A Homily for Easter 7, 2008
At the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Havana, Cuba
The Very Revd Michael J. Pitts
Sisters and brothers in Christ. It is wonderful for us to be here with you in Havana. This is my very first visit to your country, though I have followed your history with great interest since I was a student very many years ago. Some others of our group are also here for the first time, though my dear colleague Canon Sanchez will already be known to some of you from her visit last year. I thank Dean Juan, Bishop Nerva, you all and many other people we have already met, for making us feel so welcome in Cuba.
We are with you at a time when the whole church is celebrating the feast of the Ascension. I know that for many, especially for younger people, the idea of Jesus floating into the sky, as it is often depicted in Christian art, is not easy to grasp. So I like to think of this as a story rather than an historical event. I believe that it is a story of very great importance. It tells us about a transition between the time when Jesus was physically present with his disciples and the time when his presence was known spiritually in the community of the church and especially in the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine.
One of my favourite of the Easter Stories is Luke's account of the two disciples who walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the first Easter day. As they walked they were aware of a stranger walking with them. He spoke to them, you may remember, about the scriptures (the Hebrew Scriptures which were their Bible). He showed how they pointed to the meaning of Jesus. But the disciples did not recognise the stranger until.... until they arrived at an inn and the stranger took bread and broke it. Then they knew the presence of Jesus with them. And then, Luke tells us, he was no longer there, but they returned to Jerusalem filled with joy.
We are all disciples of Jesus after the resurrection and Ascension. Jesus' presence with us is not a physical or direct or individual presence. We find and know the presence of Jesus when we meet together as a community, and especially when we break the bread and share the wine. It is this presence of the living Jesus which binds us together in one world wide community. It is this presence which makes possible a fellowship between you in Havana and us in Montreal, even when normally, we are separated by the length of a continent.
I find it sad when, in the history of the church, and at the present time, there are those who try to make our common fellowship be based in something other than the presence of the living Christ. Beliefs about Jesus and his moral requirements are made into the rule of faith, and it is insistence on those rather than on our common experience of the presence of Christ, that has always torn the church apart, as it is today.
We are one because we are one in Christ, the living Jesus who shares with us in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine. When we have known that sharing, that communion, nothing should be able to divide us.
In my ministry I have shared at the Lord's table in many different places and in many different contexts. I have met with the living Jesus in great cathedrals, in tiny churches, in people's homes, in hospitals, in schools, on board ships. I have presided at Eucharists in different countries, inside and in the open air, in the Anglican church and with other church communities, sometimes with people of other faiths. Yet I know that these Eucharists spread over sixty years and four continents have really been one Eucharist, one continuous thanksgiving for the presence of Christ in one great community. And so today we gather at the Lord's Table with you in Havana, while the rest of our congregation gathers in Montreal. This day and every day we are one fellowship in the risen and ascended Christ, a fellowship which crosses all barriers of time and place, of country race and culture.
This, I believe is the greatest gift of our Christian faith. By in its very nature, it is not a gift to be kept for ourselves, but a gift which has to be shared inside the church but also outside. Our faith in the risen and ascended Christ is a vocation to share the joy of a unity of all humanity. In Christ there are no barriers. May we together witness to that in the whole world.
