A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 13:14, 43-52 Revelation 7:9, 14b-17 John 10:27-30
There’s not a panel in the old wainscotting, but what, if it were endowed with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall, and tell its tale of horror—the romance of life, sir, the romance of life!
The narrator is speaking of cheap London lodgings, whose tenants so often change, but he could just as well be describing our homes and the stories they might tell if, as we say, “the walls could talk.”
The line is from a very unusual ghost story found in the first novel of Charles Dickens, though The Pickwick Papers is a barely-sewn-together series of stories. In one such, a renter must furnish his flat with an ugly, ancient armoire. He considers turning it to kindling when, of course, “a sound resembling a faint groan appeared to issue from the interior of the case.”
The tenant tries to ignore the noise until
one of the glass doors slowly opening, disclosed a pale and emaciated figure in soiled and worn apparel standing erect in the press. The figure was tall and thin, and the countenance expressive of care and anxiety; but there was something in the hue of the skin, and gaunt and unearthly appearance of the whole form, which no being of this world was ever seen to wear.
Yes, it is a phantom, who explains, “In this room…my worldly ruin was worked, and I and my children beggared.”
But this ghost story takes an unusual, even comedic, turn. Having heard the spectre’s sad story, the tenant asks the ghost the question we would all like to hear answered.
I don’t apply the observation personally to you, because it is equally applicable to most of the ghosts I ever heard of; but it does appear to me something inconsistent, that when you have an opportunity of visiting the fairest spots on earth—for I suppose space is nothing to you—you should always return exactly to the very places where you have been the most miserable.
That is the question ghosts really should be made to answer: Why remain where you have been most miserable? It is equally applicable to the living, who make ghosts of themselves by continuing to haunt—or be haunted by—the past: Why stay there?
We all have “tales of terror” to tell. People have hurt us; we have suffered grave losses; our hearts have been torn open. That is, as Dickens ironically puts it, “the romance of life.” The question begging to be asked is why we want to haunt the past, to allow it to weigh us down.
Once we have learned our lessons, we need to walk on, and that is always the work of the one who calls himself our shepherd. He leads us forward.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me (Jn 10:27).
Christ calls us to leave the past for dead, to live in the present, to journey towards the “eternal life” he promises. Yet it is so hard to forgive and to forget. When the whole, wonderful world lies in front of us, many of us are like ghosts. We sadly choose to chain ourselves to that point in life where we were the most miserable.
For many, moving on is more than a question of resolution, however firm. We need God’s grace, God’s assistance, and that must be our prayer.
Lord, I cannot forgive, and therefore I cannot forget, though I know I must. Set me free from my own chains. I no longer want to be a ghost of who I once was, before the terrors came. When the day comes that you call me to yourself, I want to wear one of your white robes and hold a palm of peace in my hand.
That is the other tale of the walking dead, which we must remember: those who have passed through death into life, who have faced its terrors but heard the Lamb call them to a life beyond all that.
I, John, had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
Then one of the elders said to me,
“These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:9,14).
Who are these people? The early fathers of the church answer. Caesarius of Arles says that “These are not, as some think, only martyrs, but rather the whole people in the church.” Primasius adds, “It is through the endurance of struggles that the number of the faithful are sifted out…” These are ordinary folk, whose struggles go unsung. They fought valiantly, says Oecumenius, “against every spiritual and physical foe.” They met life, suffered and survived because they belong to the shepherd.
Do we want to be ghosts who haunt the past, or do we want to follow our shepherd into new life? The choice is ours but probably not the courage or the clout. The lamb-once-slain himself must call to us. We must hear and realize that we are not able to follow without his grace. Then we must pray a long, silent prayer in which we first rehearse our woes
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
and then we fall silent, listening to the shepherd.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
