Proverbs 31: 10 – 12, 15, 17, 20 – 21, 23 / Psalm 23 / I Corinthians 13: 1 – 13 / John 14: 1 – 6
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene
Tucker on Saturday, February 12, 2022 on the occasion of the Celebration of Life
observed for parishioner Estelle Yelnosky.
“THE ‘ALREADY’ AND THE ‘NOT YET’”
(Homily
texts: I Corinthians 13:1 – 13 & John
14:1 – 6)
Perhaps
most of us have had the experience of setting out on a trip, only to have some one
or more of the younger members of the household say, “Are we there yet?”
(Usually, in my experience, this question gets asked about five minutes into
the trip.)
Setting
out by car on a trip is an “already” experience, the one of being on the way,
and the “not yet” experience of not having reached out destination quite yet.
Life
is, if we think about, filled with a good deal of “already” and “not yets”.
For
example, when we were in school, we used to dream about the days when we
wouldn’t be sitting in a classroom, perhaps. We were, as we sat in those
classrooms, in the “already” experience of making our way to graduation, or to
the conclusion of the course of study we were engaged in, on our way to the
“not yets”, graduation or the completion of our work, that hadn’t, in the
fulness of time, taken place.
We
could say the same thing about any number of other life experiences.
Our
walk with God is also filled with the “already” experiences of such things as
Holy Baptism, of Confirmation or First Communions, and of other experiences as
we come to know God as He is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, and as we
grow into the full stature of Christ.
Our
walk with God culminates in the “not yet” experience of the end of this part of
our walk with God, our walk in this life, among those who know and love us, and
of the end of our earthly journey in this body. Then, at death, we finish the
“not yet” of life, and enter into the “yes!” of the full, complete,
face-to-face experience of God.
Our
Gospel reading, from John’s account, chapter fourteen, points to the “already”
and the “not yet”: Jesus says that He is going away. He tells His disciples
this news as they are all together in the “already” of their presence with one
another before His suffering, death and burial. But He points forward to the
“not yet”, the reality that He will return to claim those who belong to Him.
How
can we be sure that these words are trustworthy? I think the answer lies in the
Lord’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday morning. Then, in that
experience, the Lord returns with his physical body intact, still bearing the
wounds of His suffering, but now free from the limitations of time and space.
His return, His appearing to the gathered disciples on Easter Sunday evening, is
the guarantee that, through God’s power, He has pierced the veil of death, and
has returned to say that, as He has passed from death into life again, we, too,
will do the same thing when the “not yets” of our lives become the “yes!” of
eternal life in God’s presence.
For
now, we who are in the “already” phase of life, look into the face of death,
and into the reality of the one we have known and loved, but who has now passed
through the veil of death, and is now in the “yes” of full and complete life in
eternity, and we might say, with the disciple Thomas, “Where are you going? We
don’t know the way?” Truly, St. Paul was correct when, in writing to the early
Christians in Corinth, he said that, “Now we see as in a glass dimly, but then
we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully,
even as I have been fully known.”
The
reality of God’s power over death, that reality which means that life has
changed as we put off this mortal life, with its pains, its aging process, its
diseases and ills, is now free of all these things. God, making His power
visible through the reality of Jesus’ rising from the dead on Easter Sunday
morning, is the window through which we can believe that these promises are
true and trustworthy.
Thanks
be to God!
AMEN.
