Cloister thoughts...

When Lloyd Douglas, author of The Robe, was a university student, he lived in a boarding house. The story is told that downstairs on the first floor lived an elderly, retired music teacher who was confined to his living quarters. Each day, Douglas said, they had a ritual that they would go through together. He would come down the steps, open the gentleman’s door and ask: “Well, what’s the good news?” The music teacher would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair and say: “That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; and it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but, my friend, that is middle C!” The teacher had discovered a truth in the midst of a faltering and out-of-tune environment. He found one thing upon which he could depend, the one constant in his life.

I would like to suggest today that the absolute on which we can unfailingly trust, that we can count on, that endures, that does not change, is Jesus Christ. This is the word of Revelation which comes to John on the isle of Patmos, a word of completeness, a word of finality, a word of never ending hope: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’…(the one) who is and who was and who is to come” (Revelation 1:8). How did this extraordinary revelation occur in the life of John?

John, the youngest of the disciples of Jesus, is now an old man, living in exile, prisoner on Patmos, off the coast of Palestine. The time is about the turn of the first century, some seventy or eighty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. John and most of the other members of that community of faith which he has nurtured have endured much tribulation. The first century church had struggled through monumental disillusionment: Christians had been ostracized by the Jewish community from which they had emerged; political and social opposition from Rome had been painful trauma, accusing them of not only being a security risk to the government, but also of practicing cannibalism. Worst of all, the expected new order in a visible kingdom of God had not materialized. Terror marked their days, evil reigned supreme. The passing years had become dreary, their hopes stillborn, their prophetic expectation hushed.

Here is John, last living disciple of Jesus, victim of a malediction he did not understand, wondering, wondering. He sits alone in that deep cavity dug from the rock formation of the island which is his prison, birds soar overhead, watching the water intently for those morsels echo through the waving palm leaves, and the musical voice of the seal resonates against the walls of his hollow, bleak prison.

He waits, one day merging into another, finally a continuous stream without lines of clear demarcation, time having lost any sense of movement. He waits, engulfed in a vast sense of aloneness and overwhelming helplessness. Yet, he remembers; he remembers with agony the Christ by whom he had been claimed in love; he remembers the excitement that stirred within him as Jesus spoke so compellingly about what life could be, visions of new possibility made so plausible; he remembers the pain and fury and turmoil that marked the days of Passover, culminating in the disbelief of resurrection; he remembers and surfaces one by one the faces of those who became followers of the Way, those just across the waters, those for whom his whole being yearns for touch and the fellowship of belonging; he aches at the thought of that mindless persecution that has played such havoc with what might have been. John waits, and remembers, and wonders and hurts; and questions ominously corrupt his mind; and assault his faith.

It is the Lord’s Day and John gives himself to sorting out all this confusion and spiritual disarray, and in the very midst of the effort being made, the Spirit descends upon him; overwhelmed by the presence of Christ, John falls prostrate on the sand, his depression vanishes. The Master is here and he can feel a touch on his shoulder and the old familiar voice says once again, “Fear not.” “…Fear not, I am the first and the last, the living one. I was dead and behold I am alive for evermore…” (Revelation 1:18).

Christ triumphant! Christ the comforter! Christ who walks before us teaching us his ways, the crucified who died for our sins, behold he is resurrected and lives for evermore. Believing that, my friends, as John did, is the middle C of the Christian faith.

In the storm of this pandemic, this global sheltering-in, it’s the Good News of life. It is hope for the world! It is our trust in the One who is and will be now and forever that provides us with strength to live each day with courage to face the future!