Several weeks ago I stood surrounded by the twelfth-century stained glass windows in the early gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Chartres, France and found myself overcome by emotion. Why, I asked myself: was it the size, splendor or antiquity of the building? No, it was none of these things. Rather, standing in this space was like entering into the story of salvation. The luminous windows tell the story in terms of prophecy and its fulfillment in the Incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The story is told on the outside as well in myriad statues and carved reliefs. By entering this space I had, as it were, entered into the life of Christ. I had a profound sense of having entered not simply a building but a whole world represented in glass and stone that was utterly real to me and, in fact, the place where I am most truly and fully at home.

Sadly, this world is in enormous contrast to the world in which I live most of the time, a world that has very little awareness of the deep mystery of Christ in us which embraces and transfigures the whole creation. Though we have been made part of this deeper reality through our baptism, how little we truly attend to it. How seldom we live there.

I then thought of some words from the letter to the Colossians: “[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son…” To be transferred into the kingdom of God’s son is not about place but about a transformed consciousness, a new way of seeing and being which Paul calls “new creation” and 1 Peter describes as being “born anew.” Our rescue and transference is celebrated in the sacrament of Baptism, through which our life is taken up into Christ “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

What does such language mean? For me, the power of darkness and sin have to do with the distortions, blindness and untruth which afflict us all. We are either monumentally aware of them or unwilling to examine them for fear that would require us to see and behave differently, that would require repentance or a change of heart.

And here we need others to help us to see clearly and lead us to repentance. It is deeply troubling, therefore, that many of us in the church seek out people just like ourselves to help us maintain our limited vision. Communities of like-mindedness protect us from the challenges that divergent, and therefore threatening, perspectives or understandings of “the truth as in Jesus” might present and ask of us.

Yet, the Holy Spirit by whom we are “sealed in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever,” is not a spirit of cowardice and evasion but a spirit of love. Love, you will remember from Paul’s great hymn in 1 Corinthians 13, bears all things, endures all things and, above all, “rejoices in the truth.” The Spirit of truth constantly draws from the riches of Christ, who is himself the Truth, in order that — again in the words of Paul — we may be “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son.”

This work of being conformed to the image of Christ, which is carried out in us by the Spirit, is a life-long process which has as its fundamental dynamic the paradoxical pattern of dying and rising, losing and finding, becoming strong by encountering weakness, being made rich by experiencing our existential poverty, and thereby knowing viscerally, and not just with our minds, that our life at its deepest and truest — in ways we can scarcely begin to understand — is hidden with God in Christ who is being formed in us (Galatians 4:19).

This process of formation and conformation, of being endlessly reformed and refashioned, is an expression of God’s loving desire for us and the whole creation. It shows forth God’s yearning for our good and our flourishing, which lies at the heart of what we call God’s will.

The new birth carried out in us through baptism into Christ involves a renewing of the spirit of our minds (Ephesians 4:23) and having the mind of Christ (1Corinthians 2:16). It means having the consciousness of Christ worked in us over time by the Spirit, who is able in the most exact and sometimes ironic way to guide, sustain, challenge and enlighten us through the ordinary and immediate events and relationships that make up the stuff of our lives.

Leaving the cathedral by the south portal, I stood on the steps looking out at the town of Chartres and its buildings which spanned the centuries. I then turned back to the doorway through which I had just passed and noticed a large statue of Christ the Teacher, his left hand extended while in his right hand he held a book. On either side of the doorway stood the apostles ready to receive and act upon his teaching. I thought again of our being sealed by the Holy Spirit who teaches us by forming Christ in us. As I contemplated the figure before me, it was clear that Christ’s hand was extended not only to the apostles but to all of us who have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. 
 
 
The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold
XXV Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church, USA