Hanford Sermons

Epiphany 4: The Litmus Test of Authority

2012-01-31T12:38:00.000-08:00

Deuteronomy 18:5-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

The nature of authority looms high in the readings this morning, but also some of the inherent problems with discerning genuine authority. The western paradigm has ever been – and only relatively recently challenged – that all authority comes from God. And in the Hebrew Scriptures we find that God shares that divine authority, the divine power, firstly with prophets. So God grants authority to Moses, and the writer of Deuteronomy says of him that “never since has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face”. (Deuteronomy 34:10) In fact, Moses is considered by Jews, Christians and Muslims the greatest of the prophets. At the same time, the prophet is also the one through whom God’s power and authority is mediated and passed on to others, and we see also recorded in Deuteronomy at Moses’ death how “Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him.” (Deuteronomy 34:9) Equally in the second book of Kings, when the departure of Elijah is imminent, his servant Elisha asks to “inherit a double share of [Elijah’s] spirit”. (2 Kings 2:10) As Elijah is taken into the heavens his mantle is literally taken up by Elisha, and on meeting a company of prophets they declare “the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha”. (2 Kings 2:13, 15) It is through the prophets also that God’s authority is passed on to kings. Samuel the prophet is the one who anoints Saul the first king of Israel, (1 Samuel 10:1) and all subsequent kings are in the same way anointed. By the first century, after the period of kings and prophets, authority among the Jews is exercised by the official teachers of the law. Jesus hints at this in the Gospel of Matthew when he is quoted as saying: “The scribes and Pharisees”, he says, “sit on Moses’ seat’. (Matthew 23:2) Each of these would at some time been the disciple of an older, more experienced teacher who would have passed to him their knowledge, and thus bestowing on him authority.

And so, divine authority – the only real authority which has been understood as such through most of history – has been understood as passed down in succession from one generation to another, and only to a select group of people by a select group of people. However, the very exclusivity of such a system can encourage those commissioned with authority all too quickly to get into bed with the powers-that-be, if they do not become the powers-that-be themselves. And now that spirit and voice of God which they are meant to deliver, becomes simply the spirit of the age or the voice unquestioningly in support of kings, princes and their policies. Such a situation is a recurring theme in the Old Testament: prophets who are simply mouth-pieces of a particular ruler. The possibilities of this was envisioned from the start, and the writer of Deuteronomy warns of the end of such people: “any prophet…who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak – that prophet shall die.” (Deuteronomy 18:20)

But what is to be the litmus test? How are the people to know the genuine prophet from the false? Certainly, in part, by the integrity of their lives, but also the extent to which they align themselves with the powerful or the powerless, the extent to which invest themselves in the status quo or in the margins of society. The genuine prophet can be recognised as she or he speaks up for the most neglected, for the powerless, for the poor and dejected. The genuine prophet can be recognised as he or she speaks up for a renewed society of peace with justice, of freedom and transparency. So, it is not surprising then, how the people flocked to John the Baptist. The Gospel of Mark records that “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people from Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him,…confessing their sins.” (Mark 1:5) Neither is the people’s astonishment at Jesus surprising, nor their observation that his “was a new teaching with authority”. (Mark 1:28) The people had come to realise how unreliable is the authority of the those with or close to power; and by the teaching, preaching and manner life they saw in John and Jesus, they recognised the genuine spirit of God at work, recognised them both as bearing God’s authority, recognised them both as prophets. John tells the people that God is at work in the world, and that the renewal of all things is imminent: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. (Mark 1:3b) That certainly a reality hardly to be welcomed by those in power. By his ministry, Jesus proclaims the same reality, indeed demonstrates not that the kingdom is coming, but that it has already arrived and is growing, making its presence known in Jesus’ liberating acts. One commentator in considering the narrative of today’s Gospel writes: “The liberation of the demoniac is a miniature and proof of the coming liberation of the cosmos.” The nature of both John’s and Jesus’ prophetic activity, the nature of their prophetic identity and the nature of their authority, are marked by their being outsiders who speak up for the outsider, pointing people to a coming reality beyond the status quo, beyond the self-interest of kings, princes and even of religious leaders. Their authority comes not from a long line of succession handed down to them directly from another, but from their own encounter with reality, from their own careful reflection on the traditions of Israel, and from their own walk with God. They test their ministry by the critique of scripture, most particular by the record of the prophets recognised as authentic by the tradition. The authority of both John and Jesus finds its authenticity in its compatibility with the prophetic vision of a renewed creation and they act on that vision. In the case of Jesus particularly, the people recognise that his authority is manifested and vindicated in that act of casting out demons which is “a miniature and proof of the coming liberation of the cosmos”: “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching – with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ ” (Mark 1:27)

We often speak of the authority of the Church or the authority of the Scriptures, and we can certainly see how the Church has in some ways modelled her own practice on ancient ideas of passing on authority – ordination by laying on hands, and the tradition of bishops consecrated in apostolic succession. All that is certainly important, and I would even argue necessary marks of an authentic Church. However, the Church compromises her authority and credibility in the world when she forgets another aspect of the authority which Jesus himself confers on her and which his own contemporaries recognised in him, chiefly his ministry of liberation and his commitment to God’s vision of a renewed creation, as expressed most perfectly in the prophetic tradition. Sometimes the Church’s self-understanding gets bogged down in how she transmits her authority, most notably this can be evidenced by the vicious wrangling in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women to the priesthood, and their consecration to the episcopate. Yet, first and foremost, the Church should ground her authority in the life and mission of Jesus as revealed in the gospels, expressing her authenticity in aligning herself not with the powers-that-be but with victims of that power; not with the status quo but with its casualties. Certainly, the Church bears in the world God’s own authority, but it can only be revealed as such in the world when it is experienced as truly liberating and unencumbered by facile allegiance to power structures which undermine the Church’s message and ministry. When the Church exercises her authority in this way, then people certainly recognise it as authentic. That is the challenge presented to the Church in every age, but most especially in the present, when people have become keenly aware that authority must display itself in integrity, in short that people and instititions make their authority legitimate when they practice what they preach. Simply saying that we have our authority handed to us by God is no longer sufficient, if it ever was. As a Church, ours must be an authority which resolves itself in the proclamation of liberation from whatever keeps people bound, and in speaking up for the world’s renewal along the lines of God’s justice and love. Like Jesus’ authority, the Church’s own authority must be different from the kind of authority exercised in the world at large, in order that her authority can be recognised as authentic beyond the simple boundaries of the instutional Church, so that what what people observed of Jesus ministry may be said of ours too – “What is this? A new teaching – with authority!” (Mark 1:28) As the Church, may we ever be worthy of such a proclamation.

Epiphany 3: The Mirror of Folk Tales

2012-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The story of the Jonah is one that has firmly ensconced itself into our collective consciousness. Even people who have only a passing familiarity with the biblical narratives know this story of the prophet swallowed by a whale. In large part this may be because, while Jonah is called a prophet and the book is included among the other prophets, its narrative has more the feel of a folk tale, even a morality tale, and like all such stories its fantastic elements help to impress it on our minds. Looking at the book objectively, we can see that is unlike any other of the prophetic books. As Lawrence Boadt observes in his introductory work to the Old Testament, “[the book] contains no oracles at all, except the report of Jonah’s words to Nineveh – [‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown’. Rather,] it is the story about a prophet, and right from the beginning we are warned to take the prophet with a grain of salt. The author has a great sense of literary style, full of abrupt changes of direction in thought, humorous touches, and unexpected twists in the plot….[T]he author…knew that his audience would enjoy the story and not be forced to choose whether it could actually have happened or not.” Indeed, the book which bears his name is far removed from the historical figure of the prophet Jonah who was active in the eighth century and mentioned in the second book of Kings,. The Book of Jonah rather was written some 400 years later, and after the Jews’ return from exile in Babylon and once they had begun rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.

While the historical prophet Jonah is concerned with the power of kings and kingdoms, prophesying that the king of Israel would regain some lost territory, the Book of Jonah is concerned with more universal themes, most especially God care for those considered beyond the pale. As I mentioned, most scholars concur that its composition dates from the period after the Babylonian Captivity when the Jews having returned to the “promised land” and looking to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple have become almost obsessed with racial purity. Indeed, to such an extent that men who had married foreign wives were forced to send them away, together with their children. Out of this institutionalized xenophobia arose dissenting voices that reminded people to look outwards, and beyond simple borders of Jewish identity. In the Holy Scriptures these dissenting voices find their expression in two folk tales, the story of Ruth and the story of Jonah. I noted earlier that perhaps the best way to classify the Book of Jonah is as a folk tale, and one of the cultural purposes folk tales serve is to hold up to us a mirror, a mirror to our own foibles and pettiness, as individuals and as communities. And so like all folk tales, Ruth and Jonah hold up a mirror to the community around them to highlight their exclusivist outlook. In the book of Ruth the reader is reminded how the greatness of Israel and of the city of Jerusalem itself finds its origin in a “mixed marriage”; after all, Ruth, King David’s great-grandmother, was a Moabite, a foreigner. In the book of Jonah the theme is more forcibly brought home and universalized as God is depicted caring for the inhabitants of Nineveh simply – it seems – because they exist, because they are part of the created order. At the same time, the writer turns the role of the prophet on its head as Jonah, as a character, represents not God’s vision, but the conventional social prejudice against the foreigner. In fact, Jonah initially refuses to deliver to Nineveh God’s invitation to repent, and when he does deliver it and they do repent, he sulks and becomes angry, “angry enough”, he says, “to die”. (Jonah 4:9)

Anger is an interesting reaction to generosity and I cannot help but be reminded of Jesus’ parable in which all the laborers no matter when they began their labors are paid the same, and when the ones who have worked the longest complain, the master responds: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15). Are you envious because I am generous. Not too different a sentiment is expressed in the last verse of the book of Jonah when God says: “And should I not be concerned with Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11)

Now, it is easy here to simply observe that the book of Jonah presents us with what has in recent years become a seemingly repetitive, albeit certainly necessary trope, that is, the issue of God’s inclusive love. However, there is something more here than simply that. We are challenged by Jonah’s anger itself. It is not enough that he does not want to include the Ninevites nor desires for them salvation and right relationship, but he is angry that God does, and that is an interesting dynamic to consider indeed. It resolves itself in more than simply an unwillingness to include, but a positive desire to exclude. While we all to some degree tend to make God in our own image, making the divine to bear our own prejudices, the story of Jonah reveals an entirely different dynamic; here Jonah knows God’s intentions and purposes, and yet is livid, angry enough to die, because God does not and will not see things his way, because God will not be as angry, violent and even blood-thirsty as Jonah would like God to be, or as he himself would be (we can assume) if he only had the power. The word petty comes to mind.

If folk tales hold up mirrors to their readers, the Book of Jonah challenges us to see ourselves in Jonah's petty anger, in his unwillingness to allow God to be God. As we look into the mirror of the narrative we may find, exaggerated but no less there, our own unwillingness to participate in a vision wider than what we have been taught or come to expect. As we look into the mirror of Jonah's hyperbolic anger, we may just find hints of our own hidden anger and obstinacy at God’s or even at others’ generosity. In the end, that is not only the purpose of folk tales but indeed of the Scriptures themselves – to allow us to see ourselves critically in its words and images, in its narratives and characters. Perhaps that is why so many of its stories have become so much a part of our cultural consciousness, whether people specifically identify as Christian or not.

Advent 4: What Are You Here For?

2011-12-20T11:48:00.000-08:00

Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

To a lesser or greater extent we have all grown up, I think, with the idea that God has a single, distinct plan for each of us – individualised, pre-packaged, pre-planned and, barring our absolute refusal, inevitable. We use words and phrases like “destiny”, “meant to be” and “God’s will” to express our confidence in its inevitability. All this because, perhaps, more pressing and more urgent than the quintessential philosophical question, “what is the meaning of life?” is the deeply personal question, “what is the the meaning of my life?”; in other words, “What am I here for?” This morning’s readings seem replete with the resonances of inevitable destiny: David’s sense of purpose to build a house for the Lord (cf. 2 Samuel 7:1-3), the prophetic utterance that David’s “house and… kingdom shall be made sure forever…[and his] throne…established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16), and, of course, the story of the Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the announcement of God’s plan for salvation and Mary’s seemingly pre-determined role in it. As a child, I was always taught that Mary was destined – indeed pre-destined – chosen by God to be the Mother of our Lord. Certainly, the title of the feast itself – the Annunciation – alludes to the angel’s telling Mary what was going to happen, and thus positioning Mary purely as recipient and object of the divine news and action. However, a closer reading of the narrative in Luke (the only Gospel in which it appears) clearly highlights Mary’s choice to cooperate. It highlights the reality and requirement of response as our Lady says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38); and this response challenges that model of pre-determined destiny which still seems to prevail within the minds and lives of many people, even many Christians, and which can sometimes work to absolve us of our responsibility to choose. It is not simply God’s pre-determined plan which effects the incarnation as we know it, but also – and perhaps, equally – Mary’s response to the invitation, a response derived from her own self-understanding of who she desires to be in the world and in relationship to the divine.

What are you here for? That’s the question, but also the challenge. If you believe that there is one pre-planned and pre-determined destiny for you in this world, then it is just a matter of finding out what that is and directing all your attention towards it. But it also means that one wrong decision, one false move will alter it inexorably, and divert you eternally from that destiny. While the black-and-white nature of such a scenario may present a degree of straightforward certainty, at the same time, it leaves little place for creativity, not to mention for mistakes and wrong turnings. But what if there is no definitive purpose, apart from simply and ultimately sharing fully in the life of God? What if God has no predetermined plan for us, per se, but only makes to us various invitations? What if the process of our salvation – our wholeness and purpose (for lack of a better word) – is one marked most especially by cooperation with God, rather than a simple walk down a single path towards one prescribed end? What if we discover what we are here for along the way, as our lives are informed by the experiences we encounter and the decisions we make? What if, as Paul writes to the Philippians, you must “work our your own salvation with fear and trembling”? (Philippians 2:12) Granted, Paul does acknowledge that “God…is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for [God’s] good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13), but this hardly seems directive, only supportive. Again, what if the question, “What are you here for?” is less about finding one definitive answer, and instead about responding to an invitation, indeed responding to various invitations made throughout our lives; and knowing that with each response we are affecting and effecting who we are becoming, even determining what we are here for; that each response shapes us into a particular kind of person, moves us in a particular direction?

Instead, of asking “what am I here for” – a question about definitions and linear goals – why not ask how my decisions might be shaping and molding me right now? Instead of thinking of one particular path, end or destination, why not consider effect and direction? Why not explore “what am I becoming”, and whether it is consistent with what I say I believe? Does my response to a particular invitation or event draw me closer into an encounter with reality, or reinforce my own fantasies, my own desire for facile safety? Do I take the path of least resistance, because it will give me what I think I want or fulfill some pre-decided destiny I have come to accept, or do I allow myself to explore my deepest desires, what I need and what the world needs of me, even without completely understanding all the ramifications. Think once again of Our Lady who somehow decided that her underlying narrative would be one of openness to God. That openness brought her, undoubtedly, social opprobrium and isolation as an unwed mother; and while, the Church may now focus on her joy and blessedness, her decision also brought her, as Simeon prophesied at the Presentation, a sword which pierced her soul. (cf. Luke 2:35) None of it was her destiny, pre-determined, pre-ordained, but rather some of the consequences of being open to God. She did not ask “what I am here for?”, but rather “who do I want to be in the world, regardless of the consequences”.

I only recently – and to my great surprise – realized I had never seen the film The Bells of St Mary with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. So, I gave a myself a treat and watched it. In it Bergman plays the mother superior at a church school and Crosby the new parish priest. Not surprisingly, the two are at odds as to the school’s administration and direction, but don’t worry they come to appreciate each other in the end. In any case, at one point Fr O’Malley is encouraging a student who is having to write an essay on the five senses, and suggests she think outside the box in order to impress Sr Mary Benedict. He contemplates a sixth sense beyond the physical – the sense of being – and elucidates, “to be glad you’re alive; to be grateful because people are kind to you; to be able to see some of nature’s great wonders, the budding of the flowers in spring and the changing of the leaves in the autumn; to be able to appreciate beautiful music; to be conscious of the beauty of tasting, feeling and hearing only the things that are good for you; to be aware of why you’re here”. Interesting that last one, because it only comes at the end of a series of experiences which have nothing to do with an ultimate pre-determined destination, but rather about a person being formed and shaped through conscious awareness of the world around them, and by the decisions they make in encountering that world. Could it be that perhaps, we only – if ever – discover what we are here for or even why we are here, in the context of the choices we make, the directions in which we take ourselves, the responses we make to the invitations offered; that if there is any answer at all to what I am here for, it just might be only learned not in looking forward, but only in retrospect? Maybe, maybe.

“What are you here for?” Don’t worry about it, there are so many possibilities to make the question almost meaningless. Think rather of decisions, choices and responses guided by a particular direction. Explore and create an underlying narrative of who you want to be in the world; treat the world as friendly and trust. Trust that God is able to strengthen you as you grow more deeply into who you want to be. Trust that while there is no one, definitive answer to what you are specifically here top do, still “God…is [nonetheless] at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13) Trust that somehow that is enough, and remain open.

Advent 3: What Are You Looking For?

2011-12-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

The eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew records a story about the time John the Baptist was imprisoned and hearing all that Jesus was doing, sent a message via his own disciples to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3). Jesus sent word back, saying, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 11:4-5) He offers his ministry – what he is actually doing – as his credentials. He asks John’s disciples to look at what is going on and to make a judgment. And he does it using language evocative of this morning’s passage from Isaiah which looks to that time when through his Anointed One, God will proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the devastations of many generations will be built up, raised up and repaired.” (cf. Isaiah 61:4) John’s question is about identity – “are you the one?” – but Jesus’ response has to do with action; not about who people think he is or is supposed to be, but of the significance of what is doing, about the reality which people are witnessing. A not dissimilar situation is recorded in today’s Gospel when priests and Levites are sent from Jerusalem to ask John himself “Who are you?” He answers with words directly from the prophet Isaiah: “I am the voice of of one crying out in the wilderness.” (John 1:23) Both Jesus and John respond to questions about identity with a challenge, a challenge for people to open their eyes, both physically and spiritually, and look at what is before them. They try to take the issue beyond the realm of the purely intellectual – if I know who someone is then I know how to fit them into my world-view – and ask people to look with fresh eyes at what is really in front of them. And so the question for this week arises: “What are you looking for.”

In John’s asking of Jesus’ identity and the priests’ and Levites’ asking of John’s, they are trying examine their respective subjects closely, to get the “skinny” on them, and yet only to validate what they already believe They are looking for something, but only for the present situations to affirm their already held convictions. It was believed by many Jews that the coming of Messiah would be preceeded first by the return of Elijah, and then of the prophet, the last forerunner of the Messiah; and John with his apocalyptic leanings, believed that at his arrival the Messiah would quickly and dramatically usher in the reign of God, subduing God’s enemies. However, in each investigation what is offered is a bigger picture: the renewal of all things with reference to something far older, far more traditional, far more radical and far more challenging – the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. John reminds those who have been sent from Jerusalem to see not with the eyes of what they already think they know – the esoteric pattern of forerunners – but to hear simply the words of Isaiah afresh. He asks them to see him not within the context of some receieved construct, but rather to allow him to point them to the larger reality of God’s call. He is only the voice crying in the wilderness. In his turn, Jesus says to John “I know what you are looking for, what you are expecting, that God will come down and run things personally, but isn’t what’s going on now actually what that prophet spoke about as ushering in the kingdom, that the “blind [would] receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers…[are] cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead…[are] raised, and the poor have good news brought to them?” What are you looking for, and is your vision wide enough to discern it even when it comes in way unexpected?

As we find ourselves halfway through Advent, the period of waiting and expectation, do we really have a sense of what we are looking for? In English, “look” can have a variety of nuanced meanings, but it generally is more than simply seeing something. It can have the sense of searching for something, while at the same time the sense of scrutiny or careful inspection. We look at something usually with a desire to understand it. We can see something, but only by looking can we come to the deeper reality of its possible meaning and resonance. We can see something, but we usually only come to the truth of it by looking at it. Also, only by really coming to the awareness of what we are looking for ultimately can we ever hope to identify it, especially if it comes in the form of a surprise. Those who came to John and John himself – at least at the start – were all looking for God’s vindication of the promises made, but they could not look at what they were seeing in any other way than within their received construct. They weren’t examining enough what they were seeing, and hence missing the very thing they ultimately looked for; and ironically enough, while it was beginning to be fulfilled among them.

What are you looking for, and are you willing to forsake your pre-conceived patterns and notions about it in order to come into its true reality. We too may say that we are looking in the end for God’s kingdom to come in its fullness, but can we be open to the fact that it may not happen exactly they way we expect it, or that it might not look exactly how we had envisioned? After all, it’s God’s kingdom, not ours. We are only subjects, and by God’s grace inheritors. We may all look forward to the coming of the Messiah, but can we look for it even when it is not happening according to our pre-conceived ideas? After all, the consistent pattern in the Scriptures when it comes to God’s actions is one of unexpected surprise. Are you looking to be surprised? Are we willing to see the present and look for its meaning with regards God’s purposes and vision?

Up until well into the 18th century medical science held that within each sperm was contained an entire embryo which under the right conditions would develop into a full human being. Like a seed planted in the ground, the sperm was planted in the womb and there it developed. The woman supplied nothing more than a conducive environment, the oven for the bun, as it were. With the discovery of the microscope, it became possible to have a closer look; and what did scientists record as they examined under its magnifying powers the sperm of various mammals? Well, when they examined elephant sperm they saw tiny little elephants, when the examined lion sperm they registered seeing tiny little lions, and so on. Truly a case of believing is seeing. They saw what they were looking for, with the limited construct of what they already knew, but also with a deep commitment to it. Their commitment to that limited construct kept them from contemplating a larger one, even when the possibility was right before their eyes. They did not look, they only saw what they already expected to find, and thus they missed the mark altogether. They all, of course, would claim they were looking for a better understanding of the natural world, but they obviously could not get beyond their pre-conceived ideas in order to discern it.

What are you looking for? And what contructs – what hard-held notions of what it should be like – keep you from really discovering it? Certainly that is the a question for Advent, as we look to celebrate one of God’s most unexpected and least understood actions – the coming to earth as an infant human being. Indeed, it has taken us over 2000 years to really look at; and if we are honest we must admit that even now we have not fully discerned its meaning. Our context is still not large enough. Whatever you are looking for, know that if you are not willing to settle it will look little like what you expected. Whatever you are looking for, if you are open to God, open to truth, give yourself enough room to be surprised.

Advent 2: What Are You Listening For?

2011-12-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

A man and his grandson are walking through the busy city with all its sounds and distractions. He stops, turns his ear slightly and says to the young boy: “Can you hear that?” The boy says, “No, what? I can’t hear anything.” The grandfather says it is the sound of a cricket, and the boy is perplexed. He doesn’t hear anything at all, and by the look of the bystanders and passersby, neither can anyone one else. He says, “How can you hear that?” The old man quietly takes some coins and drops them on the pavement, and immediately all heads turn towards their subtle, clinking sound. “You see,” said the old man to the young boy, “it all depends what you are listening for?” It all depends on what you are listening for.

Today’s readings are replete with voices, cries and proclamations as God calls out to his people through the prophet Isaiah “to prepare the way of the LORD, [to] make straight in the desert a highway for…God” (Isaiah 40:3, and those voices and that call echoes in the witness and ministry of John the Baptist. The Scriptures call us to listen, listen to words of comfort tenderly spoken: “Comfort, comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1); but listen also to the words of radical transformation: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain…for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:4, 5) Yes, they call us to listen, they call us to pay attention, to hone are senses; and as we do we may begin to ask ourselves, “What am I listening for?”

It was during my training as a counsellor that I really began to appreciate what a complicated and subtle process listening can be; and that more often that not we need to listen to what is unsaid than to what is said. Listening is a focused exercise, which takes more than just our ears, but rather our entire faculties of discernment; because in real listening we try to hear what the person may be saying which even they themselves do not yet know as true. Listening must go beyond hearing the words – the sounds the other is making, but rather trusting that the entire person is speaking and conveying their knowledge and feeling in their demeanor, in what they leave unsaid, in what they take for granted. Listening is about entering into the mystery being presented to us. It is at the heart of our relationship with God, and at the heart of our relationship with ourselves. It is at the heart of any relationship we want to call loving and real, because it demands we go beyond the surface of things presented, and listen to the underlying and sometimes seemingly hidden truth.

As we approach Christmas, its attendant social noises draw our attention, but they do not encourage us to listen. Rather, they hope – knowingly or not – that by bombarding our ears with incessant advertisements, “holiday” music, the comercially-driven “Merry Christmas” we will be sufficiently distracted and confused by those surface sounds, forget what we might be really listening for. Indeed, it has come to the point that we have no cultural period of expectation – of listening – at all when it comes to Christmas, only a rushed, hurried and noisy sort of impatient waiting as the days are counted down to the “big one”. What passes for the sounds of Christmas rob us of the opportunity for deeper relationship, and for those who are more nuanced, bring them face to face again with the question: “What are you listening for?”

Through the voices and sounds of the crowds, through the cacophony of tinned and tinny holiday music, through even the cry of the prophet and of the Baptist, what are you listening for? The prophecy of Isaiah speaks of comfort, but are we listening to the all the echoes and resonances of comfort? Are we listening for all the places where there is no comfort, or are we listening only for our own? The prophet too declares the levelling of mountains, the raising up the plains; indeed, a total re-shaping of the landscape – social, political, religious. Are we listening for the suggestions of what this will mean for all people, or only for ourselves? In the prophet’s cry and in the invitation of the Baptist, are we just listening for what we want to hear, avoiding the relationship with the reality below the surface noises? Are we attempting to attune ourselvses to all that may be contained in what is being presented to us, beyond simply the immediately discernible and the familiar? Are we listening for what is not always spoken, but which is being presented nonetheless? Are you attending to the mystery beneath the surface and patient enough to allow it to manifest itself to you?

What are you listening for? What are you expecting to hear? At the end of the day, what is that catches and holds your attention? The enterprise of listeneing begins in openness and silence – openness to the person, event or words before us – and silence enough to encounter them in their fulness. The author and teacher Marilyn McEntyre writes: “Only in silence can the ‘listening into’ take place – the pausing over words, meanings, implications, associations – and the waiting – for the Spirit to speak, for the right response to surface.” As we learn to listen well, we learn to wait patiently for all the possible resonances to arise; as we learn to listen well we learn to listen for the sound of the cricket in the bustle of the city, the cry of a new-born baby amisdt the chaos and confusion of a town busy with a government census, the unspoken cry of pain in the ecnounter with a friend or colleague. As we learn to listen well, we learn to engage the mystery beyond the surface noises, and really to pay attention to what is important, what is at the core of any encounter.

The prophet calls, the Baptist cries, and crickets chirp everywhere. Are you listening? As we move through Advent, what are you listening for. Beyond the distractions, beyond the surface noises, and are you engaged enough, listening subtly enough to attend to it?

Advent 1: What are you Longing for?

2011-12-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

As Advent begins we are confronted with the book of the prophet Isaiah. These scriptures open us up to a world of failed hope and disappointment: “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us way” (Isaiah 64:8) and confront us with a radical acceptance of God’s sovereignty: “we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hands”. (Isaiah (64:8) The entire book of Isaish actually evidences three distinct authors from three distinct periods. Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55) specifically, was written during the Babylonian exile, while Third Isaiah (chapters 56-66 and from which today’s reading is drawn) was written in the period after the Jews’ return from the Babylonian captivity, and as they looked towards the restoration of the Temple. Both writers write within the context of disappointment, with a longing for God to make good on disappointment – the disappointment of exile in one, and the disappointment attendant on the return from exile in the other. Second Isaiah longs in hope for restoration, a longing with a message full of comfort and vindicaton – “Comfort, O comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (Isaiah 40:1-2) On the other hand, Third Isaiah expresses a “deep pessimism and sense of disappointment”; and while still presenting a vision of hope in parts, it also confronts the reality that the return from exile has not ushered in the promises made nor fulfilled the hopes expressed during the exile. The Temple been yet rebuilt, and the covenant still oftentimes goes unheed, particularly its demands of for justice towards the poor and most vulnerable. Third Isaiah extends for contemplation the possibility that perhaps longing for a return to the way things were is never as satisfactory as we imagined, that our longings need to be for more than simply a return. Indeed, the return itself disappointed. Third Isaiah longs for an utter re-shaping of the national, theological, even cosmological landscape; longs for God to do something truly new: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence – as we fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil.” (Isaiah 64:1-2a).

As we appropriate for ourselves this reading, and the contexts of the writers of Second and Third Isaiah, as well as how the writers express their sense of longing, we challenge ourselves with the question: “What are you longing for?” Isn’t longing at heart of Advent? In fact, without longing there is no Advent; and if we have no longing, then we do not need Christmas, either. Longing always comes out of crisis and disappointment, it comes of dissatisfaction and even distress; the kind of crises often encountered in exile and alienation, the kind of disappointment encountered in shattered dreams and failed hopes. In reaction to crisis and disappointmnet, we find ourselves longing for a future that is redeemed, in which our own personal brokeness and that of the world can somehow be made good on. Look at the psalm; how graphically the psalmist describes the pain and sorrow of Israel: they are “fed with the bread of tears”…they are given “bowls of tears to drink”; they are made “the derision of [their] neighbors” and their “enemies laugh [them] to scorn.” To discover what we truly long for, then we must get in touch with our sorrows, with our disappoinments, with our pain. This is difficult, and while the temptation may be to numb ourselves to all these, doing so leaves us half-dead, passionless, and longing is always about passion.

However, the question is more than simply what one longs for, but how one longs for it. Second and Third Isaiah represent two different ways in which to long. Second Isaiah longs with a view to the past, a return to the land and to how things were. Third Isaiah longs for something far more radical, for something subtantially new. The perspectives of Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah represent the difference between starting over and a new beginning. Allow me to unpack that bit. “Starting over” implies that we can return to some point in the past and start things up again, hoping that with new information we may do things differently, things may go differently. A “new beginning” implies rather, beginning from where we are, but in ways that are fresh and profoundly contexted in the “now”. This doesn’t mean that the new beginning is not informed by the past, but that its face is turned to the future, towards something new. In discerning what we long for, we must also ask ourselves if our longing is for simply a return so that we can start over – usually on our own terms, or if it is for something really new, which usually means something surprising and maybe even a little uncomfortable, something which may take some getting used to, something that if we are not careful we may miss altogether, say, perhaps God entering into history as a baby.

So what are you longing for, and to discover it are you willing to enter into the pain of your disappointments, the brokeness of your sorrows? Are you willing to be alive to them in order that your longing may be passionate? Are you willing to long for something more than a return to what you know, and brave the possibility of something completely new even if you may not fully discern it? As we long for the redemption of our disappointments and sorrows, can we trust that God will enter into our lives and situations in new ways? Indeed will we expect and allow God to do so? This is the kind of longing at the heart of Advent, and which finds its satisfaction in the surprising birth of the infant Jesus who is God incarnate. The theologian Dorothee Sölle once wrote “Theology originates in pain...Its locus is in suffering.” The same can be said of longing and desire, and as we become more in touch with our feelings of sorrow and disappointment we discern more closely what we long for, we can shape our hopes and voice them, and trust that even within them God will reveal to us their redemption and our own. Amen.

Last Sunday after Pentecost: Justice, Kindness and Humility

2011-11-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel 34.11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95.1-7a
Ephesians 1.15-23
Matthew 25.31-46

I mentioned last week that we are coming to the end of things. Today is the last Sunday of the Church’s year. The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew’s Gospel are full of Jesus’ stories of warning, his parables about readiness, his reminder to his followers to stay awake and be prepared. Each of the parables or discourses in these two chapters ends with the same admonition: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming….Therefore you…must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24:42, 44) “Keep awake…for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13) But, what will happen when he comes? That is the tale for today. That the author of Matthew’s culmination of all the parables of those two chapters. Now, all the synoptic gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – have in them some description of the end time, and all of them are fairly similar. For example, the Gospel of Mark (as representative) says: “But in those days…the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-27) The writer of Matthew, using Mark as a source, relates this “little apocalypse”, as it has been called, in a very similar way. Yet, Matthew’s author goes further then simply a fantastic description of the end; and it is only in the Gospel of Matthew that we have today’s all too familiar story. It is a story which, notwithstanding its uniqueness among the Gospel stories, has impressed itself deeply on the western consciousness, both spiritually and culturally. Any metaphorical reference to sheep and goats can be traced back directly to this story. Yet, more importantly for us today, it is the only story we have which offers us any description of the last judgement.

It is no accident that this story appears in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew’s overriding theme is that of Jesus, not as starting something new apart from Judaism, but rather casts him as one who interprets the Law and traditions of Judaism authoritatively and authentically. Perhaps one of the most important verses in Matthew (which appears only in Matthew) is the one in which Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17) Therefore, in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus argues with his opponents, he consistently argues from the Scriptures, from the Law and the Prophets. In the face of his opponents’ challenges and their interpretation of the Torah, Jesus makes his own. It can hardly be contested that much of institutionalised Judaism had become mired and fossilised in legalism and the Temple cult. It had lost the dynamic vision of the prophets with their concern that “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5.24) It had also compromised on the overriding theme of compassion and hospitality which marks the Torah, the Jewish law.

For Matthew, Jesus is the one who, as a child of Israel, reminds the children of Israel of their authentic traditions and who speaks with an authoritative voice. When Jesus is accused of breaking table ethics and eating with sinners and tax collectors, he rebukes his accusers by referencing the prophets, more specifically, Hosea 6.6: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ ” (Matthew 9.13) When Jesus’ disciples are criticised by the Jewish teachers for on the Sabbath plucking heads of grain to eat (since this was considered to be work), Jesus defends them by again referencing Scripture, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?” (Matthew 12.3-4) On being questioned whether it was lawful to cure on the Sabbath (cf Matthew 9.10), Jesus responds “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?” (Matthew 9.11) Now, the Pharisees in their interpretation of the Law permitted the rescue of an animal on the Sabbath. Jesus goes on to say, “How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” (Matthew 12.12) For Jesus, the law is fulfilled in right and righteous actions, manifested particularly in deeds of solidarity and compassion.

In light of all this, one commentator says that this story of the judgement “is a fitting climax to the patterns of thought which can be traced all through [the] gospel [of Matthew]” The writer of the Gospel of Matthew wants to convey that for Jesus, and therefore his followers, loyalty to the Law must surpass that of merely an observance of minutiae and detail, and that that same covenant-loyalty must be manifest in deeds: “Thus you will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:20) In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is keen to stress that it is in acts of compassion and solidarity that the Law is most authentically fulfilled. It is only the Gospel of Matthew in which we find “the Golden Rule”: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12a) And then Jesus adds, “for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 1:12b) Here, the entire Torah is interpreted into one commandment of righteous action. While of course Matthew, along with all the synoptics, has the passage about loving God and loving one’s neighbour as one’s self, the injunction to do to others as you would have them to do you appears only in Matthew. It is therefore this emphasis on righteous deeds which informs the picture of the last judgement with which we are presented today.

Well, I have spoken a lot about the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, how the writer’s depiction of the last judgement carries through themes in the work. I have spoken of the religious and social conditions under which Jesus carried out his ministry. I have even made some distinctions between Matthew and the other synoptic writers. But, does any of this have anything to say to us here and now? Well, I think that it does. Because, you see, we are not so very different from those who opposed Jesus. We too, both as individuals as communities, tend to keep all the rules, but break the promise. And perhaps the message we need to hear today is: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is and this alone is the gospel.” (cf Matthew 7.12a) The message which Matthew conveys in the depiction of the last judgement is a message that we still have not learned. We have not really taken in the reality of the questions asked on that awesome day “when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, [and] he will sit [himself] on the throne of his glory.” (Matthew 25.31) From the story which Matthew records we will none of us be asked how many times we went to Church. Neither will we be asked why or why not we decided to remarry after a divorce, or even why we lived with a partner before or instead of marrying. There will be no questions on the theology of ordination, whether of women or of men. No questions will be made of our sexuality. We will not be asked to which denomination or religion we adhered. We will not be asked whether we had any faith at all. Deanery, diocesan and even general conventions and all their legislations will fade in importance. No questions at all about the complex web of rules and regulations which we have created, guard so tenaciously and take oh so seriously. Instead, there we will be confronted with the real questions: “Did you feed the hungry? Did you show compassion to the destitute? Did you welcome the stranger? Did you stand in active solidarity with the oppressed? Did you visit the sick? Did you in everything do to others as you would have had them do to you?” This and this alone will be the criteria by which our fidelity to Jesus and to his Gospel will be judged. It is important to ask ourselves how we measure up.

Jesus did not preach anything new. God’s demand for righteous actions in compassion are more than evident throughout the Law and the Prophets. Jesus preached against the very human inclination to make religious rules and regulations more important than the divine injunctions of love, kindness, relationship. And we Christians too have been far too guilty of that. So we too need to listen afresh to the voice of God. In the Book of the prophet Micah, the prophet himself asks of God how he shall be righteous before the Lord: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6.6-7) And the response he received was this: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6.8) All of it, all of it, it really is as simple as that: do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Pentecost 22: The Urgency of Risk

2011-11-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Psalm 90:1-8, 12
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

We are coming to the end of things, and today’s parable presents us with a recurring theme in the Gospels, that of “the departing and returning master”; a theme which, as the members of the Jesus Seminar observed, “was dear to the early Christian community because it was analogous to Jesus’ departure and expected return.” A slightly different version of the parable appears also in Luke, and there are intimations of it in the Gospel of Mark also. Many of us may remember this parable as one of the first we felt we could really get a handle on, even as children. This is, in part, because of the double meaning of the word “talent” in English. In the New Testament world a “talent” was a unit of measurement, but also of money. The conservative estimate gives them the modern value of $6,000 each, and one lone talent would represent 20 years wages for a common laborer. It is in the Middle Ages that the word came into the meaning we usually associate with it today, namely a special, natural ability or aptitude. In fact, this arose out of the communal encounter with this text in Matthew. Talents came to be understood not as money, but as the unique gifts God gives to each person. As a child at parochial school, I remember reading this parable and being asked by the sisters whether I was making the best of my talents – that is, my abilities.

Now, while that may be a wonderful reading of the parable for children, it does not take into account the sense of utter urgency the parable seeks to convey, both in its words and its place in the Gospel of Matthew itself. It is grouped with several other parables centred round Jesus’ eventual return and the consummation of the present age. And it precedes directly the beginning of the passion narrative: one final prediction by Jesus of his crucifixion, Judas’ betrayal and it all begins to unravel from there. We are indeed coming to the end of things. We are coming to the crunch. The parable’s urgency is emphasised by the large amounts of money considered, but perhaps more so by Jesus’ harsh words and the sentence meted out to the slave who played it safe: “Take the talent from [this worthless slave] and give to the one with ten talents….[Then] throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30) We can see, that what the parable attempts to highlight is something far more serious than simply, say a young woman who goes into banking instead of making a career of a natural talent for the piano. Rather, it presents us with the sobering, disturbing and even frightening thought, that “safety” is not a Gospel virtue.

Sit with that for a moment; that the hope of joy and fulfilment promised by the Good News can rarely be realised – if at all – when we hedge our bets, play it safe, when our decisions are based merely on fear of loss, when we act out of desperation in order to preserve a particular status quo or self-image. The entire sweep of salvation history seems to be grounded in this deep, deep truth. Even in the beginning, God could have merrily gone on with a literally divine existence, but instead risked the creation and risked the making of human beings in God’s own image and with free will. In just a few weeks we will again be celebrating Christmas, that great event of divine risk-taking when God goes so far as to empty God’s own self and take “the form of slave”, (cf. Philippians 26-8) as Paul writes to the Philippians. And for those first Christians, and for many still today, to become a Christian was an act fraught with risk. At the very least it could mean being ostracised from one’s family and accustomed social circle; for many it meant death. But they had internalized the reality that any profit that can come without risk is no profit at all: “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” (Matthew 16:26) And Jesus’ enigmatic words in today's parable, words which disturb our sense of fairness and justice – “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29) – these words speak to the truth that those who risk nothing, end up with less than they bargained for, even less than they started with.

All this talk of risk, yet we mustn’t confuse risk with recklessness, neither with impetuous actions or a cavalier attitude. Instead the sort of risk enjoined is one which dislodges fear and disturbs complacency. Indeed, no enterprise loses its luster more quickly than when it is governed by fear – fear of loss, fear of disappointment, always with an eye to an unimaginative bottom line; no enterprise loses its energy more quickly than when it becomes complacent – complacent with a limited vision, complacent with good enough, complacent with safe fellowship, complacent – as the prophet Zephaniah alludes – with merely the dregs (cf. Zephaniah 1:2) Genuine risk is at that the heart of anything really worth having, it is at the heart of all creative enterprises and of all change for the good, as uncomfortable or scary as that may be. It’s not that the first two slaves made a return on their master’s money that earns for them the accolade of “trustworthy”, it is that they thought creatively about the possibilities and they took a risk; while their fellow did the least creative thing he could have done. He put his master’s talent in a hole. His fear prevented him from taking even the most minimal of actions, as the master subsequently pointed out: “You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.” (Matthew 25:27) The slave acted out of fear and desperation, and whenever we do that we blind ourselves to possibility and always sell ourselves short.

When the crunch-times come in our lives, the response should never really be safety, but risk. And in one sense, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians, it is always crunch-time: “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” (1 Thessalonians 2:1-2) The crunch-time is the ever present reality and we live always in its shadow. It is ever distant, yet ever nigh. And therefore, there should be an urgency to our lives, an urgency that asks some serious questions: What am I risking today, right now? Has my faith, my Christianity, my life become a mere exercise in measured complacency? When the master comes to settle accounts what will I offer as evidence of joyful, faithful risk? Or will he find me safely and fearfully tucked in, my talent in hole?

All Saints' Sunday: Community and Relationship Forged in Love

2011-11-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

Ecclessiasticus 2:1-11
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:27-36

We gather today to celebrate a great mystery, and like so much of Christian mystery and theology we come to grips with it by means of symbols and story, and by discerning the ways the mystery’s truth plays itself out in our lives and experiences. Today we celebrate what we mean when we say, “We believe in the communion of saints.” At the same time, we celebrate the truth of the resurrection in a particular and distinctive way, as well as the truth of God’s providential care. In so doing, we touch on a crucial aspect of what it means to be authentically human. The language and symbols, the inherited traditions of this feast, have a kind of depth which can be almost endlessly explored.

Along with Easter, the early Church saw the feast of All Saints as a very appropriate time for baptisms. Baptism, which marks a person’s becoming a Christian and member of the body of Christ, also points to the reality that in being joined to Christ in his life, death and resurrection, we are also joined to each other. We are brought into full communion with Christ and with his saints, that is, the holy people of God. For the early Church the title saint was not reserved for only those who had died and only afterward been canonised, indeed no such concept existed. For the early Church, as we find witnessed in the letters of the New Testament, “saints” meant all those who were Christians; those who had been called to be a holy people by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. As the author of the first letter of Peter writes: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” (1 Peter 2.9) So Paul writes his letters to “the saints” in a particular place; he sends the greeting of “the saints” in one place to “the saints” in another; and he talks about collections for ‘the saints’ in less prosperous communities. As “the saints”, the holy people of God and members of the body of Christ, they were connected one to another; and nothing, certainly not death, could sever that connection. In baptism we have a share in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we have a share in his victory over death, and through that we are joined to each other. Therefore, as Christ’s people we cannot ultimately be separated one from another, we are all joined together in him; and because of his victory over death, not even death can sever that connection. That is what we are talking about when we say “I believe in the communion of saints.”

In affirming this belief, we also speak to a defining aspect of our humanity. To be an authentic human being means to be a being in relationship. It is relationship that we long for not only from the very start of life, but which we seem to need for our continuing survival. I am told that an infant, while it may receive all the physical nourishment it needs, will most probably still die if it does not receive human touch and affection, if it is not allowed to enter into relationship. The doctrine of the communion of saints highlights the essental truth that our humanity requires relationship; we need to love and be loved, we need to touch and be touched. We need to open ourselves up to others in vulnerability and allow our encounters together to mould and inform our own person. To be the people that we were created to be we need friendship and connection. The doctrine of the communion of saints refuses to believe that what is built up in that process is completely destroyed because those with whom we are in relationship are far away or have died. Were that to be true, then each separation would diminish us as human beings. And yet – the famous words of John Donne notwithstanding – it does not. Yes, we may miss the friend far away, we may mourn the friend who has died, but both those reactions call us more deeply into our humanity. Were we to do neither we would be less human, indeed some might even call us “inhuman.” The very fact that we do miss and mourn, speaks to the fact that we are still connected. We need the mystery of the communion of saints, with its sense of connection and relationship to be human.

If community and relationship are so essential to our authentic humanity, then God’s providential and saving power has to be understood within the context of community and relationship if that power is to be consistent with God’s abiding love for humanity. It seems that if we are to be saved at all, we are saved in community and for community. The kind of individualistic, Jesus-as-my-personal-Lord-and-Saviour theology is not the traditional Christian understanding of salvation. While better known and used for its apocalyptic elements, the Book of Revelation actually graphically portrays this truth of communal salvation: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7.9) If to be human means to be in relationship and community, then if we are to be saved as humans we must be saved in relationship and community. To be saved alone is no salvation at all. The images which the writer of the Book of Revelation presents are the images of a people saved in communion with each other and with their God. But too, the promise of resurrection is a promise of new life into community. Note how in the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus, he does the very things which we would consider as central to building relationship and community: he spends time in conversation with his friends, he eats with them, he shares who he is with them, and he builds bridges repairing past hurts. In short, he continues to care for them. Not only in the Book of Revelation and in post-resurrection gospel accounts, in many other places in the scriptures and the tradition are used the language of symbol and story to shed light on the meaning of Christian wholeness, human wholeness and they do so by pointing to community.

At the bottom line what we celebrate today is the abiding mystery that nothing, nothing can break asunder community and relationship which has been forged in love; but also that our wholeness as human beings, our salvation if you will (it means the same thing), is dependent on the communion of saints, on that great mystery of community and relationship. Paul writes to the saints in Rome “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8.38-39) If we believe that in our baptism we have been incorporated into the body of Christ and that we are in fact the body of Christ, then Paul’s conviction of our unity with Christ is also about our unity with each other, with all the saints living and departed. God’s creative love which has forged us into a people, is the same power working in us to form deep and abiding bonds between each other, not only so that the power of love may be made manifest in the world, but that we may grow more fully into the genuine humanity for which we were created.

Pentecost 20: When There is No Peace

2011-11-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Micah 3:5-12
Psalm 43
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12

The beginning of the book of the prophet Micah tells as he was from Moresheth and that the “word of the Lord” came to him in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (cf. Micah 1:1). Moresheth’s exact location is uncertain, except we know it was somewhere in southwestern Judah. We know rather more about the time in which Micah lived, and prophesied. The “days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah” covered the years 740-687 BC. Historians of the period tell us these years were marked by Judah’s general decline, as the power of the neighboring Assyrian empire increased, conquering areas dangerously close: Damascus fell to it in 732 BC, Samaria in 722 and in 701 Jerusalem herself was besieged. For those in the area, it was a period of upheaval, crisis and insecuirty; and we all know what happens in such times, the average person looks after his or her own interests. Those who do not, stand out as exceptional; and this was no less true in the ancient world. About those perilous times one bibilical historian writes, “Danger was not only external. Prophets, priests, and judges accepted bribes; merchants cheated; Cannannite cults were used alongside Yahwistic ones”.

At the same time – as in all periods of crisis and upheaval – the thought on everyone’s mind, the word on every politician’s lips was “peace”. Peace. Peace, however, is a slippery thing and its pursuit is rarely unsullied by self-interest. In many cases, all that peace means is that my life, or the life of my family, or the life of my community, or the life of my country continues undisturbed regardless of the consequences on others outside those narrow spheres. For most of us, peace means our bellies are full. As Micah himself records: “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat.” (Micah 3:5). At best, for most of us, peace is the cessation of obvious conflict even if the parties in the conflict are not exacly reconciled, even if there is no friendship between them. This kind of peace is usually purchased at a high cost: the complete and utter subjugation – even humilation – of an enemy, the silencing of internal opponents, the costly and constant watch for potential eruptions of violence or retribution, without and within the state. This is the kind of peace which was the norm for the great empires of the ancient world (and of the modern world, as well); and is best exemplified in the Pax Romana, the peace so highy vaunted by the Roman Empire. The Romans controlled all the known world and for many years did so effectively, but ruthlessly. Jesus was one of the casualties of the Pax Romana, as were many of the early Christians: Alban, Cecilia, Peter, Agnes among them, and many others unknown by name. But also casualties were ten of thousands of people captured and enslaved, the many hundreds of thousands who lived in abject poverty and at the whim of social superiors, the scores of tribes and nations conquered and kept in check by occupying forces of Roman troops. Yes, what passed for peace – and what still may pass for peace today – looks very different from the bottom of the pile.

The prophetic tradition of Judaism presents a very different image of peace, the foundation of which is right relations between peoples, and between people and God. Peace in this tradition – shalom – has many resonances and can mean something as simple as a curteous greeting (as it is still used today in modern Hebrew), but it also has profound social dimensions and is associated “with righteousness, law, judgement, and the actions of public officials.” At the same time, in the tradition of ancient Judaism, God and God alone is the creator and source of this kind of peace and it is God and God alone who gives shalom.* To work for peace – shalom – in one’s life and in the world is to align one’s self with God and what God wills and desires in creation. To work against peace is more than just perpetuating hostility or making war, it is to live in darkness, “without vision…without revelation”. (Micah 3:6) Shalom is more than peace in the narrow way in which we usually have come to understand and experience it, it is rather an entire framework and pattern for God’s world. It is not something which exists merely by our creation, purely between human beings or even between nations, but it is a reality meant to encompas the entire cosmos; a pattern that ideally should dictate all our dealings with creation, with others, with ourselves. The source of its disruption is most usually not the outside forces which menace and threaten, but the internal forces which undermine and corrupt human society and relationships. In speaking about the the lack of peace, Micah does not speak about the hostility of the Assyrians or the threat it poses. He speaks of the internal decay of rightousness and of basic human decency in Judah: “Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob…who abhor justice and pervert all equity, [you]…give judgment for a bribe, [your] priests teach for a price, [your] prophets give oracles for money.” (Micah 5:9, 11) And so, often the prophets still speak up for shalom in periods where there is no apparent hostility, sometimes most especially in periods of prosperity; for example as when the prophet Amos writes in the name of the Lord, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21, 23-24). God’s vision of peace – of shalom – is not about making nice, but about making justice; and the latter is in many ways far tougher and more nuanced than the former because it calls for serious self-examination both of individuals, communities and nations. Shalom challenges us by unmasking the very causes of the hostility between peoples and nations which lead to violence – injustice, prejudice, greed, pride. These can not easily be overcome with a simple, concordat, agreement or summit. They can only be overcome with conversion of spirit, conversion life, both personal and communal. They can only be overcome by genuinely aligning ourselves to God and God’s gracious plan for creation.

God’s plan, God’s vision of peace is costly. And its price must be our dying to privilege and facile stability, it must never be the suffering or subjugation of another. Shalom creates no casualties. Even should a nation not be at war, if hundreds of thousands within its cities and towns live in poverty there is no peace. Even if a people can congratulate itself by proclaiming how free are its citizens, if a section of that citizenry cannot participate in the fruits of that freedom due to poor educational provision or lack of dignified employment, then there is no peace. Even when a nation can take due pride in its scientific and medical advances, if large sections of its population have little to no access to those advances then there is no peace. When people’s sense of justice is still an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, then there is no peace. Living shalom means we take the risk to envision the world as God might see it, and to unmask injustice and its subtle violence, even when the powers that be tell us everything is alright, that things are peaceful, because as Christians we know that peace – real peace – is much, much more, and that ultimately no earthly power can provide it. All that we as people and as a nation can do is speak up for it and accept no cheap substitutes, no matter how comfortable they may make us feel. All we can do align ourselves to it by allowing justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Then and only then can we truly come to call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace.

Pentecost 18: "We are No Longer Children..."

2011-10-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 45.1-7
Psalm 96
1 Thessalonians 1.1-10
Matthew 22.15-22

The enigmatic nature of the Jesus’ statement, “Give…to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22.21) is matched only by its versatility. Historically, the verse has been used both to support allegiance to the government, as well as to claim a license for revolution. The Church herself has used it to argue her superiority over the state, and therefore the state’s subordination to ecclesiastical power, while governments have used it to remind the Church that there are limits to her power, in short to tell her to mind her own business. The very ambiguity of the verse has left its readers, as I am sure it did its original hearers, wondering still where the lines are to be drawn between our duties to God and our duties to the state. Yet, this kind of ambiguous response is characteristic of the person of Jesus. A vast majority of the kinds of scholars I refered to last week believe that these specific words of the Gospel Jesus, can be traced to the historical Jesus. Not only do these words appear exactly the same in all three of the Synoptic Gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – but they also appear in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus’ sayings which, like the canonical Gospels, was written somewhere between AD 70 and AD 100. One scholar writes with regards to this verse: “[Jesus] responds to the question without answering it; he turns the question back on his interrogators, just as he often does in telling a parable without a conclusion. His audience is supposed to supply the answer themselves.”

“His audience is supposed to supply the answer themselves.” You see, that is what was and is so frustrating about our encounter with Jesus, our encounter with the gopels. So much of his sayings and teaching simply leave his audience, and not only his immediate audience, “to supply the answer themselves.” How much easier it would have been, and clearer too, if Jesus had not spoken in open-ended parables or in enigmatic one-liners, but rather set up clear-cut and readily understandable rules and regulations. Yet he didn’t. Although Christians in the years after him have worked almost desperately to fill in the gaps with a host of rules and regulations, we must always come back to the reality that the Jesus presented to us in the gospel narratives is not a person of very many rules. And when pressed to make a ruling on this or that, he more often than not responded with a parable. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? It was prompted by someone asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10.29) At the end of the story Jesus presents the questioner with a question himself: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” (Luke 10.36) When asked by one of his disciples how many times to forgive, he returns with the cryptic answer: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven times.” (Matthew 18.22) Jesus’ consistent teaching method was to allow those around him to make their own decisions, come to their own conclusions. He never forced an interpretation on those who came to hear him speak, and only twice in the gospels is he recorded as actually explaining the meaning of a parable. What is most commonly recorded at the end of a parable or discourse are the words “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”(Mark 4.24, et al) “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5.19) But, it can be argued that in Christ – in Jesus –God was telling the world to grow up. You see, so long as we live by rules and regulations because they are rules and regulations, so long as we consistently look to others to supply for us the answers to life’s questions and the resolutions to our own dilemmas, so long as we follow uncreatively and unimaginatively the instructions of any teacher, we carry out our lives in a childish existence unworthy of a people created in the image of God. The problem is that we human beings are not comfortable with uncertainty, we are not comfortable with the grey areas of life. We want someone not only to guide us through them, but to define them for us. We want simple, clear-cut, black and white answers: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22.17) How many times exactly must I forgive the one who sins against me? (cf Matthew 22.16) Tell me now, who is my neighbour? (cf. Luke 10.29) It is for this reason that fundamentalist religion, whether Christian or otherwise, is so appealing to people. They do offer black and white answers. They do give to their followers clear-cut interpretations of reality, and seemingly dispense with the grey areas of human experience. The problem is that that way of doing things is not true to human experience. More often than not the issues in our lives and in our world dwell in the grey areas, and not in clearly defined black and white landscapes; and while a series of clearly-defined rules and regulations may make us feel safe, they will never encourage us to grow up.

No doubt, Jesus could have offered those who gathered around him precise and succinct answers to their questions. He could have offered black and white rulings on any number of issues. But he did not. Jesus asks of people more than mere acquiescence, more than an obedience to a system of rules, but rather he asks them to think for themselves according to particular principles – love, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, justice. Jesus knows that simply to supply answers does not encourage real growth, development or maturity among those who ask the questions. Any good teacher or parent knows that. From the gospel accounts it seems clear that Jesus did not want groupies or mere disciples who simply hung on his every word. He wanted mature individuals to share in his ministry. The gospels record that even during his lifetime he sent out many of his disciples to proclaim the Good News of God’s reign, and in his final dialogues in the Gospel of John he says, “I do not call you servants any longer, but I [call] you friends.” (John 15.15) Part of the process of enabling people into maturity and autonomy is allowing them to come to their own conclusions, indeed encouraging them to come to their own conclusions, and thereby to discover their own centre of authority. At the expense of dressing Jesus up in the garb of a respectable member of the Anglican Communion, we might say that, like a good Anglican, he trusts human reason and the ability of human reason to discern the right, the true, the good, the just, the beautiful.

Again, looking at Paul, we find he writes to the Ephesians, “The gifts [Jesus] gave were… for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to…maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children…But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Ephesians 4.11-15) The world of black and white, clear-cut answers is the world of the child. This is not meant pejoratively, but it is the simple fact. Children rarely have the deliberative skill or the insight of enough experience to give them any real understanding into the complexities of human life; and they only grow and develop emotionally and morally as they gain more and more ability in discerning life for themselves. Yes, they need guidance, support, encouragement; but they do not need to be told what to think or believe, have all their questions answered and all their experiences mediated by another, if they are ultimately to become responsible, individuated adults.

The gospel accounts tell us that those who asked Jesus the question about the tax were trying to trip him up, but whether they were or not it is highly unlikely Jesus would have offered a different answer. He would not have offered a different answer, because he wanted people to come to their own decisions. He wanted people to grow into the full stature of adult responsibility. Simply handing down rules and regulations cannot do that, neither can supplying all the answers. A great part of according human dignity is allowing human beings to think for themselves. Jesus seems to do this consistently.

Pentecost 17: Encounter with Scripture

2011-10-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Anyway you look at it Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet as related in Matthew leaves us feeling a little unnerved. And while many of us who have been taught the parable in the past were made to focus on the indiscriminate invitation of the king, it is unnerving to recognise the violence at the parable’s center: the violent ingratitude of some of those invited, as well as the king’s equally violent reprisal; moreover, that when the wedding feast is finally in full swing – after the king’s slaves have brought in all kinds of people from the streets – still we are not allowed a satisfying conclusion, but rather confronted with a disturbing one. The king on seeing the guests is apparently dissatisfied with the one of them who is not properly attired, and has him not only thrown out of the party, but bound both hand and foot and thrown “into the utter darknesss”. (Matthew 22:13) It seems cruel and unfair, especially since this fellow was not even prepared for the feast. He was dragged in from the street, after all!

What are we to do with such a passage? Well, we could begin by learning the Gospel of Luke presents another form of the parable in which is contained neither the violence or vindictiveness of Matthew’s version. In it, guests are invited, they decline with excuses and so the host has his slaves go into the streets and invite all whom they meet, then the host simply says “For…none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.” (Luke 14:23) Scholars agree that the Luke’s version is the older, closer to what the historical Jesus might have said. So, one way to escape the apparent meanness of the Matthean version is simply to realise that its more violent and exclusionary elements were a later accretion, and since older is better – closer to the source – we can conveniently ignore the parts of the parable that confuse us or which we find a little uncomfortable, the part that does not square with our pre-conceived ideas. There is also the argument of historical and social context: the world of the ancient near east in which the Gospels were written is so dissimilar from that of our own that there are parts of Scriptures we cannot really apply to our own time and society. Again, we are given permission to ignore the uncomfortable passages.

Now certainly such scholarly findings will and should inform our encounter with the Scriptures, but they can never be used to dismiss parts of them altogether simply because we may find parts unpleasant. There is a distinction between the academic study of biblical texts and a living encounter with the Scriptures. For example, an academic study can discern passages in the gospels which with reasonable accuracy can be traced to the historical Jesus and those which with equal accuracy can be traced to a later voice, usually that of the compiler and/or writer. Thus, such academic study can arrive at some factual data as to the pedigree of certain passages. However, coming to an encounter with the Scriptures is a rather a different process, because as St Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. (2 Timothy 3:16). Equally, as reads the collect for the Sunday closest to 16 November: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning…” Encountering the Scriptures as the Church, we come to them in their totality, led by the Holy Spirit and with confidence that their creation, composition and compilation are not exactly accidental, and that through them God most definitely communicates something of the divine will and purposes to the Church. However, this does not mean that we simply accept the literal interpretation of the texts, but that we struggle to find appropriate meaning for those texts in our present lives and contexts. In doing this we return to the roots of our faith. Jewish biblical interpretation works from the premise that every word and every jot in the Hebrew has meaning, and that meaning is discerned within the context of the community’s reading, and arises out of discussion, sometimes heated discussion and even argument. At the same time, the partners never cease to speak with each other, rather they continue to struggle with each other and the text; and so any meaning that arises from the text arises from within that honest struggle. This is a good model for Christian engagement with the Scriptures, and indeed was the model for most of the Church’s history. Only until very recently have some Christians become obsessed with the fundamentalism of supposed literal interpretation. Perhaps the best image for encountering the Scriptures is drawn from the Scriptures themselves in the narrative of Jacob wrestling with the man who attacks him as he sleeps. The writer of Genesis tells us Jacob wrestled with him all the night long and towards the end, as the man asked for release, Jacob said to him, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” (Genesis 32:26b) Jacob leaves the encounter limping, but he leaves with a new name, he leaves with a blessing, he leaves with a new meaning.

Think for a moment what it would mean to say to a difficult piece of Scripture, indeed to any piece, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me”. It may mean we carry a text with us for long time, even years as we continually turn it over in our heart and mind, as it passes with us through the contexts and experiences of our lives, even as its meanings shift with those contexts and experiences. At the same time, it would assume that the Scriptures in their totality are Good News and that every passage, every word, contains the possibility of blessing so long as we are willing to remain with it, struggle with it. Committing one’s self to hanging on until a blessing is discerned will also mean that we carry on that struggle chiefly within the context of the Christian community, and that that struggle may be ongoing. Having said that, as Christians we know we struggle in the trust that our strugglings are also within the context of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit who Jesus promises will lead us into all truth (cf. John 6:13). And because we do not have to get it all right, we can struggle in humility recognising that we may be wrong in part or in whole, and certainly that possibility is part of the struggle. Understood in this way then, our encounter with Scripture becomes so much more than “reading the Bible” or even studying the Bible in any detatched way. It is nothing less than an encounter with the living record of God’s Word, an experiential encounter that is always ongoing, always contextual, always vibrant, often raw, and we are always in the posture of trust, trust that the encounter will yield a blessing.

So what about the difficult passage from Matthew? Well, personally, I will admit that I like Luke’s version more, and yet that is why I must particularly spend time with Matthew’s Luke’s says what I like to hear and offers for me little struggle. Matthew’s engages me into a struggle and leads me into asking some soul-searching questions about what I believe as to God’s nature, who God is and how God works. It makes me ask questions of myself, as to where I see myself in the story. For example, if I am the one sent out into the “utter darknes”, what might that exactly be for? What is missing in my Christian clothing, my Christian habit that prevents me from participating fully in God’s generous banquet, in God’s gracious invitations, indeed that gets me thrown out? As we considered last week, how does this passage accuse me? Equally, what litmus tests have I created to keep people in or out of the Church? Struggling with the passage in dialogue with other Christians, questions and challenges can be encountered at a group level, for example, “What litmus tests has the community created in order to determine who is within and who is without?” In such a way I enter into dialogue with the text and with others which is immediate and present, a dialogue which hopefully takes us beyond the comfortable and self-congratulatory, which iniates the entire community into a journey of exploration and self-assesment, sometimes very difficult indeed.

In the Letter to the Hebrews the writer tells his or her readers: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Embracing that truth is at heart of the encounter with the Scriptures.

Pentecost 16: Creator, Created and Gift

2011-10-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

It seems second nature, undoubtedly because so many of us were taught it from any early age, to understand the Scriptural passages read and proclaimed this morning as supersessionary, that is, as representing that Christianity supersedes or replaces Judaism. And certainly, it has been a prevalent theological stance through much of Christian history to understand the Church as the new Israel, that is “a people who produces the fruits of the kingdom” (Matthew 21:43), and the covenant made with the Children of Israel on Mt Sinai as superseded, even invalidated by the “new” covenant inaugurated by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In short, we are the Chosen People, the “winners”, as it were. Very convenient, very comforting…very smug. I have to come accept it as a rule of thumb that whenever my encounter with any part of Scripture or of the Tradition leaves me feeling righteous or self-satisfied, I have probably missed its point. Genuine encounters with Scripture should un-nerve us more than a little. They should accuse, and to some degree even shame us, and it is only when we face the accusation square in the face and shoulder the shame, that the texts can yield for us anything truly meaningful or be life-giving in any real way.

If we believe Scripture to be a living thing, a living presence in the Church, then the prophet’s cry for justice and Jesus’ disgust at hypocrisy and pretended self-sufficiency are directed not exclusively to their original audience, but to us who are the Church. Only if and when we understand that, can the power of the Scriptures transform us. Any other stance allows us to stop our ears and deflect their challenge. And what is that challenge? It is the challenge to see ourselves not in those commended in the narratives, but in those reproved; to see ourselves as the careless whose indifference yields wild grapes, as those whose greed and violence gains for us a reprimand and loses for us our inheritance. Taking an honest look at the text and at ourselves, the Scriptures today accuse us. They accuse us of sloth, ingratitude and a distorted sense of entitlement which resolves itself in murderous violence. They also should and do shame us; shame us with God’s kindness and generosity, with God’s trusting forbearance. They beg the questions: “How well do I take care of what has been entrusted to me – note, ‘entrusted’, not ‘given’?” “How acute is my sense of entitlement?” “How much of what comes my way do I delude myself into believing really is mine?” These are hard questions which can strike at the core of one’s beliefs and values, yet in encountering them with integrity is held out the possibility of change, the possibility of growth, the possibility of transformation.

The premise in both the passages from Isaiah and from the Gospel of Matthew is that all things are really God’s , including ourselves and the good things that come our way. Isaiah depicts the vineyard as provided, tended and cared for by God and as representing the people of Judah who unthankfully rebelled, pretending themselves to be their own with a right to produce and to do whatever they liked. Jesus’ parable also depicts a landowner as the one who plants a vineyard and who provides all which is necessary for its successful operation: a fence, a winepress, a watchtower; and he entrusts it to tenants for his own and their mutual benefit. The tenants will get a share of what they produce, but he rightly expects his share. It is his vineyard, after all. The tenants, however, somehow get it into their heads that they are entitled to all it produces, they fancy themselves the landowner and stop at nothing to make sure that world-view is undisturbed, even to the point of murder. In both cases, the landowner – God – in the end asserts his control over what is his, and the images used by Isaiah and Jesus are pretty graphic. They leave little room for speculation on the landowner’s feelings. The passages highlight the reality to which we usually only give lip service: Everything is God’s, and ultimately all we have is provided or made possible by God.

Yes, to those who have ears to listen, as Jesus so often says in the Gospels, these two texts about landowners and vineyards confront us with some very difficult questions, and they seem disturbingly appropriate as we begin our stewardship campaign. It is certainly the rector’s duty to speak at least annually about stewardship. But more than the nuts and bolts of it, it is his or her duty to give a rationale for it, to enable the community to examine attitudes more than actions; to make, through the Scriptures, an invitation to transformation whose effects will go far beyond a pledge, while striking at the heart of our relationship with God and what God has entrusted to us. It is the rector’s duty, through the Scriptures and the Tradition, to invite people into the struggle with difficult questions. At the end of the day, stewardship is about whose world you really think this is, whose you think you are, what you perceive you are entitled to. The Scriptures tell us clearly that the world is God’s, it was created and is ultimately sustained by God. Like the tenants in Jesus’ parable, we have been entrusted with its care. It is safe to say we have been pretty poor stewards. The Scriptures tell us clearly that we are God’s. Not only were we created by God, but in his image; and through the prophet Isaiah we are reminded: “Thus says the Lord, he who created you,…he who formed you…: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1) Yet, how often are our decisions and choices utterly self-determinative, with only a pretended interest in the bigger picture of God’s will and purposes? How often have we chosen to grow wild grapes? How often do we take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually as if we really are God’s? The Scriptures are clear as to what ultimately belongs to us in terms of physical possessions – absolutely nothing: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) All that we have or may have is gift. Yet, when all we have is ultimately from God and usually undeserved, how often do we make demands for our “rights”, stand on some kind of pretended entitlement, make the argument that we somehow “earned” our good fortune? To what extent do we continue amassing goods, in the sub-sonscious hope of erasing the reality of our ontological nakedness? When we engage with the difficult questions of of Scripture and the Tradition, we may find ourselves wanting.

I am not here to tell you how much you should pledge, or how to exercise your own ministry of stewardship. I am hoping that the honest and challenging encounter with the Scriptures and the Tradition will enable for us all a daily transformation shaped by the difficult questions and images offered by them; marked by three profoundly biblical truths: the world is God’s, you are God’s, all is gift. Stewardship is more than simply what one gives in church or how one supports the church. It is about an attitude which is informed chiefly by the reality of who God is as creator and source, and who we are as God’s creation. Stewardship, like so much of the Christian life is ultimately about a relationship, a right relationship, a transforming relationship with God, creation, each other and ourselves.

Pentecost 15: The Same Mind in Christ

2011-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-9
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

In some ways Paul’s letter to the Philippians stands out among his other correspondence in the New Testament. As one commentator writes: the letter “seems to have been written simply because Paul is fond of his Philippians….In the letter he opens his heart to them, and tells them of his joy and his sufferings”. Paul’s special relationship with the Philippians may have stemmed from the fact that they seem to have been the only Christian community from which Paul accepted financial assistance. It is more than likey for this reason that the image and language of partnership appears so often in this epistle. In the ancient world, partnerships were created on the basis of verbal agreements. The parties shared common goals, and – as the majority of these partnerships were commercial – the parties shared equally in the rewards or profits. Now, such “partnerships lasted only as long as the original parties were agreed about their common purpose and as long as all the original parties were alive, when these conditions ceased to exist, the partnership was dissolved.”

As we read the letter, it appears that it was within this social construct of partnership that Paul understood the relationship that existed between himself and the Christians in Philippi. In the epistle’s fourth chapter he makes this explicit: “You Philippians know that…no church shared with me in the matter of giving a receiving…Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account” (Philippians 4:15, 17) – giving, receiving, profits, account, all the language of the a commercial enterprise. Moreover, Paul was in prison at the time of writing and there was a possibility of his death, so he is keen to encourage a common purpose among the Philippians in order that work of the partnership they have created will continue to prosper. So, as we heard last week, he writes at the very start of the letter, “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,..standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel.” (Philippians 1:27)

Paul’s emphasis on common purpose, as well as his partnership-resonant language would not have been surprising or unusual to the first-century residents of Philippi. However, as we hear today, he takes the elements of this contemporary social and commercial relationship, and places it within a new and deeper context – that of the relationship of the Church with Christ; and certainly, that is not a partnership that can be dissolved by Paul’s death, as the writer of 2 Timothy suggests: “if we are faithless, [Christ] remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13) So, Paul exhorts the Philippians first by alluding to the rewards and profits of this partnership: love, a sharing in the Spirit, compassion, sympathy; imploring them that if they have found any consolation in these, that is any spiritual rewards, benefits, dividends, as it were, then they should continue faithful to the partnership, they should continue in a common purpose, a common mind: “be of the same mind, having the same love,….Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2: 2, 5)

What is the mind of Christ? At its heart is a kind of humility that does not need to insist on its own way, but can be patient with others in charity; even accommodating one’s self to the needs and brokenness of the other in love. Paul urges the Philippians to have the mind of Christ; to do “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others better than yourselves;…[to] look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others”. (Philippians 2:3-4) In order to highlight this point he quotes a primitive Christian hymn which pre-dates the letter, and with which most probably the Philippians would have been familiar, and might even have known by heart. In using the hymn, Paul wants to highlight that if anyone had the right to insist on his own way it was Christ who was himself “in the form of God” (Philippians 2:6). But Christ did not. He did not regard his “equality with God as something to be exploited” (Philippians 2:6), rather he humbled and accommodated himself to the mind of the Father and “become obedient to the point of death”. (Philippians 2:8) The partnership between Christ and the Father was everything, and so Christ deferred himself to the common mind of the partnership in which he and the Father were engaged.

When was the last time you deferred to someone, not just because the person was necessarily right, or simply to keep the peace, but because it was right; it was the right thing to do, because it served the common purpose, the common mind? To many of us today this idea of deferring to another, humbling ourselves in accommodation, may seem ridiculous and even self-defeating. It may seem to go against everything our culture tells us about the importance of our personal identity, the importance of the individual, the modern sense of our right and entitlements. And there is no arguing that simplistic ideas of humility and accommodation have been mis-used and abused, even in the Church, to keep certain groups of people down, women most notably. But the humility of Christ which we are called to imitate has nothing to do with that sort of self-abasement, but instead arises out of the partnership we have forged with him as a people, out of a desire to have with him a common mind of service and care for the other, out a desire to do the best for the Church and the world.

When I was practicing as a therapist I was working with a particular woman. She was a Christian whose mother, also a Christian, was domineering and expected her daughter to care for her exclusively. The mother dissuaded her marrying, even to point of frightening off potential partners or convincing her daughter of their unsuitability. This woman saw it as her duty in Christ to accommodate her mother and humble herself to the mother’s needs and desires. In the end, when the mother died the daughter was left friendless and dis-orientated. Does this scenario fulfill Paul’s plea for Christians to “look not to [their] own ineterests, but to the ineterests of others”? Does this partnership constitute a meeting of minds for mutual joy and benefit? Of course not! In fact, by accomodating the mother in such a way the women was not looking to the mother’s interests, but instead allowing the mother to indulge her self-centredness and self-importance. In the end, what the daughter realised was that her actions were more to keep the peace, than out of pure Christian humility. She came to the painful realisation that in her mis-guided idea of Christian humility and service she had done a dis-service both to herself and to her mother. Humility and service have nothing to do with being a doormat, but rather with the reality of striving for the interests of others because we know that in their well-being is our own. Our partnership as Christians, and even as human beings points to that. For this reason Paul stresses the importance of a common mind first, before we enter into the serious partnership of humility and service: “Let this mind be in you, that was in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5)

As Christians we are all in partnership with each other and with God in Christ. That means we should always strive for a common mind. It does not mean we all have to think the same, but it does mean that that in humility we can sacrifice for one another and the world. It means that more than we usually do, we allow ourselves to be guided by the interests and well-being of others and not our immediate and private concerns. It means we sometimes defer to one another for the well-being of the whole, even if it challenges our own conclusions or personal tastes or temperament. But, at the same time, it also means that we are never alone. It means that others are doing the same for us, and that we can happily drop out of the rat-race of looking out for “number one”. It means we come to share in the benefits – the dividends, if you will – of the partnership: consolation, love, compassion, sympathy among them, and ultimately with Christ to share in the glory of God the Father in this world and in the next.

Pentecost 20: The Gracious Generosity of God.

2011-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Jonah 3.10-4.11
Psalm 145.1-8
Philippians 1.21-30
Matthew 20.1-16

Driving down Caldwell towards Visalia, I was reminded that we are beginning the grape harvest, and so today’s gospel seems particularly appropriate. The vintage season in the Holy Land – a period from July to August – coincides with our own; and those we see working in the vineyards surrounding our city are not fundamentally different from the workers Jesus describes in his parable: days labourers who may only work as and when there is need. For us, here in Central Valley the resonances between what we see in the week and what we have heard this morning are almost palpable. At the same time, there is also something in this parable which touches on the finality of all things, the final reckoning, the reminder that in the end “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20.16) This is the last parable Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew before he and his friends enter Jerusalem for the final time. Indeed the verses directly after this parable – verses 17-19 – are Jesus telling his friends about the fate he is sure awaits him in Jerusalem: “See, we are going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.” (Matthew 20.18–19) And what theme does the writer of the Gospel of Matthew place on Jesus’ lips as the story turns towards his death? The theme of God’s generosity. Last week’s parable of the unmerciful servant and today’s parable of the labourers in the vineyard, both highlight the generous nature of God and both demand of their listeners – that’s you and me – a response.

As the images in today’s parable are not far from our experience – we who live so close to the “Raisin Capital of the World” – so neither are the themes drawn out in the parables, both in this week’s and last’s. They speak to us not only by what they say in and of themselves, but also by where they are placed in the Gospel of Matthew – the only Gospel in which they appear, by the way. Of course, the theme of God’s generosity to which I have already alluded is clear. Yet, in last week’s parable it would seem that the generosity of God is dependent upon our own. The lord writes off the slave’s huge debt, but, on discovering that this same slave did not forgive a much smaller debt owed by a fellow-slave, retracts the write-off and places the slave in prison until he should pay the debt. The story is rounded off by Jesus’ words: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18.35) While this may seem to make God petty, with a rather quid pro quo attitude, that is not, I think, what the writer means to express. But rather, that this is the economy of the universe, as it were. Jesus expresses this in other parts of the Gospels: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Luke 6.37-38) In short, “what goes around comes around”. The world we live in is a generous world, a gracious world, created by a generous and gracious God; and to partake most fully in that generosity and graciousness, we must be willing to make a response in the same generous and gracious spirit. When we make that response we open ourselves up to receiving the fullest measure of God’s generosity.

Today’s parable seems to be about making that response, and about how little God’s generosity relates to any quid pro quo, tit for tat arrangements. All who participated in the work of the vintage season, in the work of the kingdom, share equally in the gracious generosity of the landowner. I say “the work of the kingdom”, because that is what we can understand the work in the vineyard as representing: the work of the kingdom, our participation in the generous and gracious spirit of God. The work of the kingdom is our responding in generosity and graciousness to God’s own generosity and graciousness. At the same time the parable expresses that God’s generosity is a surprising generosity; that God’s graciousness is an unexpected graciousness. Like the generosity of the landowner it may even seem unfair because it is indiscriminate. And many of us may very well identify with those workers who, realising that the late-comers were receiving the same wages as they, “grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ ”(Matthew 20.12) But, fair or unfair, there it is nonetheless. It seems that we want generosity when applied to ourselves, but fairness when it comes to others. Yet, somehow the generosity of God is not measured out in accordance to our labours; part of our participating fully in it is accepting that reality, even celebrating it. If we are really to be generous and gracious people then we must be willing to affirm graciousness and generosity wherever, wherever it presents itself, wherever it is made manifest. For some reason that is not always an easy thing for us human beings, and Jesus in the gospels is aware of that. The landowner says to the disgruntled labourers: “Are you envious because I am generous?”(Matthew 20.15b) Or, more literally, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” It is not dissimilar to the response which the father makes to the disgruntled brother in the parable of the prodigal son: “Son,” he says “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” (Luke 15.31–32) The first step to responding to the great generosity of God, the graciousness of the universe, is simply to allow it to happen and to celebrate it whenever it does happen. The beginnings of the response is simply to not begrudge the good, the beautiful, the lovely, the tender and compassionate wherever it occurs.

Such an attitude renews our mind and converts our spirit so that we can participate even more fully in the gracious and generous work of God. It allows us to see the world through a lens of generosity, to interpret the world with a hermeneutics of graciousness, and when we do that our entire viewpoint shifts. When we do that we are changed into more generous and gracious people. When we do that we are moved to do more and more acts of gracious generosity, to do more and more the work of the kingdom. We are transformed more and more to be the images of Christ in world; Christ, who lived an exemplary life of generosity and graciousness, who believed to the core that the God in whom he trusted was a God of grace and generosity, who had created a gracious and generous world. For that reason he looked for the best in people. He lived the message of forgiveness with abandon. He welcomed all who came to him, regardless of what society might think of them or of him. Even in the face of his impending death, he was able to still proclaim the good news of generosity. Even on the cross he was willing, in graciousness, to give people the benefit of the doubt: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23.34); and in generosity to affirm the goodness of God to his fellow human beings: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23.43)

Yes, we are in the midst of the harvest season, and the abundance with which we are afforded physically and spiritually should draw our minds to the graciousness and generosity of God. The abudance with which are afforded invites us into the economy of the universe preached and lived by Jesus in which what goes around comes around and in which the grace and goodness of God are for everyone; and whether we think they deserve it or not is completely and utterly immaterial.

Pentecost 11: Honour, Shame and Vengeance

2011-08-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12.9-21
Matthew 16.21-28

For anyone who has been betrayed or disappointed, whether by another or by the circumstances of life, the words from the prophet Jeremiah will resonate: “O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me, and bring retribution for me on my persecutors.” (Jeremiah 15:15a) Equally, we can all of us relate to the urgent cry of the psalmist: “O LORD God of vengeance…show yourself [and] give the arrogant their just deserts.” (Psalm 94:1-3) The desire for vengeance, for retribution, is powerful, so powerful that we must concede it comes from more than simply our wanting a “fair shake”. Rather, vengeance goes well beyond a desire for justice. Unlike justice, vengeance lacks a sense of reasonable proportionality and what we desire in vengeance is not redress, but retribution. And humiliation is at the core of the dynamic of vengeance. It calls for the demeaning and the humiliation of our enemies in turn, because the trespass done to us makes us to feel not merely injured or misunderstood, but humiliated ourselves. Our desire for vengeance comes from feeling that our self worth and dignity have somehow been diminished in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Our desire for vengeance is rooted in our sense of shame.

The world of the ancient near-east, the world the Bible was what sociologists term an “honour/shame culture”. Within such a culture the dynamics of humiliation and vengeance have a significance unknown to most of us today. In an honour/shame culture one’s social standing and even identity is bound up in the way one is is perceived, respected (or feared) and treated by others, the honour one is accorded. As such, honour is everything and shame or humiliation are to be avoided at all costs. If you shame me, you haven’t just slighted me, you have diminished me in the eyes of the group and that means you have diminished my personhood. If I do not seek vengeance, then I accept the diminishment; I accept that I am shameless. Alternatively, if I cannot avenge myself, then someone in my family, a member of my tribe, must do so for me in order not only that my honour be restored but their honour as well, the honour of my immediate group. The religious corollary of all this is that if I cannot avenge my dishonour, then God must and God must do it speedily and for all to see. God must work in the same way that we would if we could, or would our nearest kin if we had them.

For the thoughtful, the honour/shame system begs some serious questions and challenges: “From whence comes my sense of identity?” “How do I handle humiliation?” “How do I define vengeance?” “How do I define justice?” “How do I differentiate between the two?” For the religiously-minded, the question of God and God’s relationship to the dynamics of humiliation, vengeance and justice often are central, after all isn’t God supposed to be on the side of the brutalised and diminished, on the side of the humiliated and abused? Isn’t my god supposed to by on my side and take up my cause? For Christians, all this is informed by the disturbing – but not often highlighted – fact that we honour, indeed that we recognise as God, one who is humiliated, abused and ultimately shamefully executed as a common criminal, a religious agitator and social misfit. This recognition has signified a fundamental shift in social and personal relations, a shift which can be traced almost exclusively to Christianity and its insights into the nature of God.

Look for a moment at the Gospel. Jesus tells his friends about the humiliation which is to come – his suffering at the hands of the authorities and his execution. Peter immediately rebukes him. “God forbid it” (Matthew 6:22), he says. How can God allow Jesus, and by extension his friends, to lose face in this way? Jesus responds by telling Peter that he is setting his “mind not on divine things but on human things”. (Matthew 6:23) Jesus suggests that perhaps the dynamics of the honour/shame system have little to do with God and the divine economy, that perhaps there are worse things than being humiliated in the eyes of society; that perhaps we have a core identity which is not so fluid or fragile, as to be diminished simply by the whims and actions of others no matter how wounding or shaming those actions may be to our ego, and that perhaps that is rather any act of vengeance on our part which truly diminishes who we are. And so, he calls his followers to deny themselves, deny that constructed social self caught up in the honour/shame system, in a system which necessitates and demands retribution, humiliation and violence simply to keep that self intact. Accept your cross, accept that life is difficult and that living well or being good will not exempt you from suffering, pain or even humiliation at the hands of others and of circumstances. Yet know this, no one can diminish your personhood because your identity is not at the whim either of others or of circumstances. Our identity is found in God, in being created in God’s image and being redeemed by God’s love.

If there is a possibility of diminishment it lies not in what others can do to us, but in what we can do to others. It lies in our seeking and executing vengeance. Ironically, it is our own desire to humiliate another which ultimately disfigures the very core of who we are. For this reason Paul advises his fellow Christians in Rome: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them….Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all….Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:14, 17, 21) Do not let the actions of another rob you of your own self-determination. Do not allow the actions of another to determine or condition your reaction, because when you do then you lose the moral high ground, you lose your self in the worst way possible. We each of us must choose a stance for dealing with and encountering the world, both its joys and its difficulties, and in a disciplined way discern that we are not simply at the whims of others, of their perceptions and actions. We do not need to get caught up in the cycle of hatred, vengeance and humiliation. Like Jesus on the cross, we can choose to bring it to an end with ourselves. Moreover, we can cease to project onto God our need for vengeance. While we can accept that God may vindicate our trials and difficulties, we do not need to have God avenge them; and while we may recognise that God and his Church honour those who are faithful, we do not need to have those we consider faithless to be humiliated or shamed. As Christians we can desire and work for justice, but we can never legitimately desire or execute vengeance. We should not seek it even from God.

Pentecost 10: Rest and Renewal

2011-08-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 51.1-16
Psalm 138
Romans 12.1-8
Matthew 16.13-20

In the 1940’s a lion escaped from a circus in Brooklyn in New York City. The keepers located him next morning, but, strangely enough, he had only gone several blocks, stopping at an abandoned house with a thirty-foot strand of fence in front of it. There was the lion, pacing back and forth behind that fence, continuing the same monotonous yet comfortable habit of lateral movement into which he had been born in the circus cage, free and yet not entirely free after all. For whenever he would reach a corner, at one end of the fence, he would simply reverse his direction. He had a new freedom, but because he could not think in a new way, he was as encaged as ever. There is something in this story resonant with the discussion between Jesus and his friends recorded for us in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus had given over a lot time and employed various means to share with people the Good News. He had shared with them the importance of love, compassion, kindness, the secondary nature of rules and regulations over and against human needs. As we reflected last week, he had shared with them his own insight that the God of Israel was bigger than the people of Israel, and that his mission was for all people — the Jew as well as the foreigner. Jesus had offered them a vision of freedom as children of God which was in many ways new and refreshing. Yet when he asked his friends “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16.13), they responded, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16.14) The people were still thinking only in terms of the inherited tradition, the past. Something new had been offered, but no renewal of the mind had come about, therefore the new that had been offered could not be completely taken in. And lest we think this situation particular to the Jews of Jesus’ day, I would ask you to remember the many times in the Church’s own history when she has behaved in the very same way. New technology, medical advancements, as well as developments in the understanding of human nature have throughout history been met with hostility by the Church, simply because they were understood solely in light of the past, with only a very few of her members encountering them with a renewed mind and spirit. Think of Galileo, for example, who was made by the Church to either recant his “heresy” that the earth revolved around the sun or to face a fiery death at the stake. Like that escaped lion we have so often allowed ourselves to pace back and forth in a seeming cage, because we have been unwilling to think in new ways and simply turn the corner.

Today’s scriptures seem to beg the question, “Where and how am I renewed?’ At another level we can ask ourselves, “How do I personally encounter and assimilate new information?” Do we give ourselves time to think, read, reflect and contemplate the new possibilities which life and the world offer us; or do we, out of habit, simplistically reference the new with old and thereby rarely see the new for all that it may bring us? Do we take so little time to reflect on the new, and because it may appear similar to the old, simply treat it as the old, not unlike that escaped lion pacing back and forth in front of a fence, see it all the time as a cage? We live in a world which constantly is offering us new insights into human life and the human condition — much more so than ever in our history, a world which is constantly challenging “the way we have always done things”, and if we are to live in the world seriously we must take what the world gives us seriously. This doesn’t mean we have to uncritically accept all that comes our way, neither that our past should not inform our present, but it does mean that we must set time aside to think, read and reflect so that the decisions we make and the outlooks we adopt are informed and considered. That takes time, specific time; it takes pausing and not just carrying on with things as usual. Finding ourselves in the middle of August it is not a bad idea to think about taking time, making time to rest.

As we ask ourselves “where and how am I renewed?” we also begin to discern how, if ever, we set time aside to reflect. When do we allow ourselves rest in order to gather and reasonably consider new information which the world and our experiences offer us. If we do not set that kind of time apart, if we run from task to task without seriously engaging with the new things that come our way, if we do not give ourselves the opportunities to seek out information, to think and study, then our alternative is only ever to see the new within the construct of the old, or force it into our past experiences and knowledge. We all need the kind of rest which allows us to think in new ways, to think, as they say, outside the box, to use our gifts of creativity and imagination. It is the rest of consideration and reflection, the rest of renewal. It is the kind of rest which, because we are relaxed, allows us to make connections between the issues of our lives — connections which we would not see under the normal pressures of day to day existence. In our fast-paced world we have to make a lot of decisions and assimilate a lot of information, to do that well, to do that effectively and beneficially requires resting time to think and process. The rest of renewal keeps us from the glib answer, the knee-jerk response, the unconsidered and unimaginative reaction. It safeguards us from the rote resolution conditioned solely by old precedence, and opens us up to new possibilities, to the creative response engendered by a refreshed vision, even a renewed spirit.

In the letter to his fellow Christians at Rome Paul writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12.2) And I suppose that it could not have been said better. The renewing of our minds is the work of transformation, transformation of spirit, mind, body. We can be conformed to the this world (by this Paul means the accustomed and customary way of doing and seeing things, understanding even the Good News of Jesus along those lines) or we can use our minds restfully, carefully and imaginatively to discern the new things and possibilities offered to us in the day to day; we can use our minds to discern the new ways in which God may be working. How do we do this? Let’s start with reading. Not just reading what we have to read for work or material which only further reinforces a our already ascertained world view, but novels, poetry, unconventional biographies, anything which allows you to open up to different ways of understanding or making connections. Good cinema, theatre and art help us to do the same. Well considered they can lead us to catch a glimpse of how others have interpreted their encounter with the world and their lives within it. It is one of the reasons I am so proud of our film club, and wish it were more widely advertised. Time spent in nature or gardening, in any activity that calls for a quieting of soul or which gives to us a sense of perspective of the world and our genuine place in it, these too can be places of renewal and reminder. Regular prayer and meditation also are essential, enabling us to engage at a deep level with ourselves and God, and thereby less fearfully with the world. But, all this takes time and a specific commitment to making time. Yet, if we are serious about the spiritual journey, about the life journey, it is more than worthwhile.

I think it was Eckhart Tolle who wrote that 80% of our thinking is useless repition, our minds playing over and over what we already know, or think we know. It is for this reason we all need places and spaces of renewal to grow and develop, to live lives of balanced integrity, to see things from new perspectives. We need them in order to become more fully the people God is calling us to be. Our dignity as human beings, our dignity as a people made in the image of God, demands it, because if we do not make that kind of time to reflect and contemplate, to invite renewal we may just find ourselves like that lion pacing back and forth in front of a fence, trapped by a facile interpretation of reality, trapped by our simple knowledge of the past with no vision for the present or the future.

Pentecost 9: A Church of Dirty Foreigners and Uppity Women

2011-08-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:10-28

I am told there was a time the Church of the Saviour was the meeting place for the “great and the good” of Hanford, its pews filled Sunday by Sunday by the worthiest of civic worthies. And through its doors passed so many who looked to the Episcopal Church as the religious badge signifying they had “arrived”, socially, politically, economically. This is not to paint a dim picture of Hanford or of the Episcopal Church in Hanford. The situation here was hardly atypical of that in the Episcopal Church more generally – although it may have lasted longer in small towns like Hanford. The Episcopal Church was conservative, wealthy and white, and being or becoming an Episcopalian, or even being in the company of Episcopalians was a feather in anyone’s cap. If you know the film Driving Miss Daisy, there is a sure hint of that world. The Werthans are Jews, and one evening Daisy Werthan’s son is visiting his mother, but keen to get back home saying that his wife “Florene’ll be havin’ a fit if I don’t get home on time tonight.” His mother responds sarcastically, “Y’all must have plans tonight”. “Goin’ to the Andersons’ for a dinner party”, he says. She quickly observes, “This is her idea of heaven on earth, isn’t?...Socializin’ with Episcopalians!” An invitation to the Episcopal home of the Andersons was for Florene, and no doubt her other friends, a sign she had somehow “arrived”, was part of the inner circle.

But we all know that those days are over for the Episcopal Church. Some time in the 60’s or 70’s of the last century she experienced a profound conversion in which a more radical understanding of the Gospel was discerned; an understanding grounded in some of the more challenging Scriptural passages from the prophets particularly, but more importantly in a rediscovery of the ministry of Jesus himself. The Episcopal Church became somehow particularly attentive to and critical of the social, political, economic and even ecclesiastical forces that pushed people to the margins. She became critically able to draw parallels between the tribal and class solidarity which in the ancient world of the Scriptures created groups of people considered beyond the pale and how those same dynamics continued in the present and in the Church’s life itself.

It may be rather difficult for us to really understand the strict social and religious lines of divisions in ancient societies. Yet, what usually distinguishes Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, is their commitment to breaking down those sorts of divisions as well as their commitment to the de-privatistion not only of religion, but of God God’s self. If you recall, in the ancient world one’s god was one’s private possession, the possession of one’s tribe or nation. Other gods existed, but you hoped that yours was more powerful, capable of overpowering the gods of other peoples and therefore able to grant you and your fellows security and success. Judaism, and most particulalry the prophets, dared to suggest that perhaps the God of the Jews was the God of all peoples, and that tribal identity had nothing to do with one’s relationship to God, and by extension to others. And so the author of Second Isaiah dares to write: “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD…will be accepted…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” (Isaiah 56:6, 7) God cannot be the private possession of Judaism, nor of anyone. God is God, the God of all creation and there is no other; and if there is no other than certainly this God must be God of the Jew and of the foreigner alike.

Of course, the temptation to possess God is a powerful one, and with enough religious and social power the appearance of possessing and controlling the divine is easily achievable. Jesus’ generation had listened no better to the prophetic vision than had previous ones; or our own for that matter. Religion had a become a way to feel superior, virtuous and pure. So when a foreign Canaanite – and a woman at that – approached Jesus in the crowd imploring he heal her daughter, his reponse was the enculturated one: “I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24) and then he insulted her in her foreign origin – “dog” is a term of abuse regularly leveled at foreigners: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Matthew 15:26) It is not easy for Christians to see Jesus in this unfavourable light, but it does highlight the power of group or tribal identity, that even Jesus bought into it, at least initially. The woman out of bravery or shere desperation challenges Jesus, challenges his vision of God and of God’s kingdom. Perhaps Jesus recalled the words of the prophet or perhaps he remembered his own outcast status, but not only does he include both the mother and daughter in God’s world of salvation and redemption, but he commends the mother’s faith: “Woman, great is your faith.”

Immediately, after this incident (although not included in today’s gospel passage), the writer of Matthew relates how were brought to Jesus “the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others…and he cured them.” (Matthew 16:30) For curing one should read “including”. Social and religious convention dictated that like foreigners, those “damaged” or in any way disabled were also not part of the plan. God was the God of the able, not the broken and that indeed their very brokenness – whether physical or emotional – signalled their impurity, their alienation from the divine. For this reason in the gospels the question of sin is never far from the issue of illness deformity. Jesus’ parable in which a great party is hosted and none of the invited guests come highlights the same reality. Being turned down by those invited the host commands the servants, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:21b, 23b) One can see how the circle continually widened, and the early Church became the place for the broken, the damaged, the dirty foreigner and the “uppity” woman.

How far we have come from that early Church of the broken, the damaged, the misfit and misfitting. One of the aspects of the Episcopal Church that makes me most proud is how her conversion of spirit and direction has played out specifically with regard to those our world today considers damged or broken, those whom many churches consider beyond the pale of Christian life and Christian society, and hence beyond the reach of God’s love. I love how our Episcopal Church, like that host in the parable, has gone out into the streets and lanes of life and specfically welcomed those the world has made poor, whom society has labelled as moral cripples, those whose vision is compromised by the labels placed on them by others, those who have been so abused and demoralised by the powers that be they cannot even hardly walk with any dignity at all. The Church has broken down the walls and divisions, the theological cliques and spiritual huddles and said – “Come, you too are welcome. You are included. The message of salvation is for you too.” This has cost the Episcopal Church much, and for that reason makes her welcoming inclusion so much the more meaningful.

Many people ask me what my vision is for our parish. More and more I feel that I would like to see our parish further incarnate the reality of God’s love and invitation to the broken and damaged, the misfits. When so many churches find themselves obsessed with truth and certainty, I would like to be the Church that says, “Your doubts are welcome here. We don’t know either, but perhaps together we can find something of an answer”. Where so many churches brandish a simplistic understanding of family and family “values”, I would like to be the Church that says there are many wonderful ways of being a family and here in the household of God all are valued, accepted and affirmed, all recognised as sacred. When so many churches walk around as if they possessed God, I want to be the Church that says and really believes, “We can’t possess or own God, God owns us and that means we will always live out of the reality that God is already with us and with everyone.” When so many churches want to continue living by purity laws in order to feel superior, I want a Church of “dirty outsiders”, of the broken and damaged, of those who are far too aware of their imperfections; a Church that invites others who just do not quite fit in. I think we should be that place, that Church, in Hanford. I think we should want to be it. I think we are already becoming it, going some way to fulfilling that vision of Jesus and the prophets in which divisions come down and a new society is created in which all people are gathered together – foreigner, stranger and neighbor alike.

Pentecost 8: Silence, Darkness and Presence

2011-08-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

Two aspects of life – constant realities to our ancestors of just one hundred years ago – are virtually unknown to us today, namely sheer silence and utter darkness. What passes for quiet or dark in the modern world would be piercing and brilliant to those of earlier generations. And particularly those of us who grew up or lived in truly urban areas, we forget how accustomed we are to the backdrop of sound and light – which are, in fact considered to be hallmarks and indicators of modern living, of modern civilisation. Indeed, we find that for many people the absence of both or either makes them to feel inordinately and inexplicably uncomfortable, frightened even. When was the last time you sat in a dark room, and listened to the sheer sound of silence? Or sat silently with a friend for a length of time? How long before it became rather unnerving? How long before the thought “I must get up and do something, I must think of and say something” won out over the posture of simple presence? Undoubtedly, both silence and darkness carry with them uncomfortable resonances of fear and of the unknown; most certainly they carry with them resonances of death – “dark and silent as the grave” the saying goes. And certainly very practical reasons may abound for the steady eradication of darkness and silence from our modern world, but the therapist in me cannot help but consider it – in part – as indicative of an increasing human need to avoid naked presence to ourselves, to one another and to God; the human need to be in control.

For those of us uncomfortable with the dark, uncomfortable with silence it may be disconcerting to come across the observation that in the Judaeo-Christian tradition it is in both silence and darkness that God and God’s purposes are continually revealed. Clearly this is true in Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb. The very human expectation of God revealing God’s self in obvious power – wind, earthquakes, fire – is almost ridiculed in the narrative with the re-current trope “but the LORD was not in…” the wind or the earthquake or the fire, as each case may be. It is rather when Elijah can bring himself to hear the sound of sheer silence, that any revelation of God can be made. It is only when he can trust the silence and make himself present by stepping out of the cave, stepping out from himself, hat he can understand who God really is in this situation and what God is saying. Job similarly recounts “Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals,  dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake….A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice: “Can mortals be righteous before God?  Can human beings be pure before their Maker? (Job 4:13-14, 16b-17). In the Gospel of Luke we see how it is only after he has been made mute that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, can come to understand God’s real purposes.

Few of us like being driven into the silence, but it is only in the silence – the sheer silence – that we can really hear both ourselves and God. Ironically, also it is in the dark that we can ever really see. Despite the image of light in the Tradition, the great events of salvation history seem to happen in the dark – the parting the Red Sea and the salvation of the Hebrew children, the nativity, the crucifixion, which even while taking place in the middle of the day is an event shrouded in mysterious darkness, and Christ’s vindication over death happens from within the darkness of the tomb, hidden from human sight; and each of these events carry with them a fearful and dangerous element. It was in the darkness of night and the semi-darkness of early morning, with its attendant fears – after all, when we find ourselves in the dark and fearful even the revelations of God my seem deceptive and untrustworthy – yes, it is in that darkness that Peter is called to trust, that he is called to come to Jesus over the water. And even though he falters, even though he sinks, this encounter in the darkness of the early morning and amidst the darkness of his doubt is instrumental in bringing the others to faith: “And those in the boat worshipped [Jesus] saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’ ” (Matthew 14:33) Darkness can rob of us the ability to see, both physically and intellectually, and yet may open us up to understand what we thought to be impossible or make us to give up the control which seems too easily grasped in the light.

Conventional prayer notwithstanding, nor traditional images of a God resplendent in light, there are in the frightening experiences of both silence and darkness revelations of God’s nature and work which can be communicated in no other way. Perhaps this is true because of the posture in which both silence and darkness places us, that of sheer and naked presence; but with that nakedness comes also a disconcerting uncomfortableness from which we readily seek to flee. After all, who I am if I am not talking? Who am I if I can not see things clearly? I establish my persona with sound and I carve out by path and future in light, and that is certainly good and beneficial. Each one of us, after all, must make her or his own way in the world. However, the attendant and unspoken fears are that if I cease to speak I may just cease to exist, and if I cease to construct my life and plans in the “garish light of day”, I may well lose my command over both. As I hinted at the start, I have for a long time believed that the noisy world we have built and the seemingly endless idle chatter we create, as well as our obsession with light and almost unending need “to see it all” – both physically and intellectually – are indicative of a fear of death, the ultimate loss of control. And it is all about control. If I can paraphrase the words of Marilyn McEntyre from her book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies: “noise [and light insulate] us from the silence [and darkness] that [expose] us to encounters with self and God, and the voice of the Spirit that groans within us in ways that we may not control. To choose silence [and darkness] is to risk that encounter.” Another way of speaking about encounter is presence. To choose silence and darkness, then, is to risk presence – naked presence – before God and before each other.

Think for a moment what it would feel like to stand or sit before another – a friend, a partner, a child; to sit before them in silence and to sit with them in intellectual darkness, that is laying aside any preconceived notions or ideas about who they are, laying aside what we think we know, all that we project onto them. Imagine sitting before that person in absolute and naked presence. Funnily enough, the better we think we know the person, the more difficult the exercise becomes. It can become even frightening as we lay aside our controlling and well-practiced tools of encounter: our words and our light. How long do you think you could bear it: five minutes, ten minutes thirty minutes? As is with others, so it is with God. For so many even seasoned Christians, the posture of silence and darkness, the posture of naked presence, are fearfully frightening or completely unknown in their prayer or spiritual life, in their relationship with God. With their words and their glaring light, they carry God in their pocket. Their religion is sure, confident and above all controlled, according – not to God’s – but to their own will and purposes. So few of us even seasoned Christians step out of our comfortable and controlled cave into sheer silence and uncertainty; so few of us even seasoned Christians step out from the safety of our little boat and into that fearful and precarious darkness. So few of us even seasoned Christians step out at all, risk our dying to control, risk the encounter of naked presence.

Ultimately, if we cannot countenance silence, if we cannot bear darkness, the path to a genuine relationship with God becomes extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible. Our relationship with God can only ever be a relationship with our projections, our words and our thoughts, a mere exercise in control. Ironically, sound and light obscure our ability to see and hear. In a world of increasing sound and decreasing darkness, in a world where control and self-assertion are more and more prized and rewarded, this is perhaps one of the most important and appropriately counter-cultural posture religious persons have to offer the world. The posture of silence, the posture of darkness, the posture of naked presence.

Pentecost 7: Banquets, Kings and Kingdoms

2011-08-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 55.1-5
Psalm 145.8-9, 15-22
Romans 9.1-5
Matthew 14.13-21

It it sometimes difficult to come to grips with the truly creative genius behind the composition of the Gospels; not least of which because of the nature of the lectionary. Too often because specific episodes in the life of Jesus are isolated and stand alone on a Sunday morning, awe can miss much of their intended impact and meaning. I often told my students on the Reader Training Course in Southwark diocese that in preparing their sermons it is not enough to look at the text itself, but what comes before it and what comes after. Today’s lectionary selection is an excellent example of this. Both the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures and that from the Gospels centre around the feeding of God’s people, indeed a banquet of abundance grounded in the spirit of divine hospitality and generosity: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”(Isaiah 55.1); “And [the multitude] ate and were filled…and those who ate were five thousand men, besides women and children.”(Matthew 14:20, 21)

But there is another banquet in this narrative; a banquet hidden from our eyes by the lectionary, and which sheds light on that impromptu banquet in a deserted place. Indeed a banquet, without which we can not fully comprehend the meaning of the feeding of the “five thousand men, besides women and children.” This other banquet does not take place in the wilderness, but in a royal palace. Its guests are not weary-worn travellers, but prominent and noble citizens of Judea. Its outcome is not life and refreshment, but death and betrayal. It is the banquet at which the daughter of King Herod’s wife asks of her step-father the head of John the Baptist and gets it. For the Matthean and Markan communities at least, these two stories must have had a joint siginificance, because both place Herod’s banquet directly before Jesus’.

These two kings — and two kingdoms — are purposely set side by side, and the significance of that would not be lost on the original reader, hearer. In placing together these two narratives, the writers allude to strong cultural and religious symbols of the Hebrew Scriptures and of first-century Judaism: God’s feeding of the children of Israel with manna in the wilderness, and also the anticipated eschatological banquet promised after the apocalyitic cataclysm when God would end the old age (and all forms of distortion and evil) and establish the divine reign in its fullness; and perhaps much more simply is the contrast in these two narratives between slavery and exodus, between Egypt and the desert, between Pharoah and Moses. At same time the writers use these traditional and potent cultural and religious images to point to the future, a new way to be the people of God in the world. In hearing the story of the feeding of the multitude no Christian — whether two thousand years ago or today — could possibly be deaf to the resonance with still another meal, the meal we celebrate Sunday by Sunday: Jesus, “taking the five loaves and the two fish,…looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” (Matthew 14:19) So there is here still another hidden banquet, the banquet of the Eucharist. The banquet that for Christians is not only a foretaste of the eschatological banquet at the end of the age, but the very sign that the consummation of the age has already begun. And so, contrasting the banquet of King Herod in his palace and the banquet of the eternal King in a deserted place, the evangelists point to the banquet of another kingdom – the kingdom of God. We can thus begin to see how subtlely and how cleverly are crafted these narratives; and that as they invited the original readers and hearers to the resonances of the past and the vision of the future, it is the hope that they do so to us today.

For me, I suppose, there arise several questions from my encounter with these resonances, and while I claim to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, I do wonder in which kingdom I spend most of my time,and while I share regularly in the banquet which is the foretaste of God’s ultimate victory, I do wonder sometimes where I eat most of my meals. The fact is that I spend a lot of time in the kingdom of Herod, and I think that if we are honest we all do. Perhaps, execution is not a regular part of our agendae, but that is the more overt accident of that kingdom. If you are like me, I find that I live in its more sublte aspects. I live in a kingdom in which I am served, much more that I serve; I eat at banquet in which I am the guest much more than I am the host; I live in a kingdom in which like Herod, I sometimes turn away from doing what I know to be right in order to save face or reputation; I eat at a banquet in which I am always acutely and selfishly aware of how little there is to go around, because I cannot fully trust a God who sends manna from heaven.

The contrast to all this is that banquet in a deserted place in which, like all of Jesus’ disciples we are all called into God’s own work of service and compassion. It is the banquet in which God is praised for the good things provided and then we are instructed to distribute them, to share them. It is the kingdom where we all of us sit down on the grass together close to the ground from which which were created, and regardless of social precedence and position. It is the banquet where no one goes away hungry and there is more than we could ever have asked for or imagined. It is the kingdom where we are called into personal responsibility for care-taking of the creation and for the well-being of the most vulnerable in our world.

And we do all this because of what happens here, in this place, within these walls We commit ourselves to live this way because we learn it at the table of the new creation, at the banquet of the kingdom. It is here that we practice the life of the kingdom in which the greatest is the servant of all, in which we all stand equal before each other and before God, in which everyone one is welcome and everyone included. The People of God — the Church — and the Eucharist are the places where we should be experiencing the prefiguring of God’s reign in order that we can go back out into the world and work within it towards the fullest revelation of God’s reign and God’s purposes. This banquet is the training ground for how to eat at the banquet of Herod, the banquet of the world; and not just how to eat at it, but how to transform it.

Yes, the fact may be that we live at Herod’s banquet with its jostling for position and regard, with its pomp and prestige, it surreptious and even deceitful dealings; but our calling is that banquet in a deserted place where we are invited to sit on the grass with out sisters and brothers, where we give thanks to God for the goodness of the earth and creation, and where God God’s self calls to us in welcome and generosity: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” (Isaiah 55:1, 2b) We also gather as the Lord’s people around the Lord’s table to learn how to behave at that second banquet, how to respond to that call, how to listen carefully to the Lord, how to eat what is good; how to be formed into a people who shall be a witness of God’s reign to all peoples, calling them by our lives and actions to its fullest revelation in order that “the kingdom of the world may become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (cf Revelation 11:15), the kingdom of justice, compassion, kindness, mercy and peace.

Pentecost 6: The Upside-Down Kingdom

2011-07-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Like any good teacher, any good rabbi, at the conclusion of his teaching, Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?”. (Matthew 13:51a) And, of course, his disciples like good students answer “Yes”, (Matthew 13:51b) or as one of my favourite translations renders it: “Of course” But do they; do they really? How many of us have claimed to understand “x” or “y” in order to simply save embarrassment? How many times have we nodded or smiled ourselves into intellectual, philosophical and even emotional dead-ends because we were unwilling to expose our ignorance, even our stupidity? Or worse, how many times have we convinced ourselves we understood? Our agreement being a kind of intellectual sloth. After all, it is easier to say “yes”, than to ask “how” or to think “why”. From the gospel narratives as a whole it seems clear that Jesus’ disciples understand little of what he meant, and while they might nod, agree and even, like Peter, declare Jesus to be “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16) their understanding was ever so limited, and they bumbled along continually missing the point.

But why should they get it, really? What Jesus talks about goes so very much against the grain of the received “wisdom” – and I use the term in inverted commas; it goes so much against what makes conventional sense. They like Jesus, they love Jesus, they follow him, but they must have questioned the practicality and the reasonableness of his teaching. Why should anyone, how could anyone, sell everything he or she has and buy one pearl, for example? How can God’s reign be compared to a mustard weed, a shrub, when the cedars of Lebanon as described in the book of Ezekiel are so much more noble (cf. Ezekiel 17:22-23); or the apocalyptic tree descibed by Daniel is far more consonant with a powerful, towering kingdom: “there was a tree at the center of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew great and strong, its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the ends of the earth”? (Daniel 4:10b-11) How can God’s reign be compared to leaven, when every Jew knew that leaven, yeast, represents sin, evil, corruption, while the lack of leaven signifies that which is pure and holy? Yes, one can hardly blame them, because Jesus is not merely teaching the conventional wisdom, he is not even teaching the conventional wisdom in a new way, but he is asking of his followers something much more fundamental. He is challenging them with a new paradigm, a new world view. He is challenging them with what one New Testament scholar called ‘the upside-down kingdom”.

The values of Jesus, the values of the Kingdom he heralded, fly in the face of the received wisdom, they certainly fly in the face of social convention. At their most powerful they can offend and even disgust. The disciples may politely say “Yes, of course, we understand”, but as first century Jews they would more than likely be disgusted by some of the suggestions Jesus makes about the reign of God, by some of the actions he takes in proclaiming it. Jesus tells stories about collaborist tax collectors being justified before God, about heretical Samaritans being good and righteous, about financially and sexually profligate sons being received with joy into the bosom of their fathers. He speaks with women in public, touches the dead and lepers (who are as good as dead), and of course he sits down to eat with foreigners, whores and any number of dirty, unclean people. The disciples might say, “Yes, of course, we understand” but one would hardly be surprised if under their breath they just might utter “but we don’t believe it”. And, so, as I suggested earlier, they find themselves at an intellectual dead end because they cannot make that leap into a bigger vision, into a different paradigm.

Now Solomon does. The conventional wisdom of his age dictated that kings first and foremost be powerful – powerful over their subjects and over their enemies – and that that power resolve itself in conquest and wealth. They needed cunning skill and a healthy dose of mistrust. But when Solomon is asked by God directly what he should desire above all else to facilitate his reign, the new king asks for none of these, but rather “an understanding mind to govern your people, [and the ability] to discern between good and evil.” (1 Kings 3:9) He opts for the counter-intuitive request of wisdom. By this request he made his kingdom an “upside-down” kingdom, and thus inaugurateted a new understanding of monarchy, one which would influence the idea of monarchy well into the 18th and 19th centuries in Christian Europe, certainly. He was, perhaps, history’s first philosopher king. Nevertheless, without question, his request would have been seen as foolhardy, weak, unworthy of a real king, of a real man. His request might bring into question his prowess and willingness to fight; to his contemporaries it might signify an inversion of his maculinity, as digusting a prospect to the ancient world as it is among many less enlightened people today. And let’s face it, all his wisdom nothwithstanding, the kingdom of Israel did not surivive united after his death; and this reality makes us once again face the unconcventional wisdom of the “upside-down” kingdom, for example, that in it there is something more valuable than simply surviving intact: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

In the twelfth chapter of the letter to the Romans St Paul writes: “Do not be conformed to this world [or, age], but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2) There may be much to commend the wisdom of this age, the kind of wisdom that helps us get on in the world, the common-sense shrewdness that teaches us to hold on to what we have, and allows us to conventionally discern who are our friends, who our enemies, and who are beyond the pale altogether. Indeed an entire life can be lived – and by certain standards, successfully – saying yes when we are not really sure and agreeing when we do not really understand; a whole church life can be lived saying, “Yes, of course, I understand” while my un-renewed mind silently utters “but I don’t really believe it”. Like the disciples, we may like Jesus, we may love Jesus, we may follow Jesus, but there is not a person in this place who has not questioned the practicality and reasonableness of the teachings of Jesus: “If I give myself over to the varieties of life’s little deaths, will I really discover a life more full, authentic and meaningful? If I share even the little I have, will there really be enough for everyone? If I ask for wisdom rather than success, will everyhing really be alright even when they seem to be falling apart? If I embrace what seems disorientating chaos and social confusion, can I trust that a far more beautiful order – a divine order – will emerge that has nothing do with my control or manipulation?” It does not make sense. It is too much to ask. It requires an unqualified and frightening leap; a leap from the conventional and conventionally rational into something not altogether immediately discernable, but at its core trustworthy nevertheless. It is a leap into that place where we can stop pretending to understand, and simply say “I believe, Lord help my unbelief”. (cf. Mark 9:24) It is the leap into the “upside-down” kingdom in which leaven is holy, treasure is discovered in the most unlikely of places, shrubs become trees, and letting go is the only way to have everything.

“Have you understood all this?” Probably not. But then neither have I; and yet at moments I find myself almost coming to believe it. I hope you do to.

Pentecost 4: Hearing the Call and Doing

2011-07-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

In the prayer book of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, the lector ends the readings with the words, “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church”. Such an acclamation is certainly resonant with Jesus recurrent injunction throughout the gospels: “Let anyone with ears listen” (Matthew 13:9) and with the recurrent phrase in the Revelation to John: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” (e.g. Revelation 2:29) Yet there is a difference in the New Zealand acclamation and those biblical verses: the first uses the word “hear” the other two the word “listen”, and so their relationship begs the question: What is the difference between “hear” and “listen”? Certainly, the Greek of the New Testament has two different words for “hear” and for “listen”; in fact, in some ancient copies of Matthew the verse reads, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.” In a more recent modern translation the passage reads, “Anyone here with two ears had better listen”. Now the lectionary does rather a cheat with today’s Gospel in that it implies that throughout Jesus is speaking to the same group of people. But if you notice the citations, the passage is filleted; verses 10-17 are not included. The fact is that when Jesus tells the parable he is speaking to the crowds at large. That’s verses 1-9. But when Jesus is explaining the parable in verses 18-23 he is actually speaking only to his disciples. When Jesus speaks to the crowds generally he uses the word “listen”: “Listen. A sower went out to sow.” (Matthew 13:3b) When he explains the parable to his disciples, those who have already made a commitment to follow him, he uses the word “hear”: “Hear then the parable of the sower” (Mathew 13:8) And in explaining the parable he continues to use the word “hear”. The difference between “listening” and “hearing”. He calls the crowds to “listen”, he enjoins the disciples to “hear”.

Listening is fundamentally a passive, interior activity. So much so that the term “active listening” has had to be invented to demonstrate that – in counselling, for example – something is being done even when the counsellor is simply listening. Hearing on the other hand suggests or even demands some kind of action. In Jesus’ explanation of the Parable of the Sower each of the times he uses the word “hear” it is coupled with some action, even if the action is mis-understanding or despondency. The injunction to listen, it seems, is for the un-initiated, for those who are still processing the information in order make a decision. Listening is for those who are still trying to discern if there is truth in what is being spoken; for those who are still wondering if they can make or want to make a commitment. But those who have made a commitment – like the disciples, like you and me – then we are called to hear; hear with both ears; hear and do something. The call to hear is for the initiated for those who say that they have made a commitment, and it always carries with it the call to action.

If we are Christians then we have made the commitment. In one sense, we cannot fall back on simply listening, but we are hearers and that means acting, acting because God and God’s kingdom depend on us, depend on our work. Those of us who have heard the call of Christ know that we must respond. Those who have heard the word and invitation of God are ultimately called to bear fruit, and to offer back to God and the world something meaningful, a rich harvest: “my word…that goes forth from my mouth…shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

If you are a hearer of the word, committed to the Way of the Christ, what are you doing? What are you offering back to God? What is your adherence to the word yielding in the world? The writer of the Epistle of James reminds us, “rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” (James 1:21-22) Each of us have heard the word; in baptism each of us have had the living word of Christ implanted in us, but what have we done? Have we abandoned it to the rocky, inaccessible places of our lives? Have we let it wither through well-meaning but unfulfilled intentions? Have we choked it through negligence or warped priortities? Or have we been faithful to the what we have heard and yielded a return – thirty, sixty, perhaps a hundredfold? Only each of us can answer these questions for ourselves. But we must examine oursleves and make some kind of answer to those questions, lest we discover that the the word we have heard, the word implanted in us ultimately returns empty, yields nothing, and we miss altogether the divine partneriship into which we have been called, miss altogether the word of the kingdom.

Hear the parable of the sower. Hear the call. Hear the invitation. And as Jesus says to his followers, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” (Matthew 10:27) Do, act, proclaim by word and by deed the good news you have heard, the word that has been implanted in you so that God’s truth does not return to God empty but bears fruit in us and in our world, yielding a harvest of joy, peace and justice.

Pentecost 3: The Righteousness Game

2011-07-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do”. (Romans 7:14, 19) As we read through this passage we encounter a confused and confusing thought process revealing an internal struggle within Paul which it is clear he himself cannot entirely comprehend. Indeed, he says as much: “I do not understand my own actions.” (Romans 7:15) Certainly things had changed for him with his conversion, but he does not yet completely know how to behave – what to do – in this new life. Old habits die hard, and as he writes we find him still caught up in a vicious and destructive cycle of trying to be good, trying to be righteous which has become for him a nightmare of subjective failure and worthlessness. He has even pitted his body against his mind – “I see in my members another law at work with the law of my mind” – and as such has set himself up for a no-win situation. He is still playing the game of righteousness which when internalised always resolves itself in feelings of shame, uselessness and worthlessness. For many this internalisation ends in suicide; the feelings become unbearable, as “winning” – whatever that may mean – becomes increasingly unattainable, impossible.

But there are other ways to play the game, whose rewards seem far more satisfying, that is the feelings attendant on being right, being superior; when, instead of placing ourselves in a no-win situation, we place others. Isn’t that really what Jesus is pointing out in the Gospel? “John came neither eating nor drinking and they say, ‘He has a demon’: the Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard.’ ” (Matthew 11:18-19a) The political and religious authorities, the cultural and social elite, all felt threatened by John and by Jesus; after all the two laid bare some pretty nasty truths about power and social control. Both John and Jesus took those groups down a notch or two, and for this neither were liked, and so their opponents played the righteousness game calling the one demon-possessed, the other a loose liver; and now they could look down their noses at them, and thus had a plausible rationale for ignoring their insight and accusations altogether. It may seem that they are winners in the righteousness game, but the externalisation of the game – like its internalisation – has its own vicious cycle, a cycle of demoralising one-upmanship. The name-calling moves to accusations which in turn become threats, and threats violence; and, like its internalised counterpart, the externalised version of the righteousness game ends in death. Both John and Jesus eventually are executed as the cycle comes to its gruesome apex.

In a sense the root of the game is always a feeling of unworthiness, a feeling of worthlessness and the attempt to achieve worthiness through our own efforts. At one extreme, internalisation, we cripple and demoralise ourselves; at the other, externalisation, we demonise and victimise others. At the one extreme feelings of unworthiness paralyse us into believing “I am not worthy enough. I must accomplish more, achieve more, attain worthiness by doing more, discern my worthiness according to others’ opinions of me.” At the other extreme, feelings of unworthiness resolve themselves in “I am more worthy than others. I have done all the right things, I live so much better than others, I do so much more than others, I think the right things and know the right people”. In both extremes what is created and perpetuated are, as I mentioned, vicious cycles of more and more action, more and more doing, more and more guilt, more and more victimising; escalating activity, escalating self-reproach, escalating victimisation, and eventual escalating violence, violence to ourselves and to others; until we can find ourselves saying with St Paul “[Wretch] that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24) Who will save me from this unending game of self-loathing and self-righteousness? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

The Good News of God in Jesus Christ is that there is an alternative to this cycle of demoralisation and victimisation. We do not have to break our spirits and those of others to prove our worth. We can stop trying to win a mug’s game, simply by ceasing to play it. Ultimately, I cannot be right in any real and objective way, and so I must stop trying to achieve rightness by more and more activity. Ultimately, worthiness is not something I can achieve by my own efforts, certainly not by looking down on others, because worthiness is already inherent in my creation, and in the creation of every one. It is – to borrow a timely word – inalienable. My worthiness is not about me – your worthiness is not about you – it is about God, and thus it is about love; and it is only when we really allow ourselves to be loved, and to be loved well, that we can ever stop playing the righteousness game, whether it resolves itself for us in distorted inferiority or exaggerated superiority. When we know that we are loved, then and only then can we stop; stop the game, stop the need to prove our righteousness through agonising and soul-destroying activity or obsessive introspection, stop the one-upmanship, the looking down our noses at others, the victimising of the different. We can even stop with the need to be right. When we can accept our worthiness through love then we can rest. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”. And what can be a heavier burden than this un-ending cycle of righteousness? Still, laying that burden down and opening ourselves to love can perhaps be the heaviest work of all; and in comparison the vicious games of self-accusation or victimising superiority are easier to play, because whether we realise it or not in playing them we can continue to entertain the illusion that our worth can be achieved through something we can do. Ah, but to lay down that burden, to lay down the game, and to say “I don’t want to be – I don’t care about being – right or worthy or good anymore, I just want to love and be loved.” To say that and to live that is perhaps one of the most difficult changes to make. It will feel like a yoke placed up on our backs as we begin to walk into this new way of being. Jesus knows this because it is the same yoke which he bore himself, and he says to you right here and now “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-29)

Let’s be honest, we all play the righteousness game, whether by self-deprecation or self-importance – sometimes both by turn. I am beginning to learn it is a mug’s game whose end is always violence and death in one way or another. But its antidote is love, the love of God and of others; not some narrow, romanticised version of love but real love that welcomes, accepts, redeems, transforms, and allows us to grow into the reality of our inherent worth. The antidote of the righteousness game, as Jesus suggests, is in gentleness and humility: gentleness to ourselves and humility in the face of others. The psalmist tells us the “the LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness; [that] the LORD is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” (Psalm 145:8-9) It is not anything we do but this attitude and love God has towards us that makes us acceptable and worthy. We can stop; stop with the game, and in God’s acceptance find rest for our souls and bodies. We can stop with the cycle of righteousness and in God’s acceptance lay down the burden of having to be right or good or better, and simply live the life of a beloved child of God – loved, redeemed and worthy – the only life God has ever wanted for you, and the only life in which you will find real meaning and joy.

Pentecost 2: The Discipline of Hospitality

2011-07-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah 28:5-9
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10: 40-42

“Let all guests be received like Christ Himself, for He will say: ‘I was a stranger and ye took Me in.’ And let fitting honour be shown to all….At the arrival and departure of all guests, let Christ – who indeed is received in their persons – be adored in them, by bowing the head or even prostrating on the ground.” Thus wrote St. Benedict in the early part of the 6th century as he outlined a rule for monastic communities. In some ways he echoed words from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2) In both, we hear resonances of Jesus’ own words to his disciples recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:40) All of these passages point to what is an often forgotten spiritual discipline – hospitality; and its practice runs through the Judeao-Christian tradition. It is highlighted in the stories of Abraham’s meeting with the angels in the 18th chapter of Genesis, and in the following which details the destruction of Sodom. It is enshrined in the Mosaic law (Exodus 22:21); and both the prophets (Ezekiel 16:48:50) and Jesus condemn towns for inhospitality (Matthew 10:14-15). Indeed, just verses before today’s Gospel passage Jesus says to his disciples, “If anyone will not welcome you…shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” (Matthew 10:14-15)

Why is hospitality so important? Certainly, there are sociological reasons. In a time and culture of few large cities – around the time of Abraham the largest city was located in the Indus Valley and boasted only about 40,000 people – as well as dangerous travel conditions, the presumption of friendly hospitality was essential for travelers. It was considered one’s social duty to offer hospitality, most especially to strangers; and this relationship between guest and host was sacrosanct, as is gruesomely demonstrated in the story of Sodom narrated in the book of Genesis, when Lot thinks it better to throw out his daughters to the violence of the mob, than to give up the guests who have come under the shelter of his roof. In a disturbing way, hospitality consisted of doing more for the stranger, than for one’s own kindred – a difficult concept for us today. This social custom of hospitality developed by a nomadic people was, as I mentioned, enshrined in their law code, and continued into the period of their civilization, influencing social thought and practice well into the time of Jesus.

It was, however, Christianity which developed a conscious theology of hospitality; and thus a relationship considered a sacred trust became a divine attribute. Hopsitality was understood as the context for God’s engaging with human beings, and the rest of creation. As such, it was a practice commended among Christians for a new and distinctive reason, because it imaged God’s own actions in the world, God’s hospitality of welcoming the stranger in Christ. If we can paraphrase Paul in the letter to the Romans: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were [strangers] Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Moreover, think how many of Jesus’ parables are centered round a party, a celebration, and banquet in which those invited are strangers and outsiders. Think about the times Jesus himself welcomes those on the margins, those considered beyond the pale of conventional hospitality. What could be more hospitable words than Christ’s own: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”? (Matthew 11:28) or his own offer of nourishment: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:54-56)

Hospitality is not just welcoming the stranger, but sacrificing for the stranger, giving up of one’s self for the stranger, the alien, the outcast, even the enemy. Christian hospitality is the willingness to see in the stranger the face of Christ – “whoever welcomes you welcomes me” = and to serve Christ in her or him. I know that lately I have mentioned our Soup Kitchen in a number of my sermons and discussion – and perhaps only because it has been on my mind with the remodeling of the facility or more recently the vandalism we experienced – but I see our Soup Kitchen as incarnating that reality of Christian hospitality. Everyone is welcome and no one is turned away. There are no litmus tests of worthiness or need. If you show up you are fed, and into our hall are welcomed day to day, the stranger, the outcast, the lonely, certainly the hungry; and I know from my own personal experience that our volunteers welcome each as Christ in their midst.

But welcoming the stranger is not easy. I am sure some of our neighbours would prefer the alley was not lined with “that sort of people” six days a week. I am sure – although it has never been mentioned to me - that our radical hospitality presents particular headaches for the local community and for the city more generally, perhaps even for law enforcement. We know that welcoming the stranger has not been easy for the Episcopal Church as through history she has drawn the net increasingly wider and welcomed Christ in native people, in ethnic minorities, in women, in GLBT people. The latter two particularly have cost us much; no one knows that better than this diocese. At the same time we must always return to that reality presented to us in the Church’s tradition that when we welcome the stranger, when we welcome the outcast and the disliked, we welcome Christ. Moreover, that hospitality is more than mere politeness to the stranger or conviviality with friends – after all we can, every one of us, throw a great party with “people like us”. No, hospitality is that spiritual discipline in which we sometimes must work to discern the face and presence of God in unexpected people and even in unexpected situations, and then welcome them into our midst in the knowledge that their presence brings with it a gift, something new, something important. Hospitality is not charity, it is most assuredly not condescension. Hospitality certainly entails giving of ourselves, but perhaps even more, it entails an opening up of ourselves to recognize and welcome the divine in those around us. Ultimately, it is something about the reality that perhaps God is chiefly encountered in the other – most especially in the stranger – and served chiefly in our responding to their needs: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)

Trinity Sunday: Divinely Passionate Involvement

2011-06-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

It seems the case that some of the dodgiest theology, even heresy, appears to be acceptable when presented in hymns. Take, for example, the much-loved Christmas carol Hark the Herald Angels Sing: “Late in time, behold Him come, offspring of a virgin’s womb.  Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.” That’s it – “veiled in flesh”, suggesting that Jesus only takes on the disguise of a human being and that – as one person described it – “becoming flesh obscures the divine glory rather than expresses it.” Today’s recessional hymn poses, if not altogether dangerous, then at best unhelpful theology: “Unresting, unhasting and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might…[things] wither and perish, but naught changeth thee”. Here we hymn a passionless god, a distant un-involved god, an in-light-inaccessible-hid-from-our-eyes god; and while I love this hymn with its cadences, its imagery and alliteration, I know that it sings more the god of the Deists, than the God of Christianity, because the God revealed to us in scripture and tradition is a God not distant from us, but intimately involved with us, intimately close to creation. The God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is not un-changing as such, but instead profoundly involved in the process of change, profoundly involved in creation and re-creation, and – on account of the Incarnation – profoundly involved in the vagaries, the uncertainties and the messy incidentals of the our humanity.

Today is Trinity Sunday, and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to understand this infinite and passionate involvement God has – or perhaps better, God is – with creation. The image we often have of God as loving – yes, certainly loving – but yet distinctly distant is not what we hear this morning in the lessons or in the Gospel. It is certainly not what we encounter at the altar when God gives God’s own self to be experienced by our senses – when God gives God’s own body to be taken into our bodies. No, what the doctrine of the Trinity attests to is the reality of relationship – passionate, creative and re-creative relationship – between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it attests to the truth that that passion is so great, so powerful, that by God’s grace it spills over in creative power, inviting and drawing into that relationship all that is. It may be tempting to think of the doctrine of the Trinity as simply describing the nature of God, but it encompasses more than that. It is also how we understand our own participation in the life of God, and in that marvellous relationship of love, in that marvellous, divine adventure in which God goes outside of God’s self in passionate, even erotic – in the classical sense of the word – self-revelation, and then draws us into it. Isn’t that perhaps the best way to understand the narrative of creation – that big bang of passionate love which cannot be contained but bursts out in creative power, and not as a once and for all event, but an event which unleashes a process of continual creation and re-creation? Light, stars, earth, animals, seas, creeping things of every kind, “galaxies, suns,…planets”, you and me all birthed through love into an exciting and continual process of change and growth; or more correctly – dare I say it? – evolution.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the reality that God does not desire to be contained – ultimately, no sacred temples, no holy of holies, no purity laws – but that God’s desire bursts forth into nothingness and creates, and once creating continues to desire more and more intimacy with creation. God wishes to pattern creation along the reality of the passionate, loving and dynamic relationship which God is in God’s own self – that relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God reveals that passionate desire in the creation of life itself, in the calling of those creatures into partnership and redeeming them into freedom. We Christians recognise that desire uniquely expressed in the “big bang” of the Incarnation, when God’s passion for relating cannot be contained and is revealed in a distinctive human form – in the person of the Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus God joins God’s self to humanity purely out of passionate love, purely out of a desire to connect with us, and by so doing draws all that is human into the divine life. Pentecost is a continuation of that desire as divine creative powers are unleashed in the person of the Holy Spirit. This unleashing, as Bishop Talton reminded us last week, breaks down any divisions of language, gender, race, class, economic status – any divisdins whatsoever – and thereby inaugurates a new community that is to mirror the generous, loving and equal relationships within the Holy Trinity. God calls into being and calls into partnership a community, the hallmarks of which are the same as that of the divine life, hallmarks detailed in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “Put things in order…agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” (2 Corinthians 11:11)

As we are drawn into the life of God we are also drawn into the uncomfortable processes of conversion, change, transformation, and maybe that explains the hymns; because it is easier to have a distant, unchanging god we simply have to worship, than an immanent God into whose passionate, explosive love we are drawn to participate. It is easier to have a saviour who comes merely disguised as a human being, rather than one who loves humanity so much that he wants to share in all its intimate, messy details, and then makes us part of the story by sending us out into the world; sending us out to unleash his creative power. Isn’t that what the great commission is about as Jesus sends out his followers into the world in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? He commissions them, he commissions us, to go into the world and live the life of the Trinity in creation. Is that also not what the early church did? Listen to this description in the Acts of the Apostles: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:43-47) What the author of Acts describes is the life of the Trinity poured out and manifested in the life of the Church. It is what we witnessed last week as God’s life burst forth in the lives of Corey, Lisa, Patsy and Melissa and they were drawn into that life, the Trinitarian dance of creation. In that life there are no divisions and there are no spectators. There is no place for passionless participation – whether our own or God’s. There is only purposeful, passionate involvement, there is only going out of one’s self in love and getting caught up in the cosmic drama of continuing creation and re-creation; caught up in what we – in short – call salvation.

Easter: Proof of the Resurrection

2011-05-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18

The question of the historical truth of the resurrection has in the last few years loamed high. With the rational skepticism of our present age, we may think this a new phenomenon; but this “debate”, or better termed, concern, can be traced much further back. In fact, St Paul is addressing this issue in his letters years before the Gospels themselves were written. In the letter to the Corinthians it is clear that even among Christians the question existed as to the truth of Christ’s resurrection – and by extension their own. Paul writes to them: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 18) He places the resurrection faith at the heart of Christian truth and Christian hope. However, Christians from the beginning have had to make to the world an accounting for this truth and hope that is in us (cf. 1 Peter 3:15), that is, the truth and hope of resurrection.

Since the dawn of the scientific revolution, for Christians the question as to the truth of the resurrection has become particularly focused, particularly acute. In his poem for Easter Day from The Christian Year, the poet John Keble poetically poses for his readers the questions which the rational and scientific world ask of Christianity: “The World thinks [not] on thee, thou blessed day: Or, if she think, it is in scorn: the vernal light of Easter morn to her dark gaze no brighter seems than Reason’s or the Law’s pale beams. “Where is your Lord?” she scornful asks: “Where is His hire? we know his tasks;  sons of a King ye boast to be: let us your crowns and treasures see.” If in our proclamation of the resurrection, we Christians are to speak with authority, or even any relevance, we must make some sort of credible response to the world. More specifically, as Episcopalians – as Anglicans – we must make that response in clear faithfulness to tradition, scripture and reason. At the same time, we must do so without any simplistic or facile commitment to “facts” or proofs. Belief in Christ’s resurrection is above all, a statement of faith; and the truth of a faith statement is not proved in an appeal to science or history – to empirical evidence – but, rather, in the fruits it produces in the lives of those who believe. The resurrection is true, not so much because we can point to its happening on such-and-such a date, in such-and-such a place, or in such-and-such a way, but because we witness its reality manifested in transformed lives. Its truth does not lie in a historical fact subject to proof or dis-proof, but in a lived experience of freedom and new life, in a lived experience that divisions between people are broken down, and that new possibilities are arising. The truth of the resurrection cannot be grasped by those who look on and examine it with scientific objectivity, but instead by those who are enter into and live its reality, by those who allow their lives to be transformed by the indwelling of the Risen Christ in them.

Many know John Newton as the writer of the hymn, Amazing Grace. Fewer know that he was originally involved in the 18th century slave trade, and it was only when he had an encounter with the Risen Christ that his life was transformed. This encounter with the liberating truth of the resurrection not only led him to be ordained a priest in the Church of England, but more importantly to work tirelessly for the abolition of slavery. Even in his day, proof for the resurrection was a common issue, and in one of his sermons he preached: “…the proof the resurrection of Christ, which is the most important and satisfactory of any, does not depend upon arguments and historical evidence….Those who have found the gospel to be the power of God to the salvation of their souls…know that the Lord is risen indeed, because they have been made partakers of the of the power of his resurrection, and have experienced a change in themselves, which could only be wrought by the Holy Spirit which Jesus is exalted to bestow.” He eloquently presents what the Church has always believed, that the truth of the resurrection makes itself known in changed lives.

More than mere historical fact, the resurrection is mystery; and mystery is a way of engaging with truth, deepest truth, truth too deep for words; truth so deep it can only be experienced. It is only manifested in the day to day living. It is manifested when we commit acts of courage in the face of frightening circumstances. It is manifested when we dare to love even as the world says our loving is useless or inappropriate. It is manifested when we continue to trust life and speak up for freedom, although it may be easier or safer to settle for a quiet existence. Ultimately, it is manifested when we embrace life – all life – without having to be afraid or cautious, without having to hold back. We know that when we encounter people who live their lives in such a way we are instinctively attracted to them; we know, whether we can immediately vocalise it or not, that we have encountered something of the holy, something of the whole, something of the resurrection.

The world will continue to ask for proof of the resurrection, and the only response we can make is the one the Church has always made – the living of transformed lives. It is the only proof we can offer. More than that, it is the only proof we would want to offer, because even if the resurrection of Christ could be proved as historical fact beyond dispute, it would be meaningless if its reality were not manifested somehow in real lives and real people, right here, right now. A Jesus resurrected in time 2000 years ago is in some sense rather meaningless, at best a fact of history. Real resurrection is Christ resurrected in you and me, and in everyone who has given his or life over to the Christ mystery, in everyone who has entered with him into the deep baptismal waters of death, and now shares his risen life. You and I, and how we live our lives, we are the real and only proof that Christ is alive and abroad in the world. That is what is means to be the Body of Christ. Only by God’s power being manifested in us can the truth of the resurrection be ever fully revealed; only through us – through all of us – can, as the prayetr book says, “the whole world  see and know that things which were being cast down are being  raised up, and things which had grown old are being made  new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection.” Isn’t this, after all the true meaning of resurrection? Amen.

Maundy Thursday: Remember

2011-05-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Tonight is a night of love: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”(John 13:34-35) It is also a night when the Church – albeit in somber tones – celebrates the institution of the sacrament by which she partakes of the Body and Blood of her Lord, the sacrament by which St Paul tells the Corinthians that “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”(1 Corinthians 11:26) However, what many people remember about tonight’s liturgy is its end: the stripping of the altar, the stripping of the church. What many people take with them is a sense of traumatic desolation as the lights are extinguished, the familiar elements of the church building removed. It is a visceral sense of loss, a visceral sense of abandonment, even betrayal: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become….She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.” (Lamentations 1:1, 2)

This week as we have walked liturgically through the days leading to Jesus’ passion and death, we have been doing so with the poetry of John Keble’s The Christian Year. John Keble who lived between the years 1792 and 1866 is best known as the one who by his Assize Sermon sparked the Oxford movement. Lesser known is the fact that he was for some ten years Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. It was in 1827 that he published The Christian Year, in in it he provides a focus on the Sundays and Holy Days for which there is a proper in the English Book of Common Prayer. With each he hopes to bring into sharper focus the meaning of the day in relation to the Church’s year, but perhaps more especially in relation to the reader’s own journey with God. In a sermon on the theme of “Christ’s Own Preparation for His Passion”, Keble asks: “For what is the purpose of the Holy Church Universal in appointing this particular time of the year, in which for so many days we are to follow step by step, through all the stages of his bitter passion first, and then of his triumphant victory over death?” He answers his own question, when he says that “what is meant is, that we, by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, should make what happened to him as present to us, and as near to us, as ever we can; that we should…‘have the mind of Christ’ ”. He hopes that by making those events present to ourselves and us present to them, they will not “fail to come home to us”. Holy Week is not about apprehending the passion and death of our Lord in any intellectual or even liturgically detached sense, but in a lived and experienced sense.

It is not surprising that tonight’s service should evoke for us that feeling of desolation, that feeling of loss, the sense of darkness closing in on us – that is what it is supposed to do. Through the ages, it has been the Church’s meaning to make the events of these days not just present to us, but to make us present to them; and ultimately that cannot be done by thinking ourselves into them, but by feeling ourselves in them. Tonight, through the action and language of symbol, those parts of ourselves which feel or have felt lost, those parts of ourselves which have known desolation are tapped into and they serve as the entry into an immediate experience of these days. But also through action and language, for those parts of ourselves which may feel unclean or unworthy to be washed by Christ; for those parts of ourselves that feel hungry or thirsty to be fed and tended to by Christ. We sometimes talk about the observance of Holy Week, but notice how detached that language is: observance, observe, watching. It is still in the realm of the “not there”, the realm of the separate. The Church in her liturgy provides for an emotional immediacy, provides for us to experience Holy Week, provides for a space in which the saving events of this week and their power are made a present reality. It is the difference between nostalgia and remembering. “Nostalgia” is placing ourselves into a past event, it has a sense of the sentimental and un-costly. “Remembering”, in the sense that the Church understands it, is about making past events present right here and now; but even more than that, about making the transforming power of the event a present reality also.

So tonight Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and commands his followers: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet. For I set you and example, that you also should do as I have done to you….I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” (John 13: 13-15, 34) Tonight we enter into that reality, physically – water touching skin, flesh touching fleshing. Tonight Jesus broke bread and poured out wine, commanding his followers to do this in remembrance of him. And so we do – and so has the Church down since her beginning, Sunday by Sunday, day by day – breaking bread, pouring wine – thus making that sacrifice of Our Lord a present reality, its power a present strength. As we remember – make present past reality – Christ’s words in all cases are directed to us, and the effects of his actions are accessible to us in so far as we can enter into the process of remembering.

Yes, tonight Christ gives himself for us in service as feet are washed; yes, tonight Christ gives himself for us as nourishment as we take into our selves his Body and Blood. Tonight, we will go with him to Gethsemane as we walk to the chapel; tonight, we make his desolation real for us as the altars are stripped, the church made naked of its usual beauty. Tomorrow we will stand at the foot of his cross, as we make our veneration, and we will go with him into the darkness of the grave as we commemorate his burial. Saturday night we will wait with him in that darkness, wait with the whole Church – past, present and future – for the revelation of God’s purposes, for the revelation of God’s life among us. Ah, then Easter, what Keble calls “Oh! day of days” – as we make that proclamation of resurrection, flood with the light the whole Church, in action and in word, we burst forth with Christ from the tomb, we share in his resurrection; the reality of Christ’s new life made symbolically and presently available.

In his second letter to Timothy, St Paul writes: “The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;  if we endure, we will also reign with him.” (2 Timothy 2:11-12) Symbolically – and believe me, this side of God, symbols are the only way to experience ultimate reality – symbolically, in these days we are doing exactly what Paul is talking about: entering into the reality of Christ’s death by remembering, making the reality a present reality. Do you feel desolation, loss as the altars are stripped? You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Do you feel Christ present with you as you receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion? You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Do you feel loved tenderly by Christ as you watch or have your feet washed. You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Remember. Pray with Christ in Gethsemane, walk with Christ along the torturous road to Golgotha, kneel as his cross, watch him die. Remember. Proclaim and share in his resurrection. In order that what “happened to him [may be] as present [to you, ] to us, and as near, as ever [it] can be”, and that in end the we may live and reign with him, both now and ever.

Wednesday in Holy Week: Resignation and Rest

2011-05-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 70
Hebrews 12:1-3
John 13:21-32

The Gospel tonight opens with the words “Jesus was troubled in spirit”. Not surprising. After three years of teaching and healing, he still finds himself an outsider, and not just an outsider but one whom the authorities are actively planning to bring down. After three years of fellowship and companionship, his closest followers still do not understand what he is about, they fail to grasp what it means to live a kingdom life. And, after three years of friendship, one of his friends prepares to betray him to those whose will it is to destroy him. Little wonder he finds himself “troubled in spirit”. However, he himself never forgets his identity; never forgets who and whose he is (as the expression goes). He clings to his relationship to the Father and trusts wholeheartedly that “if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.” (John 13:32) In perfect union with the Father he does not shrink from the path his life will take by the week’s end; and indeed it is that perfect union that will keep him faithful and steadfast to the end. He resigns himself, not in any defeatist sense, but in trust.

As we continue journeying through Holy Week with the poetic works of John Keble, we come to his poem from The Christian Year for the Wednesday before Easter. And as we engage with them for their emotional impact, we find Jesus himself speaking as he prepares to begin his passion, as he awaits his arrest:

O Lord my God, do thou Thy holy will –
I will lie still –
I will not stir, lest I forsake Thine arm, 
And break the charm 
Which lulls me, clinging to my Father's breast, 
In perfect rest.

Jesus submits to what is ahead of him, because it is the only way he knows by which to be faithful to the Father, and knows that in falling away from the Father’s will, he falls away from the Father’s care also – better the cross with God, than peace and praise without him:

Wild Fancy, peace! thou must not me beguile
With thy false smile: 
I know thy flatteries and thy cheating ways; 
Be silent, Praise, 
Blind guide with siren voice, and blinding all
That hear thy call.

There is, it seems to me, a rest that does come with resignation; when we can accept the path our life has taken and – in broad strokes, at least – the direction to which it points. If we are to visit – as we have done through this week – the themes of Holy Week with more than an intellectual stance, we have to recognise that sometimes our purely intellectual assessment of a situation may let us down. A purely intellectual assessment would have moved Jesus to ratonalise why things did not need to be this way, or even how the saving power of God could be made known in less painful ways, or by slightly compromising the truth of his message. But he trusted his gut, as it were. His attachment to God and to the road that lay before him is not rational or intellectual, but an almost visceral reaction which finds its origin ultimately in love and in utter union with the Father. But also in union with humanity by sharing utterly in our condition, and at the same time giving us a pattern in our own difficulties:

To the still wrestlings of the lonely heart
He doth impart 
The virtue of his midnight agony.

Sometimes we must cling to the certainty of what we feel or believe, rather that to possibilities which we can intellectualise or rationally construct. And sometimes by doing what seems logically foolish – resigning ourselves – we come into a place of salvation for ourselves and for others that we could never have thought out:

“O Father! not My will, but Thine be done” –
So spake the Son. 
Be this our charm, mellowing Earth's ruder noise
Of griefs and joys: 
That we may cling for ever to Thy breast 
In perfect rest!

Tuesday in Holy Week: Love That Feels and Pities All

2011-05-04T13:16:00.001-07:00

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 71:1-14
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36

As I mentioned last night, during this week we are using the poetry of John Keble’s The Christian Year in order to engage emotionally and devotionally with the events of Holy Week, the events of our Lord’s passion and death. In a sermon on the theme of “Christ’s Own Preparation for His Passion”, Keble asks: “For what is the purpose of the Holy Church Universal in appointing this particular time of the year, in which for so many days we are to follow step by step, through all the stages of his bitter passion first, and then of his triumphant victory over death?” He answers his own question, when he says that “what is meant is, that we, by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, should make what happened to him as present to us, and as near to us, as ever we can; that we should…‘have the mind of Christ’ ”. He hopes that by making those events present to ourselves and us present to them, they will not “fail to come home to us”, they will not fail to touch us in ways more than just intellectual or theological, but emotional and experiential.

To that end in his poem for the Tuesday before Easter, Keble paints with words a touching image of the suffering Christ:

“The Cross is sharp, and He 
“Is tenderer than a lamb.

“He wept by Lazarus' grave – how will He bear 
“This bed of anguish? and His pale weak form 
“Is worn with many a watch 
“Of sorrow and unrest.

“His sweat last night was as great drops of blood, 
“And the sad burthen pressed Him so to earth.”

Keble wants us to enter truly into the feelings of our Lord, into the agonies of his Passion, without allowing our intellectual knowledge of Christ’s divinity or of his eventual resurrection to dim the reality of the pain and suffering he endured. As I spoke last night about God’s love for us particularly, not just generally or theoretically; so tonight we are asked to contemplate truly the suffering of Christ, “the long hours of death as, one by one, the life-strings of that tender heart gave way.” We are called to enter into the heart of Christ as far as we are able to contemplate with our hearts how all this could have been possible. Keble draws us to almost ask of Christ himself: how could he deliver himself to be “now of mortal pangs, made heir, and emptied of [his] glory, awhile, with unaverted eye…[meet] all the storm?”

Keble does arrive at an answer, but it is the not the answer of theology, not an intelletualised response based on classical definition of the nature of Christ, neither a reasoned argument of sacrifice or salvation. Keble discerns an answer not in the mind of Christ, as such, but in the heart of Christ. Keble finds it in love which is willing to “feel all, that [it] may pity all”. Keble discerns it in Christ’s love:

As the deep calm that breathed, “Father, forgive,” 
Or, “Be with Me in Paradise to-day?” 
And, though the strife be sore, 
Yet in His parting breath

Love masters Agony…

It is not Jesus knowing, but Jesus loving that which saves us; and we cannot apprehend that love’s depths, or breadth or height unless we are willing to set aside for awhile – and especially at this time – our intellectual pondering and listen closely to our heart, our emotions, our own ability to love and desire to be loved; in short, unless we do as Jesus himself did and enter fully into what it means to be human.

Monday in Holy Week: Love, Particular and Personal

2011-05-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 36:5-11
Hebrews 9:11-15
John 12:1-11

Among other aspects of the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries was the centrality of emotion. In one sense, the movement’s definition of humanity was as “feeling” beings”, more than “thinking beings. This view affected all aspects of society and thought, including theology, preaching and devotional writing. In these was demonstrated a renewed emphasis on the love of God, and on the humanity of Christ as expressed in his feelings and emotions. John Keble’s writings were no exception, and the poems of his work The Christian Year are infused with an appeal to our emotions, they tug at our hearts with the hope that we will be wakened into devotion and renewal. Each of the days for which there are propers in the English Book of Common Prayer, there is poem to bring into sharper focus the meaning of the day in relation to the Church’s year – certainly, but more especially in relation to the reader’s own journey with God. In each of the days of Holy Week he highlights some real emotion, whether of God the Father, or of Jesus himself, and challenges us to enter into those emotions for a renewed experience of God, but also for a more immediate experience of the Holy Week mysteries we are observing.

I would like to offer that in each of these three nights we examine the poems not as “rational” beings – although we can never really put aside our reason, but as emotional beings, allowing ourselves to be placed into various parts of the Holy Week story and thereby hopefully glimpse something of them in a new way, hear them in a new voice. Now, the lectionary of the English prayer book is different from ours, and so the readings on which Keble based his poetry are not the same. Nevertheless his poems for each the days of Holy Week still sit well with our present lectionary.

In the 14th century Julian of Norwich discerned the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death as love. Knowingly or not, Keble focuses on this love in his poem for the Monday before Easter:

Out of the bosom of His love He spares –
The Father spares the Son, for thee to die: 
For thee He died – for thee He lives again: 
O'er thee He watches in His boundless reign

Thou art as much His care, as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth:….

Thou art thy Saviour's darling – seek no more.

But the love of God about which he writes, is not essentially a generic, even universal love. It is a particular and personal love. It the sort of love that a parent may have for a child, or one friend for another. It is the kind of divine love expressed in the lesson from Isaiah, which while representing God, as “the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it” (Isaiah 42:5), also represents God as one who calls each of us “in righteousness”, who takes us by the hand and keeps us (cf. Isaiah 42:6) and who shares with each of us – personally – the divine glory. (cf. Isaiah 42:8).

If we were raised in the Christian faith, we heard from a young age that “God is love” with the injunction that we “love one another”. Yet, that love we hear about can sometimes feel generic or carry with it a cosmic sense, so that we never can apprehend it as directly focused on ourself. It rarely feels personal. Yet, when we examine the Scriptures more closely they reveal the particularity of God’s love and care. They so often reveal the divine love not in generic ways, but in personal and specific ways, in personal and specific relationships: he chooses Abram and Sarai to be parents of a great nation, he chooses Moses to lead that nation out of slavery, and eventually he chooses David to lead that nation into a great kingdom. We see it further revealed in the person of Jesus, who – but for some exceptional cases – always engages with people as individuals. His love and care are somehow localised. Even at his passion and crucifixion, his care and attention seems always personal – the women of Jerusalem, the thief on the cross, his mother Mary and disciple John. Keble extends this to suggest that in that final week before his crucifixion, Jesus thought of each person, each soul, particularly:

E'en in His hour of agony He thought, 
When, ere the final pang His soul should rend, 
The ransomed spirits one by one were brought 
To His mind's eye…

As we walk with Jesus through Holy Week, engage with your emotions and see for a moment all that he does and has done for you; not in some theological or intellectual sense, but in the sense that touches us where we live, as it were. We can sometimes us the theological understanding of God’s love to avoid facing emotionally its meaning and implications. But God, loves you; not you in any generic sense, but you in a very personal sense. While God’s love indeed, “reaches to the heavens and [his] faithfulness to the clouds”, it reveals itself in the lives of particular people, in particular situations; it is the kind of love under which you can take refuge, and which comes into your own heart and home. Part of the observances of Holy Week is the Church’s way of trying to make palpable the love of God, make it a real and present reality. She helps us to recall that in all that happens, God’s meaning is love – real love for you and for me, for each and everyone of us, particularly.

Lent 5: Mortality and Immortality

2011-05-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

It is a sobering thought to realise that as human beings we are defined by the stark fact that we are going to die. We are mortals, and that is what a mortal is, literally: a being who dies. The word finds its origin in the Latin mors, death, and as such we encounter it in terms like mortality and mortal wound. We are mortals and that means that we are going to die, like the palmist wrote: “As for mortals, their days are like the grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more”. (Psalms 103:15-16) At the same time, the book of the Wisdom of the Solomon reminds mortals that our “hope is full of immortality”. (Wisdom of Solomon 3:4b) As real as is our mortality and that of everyone we know or love, so is that hope of immortality held out to us; and yet ironically enough, we will never come to know the second, if we cannot fully accept, embrace, enter into the deepest depths of the first. And there is no short cut, no easy out. We cannot come into the fulness of that hope of immortality, simply by down-playing or ignoring our mortality. Mortality and immortality are both realities, and we live in that tension. Life and the hope of immortality are certainly real, but no less real than death, both its power and the grief and pain caused by it.

The first parish in which I served had five nursing homes within its boundaries, and English clergy have the responsibility and privilege of officiating at all funerals of those who die within the parish. Often my colleague and I would have two or three funerals a week between us. It was during that time when I first came in contact with a particular piece of sentimentalism, a poem entitled Death is Nothing at All: “Death is nothing at all,” it read, “I have only slipped away to the next room….Life is the same that it ever was.” Invariably, families would come to me wanting to use this poem at funerals. I'd never say no, but I would ask them if this is what they seriously meant, that “death is nothing at all”; and, if life really is “the same as it ever was” what were we doing? Why were they grieving? Why we were preparing for a funeral, to mark this “nothing” event? Death is ‘Something”. It is real, and simplistic ideas about the promise of immortality serve no one well. I am pleased to say I never had to hear that poem read at a funeral I officiated.

Death is real, and while that hope of immortality is real too it does not eclipse the pain, shock and sense of loss attendant on death. Last week the themes of light and dark pervaded the readings and the gospel, today it is the themes of death and life, and as they do so we have two pieces of poetry on which to focus; two poems written over 300 years apart and by two very different men. John Donne was born in 1572. Certainly in his early years he enjoyed the “good life” – wine, women, song and all that, and his literary production was composed primarily of satiric and erotic poems. At the same time, he worked as a lawyer and served as member of Parliament. However, in 1615 he was ordained priest at the insistence of King James. He was made Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and became renown as a preacher and spiritual writer. He is most commonly known for the phrase “for whom the bell tolls” derived from his published meditations. He died in 1631. W.H. Auden was born in 1907 in England, but emigrated to the United States in 1939 and because a U.S. citizen in 1946. He was poet, essayist and dramatist the central themes of whose work are “love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature”. Both were committed churchmen; both had conversion experiences as adults. Auden himself had abandoned the Anglicanism of his youth, but returned to it in 1940 when he became an Episcopalian. This morning, are brought together two of their works – Donne’s Holy Sonnet X and Auden’s Funeral Blues. Brought side by side and from across the centuries, and read in conjunction with each other, the two works demand we live in that uncomfortable place where both mortality and immortality are realities. They demand we sit with both the agonising loss which cries that “nothing now can come to any good”, and at the same time with the hope “that death shall be no more;…that Death, thou shalt die”; to sit with them, without minimising the real pain of the first and without despairing of the hope expressed in the second. As we enter completely into and stay with the two seemingly opposing realities the poems represent, we find ourselves standing with Jesus at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. We find ourselves with him as he knows the deep mystery of resurrection, and yet is still moved to tears at the death of his dear friend. For him both realities are real. The knowledge of resurrection does not erase the immediate pain of loss, or the suffering of those who pass through the gates of death and enter into its depths. Standing there among his grieving friends he grieves himself, while he holds out and gives a foretaste of the hope of immortality.

Sometimes people wonder at, and are even offended by, the fact that we Catholic Christians focus so much on Jesus’ suffering on the cross, particularly with images of the crucified Christ. “Christ is risen” they say; and of course we would agree, but it sometimes feels as if some people want to get to Easter without having to engage with the pain, anguish and desolation of real death on the cross. I was recently surprised to learn how many Christian communities here in Hanford will have no Good Friday service, no place to liturgically encounter the darkness when “the stars are not wanted”, the moon packed up, the sun dismantled. The thing is that if we allow ourselves to “skip” or ignore Good Friday – the cross and its attendant death – we also can “skip over” – never enter into the – deep pits of our own pain and loss, of our disappointments and frustrations, and embrace them both as real and as our own. “Christ is risen” does not erase the cross and its horror, neither does the “hope of immortality” erase the painful and grievous consequences of mortality. Rather, the “hope of immortality” is the promise that the pain and the reality of death, while most definitely part of the story, are not the whole story, and it holds out to us a vision of a reality when indeed “death shall be no more”. But we can only get there from here, and that means through the deep pits of death, pain, disappointment. It was so for Christ, why do we think it should be any different for us?

Death is real, very real. If you do not know that, speak to someone who has lost a child or a partner or friend. The hope of immortality is real too, however. Ask anyone who has found new life on the other side of loss and pain, who has experienced that loss and pain as glorified into a new vision and purpose. Like Jesus, we are called to hold those two realities together at the same time, living in creative tension between them. If we cannot we lose something: we focus on a life hereafter, while cutting off something of what it means to human; or we become morosely obsessed, while cutting ourselves off from a hope that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”. (1 Peter 1:4)

The painful consequences of our mortality make us cry with Auden “nothing now can come of any good”, while our “hope of immortality” can say Donne’s words with trust, “those whome thou think’st thou doth overthrow die not poor Death, nor canst thou kill me.” Both are real, both are true. Our work is to wait upon the Lord within the tension of both those realities; to wait like the psalmist says, “more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning”. (Psalm 130:5) It is to wait, while honouring both mortality and immortality as our human inheritance.

Lent 4: The Sight of the Romantics

2011-04-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

“One thing...I know, that though I was blind now I see”. (John 9:25) The images of light and darkness, blindness and sight pervade the readings and the Gospel this morning, all seeming to suggest that sight is no guarantee of vision, and that the old adage holds true: “there are none so blind as those who will not see”. Jesus, speaking to the newly-sighted man, or to the crowd more generally (we are not sure), proclaims: “I came into the world…so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (John 9:39) For all who hear his voice, both then and now, his words beg the questions: “Is there more to sight than simply seeing? Could it just be that I am most blind, when I think I see, when I am convinced of my own sight? What must I stop looking at to really see what’s ahead of me.”

Our sight, like all our senses, is conditioned by our environment, by what we already know and by what we expect to see. Equally, our focus on some things can easily make us blind to others; our conditioning, presuppositions and expectations can blind us not only to possibility, but to what is actually and directly in front of us. This is true of outward sight certainly, but perhaps even more true of inward sight – spiritual, emotional, psychological sight. We often have to be reminded of a wider vision and that “the LORD does not see as mortals see” (1 Samuel 16:7) Moreover, we have to continually make ourselves cognizant about that which conditions and limits our sight. Jesse’s sight is conditioned by social understanding of kingship, saying to the prophet: “There remains yet my youngest [son], but he is keeping the sheep”, (1 Samuel 16:11) almost as to say, “Surely, he could not be king”. The sight of the Pharisees in John’s gospel is conditioned by the inherited religious tradition: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” (John 9:11); the sight of the healed man’s parents, by the inculcated fear of the authorities: “We do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him he is of age. He will speak for himself.” (John 9:21) We have all inherited conditioning which keeps us blind, limited in one way or another.

James Henry Leigh Hunt was born in 1784 and lived through some of the most crucial years of the Industrial Revolution, that period of enormous change in Western Europe. It was a time not only of scientific and technological advancement, but also of a particular kind of self-satisfied certainty. The promises of the Enlightenment and its attendant rationalism seemed in the process of being fulfilled, as more efficient factories and machinery were replacing age-old systems of labour and production. At the same time, the British Empire was expanding throughout the globe; in part, to meet the increasing need for raw goods to supply the factories of the “mother country”. Wherever British officials and soldiers went, so did the Church of England in the form of missionary societies and individuals whose purpose was to convert to Christianity the “heathens” encountered. All this was a part of the conditioning Hunt and his contemporaries would have inherited: a trust in rationalism and industry, as well an exclusivist theology which understood Christ as the only avenue to God, and Christians the only faithful for whom God seemed to care.

This was the inherited blindness which they began to question, and their response gained its own name and became its own movement – the Romantic movement. The Romantics questioned the absolute trust in science and rationalism, and wondered about the place of beauty and emotions. They questioned also the privatised sense of the divine, the nationalistic theology which saw God as an Englishman and on the side of the strongest. So in his poem Abou Ben Adhem Hunt encourages his contemporaries to open their eyes to possibilities beyond their inherited cultural conditioning. He dares to ask whether loving one’s fellow men and women might not be the litmus test of real friendship with “the Lord”, and if it is realistic to continue claiming God as the personal possession of the British, of western civilisation or even of Christianity? As Hunt floods the poem’s end with “a great wakening light” when the angel makes his return, he grants to his readers a new vision and a new insight in which the love and blessing of God is conferred on the unexpected one, on the heathen Abou Ben Adhem. With that “great wakening light”, Hunt hoped to convey to his readers new sight, a vision larger than that of their conditioning; he tried to open their eyes from their blindness, from the narrowness. Of course, this new sight meant leaving behind all kinds of suppositions and certainties about themselves, their place in the world and their understanding of God; all a frightening prospect at best.

From our place in time and history, and as Episcopalians who have a rather generous view of God’s salvation, it may be difficult to appreciate how revolutionary – even shocking – were the ideas presented in Hunt’s poem. However, it should leave us asking where are our own limitations, our blindness; what is our own inherited conditioning by which we continue to allow ourselves to be blind? While we say that we live in the light of Christ, in so many ways – often unconscious ways – we continue to join ourselves to those things that blind us and keep us in the dark. Lent should be a time when we specifically examine are conditioning, our blindness. It should be a time when we specifically pray that “God’s work might be revealed in” us, and that we might have our vision clear. Lent is that time to examine how we might lay aside unfruitful, damaging works and perspectives which serve only to reinforce our limiting conditioning, and to be brave by opening the eyes of our hearts and minds and dare to live as “children of light”; by trying “to find what is pleasing to God” no matter what we must leave behind to see it.

The blind man healed by Jesus saw his world for the first time, and yet his new-found sight cost him his religious and familial affiliations. Freeing our vision from social conditioning always costs us something, and that is the reason so many of us are loathe to do it. It may cost us our certainty or it may cost us our privileged position. It may cost us our sense of self and sense of order. It cost Hunt and his fellow Romantics their reputation, as “polite” society labelled them irrational, libertines and godless, all because they had dared to open their eyes to new possibilities and conceive a picture of reality beyond that which they had inherited. We all inherit a conditioned world-view, and it is always difficult when true light is shined up on it, exposing its limitations and short-sightedness. But in the end all that we can do with any integrity is continually to open our eyes to the light and in that light to work the works of God and to trust; trust the goodness and kindness of the Light of the World through whom everything that is “exposed…becomes visible”, through whom God’s glory is revealed and through whom each of us are called out from being darkness to living light.

Lent 3: The Mystery of the Unknown God

2011-03-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

As we journey through the Lenten desert, the readings from the Hebrew Scripture and the Gospel of John should hardly surprise us. Tales of water that flows from a rock, and Jesus’ offer of water that will quench thirst for ever, gushing up in those who drink it as a spring of eternal life; these are part of the imagery with which we have grown up, and heard a myriad of times. Yet, certainly the Israelites in the desert were amazed as the water poured forth from the rock. The woman at the well was perplexed and intrigued by what Jesus said; she had no context for his words. But still, they had the courage to remain in the presence of the unexpected, in the presence of the mystery and thereby discern the presence of the God in the encounters. For most of us, however, water in the desert is the expected Lenten imagery. It does not surprise because we are so used to it. It is relegated it to the status of “familiar”, and somehow its very familiarity blinds us to further possibility or revelation, keeps us safe from mystery We are all guilty of this – this domestication of the unexpected, the taming of surprise. And when we do not or cannot tame it, we ignore it altogether. With blinders to the unexpected, so much of that which is really surprising in the Scriptures and in the Tradition, often falls completely off our radars. It is one of the challenges of the spiritual life neither to domesticate nor ignore the surprising places, the surprising encounters, of our lives; but somehow, rather – like the Israelites in the desert, like the woman at the well – to remain with them and thereby discern in them the possibility of revelation.

On account of our own blinders, on account of our own unwillingness to be surprised, we often do not understand where God is revealing God’s self in our lives, we often miss the encounter with mystery. The disciples in the Gospel of John are no exception. With their blinders of social convention, they can not understand why Jesus is talking to a woman – and this particular woman. They return from their shopping only to find Jesus in conversation – and theological conversation, at that – with someone who is so completely beyond the social pale. It’s not enough that his conversation partner is a woman, but a Samaritan woman who is “living in sin”. They are surprised certainly, but instead of remaining in the moment of the unexpected and allowing the unexpected to challenge them with something genuinely new, they continue to try to make the situation fit within the only framework they are willing to accept – the inherited framework of who’s in and who’s out, who is clean and who is impure, what’s holy and what’s profane. Inattentive to the possibility of mystery, they miss the beauty and revelation in the encounter between Jesus and the woman.

In his poem, Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican, John Betjeman writes about another encounter with a “loose” woman, the one whe calls “the Mistress” because, as he says, she has “more of a cared-for air than many a legal wife.” Among the English, John Betjeman is perhaps one the most well known and best loved of 20th century poets. He wrote with a real passion for the beauty of an England he saw as passing away – village life and village ways, with its ancient church at the centre. But, also he wrote with a love of the ordinary, not to mention with satiric humour about the less attractive of human foibles like self-righteousness and uncharitableness. In 1972 he was made Poet Laureate by the present queen. While most definitely within the high church tradition – as this poem suggests – he was nothing of a Newman. He was an Anglican by birth and conviction who believed the Church of England to be the Catholic Church in England; and in this poem reveals that very Anglican spiritual inclination to trust the created order as worthy to reveal something of the nature and presence of God, particularly when a certain vehicle of that revelation may be surprisingly unexpected, perhaps even socially unacceptable.

Undoubtedly, for Betjeman there is something attention-grabbing, even arousing, about “the Mistress”, there is certainly something of the air of sexuality and sensuality about her – her clothes, the sound of her voice, the movement of her body. For Betjeman these seem to sit well and without contradiction alongside the sensualities of catholic liturgy itself – the sound of bells, the “vapoury…veil” of incense, the beauty of the church furnishings. As he sits there in church he takes nothing in as simply familiar and while the clergyman encourages blinders –

The parson said that we shouldn’t stare
Around when we come to church,
Or the unknown God we are seeking
May forever elude our search.

while the parson encourages blinders, Betjeman allows himself to take in everything that is going on around him, the entire beauty of the created order available to his senses, both in the form of the liturgy and in the form of the “the Mistress”, without domesticating it or ignoring it. He stays with it and contemplates the possibility that a “hint of the unknown God” may just be revealed even in the “unorthodox and odd”; and – as one commentator noted – reminds us “of the idea that the incarnation of God is mysterious and inexplicable.”

Mystery, whether the mystery of being called into covenant as were the children of Israel or the mystery of a chance encounter with a stranger at a well, or even the mystery of beauty in another or the world – mystery. is by its very nature that which we will never and cannot ever fully comprehend. It reveals itself in the ordinary, so it is easy to domesticate and tame – fit it into our limited perspective. It presents itself in the surprising and unknown, the unexpected, so it is easy to ignore, allow it to drop off outside our field of vision. Sometimes, we can use the ultimate incomprehensibility of mystery to get us off the hook from having to engage with it at all, because the encounter with and journey into mystery is not for those who want definitive answers. Indeed, the nature of mystery is such that each time we think we have a grasp on it there is always another level, further depth. All we can do is stay with it, remain in its presence. Like the woman at the well, all we can do is continue to engage with the challenge mystery throws up for us: “Sir, you have no bucket? Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well?” (John 4:11-12) Like the Israelites, all we can do is stick with the journey to which mystery directs us without fully knowing where the journey will take us, even wondering “Is the Lord among us or not?”. (Exodus 17:7) Like Betjeman in his encounter with “the Mistress”, all we can do is keep alert to our senses, trust our intuitions and be open to mystery in the most unexpected of places, and never think it “unorthodox or odd” that we “glimpse in [them]…a hint of the Unknown God”. Wherever mystery beckons, it always points to the deepest truths; it always points to God.

Do you want to engage with mystery? Look for it in the unexpected and allow it to surprise you. Look for it in the “unorthodox and odd”, in the situations where you don’t feel quite comfortable; in the places where you do not want to go; then remain there awhile and experience what it might reveal. Widen your field of vision to include it, and then stay with it without trying to domesticate it or explain it too quickly. If we cannot do this, it is then, rather, that “the Unknown God we are seeking may forever elude our search”.

Lent 2: Lead Thou Me On...

2011-03-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

The journey of faith begins always by taking a leap into the unknown. Undoubtedly it is a leap in faith, but a leap into the unknown nevertheless. Whether it is Abraham leaving his home among the Chaldeans and beginning a journey to a land promised him by an unknown God, or Moses who without any viable plan trusted his experience in front of burning bush, and goes back to Egypt to free those held in slavery; whether it is Ruth – for love of Naomi alone – going to live in a foreign land and among a foreign people, or Jesus himself who – as we heard last week – allowed himself to be “led by the Spirit into the wilderness to tempted by the devil”. (Matthew 4:1). For them – and for many others – the journey of faith was that stepping onto a not completely elucidated path, and doing so simply because they were beckoned by something beyond themselves. Their spiritual journey and temperament allowed them no other decision – better the leap into the invitations of an unknown God and unknown possibilities, than remain in safety and betray the journey altogether. This dilemma is at the heart of the conversion experience. Un-nuanced and simplistic language about conversion would have us believe that once we have “turned to the Lord”, as it were, we are scot free, we have arrived; but, that “turning to the Lord” is a process, and when taken seriously can have some scary consequences. The leap of faith can be far from a leap into the comfort of the everlasting arms. Rather, the leap of faith is always a leap into the unknown, a leap in the dark. As we are reminded in the letter to the Hebrews: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10.31)

John Henry Newman is one of the finest religious and literary figures of the 19th century. In 1821, at the age of twenty, he graduated from Trinity College, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1824, and priest in 1825. By the mid 1830’s he and a close circle of friends had inaugurated what would later be called the Oxford movement, and which sought to re-discover the catholicity of the Church of England, and Anglicanism more generally. Almost all that we recognise as “church” today in the Episcopal Church is a direct result of the Oxford Movement. For us particularly at the Church of the Saviour, our buildings would not exist in their present forms were it not for the Oxford Movement. Newman was one of the greatest apologists for the Church of England being in all aspects part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, and wrote extensively to defend that truth. However, by the start of the 1840’s Newman was entering a very personal and internal struggle as he began to doubt what he had up until then so eloquently defended. Finally, seeing no other way to be a Catholic Christian than by becoming a Roman Catholic, he did so in 1845. In his time as a Roman Catholic he founded a religious community and was eventually made a cardinal. He died in 1890. His beatification last year by the Benedict XVI was welcomed by both Anglicans and Roman Catholics, so revered is Newman by both denominations. His life was not an easy one, particularly on account of his faithfulness to the inner voice which consistently seemed to call him to make the leap into the unknown, into the dark. An Anglican before the Oxford Movement, he defended an unpopular understanding of Anglicanism as he and his friends sought to recall the Church of England to her spiritual and liturgical roots, and attempted to save her from being simply the religious arm of the state. Having won renown and no small notoriety in the Church of England, again he followed that inner voice into the Church of Rome, losing many of his friends in the Church of England. In 1833, before it all began, he wrote a poem entitled The Pillar of Cloud, which seems in retrospect to foreshadow his future. Most of us know it in the form of the hymn, Lead Kindly Light:

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, – one step enough for me.

In the many junctures – conversions – of his life, Newman was all too aware that the only action of faith is to allow one’s self to be led into the darkness and to trust, no matter the fear or cost.

All this notwithstanding, we all want to walk with our eyes open into the light, rather than stumble helpless into the dark. But wanting does not make it so, and the great spiritual traditions, as well as the life and witness of holy people in our past and present teach us differently. Perhaps it is no accident that the writer of John’s Gospel has Nicodemus seek out Jesus by night. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking clarification, seeking light. He even begins his conversation by saying that he understands, or better yet, sees things clearly: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” (John 3:2b) Jesus on the other hand points him right back into the dark, challenges his nicely spoken clarity with an image of darkness, the darkness of the womb: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Jesus challenges Nicodemus by insinuating that it is not enough to know who Jesus is, but that one must make the leap for one’s self into the darkness, into the struggle of re-birth, and discover one’s own self, one’s re-newed self, in God. That is the journey of the great saints of the Church, and the journey each of the faithful are called to as well. It is the agony of Gethsemane and the way of the cross.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10.31); nevertheless, we all want our coming to God – conversion – to be clear, conscious, manageable and controllable: “I loved to choose and see my path…I loved the garish day”. But nothing except the “pride that [rules our] will” would suggest the path leading to transformation can be discerned in the light. Ultimately, the life of the believer is a life of trust; and there is no trust in the “garish day”, because there is no need for it. The purposes of God seem to be formed in the dark – the darkness of Christmas night, the dark noon-day of Good Friday, the darkness of the tomb, the dark waters of baptism. There is light – undoubtedly there is light – but it is God’s light, not ours; and it is revealed to us only to the extent that we are willing to be led into the dark “o’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent”, only to the extent that we are willing to let go of our own sense of light, only to the extent that we are willing to say and live “Lead Thou me on”. Then, and only then, and perhaps not even in this world, will we find that “the night is gone; and with the morn those angel faces smile” with all who faced the darkness while trusting in the light.

Lent 1: Marlowe, Faustus, the Devil and Temptation

2011-03-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

A recent film, Rite, starring Anthony Hopkins, has sparked a renewed interest in the devil and on devilish workings. Hopkins plays a veteran exorcist who is sharing his knowledge and experience with a young seminarian. Shortly after the film’s release I listened to a radio interview with Fr Christopher Jamieson, a Roman Catholic priest and broadcaster. He posited that, when it comes to demonic possession, the question which concerns most people is quite simply, “How does it happen?”. He said, “You can’t become possessed unless you invite the devil into your life.” He discussed the medieval mystery and morality plays in which the angel of light could appear uninvited to save you, for that is the nature of God’s love and redemption; they come graciously unbidden. The devil, on the other hand, “must come on the coat tails of one of the demons – the demons of lust, or greed or envy”. In short, the devil must come in on the coat tails of some of our own human desires and proclivities. This is not just true when it comes to possession, but temptation generally.

The poet and playwright, Christopher Marlowe, lived and worked in the latter half of the 16th century. An inheritor of that medieval tradition, he knew well the world-view to which Fr Jamieson was alluding, and in creating the play Doctor Faustus Marlowe writes a central character who is dissatisfied and thus open to inviting something to satisfy his dis-satisfaction. Having completed studies in all the chief disciplines of the age, he is frustrated by their limitations; frustrated and, on some level, frightened by the limitedness of his own humanity. So, Faustus continues to seek for that which will give him more knowledge still, what he perceives to be real knowledge, and he searches out and finds a book of necromancy – magic – and on discovering the possibilities it contain, muses:

These metaphysics of magicians
And necromantic books are heavenly,
Lines circles, signs, letters, and characters –
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence
Is promised to that studious artisan!
….
A sound magician is a mighty god. (1.1.51-57, 64)

So the devil enters on the coat tails of Faustus’ desire for god-like knowledge and power, and Faustus invites the demonic forces in. So appears Mephistopheles, a servant of Lucifer, with assurances to deliver all that the good doctor desires, if Faustus will – you guessed it – sign over his soul and all hope of salvation. He does so, and is allotted 24 years to enjoy his “purchase”. Ironically, while he had envisioned knowledge and ability greater than that of any sage or emperor, the play proceeds with scenes of his using his dearly-bought abilities in ridiculous, meaningless exploits: selling, for a prank, a horse that turns into straw when ridden, being invisible at the papal court and playing tricks on the prelates, impressing European royalty by fetching grapes in the winter. In the end the fate he sealed at the beginning arrives at its consummation, and Faustus is taken off to that fate by Lucifer himself, in company with Mephistopheles and other devils.

It is seems almost unnecessary to highlight the significances the Faust story uncovers for us, particularly during Lent; nor the correlations with those scripture readings the Church offers this Sunday for our proclamation and reflection. Evil always finds an opening by appealing to our desires, and usually some seemingly very innocent, even beneficial, desires. Faustus’ desire for knowledge is in itself admirable. Yet, what knowledge will he ultimately find in the pits of eternal alienation from God – God who is the source of all genuine knowledge, wisdom and power? In fact, we see the beginnings of that eventually complete alienation during Faustus’ lifetime, as we witness him using the knowledge gained in order to execute ridiculous and meaningless pranks. He has knowledge and power, but without being connected to their true source, God, he has little ability to direct them beneficially; and in the end he will lose the possibility utterly. Blinded by the benefits of knowledge alone, he loses sight of the fact that without God, it exists in an vacuum of both meaning and order, and can throw up some pretty harmful consequences.

Like Faustus, Adam and Eve are on some level frustrated by limitedness, and the serpent plays on this: “when you eat of [the fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5) What is offered is seemingly very beneficial indeed – the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, there is something else inherent in the serpent’s offer: the temptation to be like God, the assumption that God is hiding something from them, that the serpent sees the situation from a wider perspective, that the serpent is the true friend of humanity. The serpent preys on humanity’s fear of and frustration with their limitations. It’s not just knowledge of good and evil which the serpent offers, but also the remedy to some of the dilemmas inherent in being human: our limited knowledge and perspective, not to mention our existential loneliness.

The devil comes in on the coat tails of both our conscious and unconscious desires, and at our invitation, as we seek easy escape from what we perceive to be the limitations of our humanity. The narrative of Jesus’ temptation in the desert is one of the most psychologically savvy pieces of writing in the Gospels, indeed in the Scriptures themselves. It confronts square in the face those desires: the desire for enough so as to be utterly free from want, the desire for absolute safety so as to be completely free from fear or injury, the desire for power so as to be totally free from the consequences of others’ lives and choices; and it is on the coat tails of these that the devil enters in and appears to Jesus in the desert. Like to Faustus and Adam and Eve, the devil makes to Jesus good arguments – from Scripture itself – and offers a way to conquer those nagging human limitations of hunger, fear and helplessness. And it’s not that what the devil offers isn’t good in itself – freedom from want, danger and oppression – but that these positive goods divorced from God, the source of all good, can only ever be a pale shadow of reality. So, in each offer made by the tempter – as Matthew calls him – Jesus returns to the real source of plenty, of safety, of power – God: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4); “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (Matthew 4:7); “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” (Matthew 4:10) Jesus embraces the limitedness of humanity, appreciating the proper nature of our humanity and therefore the proper divinity of God. He knows that any offer which does not come from God always comes with a catch, that any truth which is not grounded in God can only ever be a half truth at best, that safety procured outside the protection of God may be more perilous in the end than any dangers we may face with God.

In Jesus’ wilderness encounter with the tempter are unmasked humanity’s most primordial fears and desires; and let’s be honest, not unlike Faustus, we all of us at some point or another have sold something of ourselves in order to alleviate the anxiety those fears produce. We all us have been or are frustrated by our human limitdness. However, there is a difference between us and Faustus. In Marlowe’s play – and for dramatic effect, one would hazard to guess – in the end, although Faustus repents, he is still dragged to hell. In reality the path to repentance is always open to us. In Lent we recall our sins and weaknesses, the times when we have “sold out”, but we also are reminded by the prophet Isaiah to “seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near…[to] return to the LORD, that he may mercy…and to our God, for he will abundandtly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6, 7b) God’s goodness and forgiveness need no disguise to allure us, neither do they need trickery to hoodwink us. They may not give immediate answer to our fears and desires, but in the end it is only God – God’s goodness and God’s grace – which have any currency or meaning at all, anything else will ultimately disappoint or carry with it worse – “a hellish fall” and fate, both in this life and the next.

Ash Wednesday: Rythms and Resonances

2011-03-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Poetry is perhaps the most primitive of the literary arts. The oldest works of world literature – works like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and the Odyssey – are all in the form of poetry. Creating poetic order out of our words, experiences and stories seems to be a trait inherent in human beings. Certainly, there are practical reasons for this; chief among them perhaps is the fact that, on account of the poetic forms themselves, poetry is easier to memorise than is prose; and in a world where most communication was oral, memorisation was crucial for transmission. Nevertheless, there is also something deeper about our inherent attraction to poetry. It may have something to do with how it presents narrative and feelings in ways which are ordered and with a beauty of balance and imagination, doing so in ways which give voice to our own unspoken feelings. The Italian poet, Salvatore Quasimodo, expressed it well when he said, “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.”

As children we all learned that poems rhyme, and unfortunately many of us never grew out of that definition of poetry. Yet, while rather prevalent rhyme is not the only poetic form, and certainly not the oldest or most sophisticated. In fact, John Milton, the 17th century English poet understood rhyme as not essential to poetry, going so far as to call it a “troublesom [sic] and modern bondage”. Ancient Hebrew poetry, for example, finds its identity as poetry not in rhyming but in various other forms like verbal rhythm or more importantly parallelism, which creates a natural rhythm of its own. Parallelism is probably the most dominant poetic device in ancient Hebrew poetry and there many types, but the two most easily identified are the synonymous and the antithetical. We are so used to these that they often go unobserved. Examples abound. In synonymous parallelism the same thing is repeated in different ways, as in today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah: “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sin”. (Isaiah 58:1) In antithetic parallelism “the second member of a line (or verse) gives the obverse side of the same thought”, for example, “A wise child makes a glad father, but a foolish child is a mother’s grief.” (Proverbs 10:1) Through repetition and opposition, Hebrew poetry creates a special kind of unity, drawing things together to represent truth in ways which are memorable, and sometimes jarring as it brings together seeming opposites into relationship with one another. These patterns were not lost on Jesus and the writers of the Gospels, and we see that today especially as Jesus teaches his followers the true meaning of the ancient spiritual disciplines – prayer, fasting and almsgiving – the spiritual disciplines to which the Church calls us during Lent.

It cannot be argued that there is poetry in Jesus’ words as presented in the Gospel of Matthew. There is that poetic pattern of repetition in the discussion of those three disciplines: “whenever you give alms…whenever you pray…whenever you fast”; as well as the images of opposition: “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but store but for yourselves treasures in heaven”. And these patterns resonate with us, speaking to us and touching us in ways we cannot fully appreciate. For me, I see in the three disciplines reflected the three aspects of being human which are often at odds with each other: almsgiving representing our relationship with others and what is owed them by us; prayer representing our relationship with God and how to give that relationship the time and effort it deserves; fasting, our relationship with ourselves and our struggles to control our less attractive and more destructive impulses. Their being presented in this unified way helps to offer up the possibility that a harmonious balance can be struck between them; but also suggests that while they each function in different spheres of our lives, the appropriate approach in each case is humility, honesty and transparency, in short, don’t be like the hypocrites – and we hear that three times too. Had Jesus’ teaching been presented in less poetic ways, I am not sure that they would have the same resonances. The beauty of the words and the rhythms created help us to see things in ways not initially apprehended. They help us to engage the imagination and deeper echoes of our spirit. How true indeed are the words of Samuel Johnson: “Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.”

We are going to hear a good deal of poetry during Lent, as we journey with some well-known and lesser-known English poets. By highlighting some of the Lenten themes using poetic forms, we are following a very biblical pattern, a very ancient pattern, but hopefully we also be enabled to come to a deeper, more immediate appreciation of the Lenten call. Try to immerse yourself in some of the pieces with which we will travel, and perhaps in your own scripture study during Lent try to read some of the scriptures in the same way you would read poetry – slowly, out loud, gently discerning the patterns that make the imagery work and which resonate with you in surprising ways; after all, as someone once observed, “Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.” During this Lent allow your heart strings to be plucked and discern the music God is making in you.

Last Sunday after Epiphany: Glory on Mt St Anthony

2011-03-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 4:1-5
Matthew 1:16-21

The significance of mountains in the Holy Scriptures, and in the Judeao-Christian tradition generally, is rich and fascinating. I have mentioned it before, but in every case where a mountain appears in the Scriptures we know that we should pay close attention; something important – perhaps even monumental – is going to happen. It is on mountains that God commissions people like Moses to carry out a specific mission; on mountains are delivered God’s purposes and wisdom like the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount; it is on mountains where the true nature of things are revealed. All this notwithstanding, when last month the members of the Vestry approached the mount on which is built St Anthony’s Retreat House, I am not sure this was uppermost in their minds. Many arrived after a long week of work, and others arrived not knowing quite what to expect, never having been on retreat before. Few, I think, expected any sort of revelation. But revelation is a subtle thing, and its occurrence can sometimes go ignored; or perhaps even worse, its significance misunderstood.

Over the last three weeks I have been reflecting on our vestry retreat, and sharing with you some of what we shared, some of what we discussed. We talked about leadership and money; about ways forward, both figuratively and practically. However, much of what went on during the bulk of our time together was facilitated by what went on the first night spent on – if you will pardon my imagination – Mount St Anthony’s. On that first evening Fr Larry gathered us round and, after we introduced ourselves, invited us to share our answers to three questions. Each question was asked separately, and answered in turn. In the first instance, we were all asked what sort of heating was used in the house where we were raised. We had a variety of responses, many of them revealing not just the simple answer but also something quite meaningful about the circumstances of our upbringing. Answers ranged from central heating in every room, to a wood-burning furnace in one. The second question hit closer to home: “Who was the centre of warmth for you or your family when you were a child?” Again a variety of responses were shared, and we were all graced by each others’ memories, some joyous and some very painful indeed. Lastly Fr Larry asked, “When in your life did you come to the realisation of God as something other than merely a name?” The invitation was, of course, to share something of our faith journey. To say the least, I found the experience humbling as the people responded, vulnerably revealing something quite personal about their faith journey – again, some joyful, some quite difficult and sad, but all glorious. There was something of – dare I say it? – transfiguration that evening as we each saw our fellows in a different light, as we experienced each other on a level deeper than we do in our regular day to day encounters. What Fr Larry enabled that evening was not only space in which people could reveal something of themselves, but a space in which their revelation could be attended. He enabled a space in which each of us could really listen, and by so doing come to a deeper understanding of one another.

As we come to the end of Epiphanytide and look towards Lent, the Gospel invites us into the mystery of transfiguration through Christ’s own Transfiguration in the presence of his favoured disciples. There on Mt Tabor is revealed Jesus’ true nature. Flanked by Moses the law-giver and Isaiah the prophet, he is revealed as an inheritor of both the legal and prophetic traditions of Israel; while a voice from the clouds reveals him as “…my Son, the Beloved, with whom I well pleased.” (Matthew 17:5) The disciples appear hardly to pay attention, and like so many of us uncomfortable with revelation, they become fearful and frantic about doing something: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” (Matthew 17:4) If it is indeed “so good…to be here”, why cannot they remain in the moment, in the “here”? Their behaviour will be no different at Jesus arrest and crucifixion, when also, on other mounts, something truly significant is revealed about who Jesus is and what he is about. Again, heedless of the tradition and what was right in front them, they scramble in a fear manifested by nervous, useless, even destructive activity. Remember how when Jesus is arrested on the Mount of Olives one of his disciples cuts off the ear of the priest’s servant? No, in the presence of revelation we must stand and listen, or we may well miss the true nature of the glory that is being revealed or mistake it for something else altogether.

There was a lot to do on our vestry retreat, a lot to discuss, a lot to think about, a lot to bring home and strategise about; but we spent the first night on “Mt St Anthony” listening, attentive to revelation, and each revealed something of their glory as children of God, both the joy and the pain. And, like I said, we saw each other, I believe, in a different light, and while many people felt some difference, I think few of us could actually put our finger on it, because revelation – genuine revelation – is a very subtle thing indeed. And while we could not exactly articulate why, I think we would have concurred with at least a part of St Peter’s words: “Lord, it is good for us to be here” (Matthew 17:5) You see, the meaning of any glory revealed only comes into focus and deepens with time and reflection, and it is only as we moved through the next day that we became more consciously aware of what we experienced that first night. We knew each other beyond our duties at church or as members of the vestry, beyond our relationships and responsibilities, we knew each other beyond the accidents of our existences. Through the glory that was revealed, we went from a committee to a community, and I think that will make all the difference in the year to come.

I know that many of you who were not on the retreat have already heard about that first evening, and I also know that some people have already begun to think of ways in which we might be able to incorporate elements of it parish-wide. It’s a good idea. It is not mine to implement, but a very good idea and one I would wholeheartedly support. As we look towards all we wish to accomplish in the coming year, all we intend to do, it might be a very good idea indeed if we created some mountains in our midst, some places of revelation in order to manifest to one another the glory that is within each of us, our own glory as daughters and sons of God; and believe me – or if not, believe your vestry members – it will make all the difference. Amen.

Epiphany 8: A Limited Commodity, A Powerful Symbol

2011-03-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

It seems almost ridiculous to state that money is a powerful commodity in our culture. However, the power of money is such a given that sometimes the nature of its power goes unquestioned. So, I will say it again: money is a powerful commodity in our culture, and most importantly because it carries a symbolic value far beyond its ordinary power to purchase goods and services. For the hoarder, the miser, money symbolises security against dependency on others. For the spendthrift it may symbolise freedom to pursue one’s own desires without hindrance from others. When money takes on this sort of symbolic meaning for a person or a group, then their relationship to it is dictated rather by their addictions and anxieties, instead of its simple value as a commodity. Equally, when money is vested with so much meaning and value, one can lose sight that there are other repositories of both meaning and value.

At our retreat Fr Larry told us a story of a small church community in decline. It was predominantly an elderly congregation attracting very few new members. They attended a seminar on the future of small congregations and they were able to face the difficult truth the they were in fact dying; embracing that reality they decided to go out in style, doing something useful. They went as a group to the local primary school, met with the principal, explained their situation and offered their time and effort to anything the school might need. The principal was surprised, but welcomed them into the life of the school. Members of the church read to the students, helped out in art classes and worked yard duty. Eventually, others from outside the local community wanted to get involved in their efforts. These new people got excited about what they were doing, and became interested in their little church. Parents, too, from the school were attracted to the church which gave so much of their time and talents. In the end, the church did not close, but rather grew. Now, I don’t think this is necessarily a pattern we can lay over every situation, but the truth of the matter is that no amount of money could have bought the vibrant, living church community that eventually emerged. More money might have allowed the church to survive, but it would not have given it life; and surviving and living are two different things entirely. It is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that money is not the only currency.

Equally, at times our concern with money is not about money, per se, but, as I mentioned earlier, what money has come to symbolise for us – safety, security, independence, self-determination, power, even our own worth as a person. When money symbolises such key aspects of our well-being and identity it is usually the first and sole issue in making any decision or considering any new enterprise. It emerges as the only truth or currency in the conversation. Discussions then become incredibly loaded, because while we as group may be ostensibly talking “money”, we are actually speaking about the many things it has come to symbolise for us; and for each person it may be different. We all know how easily and quickly people can be debilitated and de-moralised, how easily things can fall apart, when money is the issue of a discussion or decision. I am told that disagreements about money is one of the leading causes of the break-down of a relationship. It is not that the couple cannot decide on how to use money, but instead that it symbolises different things for each of them and they can never get to that deeper meaning. Another anecdote Fr Larry shared with us while on retreat; he told us of a parish with which he was involved. The community, like so many Episcopal communities throughout the country, was not exactly flush, but the vestry felt that their discussions were always hampered by that the facts of their financial circumstances, and so they passed a resolution: at the proposal of any new initiative, project for ministry, mission or outreach, money was not to be a consideration until after the vestry had discussed the project’s merits and decided whether or not it was worth implementing. Only then could they begin discussing the “how” part in which the financial needs and implications would certainly figure. Even in somewhat straitened circumstances, this community’s vestry decided their mission and programmes were their most valuable asset; money was put in its place as one component in the process of implementing any project, along with facilities or people power. While in the end, the execution of the project might reveal itself to be impossible, it could be so for any number of reasons – finances among them, but not limited to them; and sometimes in the discussion of a project there might be revealed its absolute value to the community, firing up the vestry members’ excitement to make it work. For this vestry, money has ceased symbolising safety or security, for example, and was only a means to an end, one component in implementing their highest, most important priority and value, the Church’s mission.

I don’t need to tell you that the issue of money arose during our vestry retreat, both in our formal forums and private discussions. I don’t think we came to any consensus. However, as Jesus today specifically addresses the issue of money and our relationship to it, it seemed only appropriate to mention some of what we did share, and to mention it in light of Jesus’ words from the Gospel. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:28b-29) Money is not the only currency in the world, and we lose something of life’s rich meaning when it is treated as the defining criteria of value. Think for a moment about our soup kitchen. No amount of money could buy the good-will many people have towards our small community on account of our soup kitchen; and our hall has become a focal point for various people of many faiths and none – both volunteers and clients – who through contact with me and other members of our community get to learn something about what we value here at the Church of the Saviour, and as Episcopalians generally. Money is not the only currency. Equally, we need always to keep an awareness of the meaning – symbolic or otherwise – we project onto money. It is a means to end, and a tool for acquiring goods and services. While to some extent it can keep us safe from all kinds of unpleasantness, in and of itself it cannot save in any meaningful sense; and we get safety and salvation confused at our peril: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Matthew 5:24) When money symbolises for us a form of security, then safety overrides salvation and the mission of the Church suffers. We cannot have both safety and salvation driving, one of them must take the backseat. Certainly, along with the rest of the country, our community is hitting some hard financial times, but how pleased I was when our vestry voted – quite responsibly, I might add – that should the need arise and in order for the mission of the Church to thrive we would borrow from our small endowment fund; equally when it decided to make paying our assessment to the diocese a priority. I love it when salvation trumps safety.

At the end of the day, it’s not that money isn’t important, even crucial to our well-being, but that we sometimes invest it with too much meaning, too much power, at the exclusion of the all kinds of other realities which give life meaning. We invest a lot of worry in it too, undermining our power to discern other valuable aspects of our lives. Money is an important means of currency, but it is not the only currency; and equally, its importance should not fool us into attaching to it meaning it cannot and should not ultimately bear. Putting money in its appropriate place, frees us to do Jesus’ bidding when he tells his followers, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) and let “today’s troubles be enough for today”. (Matthew 6:34)

Epiphany 7: Foolishness, Wisdom and Leadership

2011-02-21T10:52:00.000-08:00

Leviticus 19-1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119-33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

Over our twenty-four hours together the Vestry spent a fair amount of time talking about and reflecting on leadership. Leadership seems to be a perennial issue in the church, and certainly one of the issues Paul is addressing in the first letter to the Corinthians. In today’s reading he likens the community’s leaders to builders who build on the foundation that is Jesus Christ himself, while at the same reminding the Corinthians not to “boast about human leaders”. (1 Corinthians 3:21) But does that not leave us with a bit a problem, since all we have are human leaders? Well, that depends how we look at it, and how we understand leadership. If we try to force Christian leadership into conventional models of leadership, we do run into some problems; and Paul highlights this when he writes, “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19a) What Paul is here hinting at is the counter-intuitive nature of truly effective leadership. The “wisdom of this world” – mere human wisdom – is the ingrained and knee-jerk reaction to events and situations, and sometimes we have took take the “foolish” – I use the term in inverted commas – route in order to arrive at a place of genuine wisdom, the wisdom of God.

While on our Vestry retreat the words of St Paul did not specifically arise, it is serendipitous that it we are presented with them today, because much of what we heard on our retreat is reflected in Paul’s ideas of leadership, of counter-intuitive wisdom and of foolishness. One of the first statements Fr Larry, who led our retreat, shared with us was a quote from Albert Einstein: “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” It is a hard lesson to learn, but much of people’s failures in resolving problems and effectively addressing challenges stems from their unwillingness to conceive the issue in a new light, within a different frame of reference. Sometimes coming into a new place of resolution is not about arriving at the right answer, but about perhaps re-framing the question, or even examining whether we are asking the right question to begin with. Have you noticed how Jesus, for example, when asked questions about the meaning of the law, always takes the whole discussion out of the narrow definitions of rules and law-keeping and instead places it within the context of interior attitudes and conversion of life. I know we have some problems here at the Church of the Saviour, but I wonder if we actually have the problems we think we have. Are we asking the right questions? We ask a lot of questions about what we should be doing, but are those really the right questions? Should we perhaps be asking questions, having discussions about what we want to be? Perhaps if we can come to some consensus about who we want to be, we can more easily discern what we need to be doing.

During the weekend we were also introduced to the work of the late Edwin Freidman. Freidman wrote and spoke extensively on the nature of leadership. He developed the idea of the differentiated leader; and among the qualities he believed characterise a differentiated leader are knowing where you end and the other begins, the ability to be clear about your own personal values and goals, the integrity to say “I” when others are demanding “we”. The differentiated leader doesn’t simply react to the actions and behaviours of others, but responds and by so doing can bring the community to a new place altogether. Again think of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:38-39) Certainly what he suggests is a kind of foolishness, contrary to “the wisdom of this world”. Yet, paying closer attention we can discern how instead of reaction, he advises the counter-intuitive action. He advises remaining true to one’s personal values. Moreover, such a response on the part of the person struck does not allow the striker to define the situation: “You can hit me and threaten me, but you cannot make me bend my conscience, or force me to abandon my principles.” Such a response affirms that the actions of another need not condition my own. It moves me out realm of mere reaction, into that of action and response. As a leader it frees you to think clearly without simply responding to the latest and the loudest; you may not be popular but the leader who seeks facile popularity will end up an ineffective weathercock.

Both Fr Larry and Edwin Freidman warned us about the allure of the quick fix. There are no quick fixes to any problem. Let me say that again and more distinctly: There are no quick fixes to any problem. There is no programme one can develop, buy, introduce or implement which will alleviate the difficult circumstances in which a person or a community may find themselves. Freidman writes that the quick-fix mentality actually signifies “a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change.” The quick fix usually whitewashes a problem in the hopes that if we cannot see it, it will disappear altogether. But problems and issues do not go away, the only way to deal with them is to engage in the hard work of resolution. The quick fix is a waste of time and energy doomed to failure and always ending in disappointment. Nevertheless, people in all walks of life, including in the Church, continue chasing the quick fix because the alternative just takes too long and is too painful. Freidman notes that “life processes evolve by taking their time…[and] there is no way out of a chronic condition without being willing to go through a temporarily more acute phase.” Think of the freed Hebrew slaves who opted for the quick fix of the golden calf; yet, in the end, to find a place of real health and life, they had to wander forty years in the desert. Their life process which moved them into their destiny “evolved by taking [its] time”. Effective leaders are not seduced by the quick fix, neither do they allow others to seduce them by it. Instead they are able to stay in the difficult places, resisting simple symptom relief while continuing patiently and sensitively to “focus on the fundamental change in the emotional processes that underlie [the] symptoms”. Imagine if Moses on coming down from the mountain and finding the people of Israel gathered round the golden calf said to himself: “Well they are not longer anxious or upset, they have found something to believe in, and that’s good enough.” No, there are no quick fixes, and good leaders don’t waste any time or energy on them.

Finally, one of the most powerful things Fr Larry told us is that the answer and solution to any issues we may have, anything we may perceive as problems is ourselves; not just the Vestry, but every member the Church of the Saviour. In one sense we do not have to do anything, just be what we are called to be – the Body of Christ in the world, the Episcopal Church in Hanford, witnesses to the wisdom of God. Let’s face it, it’s easier to just keep asking the same questions in the same way, and then wonder why nothing changes, instead of asking the really discerning and hard questions and perhaps confronting some even harder truths. Let’s face it, it feels friendlier if everyone just agrees and gets along, instead of taking the risk of upsetting someone by sticking to our principles. Let’s face it, it is easier to go for what just gets us by, continually re-arranging the chairs, as it were, instead of going through the pain and hassle of getting new chairs altogether. None of this is a programme or set of rules, but a shift in perspective, an adjustment in attitude. It is counter-intuitive and that makes taking the leap into it more daunting; still, Paul, in another of his letters, the letter to the Roman, writes “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are being asked nothing less than to renew our minds, hearts and lives in order that God’s vision for us can be discerned by us here and revealed in the world.

Epiphany 6: Living Deliberately

2011-02-15T11:49:00.000-08:00

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

In the summer of 1845 Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American writer and philosopher, embarked on a personal experiment and moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson around the shores of Walden Pond. His book, Walden, was the record of the experiment, and in it he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” There is a difference between living life and choosing life, there is a difference between living by accident and living deliberately, consciously. To live deliberately is to live with a goal and a purpose beyond just survival; it is to live in the reality that our lives matter and that our decisions have meaning and repercussions for ourselves, for others, for our environment. To live deliberately is to live in the knowledge that there is a context to our lives and that – for Christians certainly – in the end we will have to make an account for how we lived. “Living life” – in the narrowest sense – is just about getting on in our little sphere, usually looking out for “number one”, keeping things safe and tidy, no dissensions and – above all – no awkward confrontations. “Choosing life” is about opening our hearts, mind and bodies to embrace all of life, all of creation and opening ourselves to the possibility of transformation. It is living deliberately awake and aware.

In the book of Deuteronomy and in other places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the difference between merely living life and choosing life is expressed in some pretty extreme imagery and language, chiefly in the difference between idolatry and worship. Idolatry is the handing over of our allegiance to a god of our own creation, whether made with our hands or constructed with our minds. Yet, no matter how much religiosity we may vest in that god, it is an easy out because the gods of our idolatry always tell us what we want to hear, always affirm our little selves, always give us a sense of arrival. Idolatry in all its forms is always about the small and narrow picture. Choosing life in this context means deliberately embracing the big picture; embracing the journey of finding God and not, as the poet John Betjeman phrased it, finding “a God who fits”.

Paul presents the difference in the terms of “flesh” and “spirit”. Through Christian history this has led to some misunderstanding that the physical is somehow second best to the spiritual, and thus opposed to the things of God. But nothing could be further from the truth. Paul is using both “flesh” and “spirit” as philosophical categories. The flesh is associated with all that hinders the community’s full revelation as the Body of Christ. It is interesting to note that flesh of itself is a dead thing, it is the meat one buys at the market; but a body is a living thing, and when we talk of the Body of Christ – that is the Church – it is the presence of the living God in the world. For Paul, whatever undermines the community is of the “flesh”, deadening: “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” (1 Corinthians 3:3) Human inclination is the default position, the un-thought out, knee jerk reaction – defensive, cliquish, parochial. Human inclination is living accidentally. Choosing life, living consciously and deliberately is living into the cooperative reality that is the Body of Christ in which “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. [For] the one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose”. (1 Corinthians 3:7, 8) Choosing life means choosing the big picture and accepting that few things in this world are about me, about my little and immediate concerns, about my petty hurts, arguments and allegiances.

It is not so much that living accidentally is particularly wrong or evil – although historically un-examined and accidental living has resulted in some quite horrendous consequences – but rather that purely accidental living cannot bring us to the fullness to which we are called and for which we were created. For Jesus in Matthew’s gospel the difference between the two lies in the difference between outward action and interior attitudes. Doing the right thing is certainly a good discipline. It helps us get along with others, and to some degree it works to our benefit; it makes things run more smoothly. But certainly the aim is that by doing that which is right and proper, we will slowly be transformed at a deeper level. Isn’t that what we believe about children – that by molding their behaviour we shape their consciences? The ingrained human inclination may be to follow the rules, but choosing life, living deliberately asks the harder interior questions, it signifies harder, interior work. “You have heard that it was said…, ‘You shall not murder”; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement;…You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:21-22a, 27-28) Pretty harsh stuff. Few of us here will have committed murder or adultery and for the most part that is clear for all to see, but have we entered into the deliberate transformational work of being people of peace, or being people who objectify or prejudge no one? Are we consciosuly working to bring to fulfillment God’s vision spoken through the prophet Jeremiah of that time when the law will not simply be a list of rules, but instead be written on our hearts? (cf. Jeremiah 31:33)

Whether in my relationship with God, my relationships with others or even my relationship with myself, I can live accidentally. I can live from that default place where God is comfortable for me and comformable to me, where the picture is small and my allegiances parochial, and where I can safely live within the rules; or I can choose life – real life – and live deliberately where it is not always about me, where God is big and does not always fit into my plans or prejudices, where I really understand that I am part of the whole, and where I consciously allow God’s Holy Spirit to transform me interiorly according to the image and likeness of God which I was called to be from the beginning. The difference between merely living life and choosing life is the difference between existing and existence. As Thoreau observed, merely living life can be a sort of quiet desperation – the desperate work involved in keeping one’s world-view intact, the constant worry of whether one measures up. Choosing life, living deliberatively opens us up to the mystery of reality not as we would like it to be, but as it is in God, in others and in the world. If we are honest and committed, choosing life in this way is the only response we can make to Christ’s proclamation: “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Epiphany 5: God as Active in History

2011-02-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 112
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Matthew 5:13-20

Preparing to preach this morning, I came across this observation in a commentary on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “The object of Christian faith is not God in se [in himself] but as active in history”. It sparked my thinking: “The object of Christian faith is not God [in himself] but as active in history”. The commentator writes this in reference to the 4th and 5th verses of the 2nd chapter of the letter, when Paul writes: “My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)

It is an interesting turn of phrase “active in history”, and rather distinct from how usually talk about God as “acting in history”. A god who simply acts in history is like the gods the ancient classical world, or the gods of the peoples encountered by the ancient Israelites in the Hebrew Scriptures. These gods intervene in history, but they are not involved in history as such. They may swoop in and change the course of a battle or the fortunes of a believer, but there is little sense of the big picture, that the deity is there for the long haul, as it were. The Judeao-Christian God, on the other hand is one who enters into human history, forming relationship, initiating covenant, investing and involving God’s self in the human enterprise. We witness this at the beginning, when God enters into relationship and makes a covenant with Abraham, Sarah and their descendants, and also when God calls those descendants out of slavery in Egypt, renewing that covenant and then leading them to the promised land in order that they might be a beacon to the nations. In Jesus we see God’s continuing activity in history as God joins God’s self to humanity in a distinctive and unique way, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit is revealed God’s abiding promise and desire to be intimately and actively within us.

The God revealed to us in the Scriptures and in the Tradition, in the Church and in our lives, is this God who is indeed “active in history”, but belief in this God has some implications, all of which we human beings – Christians included – sometimes have trouble grasping. One of these is that it means God’s revelation of God’s self and God’s purposes is an ongoing process, and that these are made known not in signs from heaven or obviously extraordinary acts, but within history itself, in the context of human experience and deliberation. Those who prefer clear-cut, once-for-all rules – and that’s most of us – can find this disappointing and dis-orientating. The argument in the early church over circumcision is a case in point. God had made circumcision the sign of the covenant with Abraham, anyone now coming to faith in Christ must certainly be circumcised. However, as more and more non-Jews became Christians the Church was led to understand this was not central to God’s ongoing relationship with humanity. We cannot underestimate how incredibly surprising – even repulsive – was this shift in the mind-set of the early Church.

Equally distasteful – although it may not seem so to us – was the breaking down of the barriers between the social classes. This is some of what Paul is addressing in his letter to the Corinthians. In part, the problem in Corinth stemmed from the fact that at the celebrations of the Eucharists the old social order was still being observed, with the well-to-do and the friends of the host eating at the table and from the choicest foods, while the poorer and not as well connected members received lesser amounts or food of inferior quality, and a distance. The Corinthians had not fully grasped the new social order of equality revealed by Jesus and into which each had been baptised. God’s activity in Jesus was so radically different than the actions of any of the pagan gods, the effects of which were usually to re-enforce the existing social order, the wisdom of the dominant hierarchy and paradigm, what Paul calls the “wisdom of this age and of the rulers of this age”. (1 Corinthians 2:7) Paul reminds the Corinthians that “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”. (1 Corinthians 2:9) Our God, “active in history” is a God of surprises, not necessarily bound by the old or the conventional, a God who in relationship with us, questions our assumptions. For us, as for the Corinthians, encountering this God may mean we let go of some of our inherited and conventional wisdom, some of social conditioning.

How much more comforting if God simply acted in human history, but left things, for the most part, the way they were already set up, re-enforcing the status quo by those divine acts. However, as idyllic as that may sound, that is not the God we believe in. Moreover, belief in such a god suggests a disturbing of image of relationship, because it would signify human beings as only passive creatures acted upon, merely pawns at the whims of such a being. Instead our God, active in history, draws us in as agents in the cosmic drama, subjects in the process of creation’s groaning as it awaits the fulfillment of God’s purposes. In the Judaeo-Christian narrative human beings are not pawns, but partners with God. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is the prophets who most succinctly present this truth. We heard it today in the reading from Isaiah. God gives the people of Israel a vision of a rebuilt Jerusalem, yet God does not simply step in and accomplish it, but instead presents the city’s restoration as a result of a renewal of the people of Israel themselves and their re-commitment to the core of the covenant: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:10b-11) Similarly Jesus reminds his followers of God’s continuing revelatory activity in history: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17) At the same time he invites people into that movement towards fulfilment and reminds them how instrumental is their participation, our participation: “You are the salt of the salt of the earth….You are the light of the world”; and he dares to suggest that God’s revelation in the world depends on our remaining savoury and bright so that the world “may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”. (Matthew 5:16) The God who is active in history does not overrun our free will or treat us like pawns, but invites us into covenant and to act as agents in the fulfilling of the divine vision. God doesn’t just act in history, God is always and already active in history. What we have to do is align ourselves to that activity, become fellow-agents with God in order to reveal God’s power and vision for a renewed creation.

Gods who merely act in history are products of the “human wisdom” Paul mentions. They re-enforce the status quo while making human beings mere objects of their actions; and there is a certain comfort in those gods – they make us feel safe and special, and absolve us of responsibility to act. This, however, is not the wisdom of the God we believe in, a wisdom which Paul describes as “secret and hidden” because it is not as obvious and overt as the “wisdom of this age and of the rulers of this age”. (1 Corinthians 2:7) Our God continues always to be active in history and can sometimes pull the rug out from under us, so we cannot hold on too tightly to the status quo, and this God always draws us into the divine activity already initiated. Believing in “God as active in history” means perhaps above all two things: get prepared to be surprised and be ready to be involved.

Epiphany 4: There are Some Things Worth Dying For

2011-02-01T10:05:00.001-08:00

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

There are some things worth suffering for. There are some things worth being reviled and persecuted for. There are some things worth dying for. If we cannot come to terms with these truths, then we may never completely grasp the full depth of Christian faith or the Christian life; because right there at the centre of the Christian narrative is a man reviled and rejected – a man of sorrows. At the centre of the Christian narrative stands a cross and a place of execution. There at the centre, stands a man who while able to escape both rejection and death, embraces them because he believed that there are some things worth dying for. Jesus Christ the rejected, Jesus Christ the reviled, the persecuted, Jesus Christ the executed was the over-riding pattern of Christian life for the first few centuries of the Church’s existence. The very word martyr comes from the simple Greek word meaning “to witness”; for so many of the first Christians witnessing to Christ and the Christian life was synonymous with suffering and death. Witnessing to Christ meant, as Paul says to the Philippians, sharing in Christ’s “sufferings by becoming like him in his death”. (Philippians 3:10)

Undoubtedly the world around us saw us as foolish, misguided religious fanatics. The world-view of Ancient Rome was one in which overt power was the paradigm, and its victims were to be considered casualties at best, but more usually derided; and those who purposely got in its way were fools or idiots. One might commit suicide to preserve one’s honour and that of one’s family, but to embrace the sort of public executions meted out by the Roman judicial system would be nothing less than a humiliating sort of madness, foolishness; and perhaps it is in this context we should hear Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”. (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25) What we Christians were saying is that in Jesus a new paradigm had been inaugurated in which it is not our own power or our control which gives us the victory, but instead a power which comes from God and which is revealed not in holding on to our life, but in letting go so that we hold on to something deeper and more lasting.

Jesus could have escaped the cross by violence. He could have cursed from the cross those who put him there and those who mocked him. Feeling a victim, he could have lashed out at those suffering with him. Yet, to have done any of these would have been to give the lie to all that he had been, lived and taught. Instead, recall how he reproached the disciple who cut off the ear of one of those who came to arrest him in the garden, and actually healed the fellow; instead, he prayed for those who nailed him to the cross and those who mocked him as he hung there; instead, he offered hospitality to the thief crucified with him. To the outside world Christian martyrdom may appear to be some kind of foolish acceptance of victimisation, but for those born into the wisdom of God it is an assertion of the liberty we have in Christ in the face of powers which try to convince us we are powerless slaves. It is the proclamation that there are some things worth dying for, and the insistence that there is real freedom in our capacities to do so.

Just over 360 years ago today, King Charles I of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland stepped out of a window in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace in London and onto a platform specifically erected for his execution. It was the culmination of a political and religious struggle we now call the English Civil War, and which for a time dispensed with the monarchy and bishops, as well as making illegal the Book of Common Prayer. Historians will judge Charles as not the finest example of monarchy. His commitment to the divine right of kings rode roughshod over the sensibilities of Parliament, and he demonstrated something less than consideration towards dissenting religious groups; yet his commitment to the Church of England, its forms of order and worship, particularly as expressed in her middle way of the Elizabethan settlement, her governance by bishops and in the Book of Common Prayer is unquestionable. In fact, when he was finally captured, “tried” and condemned to death, he was offered his life should he be willing to abandoned his commitment to episcopacy and to the Book of Common Prayer. He refused, and at his execution said, “I die a good Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left to me by my father….I have a good cause and have a gracious God.” His enemies may have seemed to have had the victory, but his example was remembered among many in his kingdoms, and the Commonwealth – the government established after his death – lasted some eleven years only; after which the monarchy was again restored, and the throne assumed by Charles’ son; also restored were the episcopal order and liturgical worship of the Church of England. Holding on to what really mattered to him, in his death Charles gained for us a substantial inheritance. Anglicanism would not have survived in its present, rich form had he renounced it all from the scaffold. His example was honoured and commemorated almost immediately and he is the first saint officially commemorated by the Church of England after the Reformation. At the scaffold he lay aside earthly power for meaningful victory, saying: “I go from a corruptible to and incorruptible Crown.” There are, he believed, some things worth dying for.

From our perspective of religious tolerance, this reflection on martyrdom may seem strange and distant. Yet, ironically the 20th century has been called the century of martyrdom – more Christians were killed for their faith in those hundred years than in all the previous centuries combined. Chances are we will never face these kinds of overt violence, or be forced to make the kinds of choices many of our Christian sisters and brothers have had to make or have to make. Yet, does that then excuse us from coming to terms with the reality that there are some things worth dying for? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that then say about how we live our lives, about what we believe as ultimately valuable or precious? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that say about our principles; more importantly, what does it say about our faith as Christians centred as we profess on Jesus Christ who believed profoundly that there surely are some things were suffering for, being reviled for, dying for? Ask yourself for a moment if you really believe there are some things were dying for, and if so what are they? It's a good thing to know about one's self. Of course, the goal of the Christian life is not to seek out persecution, ridicule, even death. Yet, neither should we shy away from it, for we know that should it come and we meet it with principled integrity we are in good, good company: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:12).

St Stephen's Day: The Cost of Christmas

2011-01-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

Jeremiah 26:19, 12-15
Psalm 31
Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51c-60
Matthew 23:34-39

On Christmas Eve I spoke of the dynamic of light and darkness; of that light of which we only catch a glimpse, but which nonetheless transforms us into people who consistently witness to the narrative of light in the midst of seemingly pervasive darkness. While, in the darkness of the their world and the darkness of their lives, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds also have the true light revealed to them, they still must return into the dark. The shepherds more overtly into the dark night and the dark fields of pasture; Mary and Joseph into the darkness of fear, flight and exile as they must flee to Egypt in order to escape Herod’s violence. The light transforms their perspective, defines a new narrative, but they have to live still in the darkness while they work to let the light’s truth shine in the world.

If only they could simply have remained undisturbed at the “manger throne”, lost in “wonder, love and praise”, as the old hymn goes. In our celebration of Christmas we also may want to remain there. We like the high, the buzz – even nostalgia – of the light: “peace on earth, goodwill to men”, and all that. We get that high and fuzzy, warm feeling, and we feel we have arrived somewhere – at Christmas; and that’s good isn’t it? In fact, the days following Christmas Day have very little significance for many Christians; and yet Christmas Day is only the beginning. It is only the start of the Christmas cycle, and the full meaning of Christ’s coming into the world is not revealed on that one day, but in the Church’s observances and celebrations throughout the season’s twelve days. As Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and even the wise men find themselves in the darkness once again after their encounter with the Christ-light, so the Church in her wisdom takes us into the dark again. She does not allow to remain passively in the light encounter, but in the days following Christmas Day plunges us into all the violence, prejudice, injustice that darkness affords. Just three days from today the Church commemorates Thomas Beckett, killed within his own cathedral church for defending the Church’s rights and dignities over and against the king. In two days time, we recall Herod’s horrific massacre of all the “children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under” (Matthew 2:16) in the hopes of extinguishing the Christ-light altogether. Tomorrow she celebrates the feast of St John the Evangelist in whose gospel we find written those marvellous words telling of “the light [which] shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5), but who on account of the darkness of fear, victimisation and persecution will eventually find himself exiled to the island of Patmos at the whim of the Emperor Diocletian. And then there is today, the feast of St Stephen, the Church’s first martyr. All this is Christmas too; and yet think for one moment of sending a Christmas card depicting any of these events? Most people, even most Christians, want the light only, without having to encounter the dark; we want the warmth of the light without having to carry it into the cold darkness of the world. But the Church does not give us that luxury, or much time to bask in the radiance of the light; instead she immediately takes us into some pretty dark places and reveals to us the cost of being light in the world, being light in the darkness. Through her feasts, she takes us into the darkness so we can learn how our ancestors in faith were lights in the darknesses of their own generation, but also how we can be lights in the darknesses of our own.

Being light in the world means speaking the truth, especially when no one wants to hear it. It means being willing to suffer for the right, as well as defending those whom the darkness has robbed of voice and dignity. It means being willing to enter into the places that are dark in order that we can transform them by our witness to light. It means we allow the darkness to challenge us into shining only more brightly, but also to proclaim that its deeds and words are not the final deeds, the defining words. It means that even when we see and feel the darkness overcoming us, we do not give it the final victory by succumbing to its forces, but continue to oppose it even if only, like Stephen, by praying for those who live and work with darkness as their defining narrative.

Christmas that ends on Christmas Day is no Christmas at all, but enculturated comfortableness that allows us to escape the season’s real meaning for Christians. Light has come into the world, and that light is costly to those who collaborate with it, like Mary, Joseph, the wise men. It is costly for those believe in and proclaim it, like Stephen, John, Thomas Beckett. It is costly even for those who simply get in the way of the darkness, like the Holy Innocents slaughtered by Herod’s men. And yet all of them are blessed, all of them are remembered and celebrated, revealing as they do the true narrative of creation, the true purposes of God: light, the light that shines in the darkness and which the darkness does not ultimately overcome.

Beyond the expense of presents, time spent at the mall and long hours in the kitchen, is Christmas costly to you? Is the light revealed in the darkness of that Christmas night a challenge for you to be a light in the darkness of world, or is it merely a comfortable, warm glow centred around your nearest and dearest? Is the darkness in which we often find ourselves simply something to escape and from which to steer clear, or something to encounter, engage with and transform? No matter how often we may celebrate Christmas Day or pay lips service to what it means, it is only when we observe the season in its fullness and accept for ourselves the risky and dangerous challenge it offers that will ever be able to say “Glory to God in the highest heaven (Luke 2:14); “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Matthew 23:39)

Christmas: The Narrative of Light

2011-01-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; and those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them a light has shined.” (Isaiah 9:2) Can any remember a time when they were in utter darkness? The sort of darkness in which one’s eyes never get accustomed, because there is no light at all: deep, deep and utter darkness. I remember being in such darkness myself twice. The first as a boy, and not far from here in the Crystal Caves of Sequoia National Park. The second, far more recently and at another national park, this time in Ireland. Located in Country Meath (on the eastern side of Ireland), Newgrange is megalithic passage tomb built in about 3200 BC. These passage tombs can be found throughout Britain and Ireland, and as their name suggest are long passages cut into earth. They end in a round chamber within which were laid to rest the most notable in the community. The one at Newgrange is distinctive, however, because it is constructed in such a way that a light box above the main entrance allows “sunlight to penetrate the passage and the chamber at sunrise around the Winter Solstice.” At just the right moment in the morning, as the sun rises a “narrow beam of light” passes through the light box. The sun’s light enters the chamber and slowly “moves” – as it were – down the 60 foot length of the passage. As the sun continues to rise higher the beam reaches the chamber and widens so that “the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. After 17 minutes the sunbeam leaves the chamber and retreats back down the passage”. Each year there is a free lottery in Ireland to win a place within the chamber at the solstice. However, if you visit at any other time the effect is re-produced artificially. I experienced the latter, and it was still incredibly powerful. Standing in the darkness of the chamber, I felt the light as a living thing moving towards me along the floor of the passageway, ultimately enveloping me and all in the chamber with me in its glorious brightness. Eventually it receded back, and we were once again left in darkness. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” (Isaiah 7:2)

How this was all calculated, planned and constructed over 5000 years ago still challenges scholars and engineers. So too does the exact reason why; but surely it must have something to do with making palpable the reality of the presence of light even in the most abject darkness. Certainly, the place and the experience mediated by it are symbols of the underlying but often difficult-to-apprehend truth that the real narrative of creation is not darkness, but light. As we gather tonight, it seems that we are telling fundamentally the same story. The child born in the darkness of this night, in the dark obscurity of a cave – the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem is after all a cave – this child is the embodiment of God’s promise of light; indeed this child is Light, the true light coming into he world, the light which enlightens everyone. (cf. John 1:9) At the same time, like the light in the chamber at Newgrange, only a few witness the Christ-light – Mary, Joseph, some shepherds, a collection of animals, and later the wise-men – and all too quickly the light recedes to a hidden place, seemingly conquered by the darkness of political power as Herod fears for his throne, and by the darkness of violence as small children are massacred in the hopes of discovering the one who it is believed will overthrow the government altogether. The light recedes, but it is not conquered; those who are witness to it never forget its grace and truth. They learn that the underlying narrative of creation is not the seemingly pervasive darkness in which they often find themselves, but light – the light of grace, the light of Christ, the light of God. The shepherds’ dark doubts are transformed into joy and praise, and, as Garrison Keillor reports in his re-telling of the Christmas story: “life would never again be the same for them; there was always a light in their hearts and it would never be dark night for them again.” For Mary also, the darkness of uncertainty and most probably worry, become quiet acceptance and contemplation in the presence of the Christ-light. She treaured all she heard and saw, and “pondered them in her heart”. (Luke 2:16) As an adult Jesus willingly entered into a world of darkness and dark forces – political and social – which oppressed, disfigured and determined the lives of many, but his life was lived in such a way that the light was his defining narrative, and so he could say with confidence, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), and he could tell his followers that they too were the “light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14); light shining in the darkness which the darkness does not overcome. (cf. John 1:5)

We all know the extent to which we live our lives in the dark: in the darknesses of fear, in the darknesses of uncertainty, in the darknesses of regret. Many in our world live their lives in the darknesses of violence, hunger, poverty, oppression. Yet, the message of creation and of creation’s God, the message of Christmas is that darkness is not the defining narrative. The defining narrative is light; light hidden, light obscured perhaps, but light nonetheless. The call of the Christian life is to expose that light wherever it is covered, shine it in the darkest places of our world; it is to encourage it when it is but a dull spark, kindle it into a great shining blaze and carry it to those who “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death”. (Luke 1:79) It is always and everywhere to give the lie to the narrative of darkness, and ever witness to the the deep and true narrative of light, no matter how dark things may seem. Those of us who have seen and know the truth about the light must follow the example of the shepherds who on having experienced themselves the Christ-light go out into the darkness bearing its truth, glorifying and praising God for it. (cf. Luke 2:20) Indeed, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” (Luke 9:2)

Not unlike those who this solstice stood within the chamber of Newgrange and who began and ended their experience within its dark recesses, so we began our service tonight in the dark and we will end in the dark. However, there as here light has been revealed to us. In different ways we have experienced the same story, the true narrative of the light – the unconquerable light, the inextinguishable light, the light which darkness cannot ultimately overcome. More specifically as we celebrate this holy feast of Christmas we know that we have encountered the light of Christ, the light of the world and as Christians we know that no matter how dark things may seem, no matter the darkness of our world or of our lives, it will never really be dark night for us ever again. Even as we walk in darkness we know the truth, we know it is not the final word, the defining narrative. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2); “the light [that] shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

Advent 4: Waiting in Hope

2011-01-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

Advent 4 (A) (2010)
Isaiah 7.10-16
Psalm 80.1-7, 16-18
Romans 1.1-7
Matthew 1.18-25

Traditional wisdom tells us that “hope springs eternal.” And if Advent is about anything, it is about hope. Its color, blue, is more specifically the blue we see in the sky just before the sun rises. Advent is about our waiting in darkness for the dawn to break upon us from on high (cf. Luke 1.78); and as we wait, we wait in hope, knowing that the sun will rise. Hope and waiting are intimately connected. If we are hoping, we are waiting for that hope to be fulfilled. If we are waiting, we are hoping that our wait will be vindicated. Spanish makes the connection between the two more clearly, as the words are etymologically related. The Spanish “to wait” is esperar, for “hope” esperanza. Some years ago I was leading an Advent study group, and we were discussing what might be the most appropriate image to describe the nature and feel of Advent. We came up with a maternity waiting room in a hospital; the place where family and friends gather as they await the birth of a new baby. There one finds all the expectation and hope which should surround Advent. That waiting carries with it a sense of danger and trepidation – fear for the well-being of the mother and the child to be born; but also joy and excitement that a new life is coming into the world. The waited-for baby carries for those around her a sense of hope, and all the sense of possibility new life brings.

So it is no accident that today we are reminded of this image. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7.14). “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” (Matthew 1.23) Although referring to two different babies, both Isaiah and Matthew use these similar words to express a sense of hope in the new possibilities which a coming child represents. While the passage from Isaiah has often been understood as speaking directly about Jesus, the majority of biblical scholars do not now agree with this view. Raymond Brown the renowned Roman Catholic New Testament scholar says that the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures “were primarily concerned with addressing God’s challenge to their own times. If they spoke about the future, it was in broad terms of what would happen if the challenge was accepted or rejected.” Isaiah was addressing his words to King Ahaz at a time when the kingdom of Judah was under great threat by the rising empire of Assyria. It was in fact under so much pressure that King Ahaz in desperation had sacrificed a child of his to one of the pagan gods hoping to assure his safety and that of his kingdom. He repented of this act of faithlessness and violence and so, the prophet Isaiah offered to him a sign. He places all his hope on the next generation, on the child which is in the womb of Ahaz’s wife, on the next king: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7.14). The hope in the prophet’s words is that in the birth of this new child God will make fully known the divine purposes for Judah and the world; that God will make God’s self present in a new and distinctive way, a way which will renew the disastrous kingdom and all of creation. The words of the prophet are the words of a firm faith and hope in the God of Israel to save his People.

Matthew too wishes to express the same hope in the child born of Mary, and as he is writing down the story of Jesus this passage from Isaiah comes to mind. A passage that perhaps had been turning round in his head for a long time. It is not identical with that of Isaiah. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures with which Matthew was familiar had translated “young woman” into “virgin”, and while Isaiah says she “is with child”, Matthew writes that she “will conceive”. Nevertheless, it is fundamentally the same passage, yet in this new context a whole new generation of Jews found a source of hope in the coming into the world of a new baby. Matthew, writing some forty years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus saw Jesus’ coming as somehow a fulfilment of the words Isaiah had spoken about the son to be born to Ahaz and his wife. Encountering the Jesus story with the eyes of the faith, he voiced the early Christian conviction that in the rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, surely God is with us; and so have Christians believed down the ages.

Now, the child in the womb of Ahaz’s wife did not exactly usher in the reign of peace and justice Isaiah had hoped for and anticipated in his words. Judah was eventually overrun by the Assyrians anyway. And if we are honest Jesus – the one whom we confess as Son of God – did not fully usher in the hoped for kingdom; and while we work for its mainifesation, we continue hoping and waiting for that full revelation of God’s kingdom and God’s purposes. While we work for the kingdom certainly, in some way we also continue living in that delivery waiting room, living in anxious and joyful expectation; and we can continue to do all this because of one word in the Scriptures. A word which appears only three times in the whole Bible – two times in the book of the prophet Isaiah and one in the Gospel of Matthew; a word which we have heard this morning spoken twice – Immanuel. A Hebrew word which means “God with us.” We continue to wait, and wait with hopeful expectation, because we believe that God is faithful, and we believe the promise of that word – Immanuel, the promise that God is with us. If we did not believe then we would stop hoping. We would stop waiting. We would have packed it in long ago. But we do believe. We believe that God is with us in the words of the prophets preserved through the ages. We believe that God is with us in a particular and distinctive way in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that God is with us working out the divine purpose in the world. We believe that God is with us here and now when we gather in fellowship and praise. We believe that God is with us. And that belief gives us the courage to hope and the strength to wait for the fullest manifestation of God’s promises, even in the face of the darkness and the tragedy of the world.

This Friday night we will gather here again, to begin our Christmas celebrations – to celebrate the birth of Jesus in history, yes, but more importantly, the everlasting reality that God is with us; that Immanuel – “God with us” – is not simply a title for the Christ, but the underlying reality of our lives. The fact that God’s promises and God’s kingdom have not been fully revealed does not daunt us one bit, diminish our faith or deter us from action. Those who gather in the maternity waiting room of a hospital know that life is difficult, they know that the child they await will be born into a world of violence and prejudice – a world that is far from perfect. Yet that does not daunt them in their hope or make them any less joyful when the child is born. They bring to their waiting a clear hope in human life and in the potential possibilities of a new human life. How much more should we wait with hope, not just in life, but in the Lord of all Life? In one sense Friday night we will end our waiting, yet in another sense we continue to wait for the full revelation of God’s kingdom; but we can wait in hope. For as Paul writes to the Romans, “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5.5), in other words because God is with us.

It is true that for human beings “hope springs eternal”. We may not always get it exactly right. Ahaz’s son did not usher in the world where the lion lay down with the lamb, and the imminent return of Jesus which his earliest followers expected did not materialise. But that did not and does not shake hope. It did not shake their hope, and it does shake our hope. We continue to wait and to trust God’s abiding presence. Hope seems to be an indestructible aspect of the human make-up, maybe even genetics. And maybe, just maybe this persistent sense of hope instilled in us, this willingness and ability to wait in hope, this strong inclination to trust in the potential offered to us by new possibilities, is the best evidence of all that “God is with us”.

Advent 3: The Kingdom: Near or Here?

2010-12-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 35.1-10
Psalm 146.4-9
James 5.7-10
Matthew 11.2-11

Think for a moment about your dreams, your hopes, your ambitions. Those of us who are older, think back to how you imagined your life – your future – when you were young. How did you imagine your life turning out? How did you imagine things turning out by the time you were thirty or forty or fifty, or even sixty? And now today, how often do you return to those dreams? Today are they still a source of excitement and encouragement; or do they point the accusing finger of disappointment and missed opportunity? Are they today dreams fulfilled or mere childhood fantasies, brushed aside yet quietly lamented? All of us carry with us memories of how we wanted our lives to turn out. We all have past constructions of a future which should have informed or be informing our present. There is in all of us a little bit of Scarlett O’Hara who, after the physical and emotional ravages of the American Civil War, when Ashley Wilkes comments that she’d hardly changed since before the whole ordeal began, says to him sadly, “That girl doesn’t exist anymore. Nothing’s turned out as I expected, Ashley. Nothing.”

When John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea he came not so much preaching a new message, but rather something quite old. He came reminding the Jews of the dreams they had had when they were a young people. He came in the shape and voice of the prophet Isaiah and brought to the communal mind that vision the prophet offered the Chosen people when they were a much younger people dreaming of a future beyond their captivity in Babylon. Isaiah helped them to dream of a future when “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom” (Isaiah 35:1); when “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; [when] the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy” (Isaiah 35:5-6); when the “ransomed of the Lord…shall obtain joy and gladness.” (Isaiah 35:10) In his person John brought all this to mind and called the people to task. In the midst of the Roman occupation, the oppression of absentee landlords and a collaboratist Temple hierarchy he reminded the people of their earlier years as a people, their dreams for the future and he pointed the accusing finger which asked the embarrassing question: ‘”What happened? What happened to the dream?” At the same time he proclaimed to the people that it was not all too late, that what had been envisioned by their ancestors was still possible, that it was still a future held out to them by God. He preached that the kingdom of God was near; yet while near it had not yet come; and he called people to conversion, metanioa, repentance, literally a turning around, a turning back to the vision that they had in their younger days. He was still very much in the cast of the prophet.

And then came Jesus who approached the whole thing in a completely new way. While John preached the imminent coming of the kingdom, the imminent realisation of the ancient dream, Jesus proclaimed that it was already here. In his words and actions, he encouraged the people to stop dreaming the dream and to begin to live it. He did not just talk about the ancient prophetic vision, but gave it hands and feet in his own body. So when John’s disciples come to ask Jesus if “he is the one who is to come” (interesting that they are still speaking in a future tense), Jesus responds by showing how he is living out the earlier vision right here, right now: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 11.4-5) For Jesus there was no tomorrow, only today and today and today; and he would have agreed (at least on this point) with the apostle Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians: “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Dreams for the future remain only ever dreams unless one day – today – someone – you – begins to live them. And Jesus did just that. Jesus consistently told parables about what living the dream was about and what it looked like – those parables about the Kingdom – but the fact was his whole life was a parable of the Kingdom. He didn’t talk about a future time of forgiveness, he forgave and he told others that they had to as well. He didn’t simply offer a vision of a future when the hungry would be filled, but he shared food as if there were enough and – lo and behold – there was; and he commanded his friends to do the same. He didn’t just preach about a future when all people would without division come to the mountain of God, but he lived that as a present reality, disregarding the social, religious, economic and political divisions which so characterised the world in which he lived, and he told others that if they wanted to be a part of the kingdom they had to live inclusively also. For Jesus, there was no future that was going to magically appear, but only one which must begin to be created and lived in the present.

John the Baptist preached a kingdom that, while coming very soon, was not here yet. Jesus lived a Kingdom that was already in existence, inherent in each of us and for which we must take responsibility: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed;” he said, “nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among (or within) you.” (Luke 17.20-21) In a very real and practical sense, there is only now, there is only today. In fact, we can say that what is not being done today is never being done. Scarlett’s dream for her future self was someday to be like her mother: kind, compassionate, dutiful, a pillar of society. However, each time she encountered a crisis she dealt with it in a way which was hardly congruent with her dream, and each time she lamented it and brushed it aside: “I can’t think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” And at the end she has to admit that nothing’s turned out as she expected. Nothing. It is not enough to simply dream a dream or carry a hope of the future. Jesus’ life teaches us that the future begins now. Had there been no Jesus and only John, how far would the Kingdom movement have gotten? If all that had been done was a recalling of the ancient vision, would there be a Kingdom people today? Most probably, not. What are your dreams? What is your vision for a better life, for a better world? And what are you doing about it right now?

With the rest of his fellow Jews, Jesus shared a common vision for the future, the vision which the prophets had offered; but he didn’t just have some vague hope for tomorrow, he didn’t just believe a promise. He dared to live the vision, he dared to stop waiting for tomorrow, but instead to begin to live as if tomorrow, with its vision and promise had already arrived. For him the Kingdom was not simply near, but it was here. What you would you do, what would we do, if we actually believed that too?

Advent 2: The Gift of the Outsider

2010-12-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 11.1-10
Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19
Romans 15.4-13
Matthew 3.1-12

The story of salvation is a history of outsiders, of people who live lives on the margins of their world. It is the story of people who do not quite fit in; and because they do not quite fit in, they offer their contemporaries a different perspective on the events of the world; they offer an insightful and even prophetic view of the world in which they live. From the old barren couple, Abram and Sarai, out of whom is established a great nation, to Joseph, despised by his brothers, who saves his family from starvation; from the two Hebrew slaves – Shiphrah and Puah – the two midwives that save Moses who in time leads to freedom all the Hebrew slaves, to Jepthah an outlaw and the son of a prostitute whose power and insight as judge over the Hebrew people helps to mould the band of escaped slaves into a nation; from the foreign widow Ruth, who is to be the ancestor of King David, to David himself, the youngest of the sons of Jesse — the least likely to amount to anything – who is chosen to be king over God’s chosen people. All of these – and many more figures of salvation history – come from the margins of the social order. They come from groups in society which are never in the centre, but instead have always been relegated to the edges – immigrants, foreigners, slaves, women, the illegitimate, the powerless.

And yet, they carry with them what I have come to call and know as the “gift of the outsider”. Because they are not invested in protecting or perpetuating a position in the centre of the social structures, they can see the world in which they live more critically. Because they stand on the edges of the social order, they can see both inside and outside its boundaries. Because they live on the very margins, they can see something new coming long before any at the centre can. Let me try and show you what I mean. Close your eyes and imagine a circle. At its centre is a great crowd of people. At its edge stands one person. Who has a wider field of vision, a person living in the very middle of the circle – in the very middle of the that great crowd – or the person on the edge? Who will see something new coming into the circle first? Who realises more readily that there is a reality beyond the circle as well as within it? The person in the centre cannot probably see the edge of the circle, much less beyond it. The person on the edge can see both into the circle and out of the circle. That is the gift of the outsider – the ability to see from a wider perspective because of where they stand, the freedom to question the structures at the centre because they know that there is more to reality than simply those structures at the centre. That is the ‘gift of the outsider’. That is the gift that those on the edges can bring to the centre, if those in the centre are willing to receive it.

John the Baptist is in that great tradition of those who live on the margins, and thereby have a clearer picture of the situation around them. He is introduced to us in the gospel of the Matthew with these words: “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea.” (Matthew 3:1) Physically, he lived on the edges of the inhabited areas; socially he lived on the edges as well, clearly away from the centre of religious and political power in Jerusalem. His dress and habits — a camel’s hair coat and his diet of locusts and honey — further made him a person on the edge, one who would most definitely be ostracised from polite society. And his message to the centre was this proclamation: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”; “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:3) What a message! We who are so used to hearing those words can fail to appreciate their impact the first time they were heard. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:3) That is the gift that he offers to the centre. That is the insight which he has gained from living at the edges of the circle, the knowledge that has come to him as an outsider. It is a dangerous message. It is not a message that those at the centre will hear, or even want to hear. Why? Because, if the kingdom of heaven is at hand, then surely their kingdom – their way of running things and the benefits which they gain from it is near its end. The voice of the one crying out in the wilderness – the voice of the one on the margins – is never the voice that those in the centre are willing to hear. Yet it is the voice of the outsider which in the Judaeo-Christian tradition certainly and consistently seems to convey to their contemporaries the purposes of God, whether their fellows want to the hear them or not. The figures from the Hebrew Scriptures I mentioned earlier each come from the margins of their world, and each brought threatening, but inestimable gifts to that world. Likewise John the Baptist brings to his world the promise that God’s kingdom is at hand, and while it is a threatening promise to those who are in control, it is a sign of great hope to others who find themselves on the margins of their world; and surely for this reason people from “Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan.” (Matthew 3:5) Those who flocked to hear John and his message were also those who found themselves living on the edges of their society.

Like the Hebrew Scriptures, so too the New Testament is full of figures from the edges; and they are most poignantly visible in the stories surrounding Advent, Christmas and the Epiphany. Not just John the Baptist, but Joseph the peasant carpenter pushed around by powerful government and regulations. There is Mary, the young unwed mother, surely at the bottom of the social pecking order; Elizabeth and Zechariah, the old barren parents of John the Baptist; the shepherds, the lowest of the low in the society of the ancient near-east; the two senior citizens, Simeon and Anna, who, regardless of their dim eyes, had the keenest vision of all at the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Even the wise men from the east who came to offer their extravagant gifts were foreigners, and therefore would have few rights in the kingdom of King Herod. Each of these, while – in fact because – they lived at the borders of their world, were able to see what God was doing more clearly than those at the centre. They offered the gift of their vision to the centre – the political and religious establishment – and were met with ridicule, persecution and even death. Yet it did not make their message and vision any less real, neither did it diminish the blessings the message brought when it was eventually heeded.

Those who on account of their race or gender, who on account of their sexual orientation or age, who on account of their legal or marital status, live on the margins of society, share in a great tradition and always offer a special gift to our world. Because they live on the edges they often have the ability to see things in liberatingly new ways. Because the structures at the centre rarely support them, they are not so keen in preserving them, and so their vision often has scope for radical and refreshing novelty. Because they already don’t belong, as it were, they can risk including everyone. As we journey through Advent and prepare ourselves to “greet with joy the [second] coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer”, it behoves us to remember how it was those at the centre of things who missed his first coming altogether, or even actively opposed it, and how it was those at the margins who recognised him. After all, isn’t it the woman (or man) at the very the edges of the town who sees the dawn first and most clearly?

Advent 1: Wake Up and Dream

2010-12-06T11:38:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

A recent cartoon in the Sentinel shows a man and a woman in bed. They both look worse for wear, and she says to him, “Gravity seems stronger on cold mornings.” How difficult, how unpleasant it is to wake up; espcially as the days get shorter and the mornings colder; that’s when the snooze button on the alarm becomes your best friend – just five more minutes you think to yourself, you tell you partner, just five more minutes. You want to put off that moment of stark reality – of pulling back the covers and hitting with your feet that cold floor – for as long as you can. And there goes the alarm again. “You know what time it is”, it seems to say “it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep; the night is far gone, the day is near.” (Romans 13: 11, 12) It is no surprise that so many of the world’s religions and spiritual traditions, Christainity included, use the image of “waking up” to represent spiritual awakening or conversion. Waking up, whether physically or spiritually, shakes you up. It jolts us into reality, whether the reality of the morning or the reality of our lives. The expression, “wake up and smell the coffee”, exists for a reason, and also intimates at the human propensity to avoid waking up at almost any cost.

Anthony DeMello was a Jesuit and psychotherapist, as well as a prolific writer and speaker on spirituality. He wrote once: “Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.” As we enter the season of Advent in which we prepare ourselves not only to celebrate Jesus’ coming “to visit us in great humility”, but also to greet him on “the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead” the message is clearly one that calls us to wake up; to wake up to who we really are, to wake up to the possibilities of what we are called to be, to wake up to the inevitable end of all things, to wake up and realise the extent to which we pass our lives asleep. And yet, we have to accept how unwilling most of us are to wake up, the extent to which we really do live our lives asleep; and while staying asleep may shield us from some of the more unpleasant consequences of waking up, it also keeps us closed to experiencing real beauty, as Anthony DeMello continues: “[those who will not wake up] never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.” Let face it, we miss a lot when we are asleep. Lying in bed under the covers keeps us from facing the harsh, cold morning, but it also keeps us from seeing and experiencing the real beauty of glistening frost on the grass, or the sun’s rays lighting up the skies, flooding the mountaintops around us with light. Only by waking up can we really engage with the world and with God. Only by waking up can we dare to envision what it truly good about us and about our world. If you will pardon me, I want to again quote DeMello because he puts it all so beautifully: “You know,” he says, “all mystics – …no matter what their theology, no matter what  their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.” Ironically, he equates sleeping with nightmares, and conversely, I would suggest we can equate waking with dreams. It is only when we are really awake that we can dream; dream a new vision for ourselves, for the present, for the future, because when we are really awake we know that “salvation is nearer to us…than when we first became believers” and we can dare to wake up and dream.

Look at the vision which the prophet Isaiah dreams for the people of Israel in his prophecy when peoples “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks’; when “nations shall not raise sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”. (Isaiah 2:4) These are not the words of the someone who is asleep, but rather of one who is completely awake, awake to possibility, awake to God’s plan for a renewed heaven and earth, awake to hope. That kind of dream – the dream of vision, not the dream of fantasy – entails, more than anything, being awake to the reality of life in all its challenging facets. Living awake lives means living self-conscious lives, refletive lives. It means we do not simply go along with the status quo, or even with our own initial visceral reactions to people and situations. It means we never step back from asking the hard questions, or follow the path of least resistance. It means being ready to greet the fullness of God’s reign wherever we may discern it, and no matter how uncomfortable it may make us feel. It means living consciously, as opposed to accidentally. Only when we live in this way can we be ready to enter fully into the life of God’s kingdom and God’s purposes. Jesus tells his followers “Keep awake…for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming”. (Matthew 24:42) If we are to enter fully into God’s vision and God’s reign, then being awake to it starts right here and right now so that we can recognise it when we see it in part, and so that when it comes in its fullness we are not taken by surprise, neither are we left behind.

As the days grow shorter, the temptation is to sleep, to hide ourselves beneath the covers and protect ourselves from the increasing cold. And we can live our entire lives like that, asleep, protected and warm. Yet, Advent’s call is to attend always to the light in the midst of the dark, and allow that light to awaken us and draw us out of ourselves, to awaken us to the beauty and reality of life and of God’s vision; to awaken us to real life; to awaken us, so we can dream.

Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King): Unpacking Images

2010-11-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

Proper 29 (C) (2010)
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 46
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43

Christianity and our parent faith, Judaism, developed in times when monarchy was the dominant political model. Kings and emperors held vast amounts of power and – depending on the size of their domains – their decisions, and even whims, would affect hundreds of thousands, of people, a vast number in a pre-industrial world. So, in trying to make sense of the ineffable nature of God and of God’s power, it is hardly surprising that the language and images of kingship were associated with the divine. Christianity’s growth alongside the principalities and kingdoms of the Middle Ages only served to cement image of king with respect to God. This is how God-language works, it work by analogy and metaphor. Understanding God as all-powerful – the sort of power expressed in the psalm appointed for today – our ancestors in faith associated God with human examples of power, like kings. But God-language always requires some un-packing, because it not so much what we say about God, but rather what we mean with what we say about God. When we talk about God as king, we certainly do not mean a tyrant; we might qualify that title with “good”, we mean a “good” king. When we talk about God as father or mother, we do not mean any kind of father or mother, but certainly one who cares for their children with tenderness and genuine parental love. When we image Jesus as a shepherd, we do not do so as the shepherds described by the prophet Isaiah who “destroy and scatter the sheep”, but as a “good” shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep and even lays down his life for them.

Yes, religious language always needs unpacking, and in every generation, people of faith must struggle with un-packing religious language if it is to continue having any kind of resonance. Religious language that is not resonant is useless, even dangerous. Unpacked and un-nuanced religious language very quickly becomes sappy at best, and idolatrous at worst. Good religious language, on the other hand, always packs a punch, pulls out the rug from beneath us and forces us to understand something new and surprising about the nature of God. Take for example the image of God as shepherd. To those who heard it for the first time it would have been shocking. Shepherds were pretty low down on the social ladder, and the work was menial and tough – long, cold nights spent out in the open; and the life-style was itinerant, as they continually moved the flock in search of food and water. The responsibility the shepherds bore for their woolly charges was immense, and the requirements of the job could entail a considerable degree of danger. All of this would have certainly crossed the minds of those who first heard God referred to as a shepherd. Yet, for us western, modern Christians the term shepherd has none of those resonances, and so our image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, is usually a saccharine, Victorian, stained glass image which make us feel warm and cuddly, but does not disturb or shock. To get the full force of the image perhaps we could think of Jesus as rescue-worker in a war-torn region whose job it to get civilians safe from one town to another. He is marginalised, dirty and alone, with any number of people depending on his courage and knowledge, depending on his sacrifice to see them into a place of safety. When we really un-pack religious language then we catch a glimpse of what our tradition is trying to tell us about who God is, who Jesus is.

Equally, with the language of king. Our images of kings come either from contemporary foreign monarchs, or more usually from fairy tales. And so, Christians often glibly speak of Jesus as “the King” or “my Lord”, and in their minds is an image not learned from the inherited tradition, but from films and cartoons, or just plain sentimentality. Without unpacking the God-language surrounding the images of king and kingship, we may overlook the extent to which Christianity seeks to subvert their conventional and popular representations. While the Hebrew scriptures certainly use king imagery to convey God’s power, there is also the representation of a king as one who cares intimately for his people and is utterly faithful to God’s will. In the gospels, Jesus expands on this understanding when he says to his disciples: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27) What the Judaeo-Christian scriptures are hoping to reveal is a new resonance surrounding the image of king, particularly when applied to God. Perhaps, nothing makes the point more clearly than depictions in the Gospels of Jesus’ crucifixion. Here we see the conventional idea of the powerful king utterly undermined by a king who lays down his life for his people. How ironically crafted is Luke’s narrative in which Jesus suffers and dies under a sign declaring him “King of the Jews”, while the bystanders, having no other context for kingship than that of power and show, mock him with that same title. How marvellously crafted is the narrative in which the real meaning of Jesus’ kingship is grasped by one who is thief and an outcast: “Jesus, remember me we when you come into your kingdom”. There on Mt Calvary any conventional understanding of kingship as applied to God is shattered, and as we unpack the words and images of the tradition we discover the uncomfortable and perhaps somewhat unsatisfying truth that our king reigns from a cross

Religious language always needs unpacking, and when we live outside the social and historical context in which it was originally created, we need to be particularly careful how we adopt and continue to use it. All religious language is analogical and metaphorical, and to a large extent we human beings are its creators, but if all we do is use to it in order to feel safe and comfortable then we can be pretty sure we have missed something. Religious language should disturb, it should challenge, it should work to open our hearts and minds to possibilites about God and God’s nature we would not readily contemplate: that God is a shepherd – yes – but really a shepherd, one who makes himself dis-enfranchised and homeless for love and care of his sheep; the God who is a king – yes – but whose kingship is revealed in service – even humiliation – in suffering and death. Living in the United States in the 21st century we may not be able to relate to shepherds and kings of the ancient world, but by seriously doing the work of the unpacking what their use as religious imagery can mean for us today we may discover resonance with our own lives, namely the importance and value of sacrifice and service, as well as graphic and surprsing depictions of God’s love and care for us.

Pentecost 25: Enduring to Sing a New Song

2010-11-16T19:47:00.000-08:00

Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

“When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won. Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble”: words of the witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Scottish play. As many of you may know, the play’s context is the turmoil and internecine violence of the Scottish ruling classes; the naked, ruthless, grasping struggle for power that always causes untold chaos and destruction, and not only to those who instigate it. Certainly, Shakespeare’s play is a work of historical fiction, and as such takes considerable license. Still, many people have lived and continue to live through the kinds of uncertainties and social upheaval described in the play. They live and continue to live through the kind of upheaval and violence described by Jesus in the Gospel: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven….You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.” (Luke 21:10-11, 16) Whenever Christians have find themselves in a place of chaos and violence, it has always been tempting to fixate on Jesus’ predictions for the end-times, predictions of violence and destruction; but is that what we are really called to do? As we gather this morning there seems to be a confluence of events which meet around this issue, this question of how we are called to behave as Christians in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty attendant with fundamental shifts or changes.

St Margaret of Scotland (whose feast we celebrate Tuesday) was the wife of Macbeth’s successor, Malcolm, and thus successor herself to Lady Macbeth as Scotland’s queen. Margaret was an Anglo-Saxon princess who due to the dynastic struggles in England, was born in exile in Hungary. As a child, she was brought to England only to face the upheaval of the Norman Conquest, surviving by fleeing to Scotland. A faithful daughter of the Church, Jesus’ words must have more than once echoed through her mind: “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom”.

We also commemorate today the consecration of Samuel Seabury, first bishop of our Episcopal Church, consecrated. He lived through the turmoil of the American War of Independence and experienced first-hand the animosity and division it caused in the colonial Anglican Church; but also deep divisions among friends, relations and families as individuals took sides in the physical and ideological struggle for independence. Undoubtedly Jesus’ words must have crossed his mind: “You will be betrayed by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends.”

Now we all know that the Kirkin’ o’ the Tartan is an American invention, dating from the time of the Second World War when the Rev’d Peter Marshall was holding prayer services to benefit the British War Relief. However, it tries to make a connection with a terrible time in Scottish history when, after the unsuccessful Jacobite Uprising in the mid-18th century, the English Parliament banned wearing tartan, speaking Gaelic, Scottish music, dancing, or playing the pipes. Punishment for transgression could entail imprisonment or transportation. It caused a particular kind of cultural dis-integration whose effects would be felt years to come, and threatened an entire way of life, particularly in the Highlands. Those who knew their Bible might have reflected on Jesus’ words: “They will arrest you and persecute you….You will be brought before kings and governors.”

Certainly these words of Jesus must resonate in the hearts and minds of all Christians who find themselves living in turmoil and social upheaval. While for the less nuanced their engagement with these words in time of crisis produces a simplistic conviction that the “end is nigh”; for others, Jesus’ predictions are tempered by his advice: “Beware that you are not led astray”, and by his promise of “words and wisdom” in the those times of crisis. He does not suggest we should ignore the seriousness of the situation, but rather that we understand it for what it really is, never allowing ourselves or our imagination or fears to get the best of us, that is, lead us astray. In the time of crisis we do not need doom-sayers, but people who can open themselves to the words of God in wisdom, who can open themselves up to what the Holy Spirit may be calling us to do. At the very least, in times of crisis, we cannot allow the situations in which we find ourselves to define us, to make us betray our principles or to make us lose hope.

If St Margaret, Samuel Seabury and the outlawed highlanders knew their Bibles – knew Jesus’ predictions of the end times – they also listened to his advice not to lose their sense of perspective, and acted on his promise of wisdom. In the midst of the social chaos in the Scotland of her time, Margaret did not simply resign herself to the possibility of the end of the world, but instead she committed her efforts not only to the reformation of the church in Scotland which had fallen into many careless practices, but also to the founding of schools, hospitals and orphanages, as well as using her influence to improve the quality of life among the highland clans. She worked for the improvement of conditions, and for the a new social order which reflected God’s love more closely. Wars and rumours of war did not distract her from the real work of being a Christian. Equally, Samuel Seabury who while throughout the war remained a loyalist and served as chaplain to the British Army, at the war’s end remained in America and worked to build the Church here. He struggled to reconcile families and communities in the new United States. Subsequently, he was named to be our first bishop; but because he could not swear allegiance to the crown could not be consecrated by any English bishop. He was instead consecrated by bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He did not accept the divisions between people as merely a “sign of the times”, but prayed and worked so that God’s words and reconciling wisdom might be manifested in the young country and our own Episcopal Church. He knew that division could not be the defining narrative. The Highlanders too in the face of the Acts of Proscription did not simply accept them as indicating the “end times”, but discerned words and wisdom to survive and to maintain their customs in new and un-orthodox ways. They brought those customs to the places they immigrated. The fact that we are here today in Hanford are celebrating the Kirkin’ o’ the Tartan, and indeed that it was created at all many years after the greatest waves of Scottish immigration, is witness to that.

The witches in Macbeth are there to represent the disintegration of human society, they foretell destruction; but destruction does not have the final word and the virtuous characters in the play are able eventually to steer the state to a safe place, a new place. Jesus too speaks of destruction in the gospels, but unlike the witches he offers a way through, and a hope for the future. “By endurance”, he says to his followers, “you will gain your souls.” A crisis, whether in our lives, our society or the wider world does not signify the end of things, and Jesus rightly warns us of making that simplistic connection. It does call us to act with wisdom and listen to how God may be working, what words God may be offering. In the end the call of the Christian is somehow to endure and through enduring bring some kind of transformation, effect something truly new and hopeful. What we learn from Margaret, Seabury, the Highland clans, and most especially from Jesus is that we are not ultimately defined by the crises of our lives, but by how we engage with and react to them, by what we create out of them, by how we listen to the voice of God as we struggle with them, and by how we endure to “sing…a new song.”

Pentecost 22: All is Grace, All is Gift

2010-10-26T09:32:00.001-07:00

Sirach 35:12-17
Psalm 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18.9-14

Finding ourselves in the midst of our stewardship campaign, the passage from the Hebrew Scriptures seems tailor-fit for purpose: “Give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford”; and with its promises of sevenfold repayment, it seems designed for a parish pledge drive. All that notwithstanding, I found myself drawn to Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector, of the righteous man and the sinner. The passage from Sirach is certainly refreshing in its stark simplicity: give to God, because God has given to you; and remember there are rewards – tangible rewards – for doing so. On the other hand (as is so often the case), Jesus’ parable speaks less directly and yet challenges us more powerfully. He challenges us not only with what it means to be generous, but with what it means to be a person of a generous spirit. He not only challenges us with what it means to be grateful, but what it means to be grace-ful. Most of all, he exposes all of our machinations of pretended thanksgiving, of pretended vulnerability, of pretended dependence, highlighting what it actually means to stand naked before God, just as we are “without one plea”, as the old hymn goes.

Not surprisingly, the historical anti-Judaism of the Church has interpreted the figure of the Pharisee as representing Judaism as a whole. But that is a cheap and dangerous piece of scapegoating. The Pharisee is any of us and all of us. He is all of us when we get a cheap religious or spiritual thrill about simply following rules for their own sake. He is all of us when we confuse good fortune with the produce of our efforts, and then give ourselves license to look down our noses at others less fortunate. He is all of us who think we can stand before God with credentials – acts of piety, social success, even tithing. He is all of us who are unwilling to stand naked before God and with the tax-collector say: “God, be merciful to be a sinner.” Remember, being a sinner does not mean we are constitutionally corrupt or evil – that is what the self-righteous would have us believe – but simply that we miss the mark; that, as Paul writes to the Romans, we “all short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and that we always stand in need of God’s grace. Accepting ourselves as sinners, in this sense, also means we understand that we are not in control, we are not in charge, that all things are God’s and that ultimately we need not and cannot stand before God with any credentials of righteousness whatsoever. All is grace. All is grace.

All is gift. That is the cosmic economy; and if you are wondering what all this has to do with stewardship – then it is this, this idea of the cosmic, the divine economy in which we know everything, everything as gracious gift. When we see our world and our lives through the lens of this cosmic economy we live in the reality that God is the fountainhead of all that is good in our lives. When we really believe and trust in that truth, we are freed to live into the heart of what Jesus lived. We can dare to love our enemies, because of how much we know that God loves us. We can stop with judgement and condemnation, because we know – we really know – that we always fall short of the glory of God ourselves, and yet that God always invites us into and embraces us in that glory. We can stop creating victims, stop playing the “blame game”. We can forgive, because we recognise how profoundly included and forgiven we have been in God’s love; and not because we love God – not because of anything we have done – but because God loves us. (cf. 1 John 4:10) And we can give; give without payment and without expectations of return, because everything we are and ever will be, everything we have and may ever have is really God’s. All is gift, and in that truth we can stand naked before God.

I know that as we journey through our stewardship campaign, and as I stand here I should perhaps be offering a theological rationale for tithing, providing you with clear biblical rules about its meaning and how to accomplish it, perhaps even say something about your obligation to maintain the life and witness of the Church. All that is possibly true and quite possibly important. But it’s not me. You see, the self-righteous words of the Pharisee play on my mind: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” (Luke 18:11-12) Knowing and acting on the rules of tithing and the rules of religious observance did not transform him in any way to be more like the God of compassion and salvation revealed in the Scriptures. In fact, he used it to justify himself before God and over others. Simply knowing and acting on the rules of religious observance transforms no one, and ultimately that is what the Church should be about – the difficult and challenging work of transforming our lives in imitation of Christ’s; the vulnerable – and yes humiliating – work of standing naked before God, and enabling our sisters and brothers to do the same. As the Church we should be about incarnating the truth that all is gift and all is grace. Conventional stewardship is important, but not in isolation; and keeping the doors open without a view to the real work of the Church will leave us no better, and perhaps worse, than the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. Without real transformation into the cosmic economy, without a real appreciation that all is gift, without a willingness to stand naked before God, we human beings have an innate inclination to use anything we do to justify our self-righteousness and superiority over others. Solvency matters little if we fall into that trap.

By all means, as you pray over your giving I hope you will be influenced by the words from Sirach “Give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford”. But, more importantly, I hope that you will commit yourself to the deeper and more fundamental vision of being transformed by the dynamics of the cosmic economy. I hope that as a community we will be transformed into a people who know and experience all things as gift, all things as grace, all things as God’s; and that we can have the courage to live and to give out of that reality. I hope that we can do this, because that is what we say we believe, it is what we have “signed up for”, as it were; but also it is a message our broken world needs to hear: all is grace, all is gift and we can stand before God naked without credentials and without justification, loved and redeemed. And bearing that message is perhaps the most important work of stewardship to which we are called.

Pentecost 21: Wrestling with Angels and Demons

2010-10-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Genesis 32.22-31
Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3.14-4.5
Luke 18.1-8

“Theology originates in pain...Its locus is in suffering.” So writes the theologian Dorothee Sölle. It is the times of greatest suffering or disaster that beg the most difficult questions about who God is; and it is in the difficult crossroads of our lives that we must look closely at who we are and what we are, struggling with our very selves. In today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures Jacob finds himself at such a crossroad. Jacob has cheated his brother Esau from his inheritance by tricking his blind father, thus bringing on himself a legacy of deception and manipulation, but also of success. Now, the night before his first reunion with Esau since he left home, he finds himself wealthy, married to (among others) the woman he loves, and with the promise of a great nation as his posterity. However, the outward trappings of success, rarely bring with them genuine self-knowledge and inner peace and we can only surmise the doubts that crossed his mind as he anticipated and even dreaded the meeting with Esau: “What will he say to me? What will I say to him? How can I explain what I did and why I did it? Should I blame our mother who pushed my hand to cheat him? What does my willingness to prosper at my brother’s expense say about me? What kind of a person am I?” It is in this context that any understanding can come from Jacob’s wrestling with the ish, the man, in the Genesis narrative. In the struggle, Jacob comes to terms with who he is and emerges from it changed, a new person, carrying with him still the evidence of his struggle.

Although the Hebrew calls Jacob’s opponent clearly an ish, a man, the tradition has interpreted him as an angel; and yet the setting of the passage almost seems to allude to his being some kind demon. Whatever Jacob wrestled with, it is clear that he wrestled himself; with the angels and demons in himself; with his history: his deceptions and successes. He wrestled with Jacob the trickster and Jacob the would-be patriarch. And he wrestled all the night long, until daybreak.

We can no more ignore the assaults of the crises of our lives than Jacob could ignore the man who attacked him. At these crossroads we meet our own men, women, angels, and demons; and, as a people of the living God, must struggle with them and see in them ourselves. If salvation is to have any meaning at all, it must speak to a vision of wholeness and liberation, ridding itself of pie-in-the-sky platitudes. Salvation is that vision of a humanity transformed by the power of God to live a life of wholeness and integration. It does not come without struggle; indeed, it is in the struggle that we take steps towards it and that God comes to meet us. We must like Jacob, grab onto our own pasts, our failures, our fears, and our successes; grab onto our demons and our angels, wrestle with them, name them, own them as ourselves, and then begin to discern in them the face of God.

The Chinese character for crisis is a combination of two characters, the one for danger and the one for opportunity. Every crisis, every crossroad in our lives is indeed fraught with dangers — dangers that can drown us, that can overwhelm us; but they are also opportunities. In the crossroads, the crises, of our lives can be discovered marvellous invitations from God. With God’s grace we can be moved to examine ourselves honestly and begin to see ourselves for what we are and who we are; to see the good and the bad, the angels and the demons; not to condemn ourselves, but to know ourselves and allow ourselves to move on, not leaving behind any part of who we are or have been, but allowing those things to be transformed, transfigured. In this way we receive their blessing; we are blessed and with them are brought into that place where God calls us; down that continuing road to ourselves, to our centre, and eventually to another crossroad.

The encounters at the crossroads can be painful, even crippling; and in the crises of our lives we are dealt harsh blows, not only by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but sometimes even more by the discoveries of our own soul searching and examination. As one of my theologocal college lecturers once said, “The kindly light which beckons embarrasses profoundly.” The angels and demons we encounter not only wrestle with us, but wound us, put our bones out of joint. Yet an unwillingness to engage with the pain of who we are is unworthy of a people who believe and trust in the living God. The scars of our wrestling do not go away, but like wounds of Jesus himself are changed and glorified; and while like Jacob we limp away, we also know that we have been changed, called by a new name and that in that struggle to see ourselves as God sees us we “have seen God face to face.”(Genesis 32.30)

This is the possibility that God lays open for us in every crisis, to become more fully that person which we were created to be from the beginning. It is in the crises of our lives that we are given the opportunity to grow. This is not to say that God is some cosmic parent who punishes us “for our own good”; but rather to affirm the central mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus – that God is a God who makes good on disasters, that for God there is nothing which God can not or will not use to declare the divine glory, to proclaim God’s own saving power. We can allow the disasters and crises of our lives to cripple our souls and embitter our minds, or we can discern in the midst of their wreckage God’s still, small voice inviting us to become co-workers with him in our healing and wholeness, in our redemption, and in that of the world itself. This is a noble calling. It is the calling and mission of every Christian, because it is the calling and mission of Christ himself.

We must all come to our own Jabbocks, our own fords and crossroads and enter our own dark nights of struggle and examination. We will wrestle and be wounded. But if we are honest, if we do not shy away from the struggle, we shall receive a blessing, we shall be be transformed and called by a new name; we shall arrive at our own Peniel, knowing that in the very midst of our struggle and discernment, we too like Jacob “have seen God face to face and our life has been preserved.” Amen

Pentecost 20: Healing or Salvation?

2010-10-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

2 Kings 5.1-3, 7-15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17.11-19

Everyone wants miracles. We want the fantastic. But if the Scriptures teaches us anything, it seems that salvation — wholeness — happens within the context of the ordinary, the everyday, and the profoundly human; and because we look for the glory of salvation among fantastic and extraordinary events, when it does occur it can take us by surpise, it happens when and how we least expect it or want to expect it. This was Naaman’s problem — that great commander of the army of Aram, that great man in high favour with his master, the king of Aram. He wanted to to be healed (that is what salvation literally means), but had already some preconceived and quite clear ideas about how it should happen. And yet, at each step Scripture relates how his healing happens hardly in the ways he expects. It happens within the context of very ordinary events and is brought about by the agency of some rather un-extraordinary people. The first suggestion that he should seek healing from the “prophet who is in Samaria” comes from a slave, a young captive girl from the land of Israel. She is someone who, to a great man like Naaman, would be worth less than nothing. This slave-girl serves Namaan’s wife, and the writer of the second book of Kings tells us that the girl did not speak to Naaman directly, but made the suggestion that he visit Samaria to her mistress, his wife. Naaman listens to the suggestion and goes to Samaria, undoubtedly after a good deal of convincing from his wife; he would not have accepted the young slave’s suggestions readily or very willingly. He does go, but with his pre-conceived notions of how “these things” happen: “He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments” (2 Kings 5.5b) in order to pay the prophet. He goes also expecting to undergo the magical ministrations of the man of God by which he will be healed of his affliction; but this is not what he gets. All he is asked to do is the very ordinary act of washing in the river, probably alongside other bathers and even people doing their laundry. He is angered by this, indeed goes into a rage, and is only convinced to do it by his own servants. He washes and is healed of his leprosy. He tries to pay the prophet for his services, but the prophet will not accept any of his money or gifts. At every step of the way it is the ordinary human relationships and ordinary actions which effected his salvation, his healing, quite contrary to his expectations of how ‘these things’ should happen; and in the end, not only is his physical condition transformed, but his spiritual as well. He says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” (2 Kings 5.15b) One is left wondering, which is the greater miracle. A man healed of leprosy or a man whose world view is changed? A man whose flesh is transformed to be like the flesh of a young boy, or man whose mind is renewed so that he is able to realise that he and his ways are not the centre of the universe?

The fantastic does not really transform people where it matters — within. Had the prophet merely done what Naaman expected — a fantastic, miraculous act — he would have been healed of his leprosy, yes, but would that deeper transformation have occurred? Would his healing actually have been salvation? Perhaps, it is one of the reasons that Jesus’ miracles are presented in relatively unspectacular ways: a women touches the hem of Jesus’ garment and is healed, loaves and fishes are multiplied in their being simply shared, and, as we hear today, lepers are cleansed as they journey on the road. Like in Naaman’s situation, so in each of these it is the inner transformation which is the greater miracle. It is the woman’s transformation into a person of courage willing to reach out for her healing in the person of Jesus. It is the disciples’ learning the importance of risk and the sharing of even the little that they have. And it is that one leper’s renewal of spirit which allows him to become a person who learns to give thanks. Like Naaman’s story of healing these stories of Jesus’ miracles happen within the context of very ordinary circumstances, but bring about extraordinary transformation.

But why should this be so? Well, it is because simple magic does not form us into better people. Namaan became a better person — one who learned that the world did not necessarily run by his rules — not because he was healed of his leprosy, but because he was healed of his leprosy in particular way. He had to listen to those around him: his wife, the slave-girl, his servants; and he had to change his perceptions of how things work. He had to pay attention to the ordinary; and it was only by things happening in unexpected ways that he was able to say, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” (2 Kings 5.15b) By way of the ordinary his entire world-view was able to be transformed. Not only was his body healed, but his mind was renewed. So what we come to witness in this story of Naaman is really two kinds of transformation, two kinds of healing. It is the same which we witness in the story of the ten lepers. All are healed, but only one returns to give thanks. All are healed, but only one is transformed. And perhaps it was the every ordinariness of his healing that allowed him to reflect on its deeper meaning for him. Perhaps it was the very ordinary activity of walking to the Temple that allowed at least one of those healed to reflect on the meaning of healing, wholeness, salvation and therefore to return and give thanks. As Jesus says to him, “...your faith has made you well” (Luke 17.19), one gets the feeling that he is talking about more than just the man’s leprosy. Jesus seems to be saying the this man was been made well and made whole not so much because his leprosy disappeared but because, unlike his fellows, he learned to be thankful.

The real miracles in our lives may not be the healings, they may not be the answer to our prayers in the way we expect them to be answered. They may be the transformation of our lives and spirits by close attention to the ordinary, to the little details of our lives, to the voice of God in the unexpected. Had Naaman not listened to the ordinary, had he continued to relate to his world only in terms of what he expected, neither would his body have been healed or his mind renewed. Had the leper said to himself, “What is the point of going to see the priests? I am not yet healed.”, his own journey of transformation would never have been initiated. We too, if we only look for things to work or happen the way we expect them may miss our own redemption. As Christians we are an incarnational people. We believe that God’s fullest revelation of God’s self, God’s greatest work of salvation, was made manifest to us in the life, death and vindication of an ordinary Jewish carpenter turned rabbi. Perhaps some people dismissed him and his message simply because he was so ordinary, so common you might say; indeed as some of his contemporaries observed: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1.46) However, it is in that rather ordinary life each of us believe we discover our salvation, and ultimately it is our faith in that ordinary life which renews us and makes us whole.

Pentecost 19: Unquantifiable Faith

2010-10-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-10
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

Undoubtedly the insights of the scientific revolution, of the scientific method and of science generally have brought considerable benefit to humankind. However, one of its unfortunate consequences has been how many Christians feel the need to defend religious faith by scientific principles, and that of course will never do. While science deals with those aspects of our world which can be definitively verified, quantified and observably qualified, religious faith deals with what which Paul Tillich calls “ultimate concerns”, and as Oliver Thomas says in our Adult Sunday School study book, with “abstract philosophical questions such as the nature of life and why we are here.” Any conclusions we may come to about these latter will hardly hold up under the methods of science, and they were never meant to. Lamentably, we find presently so many people, so many Christians, trying to prove religious truths using scientific methods, and it inevitably makes them look ridiculous because religious truth is far more elusive and subtle than is scientific truth. While the latter depends on facts, the former depends on faith, and here we come to the crux of the issue for many Christians today: the meaning of faith and belief in a world whose primary paradigm is one in which the only things accepted as true are those which can be objectively verified. What does faith mean when the overriding world-world view is one of quantifiable facts and conclusions? And does faith have anything to say to that world?

In the first instance, faith is much more about trust than about it is about clear, certain and provable knowledge. Look at the reading from the prophet Habakkuk. Things seem pretty bad as he depicts the Babylonians’ brutality in overrunning Jerusalem, and yet his trust – his faith – is unwavering: “There is still a vision for the appointed time.” Notice also how Paul in the midst of his trials writes to Timothy: “I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 1:12, 13) Again, here we get the sense of trusting in the general goodness and redemption of the world, even when in the midst of trials and suffering; a sense of trusting even beyond that which is immediately observable and quantifiable. Sometimes that trusting is more difficult than at others; and sometimes the act of faith is one of wresting or constructing hope and possible meaning out of some pretty horrific situations. In the face of destruction and violence, when “the law becomes slack,...justice never prevails…and judgement comes forth perverted” (Habakkuk 1:4), the stance of faith is that which never gives up on the possibility of redemption, while at the same time never allowing the trials and tragedies of life – the simple facts, as it were – to undermine our own inherent goodness; as the psalmist writes: “refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” (Psalms 37:9) The scientific enterprise is about knowledge, clear and certain; the life of faith is about trust, about the discernment and even construction of hope. In any disaster, science may be able to tell us the number of wounded and dead, but only faith will enable us to give meaning to their struggle, their suffering, their deaths; and when none is easily forthcoming faith allows us to trust that meaning can eventually be discerned as we continue forward in hope.

Faith is also profoundly about relationship. It is one thing to believe that God exists, and quite another to believe in God. The first is an assent to a theological principle which treats God as an object of our credibility, the second is the declaration of a relationship. The Latin word credo, the word translated in the Nicene Creed as “I believe”. connotes much more than simple belief, it connotes also “I commit myself to”, “I trust in”. Christian faith is not just assent to a particular set of principles, or a detatched belief in the Bible, or the Church or even in God. Christian faith always suggests an ongoing, deepening, challenging and above all personal relationship with the divine, and with the divine processes and purposes; and by extension with other human beings, indeed with all of creation. At its foundation is not facts or even duties, but love and it always envelops us in a network of love and solidarity. Christian faith in God, that is relationship with God, is never privatised, never expressed in isolation. Paul highlights this to Timothy as he commends him for his faith, “a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” (2 Timothy 1:5) When Christians talk about faith it is always in this sense, and like all relationships in our lives it shapes and changes us; it is not always easily explainable, neither is it easily quantifiable. If you are anything like me you know how futile words can be in expressing how we really feel about those closest and dearest to us; moreover how useless it is to try to measure the extent of our devotion and trust, how ridiculous it would be to objectively tally that feeling of comfortable familiarity we have in their presence. Indeed by trying to do so we innately know that we do the relationship an injustice, and somehow even cheapen it.

As many of you know (and perhaps lament), I rarely tell stories when I preach, but I want to share one with you today. It is a true story told me by a friend of mine about a friend of his. This friend of his was once in a terrible accident in which his spine was broken. Due to the wonders of modern science and the skill of his doctors his life was saved, but his path to healing was long and painful, not to mention the uncomfortable and limiting body brace he had to wear during the entirety of his recovery. When finally the brace came off, the doctor assured him of a full return to health, but warned him that if he should ever feel even the slightest bit dizzy in the next few weeks we was to lie down immediately wherever he found himself. As chance would have it, soon after this warning he was crossing a street in central Fresno and he did in fact feel dizzy and so right there midway between one corner and the next he lay down in the road. Undoubtedly, people thought him mad and as the light changed for cars to move across the intersection people became belligerent and verbally abusive. “Are you crazy you stupid old man. Get up, you damn idiot!” were perhaps the less colourful of expressions directed at hime. As he lay there, he rememebered praying: “Lord, I do not know, I do not understand why this is happening, but please do not let it lessons be lost on me.” This story goes to the central meaning of Christian faith; faith which can bear not knowing, but still trusts that there can be meaning in the most terrible and non-sensical of situations, while at the same time not needing to retaliate or become embittered. It is the kind of faith which, as it is built on relationship, can trust that God is there close by, that God is involved and that something of what God wishes to convey to us can be glimpsed in the events of our lives.

The dynamics which faith address cannot be proved or disproved by scientific method. Indeed, the dynamics of faith are oftentimes challenging and hardly straightforward, so it is partially understandable why many Christians attempt to cram them within a more predictable and containable model – that of the scientific method. However, when they do so they limit the real power of faith to get us in touch with truth more vibrant than can be conveyed by simple, straightforward facts; ineffable truths revealed in the vulnerability of relationship, as well as in the inexplainable human drive to trust and to discern redemptive meaning. As Oliver Thomas observes “science helps us to understand the world around us, religion [or faith] helps us to make sense of it.” I would add that these two realities, these two modes of apprehending truth, are confused at our peril and to our detriment.