the sense of salvation, none of that matters. None of us are worthy of Jesus: none of us are worthy of His love and His sacrifice.
I say again: we are saved because God loves us despite all our sins and shortcomings. We are not saved because we deserve it, or make ourselves worthy of it. If you want a short précis (and I’m sure you do!): we are saved by Grace Alone. (And I know I go on about this repeatedly, but it is really important, and worth underlining!).
That phrase ‘grace alone’ may, just possibly, remind you of those feisty and ferocious (and frankly rather unforgiving and un-Christian) Reformation debates about salvation: are we saved by Faith, or are we saved by Works as well?
The answer I have always felt, is that we are not saved by ourselves at all. We are not saved by adopting a faith, or even by sharing in Jesus’ faith (which is what the word faith means: that we stand where Jesus does, and take on His own trust in God). Nor are we saved (or damned) by anything else we do or don’t do, though God undoubtedly has hopes and expectations of our behaviour, as any parent does; and His hopes and expectations are entirely fair and just and in our own ultimate best interests. But, we are saved by God’s grace: by His action, by His gift.
This is true of everyone; rich, poor, old, young, black, white, and people of any and every faith and none. For all of us, what saves us, is not ourselves: it is God. He saves us because He loves us, and because it is His gracious gift, and the reason He came to earth, and lived and died and rose again. So – we are saved by Grace. And this applies to all of us – Alban, his torturers, and the priest whose cloak Alban wore so that the priest could get away.
Alban was not saved by his courage and bravery, but they were signs that he was already being well-prepared for the redemption of all things in which he will share, and indeed in which he is already sharing.
There is only one further question to add, I think: one possible caveat to raise. Which is this: since it is God who saves us, do we have to do anything ourselves? Do we have to respond to this gift: do we have to actually somehow in some way accept this offer? Is our own action or will required at any stage? Do we get any choice in the matter? What happened to the torturers who got to work on Alban? If Alban did not save himself, did they damn themselves? Is that what Jesus meant when He talked about denying people before God?
I will come to some of that in a moment. But first, one other little point. We sometimes imagine salvation as though what was primarily at stake was us. Each of us, a special and precious individual, whose individual and unique and single existence with God is what concerns us and God above all: each of us plucked separately to live with God for ever; and also, to live, of necessity, with other people as well.
But salvation is actually more than that: much more. When we talk of salvation, what we really mean is that God is preparing and working towards the redemption of all created things (what theologians call His ‘Mission’). We are invited to share in this work and in this end state. Salvation is perhaps a word for what it feels like for an individual to be incorporated into this collective experience: to be fully loved and fully loving in the fullness of God’s presence and the fullness of His created universe. Our salvation is only a small part, of a much bigger whole.
Moving on, or back, to my theme, such as it is; I should state that I believe that it is God’s will that every single human there has ever been should know and enjoy this shared experience of redemption. I believe that it is incontrovertibly God’s will that all His children should come to know and love Him. He does not desire the loss or destruction of any of His children (or anything else which He intended to be good). He does not plan the destruction of anyone. He has already atoned for everything He has made; and that includes Alban’s torturers, and all the other wicked people there have ever been. He came down from heaven for all of us; He died on the Cross for all of us.
However, He does not force our love or repentance either: that is not how love works. We have at least an element of choice on whether or not to accept His atonement. We are not forced to Repent. And indeed, you cannot force anyone to love you – that is not how love works: for it to be love, it has to be freely given, otherwise it is something else, not love.
Which brings us back to the question of how resistible God is, in this world and the next. Can we choose not to accept His love and His atonement for us?
It may be that those who for any number of reasons did not (appear) to accept God’s offer on earth, get no further chance hereafter. It may be that if they have not been incorporated into Jesus before they die in baptism, that only little of them survives their encounter with God after death. In that encounter, all that is sin and evil is transformed, or burnt away in His light and glory, and perhaps very little of who they were is left behind.
However, I myself do not believe this is what happens: it does not seem to accord with what we know of God’s love for His children. It seems more than a trifle arbitrary, though it is of course possible that I simply do not understand enough. But, as I said before: if we wouldn’t call it ‘loving’ or ‘good’ if a human did it, we should be very wary indeed of ascribing it to God.
In any case, it should be unarguable that it is God’s will that all should come to love Him rather than reject Him, and I believe that He will not give up on us easily. Though we have a ‘first chance’ here on earth to recognise and accept His love, by becoming Christians and trying to live lives of loving service, I do not believe that there will ever be a ‘last chance’. God is in no hurry: His patience is as endless as His love, and it is often the case that even those who explicitly and articulately reject Him here on earth, do so because of the vast and obvious inadequacies of we who are His advocates. They have rejected our inadequate embodying of Him, not Him Himself. They have rejected what they see of Him in us, not He Himself. And God can wait for us to repent, and turn towards Him, and accept His atoning offering of Himself, and He will wait for ever: there is no ‘time’ for Him.
Moreover, we have to recognise, that being a Christian – being incorporated into Jesus by baptism – does not mean that we no longer sin: if only it did! It is obviously true, that many individual atheists and people of other faiths, have less sin in them than many Christians. Many people who are not Christian, are far closer to living lives that embody God’s love, than we are as Christians. This was true in Alban’s day, and it is still true now! If it comes to having all the sin and evil transformed and immolated by God’s unmediated presence, the personality of a holy non-Christian is as likely to be substantially retained, as is that of a Christian. After all, just being a Christian, doesn’t necessarily make you a nice or holy person! It just means that you have been enfolded in Christ: you will be saved, but you might not be recognisable when you have been re-made!
So, if God wants to save us all, and is prepared to wait literally for ever, until time itself ceases to exist, where is the problem in saying ‘All can be saved’? Why might anyone refuse to repent? Can it be imagined?
Well, I think it can be, though it may be merely theoretical nonsense.
We must remember that every single one of us, Christian or not, will be judged. Although He is infinitely loving, God is also infinitely Just and All-knowing. Even though He has atoned for us, nonetheless every single one of us will experience His judgement in its fullness, and there will be no hiding place when He shows us, tenderly but remorselessly, all the selfishness and sin that we have done and permitted.
Part of our ‘being saved’ will involve our coming to know the whole grim and gory truth about ourselves, and all the times when we have trampled on His love for us and all that He has made. The embarrassment and humiliation will be almost literally mortifying for all of us: imagine having next Sunday to hear me recite from the altar a completely accurate list of all the nasty things you have ever said, done, or thought!
Worse, we will come to see how much we have often unthinkingly hurt a Love that yearns for us to be better, and from which we can no longer hide.
So, there will be a judgement, and it will not be a thing to be experienced lightly. It will be literally transformative, as the evil in us is rooted out, or re-moulded, or trained to grow properly. Even for those of us who have lacked the energy, courage, or evil to be truly wicked, it will be unpleasant, whether or not we were a Christian: indeed, perhaps it will be worse for us Christians to realise how far short we fall of our ideals, and of His love. In this judgement, the question of what we believed, though important, will certainly seem rather less important than what we actually did. I would rather, I think, be the agnostic, or perhaps even atheist, Raoul Wallenberg, who saved Jews from the Nazi’s, than the ostensibly doctrinally orthodox Rwandan bishops and clergy who participated in and encouraged genocide in the 1990s.
But it is possible, perhaps, to imagine that for some – for Alban’s torturers, or those who ran the Nazi Death camps – this judgement will be impossible to go through. None of us will be unscathed, exactly – all of us will be changed by it – that is the point. Perhaps there will be some whom God absolutely wishes to save, who will nonetheless refuse this loving tender remorseless truth and honesty. Imagine seeing everyone for whose death you were even slightly responsible watching you, while your pride and evil and cruelty are reduced to rubble by a Judging love that demands to re-make you and seems bent on your total elimination, as it must feel to the thoroughly wicked.
If you were thoroughly wicked in life, everything you were will indeed be lost in the presence of God: and there will be almost nothing left that can be saved, because there was so little left of you that was loving or kind.
It thus seems to me to be at least possible that there will be some who never repent – who never recognise that they even could change direction, and be changed and re-made. There might be an infinite stand-off between a human self-absorption that cannot risk the pain of the truth, and an immeasurable, pitying, righteous love. This surely is a kind of hell.
If heaven is the experience of endless love, then hell is the experience of endless isolation: to be buried, alone, in your sinful self for all eternity, refusing to look up or to open your eyes for fear of the truth you cannot bear. And this would truly feel like an eternity: if there is no God, since He is outside time, there may still be time, endless stultifying years alone. (You may well recognise the hand of C S Lewis here!)
And at the last trumpet, there will presumably come a time when all the boulders of sin that make shadows of evil will be turned into pure crystal when the New Kingdom comes into being. At that point, those who persist in evil will be destroyed when all evil is immolated in the light and goodness of unmediated, unadulterated God. And those of whom only evil is left, will of necessity cease to be: evil cannot exist when there is only good.
Which means that if I had to understand that phrase with which we started, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, I would say, with many others, that it is tautological. By which I mean, that the words ‘the Church’ mean ‘those incorporated in Jesus, and being made new, so that they can stand and adore in the face of God’. Or, in other words, that the condition of being re-made, is the same as being part of Jesus’ Body – being part of the Church. It does not have to happen now; but it has happen to happen ‘some when’. ‘The Church’ and ‘those who are saved’, are two phrases that mean the same thing: and when God does one thing for you, the other is automatically also happening.
So when Jesus talks about denying us, He is not talking about anger or spite: about ‘an eye for an eye’. He means, I think, that if we turn away; if we refuse to face the truth about ourselves, and Him, then by that same token, we will have turned away from life. If we refuse to look at God, He will not force us to gaze on Him; but we will then have turned our faces to the dark, and the light will not be in us.
Only those who give up selfishness, will in the end find their true selves. Only those who give themselves in love; only those who take the risk of being wounded; only those who follow the Way of the Cross: will in the end know what life truly is. Because life and love – real life and true love – can only be found through death, as we lose everything to which we have clung, everything that covers our nakedness, and learn that we need only God, and in Him is everything.
For He came to give us abundant life, but there is only one way to receive that life, as Alban himself discovered. We must let go of everything else, except His offered, scarred, open hands.
I thought I might start this sermon by reflecting on that ancient motto extra ecclesiam nulla salus, which as of course you all know, is Latin for ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’. (I had to look it up as well, don’t worry!!). It’s an old saying, that can be traced back to St Cyprian of Carthage, who was martyred around the same time as our own St Alban, in the 250s probably, and if taken literally, it seems to mean, that unless you have been baptised and are a Christian, you cannot be saved, and are therefore presumably doomed to hell for eternity.
This belief, or some version of it, is the reason why, going back a few generations, babies were baptised as quickly as possible after they were born, and it is the reason also why the Church in the Middle Ages came to ‘invent’ or suggest the idea of Limbo: the part of hell where babies were said to go if they died before they were baptised, but also before they actually committed any sins, since the idea that tiny babies went to hell proper, seemed a bit much even for the most severe of mediaeval scholars.
Taken literally, extra ecclesiam nulla salus is indeed a somewhat ungenerous assertion, and perhaps implies a fairly simplistic view of God and of His mercy, Justice, and Love, not to mention of what we mean by heaven and hell. Like a lot of things, once you start thinking about them, much depends on what you think is meant by, for example, the word ‘church’, and indeed by the word ‘salvation’ as well. But extra ecclesiam nulla salus certainly reflects a view that is quite widespread, or has been, in times past.
The first thing I would say about it – and this is a general rule of thumb that applies to everything in theology and ethics, I think – is that anything we imagine or say about God that would make us uncomfortable if we said it about a human, is at the very least therefore questionable, and needs serious reflection. If something feels to us as though it is severe, ungenerous, and too legalistic, then it might be a sign that we just don’t understand matters sufficiently, but it also might very well be a sign that our view is wrong in this repsect. It is, after all, simply not possible: and I mean it is literally not possible, that we should be more loving than God. And if we cannot imagine doing something, because it is too unloving or harsh, then it is very dubious indeed to imagine that God does it. I say again: God is always more loving than we are.
Now this sometimes means, of course, that God will not shrink from hard decisions that are ultimately in our best interests, but that we as humans might shun because we are cowardly, or afraid of hard and difficult but right courses of action. God is absolutely Just as well as absolutely Loving. But He is Loving, and His anger, when it occurs, is caused by our own cruelty, hatred, and evil: not just because He is hurt by our behaviour or our rejection of Him. God does not have temper tantrums! His pain does not make Him angry, as is the case for us. His anger flows only from His love for us, and all that He has made, and His anger does not extinguish His love: the two work together, in service to a common goal and underlying intention to bring all things to that perfection for which and by which they were made.
And the next thing point I would make, is that it is vital that we always remember that it is God who does all the work. This is by far the most important point of all to make and remember. When it comes to salvation, this is not something we can earn or deserve, and we do not need to. We are saved because it is God's will that we should be saved. We are saved, because God loves us. We are saved, because He has come to earth to save us. We are not saved because we are good, or clever, or holy or pious or loving or kind or deserving: and sometimes, we ourselves and all other people are none of those things. But in the sense of salvation, none of that matters. None of us are worthy of Jesus: none of us are worthy of His love and His sacrifice.
I say again: we are saved because God loves us despite all our sins and shortcomings. We are not saved because we deserve it, or make ourselves worthy of it. If you want a short précis (and I’m sure you do!): we are saved by Grace Alone. (And I know I go on about this repeatedly, but it is really important, and worth underlining!).
That phrase ‘grace alone’ may, just possibly, remind you of those feisty and ferocious (and frankly rather unforgiving and un-Christian) Reformation debates about salvation: are we saved by Faith, or are we saved by Works as well?
The answer I have always felt, is that we are not saved by ourselves at all. We are not saved by adopting a faith, or even by sharing in Jesus’ faith (which is what the word faith means: that we stand where Jesus does, and take on His own trust in God). Nor are we saved (or damned) by anything else we do or don’t do, though God undoubtedly has hopes and expectations of our behaviour, as any parent does; and His hopes and expectations are entirely fair and just and in our own ultimate best interests. But, we are saved by God’s grace: by His action, by His gift.
This is true of everyone; rich, poor, old, young, black, white, and people of any and every faith and none. For all of us, what saves us, is not ourselves: it is God. He saves us because He loves us, and because it is His gracious gift, and the reason He came to earth, and lived and died and rose again. So – we are saved by Grace. And this applies to all of us – Alban, his torturers, and the priest whose cloak Alban wore so that the priest could get away.
Alban was not saved by his courage and bravery, but they were signs that he was already being well-prepared for the redemption of all things in which he will share, and indeed in which he is already sharing.
There is only one further question to add, I think: one possible caveat to raise. Which is this: since it is God who saves us, do we have to do anything ourselves? Do we have to respond to this gift: do we have to actually somehow in some way accept this offer? Is our own action or will required at any stage? Do we get any choice in the matter? What happened to the torturers who got to work on Alban? If Alban did not save himself, did they damn themselves? Is that what Jesus meant when He talked about denying people before God?
I will come to some of that in a moment. But first, one other little point. We sometimes imagine salvation as though what was primarily at stake was us. Each of us, a special and precious individual, whose individual and unique and single existence with God is what concerns us and God above all: each of us plucked separately to live with God for ever; and also, to live, of necessity, with other people as well.
But salvation is actually more than that: much more. When we talk of salvation, what we really mean is that God is preparing and working towards the redemption of all created things (what theologians call His ‘Mission’). We are invited to share in this work and in this end state. Salvation is perhaps a word for what it feels like for an individual to be incorporated into this collective experience: to be fully loved and fully loving in the fullness of God’s presence and the fullness of His created universe. Our salvation is only a small part, of a much bigger whole.
Moving on, or back, to my theme, such as it is; I should state that I believe that it is God’s will that every single human there has ever been should know and enjoy this shared experience of redemption. I believe that it is incontrovertibly God’s will that all His children should come to know and love Him. He does not desire the loss or destruction of any of His children (or anything else which He intended to be good). He does not plan the destruction of anyone. He has already atoned for everything He has made; and that includes Alban’s torturers, and all the other wicked people there have ever been. He came down from heaven for all of us; He died on the Cross for all of us.
However, He does not force our love or repentance either: that is not how love works. We have at least an element of choice on whether or not to accept His atonement. We are not forced to Repent. And indeed, you cannot force anyone to love you – that is not how love works: for it to be love, it has to be freely given, otherwise it is something else, not love.
Which brings us back to the question of how resistible God is, in this world and the next. Can we choose not to accept His love and His atonement for us?
It may be that those who for any number of reasons did not (appear) to accept God’s offer on earth, get no further chance hereafter. It may be that if they have not been incorporated into Jesus before they die in baptism, that only little of them survives their encounter with God after death. In that encounter, all that is sin and evil is transformed, or burnt away in His light and glory, and perhaps very little of who they were is left behind.
However, I myself do not believe this is what happens: it does not seem to accord with what we know of God’s love for His children. It seems more than a trifle arbitrary, though it is of course possible that I simply do not understand enough. But, as I said before: if we wouldn’t call it ‘loving’ or ‘good’ if a human did it, we should be very wary indeed of ascribing it to God.
In any case, it should be unarguable that it is God’s will that all should come to love Him rather than reject Him, and I believe that He will not give up on us easily. Though we have a ‘first chance’ here on earth to recognise and accept His love, by becoming Christians and trying to live lives of loving service, I do not believe that there will ever be a ‘last chance’. God is in no hurry: His patience is as endless as His love, and it is often the case that even those who explicitly and articulately reject Him here on earth, do so because of the vast and obvious inadequacies of we who are His advocates. They have rejected our inadequate embodying of Him, not Him Himself. They have rejected what they see of Him in us, not He Himself. And God can wait for us to repent, and turn towards Him, and accept His atoning offering of Himself, and He will wait for ever: there is no ‘time’ for Him.
Moreover, we have to recognise, that being a Christian – being incorporated into Jesus by baptism – does not mean that we no longer sin: if only it did! It is obviously true, that many individual atheists and people of other faiths, have less sin in them than many Christians. Many people who are not Christian, are far closer to living lives that embody God’s love, than we are as Christians. This was true in Alban’s day, and it is still true now! If it comes to having all the sin and evil transformed and immolated by God’s unmediated presence, the personality of a holy non-Christian is as likely to be substantially retained, as is that of a Christian. After all, just being a Christian, doesn’t necessarily make you a nice or holy person! It just means that you have been enfolded in Christ: you will be saved, but you might not be recognisable when you have been re-made!
So, if God wants to save us all, and is prepared to wait literally for ever, until time itself ceases to exist, where is the problem in saying ‘All can be saved’? Why might anyone refuse to repent? Can it be imagined?
Well, I think it can be, though it may be merely theoretical nonsense.
We must remember that every single one of us, Christian or not, will be judged. Although He is infinitely loving, God is also infinitely Just and All-knowing. Even though He has atoned for us, nonetheless every single one of us will experience His judgement in its fullness, and there will be no hiding place when He shows us, tenderly but remorselessly, all the selfishness and sin that we have done and permitted.
Part of our ‘being saved’ will involve our coming to know the whole grim and gory truth about ourselves, and all the times when we have trampled on His love for us and all that He has made. The embarrassment and humiliation will be almost literally mortifying for all of us: imagine having next Sunday to hear me recite from the altar a completely accurate list of all the nasty things you have ever said, done, or thought!
Worse, we will come to see how much we have often unthinkingly hurt a Love that yearns for us to be better, and from which we can no longer hide.
So, there will be a judgement, and it will not be a thing to be experienced lightly. It will be literally transformative, as the evil in us is rooted out, or re-moulded, or trained to grow properly. Even for those of us who have lacked the energy, courage, or evil to be truly wicked, it will be unpleasant, whether or not we were a Christian: indeed, perhaps it will be worse for us Christians to realise how far short we fall of our ideals, and of His love. In this judgement, the question of what we believed, though important, will certainly seem rather less important than what we actually did. I would rather, I think, be the agnostic, or perhaps even atheist, Raoul Wallenberg, who saved Jews from the Nazi’s, than the ostensibly doctrinally orthodox Rwandan bishops and clergy who participated in and encouraged genocide in the 1990s.
But it is possible, perhaps, to imagine that for some – for Alban’s torturers, or those who ran the Nazi Death camps – this judgement will be impossible to go through. None of us will be unscathed, exactly – all of us will be changed by it – that is the point. Perhaps there will be some whom God absolutely wishes to save, who will nonetheless refuse this loving tender remorseless truth and honesty. Imagine seeing everyone for whose death you were even slightly responsible watching you, while your pride and evil and cruelty are reduced to rubble by a Judging love that demands to re-make you and seems bent on your total elimination, as it must feel to the thoroughly wicked.
If you were thoroughly wicked in life, everything you were will indeed be lost in the presence of God: and there will be almost nothing left that can be saved, because there was so little left of you that was loving or kind.
It thus seems to me to be at least possible that there will be some who never repent – who never recognise that they even could change direction, and be changed and re-made. There might be an infinite stand-off between a human self-absorption that cannot risk the pain of the truth, and an immeasurable, pitying, righteous love. This surely is a kind of hell.
If heaven is the experience of endless love, then hell is the experience of endless isolation: to be buried, alone, in your sinful self for all eternity, refusing to look up or to open your eyes for fear of the truth you cannot bear. And this would truly feel like an eternity: if there is no God, since He is outside time, there may still be time, endless stultifying years alone. (You may well recognise the hand of C S Lewis here!)
And at the last trumpet, there will presumably come a time when all the boulders of sin that make shadows of evil will be turned into pure crystal when the New Kingdom comes into being. At that point, those who persist in evil will be destroyed when all evil is immolated in the light and goodness of unmediated, unadulterated God. And those of whom only evil is left, will of necessity cease to be: evil cannot exist when there is only good.
Which means that if I had to understand that phrase with which we started, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, I would say, with many others, that it is tautological. By which I mean, that the words ‘the Church’ mean ‘those incorporated in Jesus, and being made new, so that they can stand and adore in the face of God’. Or, in other words, that the condition of being re-made, is the same as being part of Jesus’ Body – being part of the Church. It does not have to happen now; but it has happen to happen ‘some when’. ‘The Church’ and ‘those who are saved’, are two phrases that mean the same thing: and when God does one thing for you, the other is automatically also happening.
So when Jesus talks about denying us, He is not talking about anger or spite: about ‘an eye for an eye’. He means, I think, that if we turn away; if we refuse to face the truth about ourselves, and Him, then by that same token, we will have turned away from life. If we refuse to look at God, He will not force us to gaze on Him; but we will then have turned our faces to the dark, and the light will not be in us.
Only those who give up selfishness, will in the end find their true selves. Only those who give themselves in love; only those who take the risk of being wounded; only those who follow the Way of the Cross: will in the end know what life truly is. Because life and love – real life and true love – can only be found through death, as we lose everything to which we have clung, everything that covers our nakedness, and learn that we need only God, and in Him is everything.
For He came to give us abundant life, but there is only one way to receive that life, as Alban himself discovered. We must let go of everything else, except His offered, scarred, open hands.