The Very Reverend Michael J. Pitts

Greetings from the Dean,

Dear Brother and Sister Cybernauts,

This greeting comes to you following the highest festival of the Christian religion and the central point of the Christian Year.

In Christ Church Cathedral, we have celebrated Easter. We have read the Easter Gospel story. We have proclaimed "Christ is Risen" and we have sung our alleluias. In a sense (and in spite of difficulties we may have today in understanding what is actually meant by resurrection), that is the easy part. The more difficult task is to work out for ourselves how the history connects with the present. How do I connect with the Jesus who is risen? Let me describe a spectrum. You may be able to see from this where your faith fits in.

There are Christians who have a direct mystical relationship with the risen Jesus. They not only know that Christ rose from the dead a long time ago. They know and experience him now as a living person in a day to day relationship. He is as real to them as, (perhaps more real than), their other relationships in life. They speak to him and he speaks to them. They walk with him and he walks with them. They pour out their souls to him, and he gives comfort and encouragement. In earlier centuries, the mystical relationship with Christ was thought to be the end of a long process of self-discipline and the practice of prayer, a relationship only available for those who had the possibility to separate themselves from the daily cares of the world in the monastery, or perhaps as a result of sufficient wealth to obviate the need for daily work. In our democratic age, mysticism has been democratized too. Many have realized that this relationship with the risen and living Jesus is possible right in the midst of everyday life.

Let me offer however two caveats. The mystical relationship with Christ has never been for everybody. We need not feel inferior Christians if it is not our experience. Secondly, even in previous ages, the masters of prayer warned against the danger of mistaking, for a mystical relationship with Christ, an experience that came from other directions. In a post-Freudian age, we may wish to call that danger wish fulfillment or projection.

If, at one end of the spectrum, the mystical experience is one of a connection to the risen Jesus in a real and actual relationship, at the opposite end, the connection is that of coming to believe that Jesus who lived, died and rose again in history, left an important legacy to humanity. Although, here, we may believe that Jesus is alive, the present life is distant from us, not a real experience of a personal relationship. The importance of Jesus is his teaching, his pattern of life as shown in the Gospels, his love, which results in a life-style worth trying to follow, his ethic which, if followed, would make a profound difference to the world today. This way of being a Christian is well known to many of those both within the churches, and to many who have left the churches, but still claim to be Christian and to have faith. In essence it is accepting the ideas of Jesus and about Jesus and trying to fit them into our present life-situation.

Let me point out some difficulties with this end of the spectrum. First it is not greatly different in kind and dynamic from other belief systems, philosophies and ideologies. If the connection with the sources of belief is weakened, it can easily convert itself into one of those ideologies, as happened with the German Church in the Nazi era. Secondly it can be very difficult to know what following the teaching of Jesus and living like him would actually be like in the complexities of life and society on the threshold of the new millennium. What did Jesus have to say about global warming, genetically modified organisms, atomic warfare, population explosion or HIV? Thirdly worship and church community play only a small part in this way of Christianity. Church membership and worship tends to be used as a feel-good experience, and if it no longer feels good, it can be left behind, as it has been by so many in western society.

In my own Christian life, which began in childhood, I have moved from this second end of the spectrum to something nearer the middle. What I write now describes the present reality of my own Christian faith. I describe this as knowing the risen Christ through mediated relationship. I know Jesus is alive, because I meet with him, in the Scriptures, in worship, prayer and in the Sacraments, in the church community and in the world.

None of this is without difficulty. The Bible is a collection of writings collected and recorded over a period of nearly two thousand years. It contains the witness of those who speak of their history, their every day life, their spirituality and their hopes in relation to God. It is written in the context of a world-view and knowledge base, which is relatively consistent, but totally different from our own. To understand it, to know what is of permanent value, and what is culturally conditioned, and to hear God speaking though it requires an effort of reason, skill and perseverance. But applying that effort in a constant struggle with the texts, I know that I meet there the risen Jesus.

Those who are closely involved in the life of the church know that if the Christian community is to be more that a superficial social gathering, it is also a place of conflict and pain. But part of what I hear from the scriptures is that the church is the Body of Christ. It is here that I meet with Jesus, in the mutual love and support of the community, in the working through of our conflicts, in the commitment to the service of the world. Above all I meet with Christ and know his reality in the splendor and simplicity of the liturgy and sacraments of the church, and in my own prayers. In this respect the Anglican tradition of prayer is very much in the centre of the spectrum of faith, which I am describing. In our public worship and private prayer we use largely the words of others, the words of scripture, the traditional words of the liturgy, the prayers of the saints. It is through the experience of others and through the common experience of the tradition that we experience the presence of the living Christ.

If meeting with Christ in the church can be difficult, meeting him in the world is even more so. Where do we seek for a Jesus of love and compassion in our world of unbelievable suffering and injustice? I suggest in two ways. First in the suffering of our world, we meet, not so much the risen Christ as Jesus on the cross. For me the resurrection is in hope and in commitment. What I discover in the Gospels, especially with the help of the most recent historical Jesus scholarship, is a Jesus whose life was dedicated to overthrowing all that enslaved and oppressed humanity, both in the spiritual and in the political spheres. It is in the call to a commitment to continue that program as an individual and as the Body of Christ, that I believe I can meet with the living Jesus in the world.

Christ is Risen, and this is the way I meet with him and know him. I hope this may help you to know him too.

Yours sincerely,

Michael J. Pitts