Back when I  was still Chaplain to the Sisters at Saint Margaret’s House in New Hartford, I arrived home one evening . . . and smoke was pouring out of my wife’s Scottish ears.  The ancestral peat bogs were smoldering with the heat of spontaneous combustion, . . . and I could hear bag pipes skirling in the distance as this daughter of Saint Andrew prepared to keep the infidel at bay; . . . so I delicately asked “What’s up, dear?,” making sure that, if I had been the agent of my beloved’s holy ire, I had a clear path to the vegetable garden I kept, where the black flies might protect me.  “Read that!” she said sticking the latest issue of The Living Church under my nose.  Grateful for my innocence, I read a letter to the editor of that venerable magazine; . . . I read a letter to the editor written by one Father Quinn living in Chevy Chase, Maryland who was venting his spleen over being told that storm damage to his home was an “act of God” and not covered by his insurance policy.  Avoiding the obvious recrimination that he had not been prudent enough to pay the extra premium for an “act of God” rider, Father Quinn contended that

“The storm wasn’t an ‘act of God.’  It just happened, like a lot of things in life.  The dark side of human freedom and wandering through the neighborhoods east of Eden is random death and destruction.”

To which my beloved retorted, “What, they don’t have weather in Paradise?  The dark side of human freedom is to be so arrogant and ungrateful as to think that storms ‘just happen’ and to be offended when we don’t like the results!”

    My wife’s Scottish-Presbyterian / French-Huguenot spiritual ancestry had risen up in protest (as it always does) at the audacity of someone to suggest that the Lord God Almighty is not; . . . that the Providence of God is incapable of embracing every contingency of human existence, . . . even those contingencies whose outcome displeases us.

    Gratefully, Holy Scripture appears to agree with my wife and her touchy spiritual ancestors.  Because what does Saint John the Divine report that one of Heaven’s elders said to him in a vision?  . . . He said that the multitude which no one could number who are before the throne of God, clothed in white; . . . this multitude

are they who have come out of the great tribulation [whose robes have been made white] in the blood of the Lamb . . . and he who sits upon the throne will shelter them with his presence . . . For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

And who is this multitude?  . . . It is all of us together that Saint John saw in his vision; . . . all of us together and more:  . . . he saw men and women and children of every nation, from all tribes and languages; . . . all of us together . . . and more.  And what is this great tribulation from which we have emerged?  . . . It is this life corrupted and defiled by Original Sin; . . . it is this life in which we are told that the world must have a claim upon our loyalties; . . . it is this life in which we are assured that we cannot be happy unless the restless yearnings of our own flesh are satisfied; . . . it is this life in which the devil’s very lies about the world and our flesh seek to encourage self-absorption and to rob us of hope in God.  We are in the midst of the great tribulation of life.   . . . But the blood of the Lamb shed for us on Good Friday has washed the sin from our lives and made us sacred, . . . and the rising of Christ on Easter Day has expelled us from the tribulation of the tomb.  The Lamb’s blood and rising from the tomb has made us sons and daughters of God . . . so that the Lord God Almighty shelters us with His Presence . . . and by the mercy of Jesus the Lamb we drink living water from His Cup, . . . and God wipes away every tear from our eyes.  . . . Yes, we shall, in all likelihood, at one time or another be before God with weeping, . . . but the hand of God is there to catch us . . . and turn our sorrow into joy.  For, what does Jesus tell us today?

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, Who has given them to me is greater than all . . . I and the Father are one.

    It is into this sacred circle of self-control and holy living; . . . it is into this sacred circle of life and divine Presence that we bring Collin Shae and Gavin Sayers today.  And if you look very closely at that multitude which John describes, you will see them; . . . you will see Collin and Gavin.  And they are doubly blessed; . . . Collin and Gavin are doubly blessed because as well as the shelter of God’s Presence, they are surrounded by all of us, . . . God’s own earthly angels.  . . . And, because our own Baptism has numbered us among that cloud of witnesses to God’s power and mercy, . . . it becomes our solemn and joyful duty, from this day forward, to teach Collin and Gavin to listen for the voice of Jesus in their lives . . . so that they can learn to hear Him Who is their Friend and Shepherd, and from Whose Cup they shall continually drink everlasting life.  Today Collin and Gavin are raised with Jesus from “random death and destruction”; . . . they are raised with Jesus to become sons of the Living God . . . Who holds them securely in His arms.  Alleluia!