In these weeks following Easter, the scriptures readings can be tedious and repetitious. They are in the main recounting the many appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his death and resurrection. The early Church writers are making two points: The first point is: Christ is alive and powerful. He is presiding over all. They tried to convey this message almost obsessively, and in a variety of ways. They conveyed it through their writings of course, the disciples recording their encounters with the Risen Christ. For example, the early catacombs churches in Rome invariably have a fresco of the Risen Christ painted on the apse of the Church, high over the main altar. We have the same idea here in our own Church but in a different medium, done here in stained glass, obviously. The triumphant risen Christ presides over the church. A favourite image used to convey the nature of the Church was a ship. We still use the word nave of the church, the main aisle, coming from Latin navis, meaning ship. And the risen Christ is there over the prow, reassuring his flock that they are travelling safely because he is at their head. He is there calling his people into the future, towards their destination. He has just been through the most devastating storm of all, a storm signalled by the darkened skies and peeling thunder on Calvary Hill. He has come through that storm and he is how at the prow of the ship, leading his people home.
The image of the ship then is a rich one. It has great potential to nourish our Christian imagination, to capture and convey the meaning of the risen Christ for humanity. Its main strength lies in the fact that so much of his own life revolved around the sea and around fishermen. He so often pushed out from the shore and taught the people from the boat. The sea itself has a strong resonance for us. It conveys the unpredictability of our lives, the dangers that lurk ahead of us, the power of events to overwhelm us. Today the sea is a benign friend, one of the great natural beauties of our world. Tomorrow it is a treacherous enemy, roaring loudly and threatening to devour us. All the insecurities and doubts that beset our lives, and beset the lives of the early disciples, are conveyed through the image of the unpredictable sea. Yet through it all, the image of the risen Christ gazes reassuringly down from the prow. No matter how tempestuous thing become, he is there sharing our predicament and reassuring us.
The image of the Church as ship confirms our identity as pilgrims. The ship carries us from point a to point b, from the womb to the tomb, from God who is our origin to God who is our destiny. The ship is our home in the course of this pilgrimage. We are thrown together in sometimes difficult times. Naturally, we are going to get on one anothers nerves from time to time. But the first message of the risen Christ was to reassure his follower of their power to forgive one another. As a community of pilgrims, we are forgiven by one another and sustained and strengthened by the Eucharist.
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