Sixth Sunday of Easter 2020
All around us now here in Wahroonga the leaves have changed colour and are beginning to drop to the ground. As the writer Joyce Rupp observes, “some people tell me that they don’t like autumn because it reminds them too much of the inevitability of death. The leaves falling from the trees onto the barren, brown earth makes them feel sad and lonely. The leaves are subtle reminders that we are asked to let go of many things throughout our life. Every time we surrender something, we connect with our death, with the ultimate moment of letting go.”[1] Indeed, as this same writer recognizes, “Seeing death in any form – autumn leaves falling from trees or a person we love breathing a last sigh of life – can call us to face questions we would rather avoid.” These questions she says, “touch our souls and connect us to the core of our being. No wonder we feel challenged by a season that can raise such questions.”
But as Rupp shares with us, although autumn might present with this sense of melancholy with which the questions of life confront us, there is, as she writes, also a,
“movement toward life [that] takes place in autumn. Dead leaves that seem to have no value are transformed into rich humus for new growth. The barren branches already bear the potential of new green in their terminal buds. The ground lies fallow, but it is resting and gaining nutrients for [fresh] seeds. The earth waits in the process of growth for the unknown, unseen beauty of another season.”
And so, as Rupp, concludes, “Autumn is a necessary transition between summer’s fruitfulness and spring’s new life. No new growth will come unless autumn agrees to let go of what has been. The same is true of our lives.”
We cannot grow without change. These last eight weeks of relative lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic have represented enormous change for us and they have also entailed loss. They have been our “dying leaves.”
Yet the more drastic the change, the more potential we have to discover another aspect of our inner selves that we haven’t known before. The season of “dying leaves” can also become for us a mellow season – one in which hopefully we have appreciated at an even deeper level treasured people and events, the importance of our own community of faith, even. Hopefully, the last couple of months have been a time in which we have allowed our spirits to ripen, to mature.
The Spirit is given to us to appreciate with reverence everyone and everything that is a part of our life. The Spirit comes into our life so that we might learn to live life fully even as we accept the truth of our dying. As Joyce Rupp invites us, “We need to celebrate life’s moments as they come, enjoy with reverence the beauty of each day . . ., live more simply and freely because we know that each moment is part of an eternal process of becoming. Who we are on the other side of life depends on how fully we have lived on this side.”
This Autumn, perhaps more than others in the life of our parish community, has presented with this invitation. To use Joyce Rupp’s words,
“we [have been] invited to pause for a while in our busy lives and to face the deeper issues of the future. This reflection may shake our security. It can challenge us to change our present. It may feel uncomfortable and painful, but in the process, we can gain a greater inner freedom. We can learn how to live with insecurity, develop deeper trust in the unknowns of eternal life, and believe more fully in the promises of our faith, which are easy to speak, but sometimes very difficult to truly accept.”
Is this not the gift of the Spirit to us, the Spirit that Jesus promises his disciples in today’s gospel as they are forced to enter their own experience of loss and absence? The Spirit of God is promised us by Jesus so that we might do precisely this – enter the occasions of absence but discover there an unimagined presence.
Might we then conclude with a prayer given us by Joyce Rupp from whom I have drawn these reflections this Sunday:
“God of the seasons, there is a time for everything; there is a time for dying and a time for rising. We need courage to enter the process of transformation.
God of autumn, the trees are saying goodbye to their green, letting go of what has been. We, too, have our moments of surrender, with all their insecurity and risk. Help us to let go when we need to do so.
God of fallen leaves lying in colored patterns on the ground, our lives have their own patterns. As we see the patterns of our own growth, may we learn from them.
God of [birds] going [north] for another season, your wisdom enables us to know what needs to be left behind and what needs to be carried into the future. We yearn for insight and vision.
God of flowers touched with frost, may your life keep our hearts from going cold in empty seasons.
God of life, you believe in us, you enrich us, you entrust us with the freedom to choose life.
For this we are grateful.”
[1] Joyce Rupp, “The Falling Leaves” in May I Have This Dance, (Ave Maria Press, 1993), 129-139. The reflections in this homily are drawn from Rupp’s essay.
