JESUS SPEAKS WITH great dignity, passion, eloquence, power and yet restraint as he prepares his friends for his departure.
He prays for protective unity, almost certainly not envisaging this day’s multiplicity of denominations.
But our unity is in the Risen One at the centre of a circle on whose circumference we each stand, seeing Jesus from different angles, some slightly, some vastly different.
Each view is valid—but only one Jesus holds the centre!
Let us remember to keep our focus on Jesus at all times, in all places!
Given the Holy Spirit as our constant Helper, it ought to be a doddle!
Friday, May 13, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
BEING
1st May 2005 : Easter 6 : Year A
Acts 17:22-31 : 1 Peter 3:8-22 : John 14:15-21
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
We can tell that Pentecost is coming back to us because our Gospel readings are not especially subtle about revealing the designs of our lectionary makers!
This lack of subtlety is a good thing because it helps us focus on several aspects of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's relationship with Jesus, and God the Father, which tend to become buried in the excitement about the pyrotechnic antics unleashed on the first day of Pentecost experienced by the followers of Jesus.
John's descriptions of the Spirit, whom he calls in Greek the PARACLETE, and whom we encounter as Another Advocate in many of our English bibles, are almost prosaic compared to the material in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
For instance, these strange words, paraclete and advocate, simply announce the continuing presence of Jesus in another form with his disciples. Both words essentially derive from the same idea. The Greek word, paraclete, comes from words translatable as called alongside. Very appropriate for a Being who clearly is meant to be our helper in living according to the commandments of Jesus.
Advocate, on the other hand, comes from Latin words translating as called TOWARDS, again quite appropriate in the context of a community seeking to fulfill Jesus' commandments.
But notice that Jesus speaks of ANOTHER Advocate. Not THE Advocate, but ANOTHER Advocate. Meaning a Being who in terms of function and action is same as Jesus himself.
We so often think of the Spirit in other-worldly terms, sometimes cosmological, sometimes supernatural, without realising that Jesus sends the Spirit from God-the-Father quite simply to be and do for us exactly what he would do and be if he were physically standing and walking beside us. It is legitimate to think "Spirit" and think "Jesus" in the same thought!
This makes perfect sense given Jesus' promises elsewhere to remain with the faithful despite his lack of physical presence. Even though, especially in John's gospel, Jesus returns to the One who sent him, he seeks to ensure the viability of the mission by sending, not a trusted and able lieutenant, but exactly the same Being, but in a form whereby that Being - the Holy Spirit - can remain, not only with the community of faith but with and, extraordinarily, WITHIN the individuals of that community.
This, Jesus tells us, is how we know the Spirit. Because the Spirit remains with us and IN us. NOT, interestingly, because we DO specific wonders, though Jesus doesn't exclude wonders in the context of his ministry lived out in our own time and place. But here the Spirit - called the Spirit of TRUTH - is about BEING more than DOING. It is a BEING in the context of keeping Jesus' commandments, and the overriding, over-arching Commandment, the so-called New Commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us, the reality of which reveals that we are indeed Jesus' disciples.
Thus, when we are able to live the same love for ourselves and each other and the multi-faceted poor as Jesus himself lived, then we know that this Spirit of truth is living and remaining within us.
The Spirit informs our actions not so much as an engine or dynamo separate from Jesus, but as the Being who helps us, more and more, to BE Jesus for all who are lost, oppressed, living in desperation, excluded from society. Thus, although we customarily - and rightly - speak of acting "in the power of the Spirit", we are really doing no more than living the life Jesus himself would be living if he were walking down Lake Road today or hopping on a train at Challis or cruising down Champion Drive.
But of course that NO MORE THAN is pretty powerful in itself.
And so we find Paul in Athens preaching to people - powerful, intelligent, savvy folk - who believe in numerous gods, using terms of reference his audience fully understands, to share the message of Jesus, just as Jesus himself used the life and culture of his own earthly time and place to speak to the crowds.
And Peter expounds the virtues of non-violence just as Jesus taught and lived it, reminding us again that our faith, our ability to believe and to live as Jesus lived surpasses our external experience of the world.
Our ability to be people of faith is not dependent on whether this one or that one is nice to us; on whether we have money in the bank, petrol in the car, food on the table or any kind of sense that the world is being fair or just to us.
We can continue to be followers of Jesus, indeed with the Spirit within us we show that we ARE Jesus by claiming and living our faith in the Living God DESPITE ANYTHING the world catapults in our direction. How often we meet people who dismiss faith among the seriously ill as some kind of psychological sop, a vain mind-game conjured up as the last resort when the chemicals and the scalpels and the radiowaves have failed. And yet how often we use mere circumstance as an excuse for putting our faith on the back-burner!
The Spirit of truth living and remaining within us teaches and, as John will later record, reminds us of Jesus and his words and works. The Spirit empowers us to live with and through our circumstances - whether illness or the threat of closure or anything else - because the Spirit helps us to see these things as Jesus sees them - and to deal with them as Jesus deals with them.
Meanwhile, back at the Areopagus, we find a place dedicated, by the time Paul got there, to trying murder cases, with religion as a safe sideline. Ironically, truth very much exercised the minds of the council members of the Areopagus. Paul revealed a truth, thanks, we may safely suppose, to the Spirit of truth, which the Areopagus had scarcely considered.
Let us not tut-tut too loudly or smirk too noticeably in the direction of supposedly intelligent people who showed their naivete and anxiety by covering all bases with the shrine of the Unknown God.
Instead, let us reflect seriously on whether the God we worship, the God who informs our own lives, is known to us through our prayers and worship and study and fellowship and ministry. Let us ensure that we too are not unwittingly worshipping an Unknown God by revealing in our thoughts and words and deeds - or lack of them! - that the One we claim to worship and follow is little or nothing like the Jesus who sent us Another Advocate.
By our actions towards one another and ourselves and our community, what do we reveal? That we are impostors or deluded? Or that because we do what Jesus does, then the Spirit of truth indeed dwells and remains within us?
Acts 17:22-31 : 1 Peter 3:8-22 : John 14:15-21
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
We can tell that Pentecost is coming back to us because our Gospel readings are not especially subtle about revealing the designs of our lectionary makers!
This lack of subtlety is a good thing because it helps us focus on several aspects of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's relationship with Jesus, and God the Father, which tend to become buried in the excitement about the pyrotechnic antics unleashed on the first day of Pentecost experienced by the followers of Jesus.
John's descriptions of the Spirit, whom he calls in Greek the PARACLETE, and whom we encounter as Another Advocate in many of our English bibles, are almost prosaic compared to the material in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
For instance, these strange words, paraclete and advocate, simply announce the continuing presence of Jesus in another form with his disciples. Both words essentially derive from the same idea. The Greek word, paraclete, comes from words translatable as called alongside. Very appropriate for a Being who clearly is meant to be our helper in living according to the commandments of Jesus.
Advocate, on the other hand, comes from Latin words translating as called TOWARDS, again quite appropriate in the context of a community seeking to fulfill Jesus' commandments.
But notice that Jesus speaks of ANOTHER Advocate. Not THE Advocate, but ANOTHER Advocate. Meaning a Being who in terms of function and action is same as Jesus himself.
We so often think of the Spirit in other-worldly terms, sometimes cosmological, sometimes supernatural, without realising that Jesus sends the Spirit from God-the-Father quite simply to be and do for us exactly what he would do and be if he were physically standing and walking beside us. It is legitimate to think "Spirit" and think "Jesus" in the same thought!
This makes perfect sense given Jesus' promises elsewhere to remain with the faithful despite his lack of physical presence. Even though, especially in John's gospel, Jesus returns to the One who sent him, he seeks to ensure the viability of the mission by sending, not a trusted and able lieutenant, but exactly the same Being, but in a form whereby that Being - the Holy Spirit - can remain, not only with the community of faith but with and, extraordinarily, WITHIN the individuals of that community.
This, Jesus tells us, is how we know the Spirit. Because the Spirit remains with us and IN us. NOT, interestingly, because we DO specific wonders, though Jesus doesn't exclude wonders in the context of his ministry lived out in our own time and place. But here the Spirit - called the Spirit of TRUTH - is about BEING more than DOING. It is a BEING in the context of keeping Jesus' commandments, and the overriding, over-arching Commandment, the so-called New Commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us, the reality of which reveals that we are indeed Jesus' disciples.
Thus, when we are able to live the same love for ourselves and each other and the multi-faceted poor as Jesus himself lived, then we know that this Spirit of truth is living and remaining within us.
The Spirit informs our actions not so much as an engine or dynamo separate from Jesus, but as the Being who helps us, more and more, to BE Jesus for all who are lost, oppressed, living in desperation, excluded from society. Thus, although we customarily - and rightly - speak of acting "in the power of the Spirit", we are really doing no more than living the life Jesus himself would be living if he were walking down Lake Road today or hopping on a train at Challis or cruising down Champion Drive.
But of course that NO MORE THAN is pretty powerful in itself.
And so we find Paul in Athens preaching to people - powerful, intelligent, savvy folk - who believe in numerous gods, using terms of reference his audience fully understands, to share the message of Jesus, just as Jesus himself used the life and culture of his own earthly time and place to speak to the crowds.
And Peter expounds the virtues of non-violence just as Jesus taught and lived it, reminding us again that our faith, our ability to believe and to live as Jesus lived surpasses our external experience of the world.
Our ability to be people of faith is not dependent on whether this one or that one is nice to us; on whether we have money in the bank, petrol in the car, food on the table or any kind of sense that the world is being fair or just to us.
We can continue to be followers of Jesus, indeed with the Spirit within us we show that we ARE Jesus by claiming and living our faith in the Living God DESPITE ANYTHING the world catapults in our direction. How often we meet people who dismiss faith among the seriously ill as some kind of psychological sop, a vain mind-game conjured up as the last resort when the chemicals and the scalpels and the radiowaves have failed. And yet how often we use mere circumstance as an excuse for putting our faith on the back-burner!
The Spirit of truth living and remaining within us teaches and, as John will later record, reminds us of Jesus and his words and works. The Spirit empowers us to live with and through our circumstances - whether illness or the threat of closure or anything else - because the Spirit helps us to see these things as Jesus sees them - and to deal with them as Jesus deals with them.
Meanwhile, back at the Areopagus, we find a place dedicated, by the time Paul got there, to trying murder cases, with religion as a safe sideline. Ironically, truth very much exercised the minds of the council members of the Areopagus. Paul revealed a truth, thanks, we may safely suppose, to the Spirit of truth, which the Areopagus had scarcely considered.
Let us not tut-tut too loudly or smirk too noticeably in the direction of supposedly intelligent people who showed their naivete and anxiety by covering all bases with the shrine of the Unknown God.
Instead, let us reflect seriously on whether the God we worship, the God who informs our own lives, is known to us through our prayers and worship and study and fellowship and ministry. Let us ensure that we too are not unwittingly worshipping an Unknown God by revealing in our thoughts and words and deeds - or lack of them! - that the One we claim to worship and follow is little or nothing like the Jesus who sent us Another Advocate.
By our actions towards one another and ourselves and our community, what do we reveal? That we are impostors or deluded? Or that because we do what Jesus does, then the Spirit of truth indeed dwells and remains within us?
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
GREATER WORKS!
WE CAN OVERLOOK a seemingly outrageous statement Jesus slips in to this morning’s conversation—that we will do “greater works” than him—unless we understand greater as “more” rather than “superior”.
Of course we cannot perform superior acts!
But if we faithfully follow Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to guide and empower us we will continue to do God’s work through Jesus.
Jesus expresses his faith in our persevering long enough to out-number his deeds!
Those works of Jesus remain as necessary as ever.
What are we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, doing to add to their number? and how shall we continue to increase Jesus’ works?
Of course we cannot perform superior acts!
But if we faithfully follow Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to guide and empower us we will continue to do God’s work through Jesus.
Jesus expresses his faith in our persevering long enough to out-number his deeds!
Those works of Jesus remain as necessary as ever.
What are we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, doing to add to their number? and how shall we continue to increase Jesus’ works?
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
PROBLEM AND POTENTIAL
3rd April 2005 : Easter 2 : Year A
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 : 1 Peter 1:1-12 : John 20:19-31
In one of the typically-insightful, no-nonsense contemporary penitential liturgies of the Iona Community we find the following words:
It’s a negativity which plagues all humankind but certainly finds expression within the confines of the Church, which has an equally-weird talent for elevating dungeons of despair above ground-level and celebrating them as marvels.
Thus for centuries we’ve taken Thomas out of John, slandered him with an epithet which doesn’t even translate the scriptural text accurately, defamed both Tom and scripture by insisting that he performed certain unseemly acts for which no textual exists, and willfully ignored Tom’s explosive proclamation of faith in the risen Jesus – all in the name of assuaging our own failures of faith and faith-based action.
In other words, we’ve made Thomas a scapegoat – the one who carries our burden of guilt and shame, dumped onto his name just so that we can feel better about ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for feeling better about myself!
But the humungous problems with scapegoating are that it provides no more than a short-term solution, and it never successfully challenges us to change because scapegoating never addresses, let alone resolves, the deeper issues which cause those failures to begin with.
But perhaps the greatest problem with scapegoating is that it completely fails to understand the true nature of the Living God, revealed in and through Jesus, and especially in his resurrection.
The scapegoat notion certainly provides one answer to my longheld question why Tom gets dumped-on for demanding the same privilege accorded the quaking apostles holed upon behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews”, though it is better, more accurate and less anti-semitic to say “fear of the JUDAEANS”.
But until recently I’d never wondered what Thomas was doing? Why wasn't he with his knee-knocking chums? One suggestion is that perhaps he was already out in the field, doing the God-work, meeting the risen Jesus among the oppressed and marginalised, the people for whom Jesus worked so many deeds of love and peace and grace. Maybe he didn’t need the empirical evidence the way the others clearly did – for they didn’t believe until Jesus showed them his wounds …
Nor is it entirely improbable that Tom was trying to make good on his rash exhortation to “go to Jerusalem and die with [Jesus]”, spoken not long before the resuscitation of Lazarus.
Either way, Tommy Twinset didn’t die just then, and I admit it’s all speculation. But we DO know that he was NOT locked up with the disciples for fear of the Judaeans.
The point is, maybe Thomas had already understood the message and maybe THAT’s why he didn’t need the proofs. And maybe that lack of need informed his decision NOT to accept Jesus’ grisly invitation to finger the resurrectional wounds.
But it’s our weird talent for spotting the problem which seems to cause our failure to acknowledge and credit Tom’s subsequent explosion of the great proclamation – My Lord and my God! We won’t credit that because it’s not part of our experience: WE don’t say that about Jesus. … Because the scapegoat doesn’t do anything right or good. …Whereas, WE know about failed faith and Thomas looks fit for the part – the outsider (literally!), outspoken where we prefer to be taciturn, willing to express the unpopular opinion, ask the question we are too afraid to ask …
Which brings us back to negativity. We find it at home, at work, in the Church, in our parishes, in OUR Parish …
Scapegoating and negativity are of a kind because both work overtime at spotting problems and neither effectively propose solutions. LEAST OF ALL do they drop sweat looking for the potential. And both work in total ignorance of God’s way of love, peace and grace.
Remember last Sunday? We celebrated the resurrection in a particular way – and rightly we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, and certainly we’ll celebrate the resurrection in particular for a whole fifty-day period. We call it Easter, which isn’t about one day or a single event. It’s about an entire lifetime.
And that lifetime is lived within the mantle of the Living God who sed, Forget your scapegoats, forget your negativity, and most of all forget your shame and blame. Negativity sed, Jesus was crucified, he’s dead as a Dodo, ain’t no reversing that! And God sed, You forget the potential. I deal with life. I deal with peace, and with grace.
How is that we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, have forgotten that we now live our lives in the love, peace and grace of the Living God, who raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, and sought, not revenge and satisfaction, but people who would accept the revelation of love and peace and grace? How is it that we live and breathe the divine potential made real and shared with us through the Spirit whose name we bear, and yet we still dare to proclaim the gospel of shame and blame?
Is this God’s example? NO IT IS NOT!
As we stumble into one more Parish crisis we need as much as ever to grasp what the Living God does for us and use the potential dormant within us. Some of it happens, certainly. But more can happen. More NEEDS to happen. Unless, of course, we believe that we have no more of God’s work to do here. Unless, of course, we believe that we have successfully completed all of God’s work here. That no more lonely, abused, unemployed, despairing, suicidal, forgotten, unloved, uncared-for people exist within our boundaries and beyond …
If that’s the case let’s all go, like, Alleluia, dude! and rack off to another parish, where we can keep the great work happening.
If not, then it’s Potential Time, B2: welcome the new ideas; nurture the wackiest ones; question the soundest, most plausible ones without negating or destroying them. Search within our own store of potential even as we seek the potential in others’ suggestions.
Above all, live in the New World given us by resurrection. Love, peace, grace. Life, not death. Not problems, but potential waiting to be made real! After all, it’s not we who will act, but the Spirit of the Living God within us. Anyone have a problem with that? Or should I say, Let me know today all the potential you see in the glorious place we inhabit!
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 : 1 Peter 1:1-12 : John 20:19-31
In one of the typically-insightful, no-nonsense contemporary penitential liturgies of the Iona Community we find the following words:
God of all time, forgive us … our weird talent for spotting the problem before the potential …This “weird talent” is one part of what lies at the heart of the amorphous beast the intelligentsia in general and literati in particular call the “human condition”. In more common parlance we know this weird talent by the name Negativity.
It’s a negativity which plagues all humankind but certainly finds expression within the confines of the Church, which has an equally-weird talent for elevating dungeons of despair above ground-level and celebrating them as marvels.
Thus for centuries we’ve taken Thomas out of John, slandered him with an epithet which doesn’t even translate the scriptural text accurately, defamed both Tom and scripture by insisting that he performed certain unseemly acts for which no textual exists, and willfully ignored Tom’s explosive proclamation of faith in the risen Jesus – all in the name of assuaging our own failures of faith and faith-based action.
In other words, we’ve made Thomas a scapegoat – the one who carries our burden of guilt and shame, dumped onto his name just so that we can feel better about ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for feeling better about myself!
But the humungous problems with scapegoating are that it provides no more than a short-term solution, and it never successfully challenges us to change because scapegoating never addresses, let alone resolves, the deeper issues which cause those failures to begin with.
But perhaps the greatest problem with scapegoating is that it completely fails to understand the true nature of the Living God, revealed in and through Jesus, and especially in his resurrection.
The scapegoat notion certainly provides one answer to my longheld question why Tom gets dumped-on for demanding the same privilege accorded the quaking apostles holed upon behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews”, though it is better, more accurate and less anti-semitic to say “fear of the JUDAEANS”.
But until recently I’d never wondered what Thomas was doing? Why wasn't he with his knee-knocking chums? One suggestion is that perhaps he was already out in the field, doing the God-work, meeting the risen Jesus among the oppressed and marginalised, the people for whom Jesus worked so many deeds of love and peace and grace. Maybe he didn’t need the empirical evidence the way the others clearly did – for they didn’t believe until Jesus showed them his wounds …
Nor is it entirely improbable that Tom was trying to make good on his rash exhortation to “go to Jerusalem and die with [Jesus]”, spoken not long before the resuscitation of Lazarus.
Either way, Tommy Twinset didn’t die just then, and I admit it’s all speculation. But we DO know that he was NOT locked up with the disciples for fear of the Judaeans.
The point is, maybe Thomas had already understood the message and maybe THAT’s why he didn’t need the proofs. And maybe that lack of need informed his decision NOT to accept Jesus’ grisly invitation to finger the resurrectional wounds.
But it’s our weird talent for spotting the problem which seems to cause our failure to acknowledge and credit Tom’s subsequent explosion of the great proclamation – My Lord and my God! We won’t credit that because it’s not part of our experience: WE don’t say that about Jesus. … Because the scapegoat doesn’t do anything right or good. …Whereas, WE know about failed faith and Thomas looks fit for the part – the outsider (literally!), outspoken where we prefer to be taciturn, willing to express the unpopular opinion, ask the question we are too afraid to ask …
Which brings us back to negativity. We find it at home, at work, in the Church, in our parishes, in OUR Parish …
Scapegoating and negativity are of a kind because both work overtime at spotting problems and neither effectively propose solutions. LEAST OF ALL do they drop sweat looking for the potential. And both work in total ignorance of God’s way of love, peace and grace.
Remember last Sunday? We celebrated the resurrection in a particular way – and rightly we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, and certainly we’ll celebrate the resurrection in particular for a whole fifty-day period. We call it Easter, which isn’t about one day or a single event. It’s about an entire lifetime.
And that lifetime is lived within the mantle of the Living God who sed, Forget your scapegoats, forget your negativity, and most of all forget your shame and blame. Negativity sed, Jesus was crucified, he’s dead as a Dodo, ain’t no reversing that! And God sed, You forget the potential. I deal with life. I deal with peace, and with grace.
How is that we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, have forgotten that we now live our lives in the love, peace and grace of the Living God, who raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, and sought, not revenge and satisfaction, but people who would accept the revelation of love and peace and grace? How is it that we live and breathe the divine potential made real and shared with us through the Spirit whose name we bear, and yet we still dare to proclaim the gospel of shame and blame?
Is this God’s example? NO IT IS NOT!
As we stumble into one more Parish crisis we need as much as ever to grasp what the Living God does for us and use the potential dormant within us. Some of it happens, certainly. But more can happen. More NEEDS to happen. Unless, of course, we believe that we have no more of God’s work to do here. Unless, of course, we believe that we have successfully completed all of God’s work here. That no more lonely, abused, unemployed, despairing, suicidal, forgotten, unloved, uncared-for people exist within our boundaries and beyond …
If that’s the case let’s all go, like, Alleluia, dude! and rack off to another parish, where we can keep the great work happening.
If not, then it’s Potential Time, B2: welcome the new ideas; nurture the wackiest ones; question the soundest, most plausible ones without negating or destroying them. Search within our own store of potential even as we seek the potential in others’ suggestions.
Above all, live in the New World given us by resurrection. Love, peace, grace. Life, not death. Not problems, but potential waiting to be made real! After all, it’s not we who will act, but the Spirit of the Living God within us. Anyone have a problem with that? Or should I say, Let me know today all the potential you see in the glorious place we inhabit!
Saturday, March 26, 2005
THE GOD OF NON-VIOLENCE - Easter Sunday A
27th March 2005 : EASTER SUNDAY : Year A
9:30am
Acts 10:34-43 : Colossians 3:1-4 : Matthew 28:1-10
9:30am
Acts 10:34-43 : Colossians 3:1-4 : Matthew 28:1-10
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTI am indebted to the following source for insights into Acts 10:34-43 in particular:
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary
http://girardianlectionary.net/index.html
Rev. Paul John NuechterleinEspecially:
EASTER DAY -- YEAR A
Last revised: March 25, 2005
http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/easter-a.htm
One of the ironies of the Easter story is that the accounts of the reactions of the disciples are so thoroughly human …
Hang on a mo, I hear you say. Of course they’re human! What else could they be?
I’m glad you asked because resurrection, which is what this Easter business is about, also involves the Living God – intensely so! And the “Godness” of Easter is what challenges us humans and offers the way forward into something that is truly new and truly new life.
We may find it something of an embarrassing and awkward truism to say that God looks at this world and its people differently from humankind. We say it easily enough because it’s an easy-enough thing to say. But what are the implications of such a statement? And how do those implications impact on matters like the resurrection of Jesus and human behaviour – especially the kind of violence which killed Jesus, has plagued our world for all of recorded history and continues right now with little sign of stopping?
We see the human side of the matter clearly enough in Peter’s speech to Cornelius’ household. Peter, still a torah-abiding Jew as well as follower of Jesus, had required a little persuading by God to share the good news with these Gentiles. God had to remind him who was the boss and that the boss had the right to explain what the rules really meant.
But Peter, in addressing the Cornelian gathering, cannot move past the confrontational, antagonist language of Us versus Them:
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third
day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen
by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one
ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.
It’s the same line as Pete’s Pentecost preamble, which is even more aggressive and blaming:
"You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man
attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did
through him among you, as you yourselves know-- this man, handed over to you
according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and
killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having
freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.
These are early days for Peter and the Church. They still have a human mindset which seeks to apportion blame and implicitly demand revenge, though they would no doubt have used the euphemism “justice”. Peter’s words, though somewhat restrained by eschewing an explicit demand for satisfaction, nevertheless bristle with the violence which led to and caused Jesus’ execution, which saw Judas handing Jesus over to the religious hierarchy and occupying forces acting out Operation Israelite Liberation, er, Freedom, and which gave rise to the desertion and denial of the male disciples.
Peter – and, we presume, the Church – have not yet grasped what the Living God has done in the resurrection – taken a situation played out on a human stage and recreated the entire aftermath in Godly terms – but still well within the human arena.
In other words, the Father, surely the One most hurt and grievously maltreated in the torturous death of the Son, responds, not with the kind of violence that wiped out Jesus, but with a negation of that violence. By refusing to be violent, God destroys violence as a legitimate answer to violence. So instead of death, God brings life. Instead of retribution acted out in rage and bitter fury, God raises Jesus from the dead on the third day and sends him into men and women’s hearts saying, Peace, and Do not be afraid.
Jesus for his part has to reassure the terrified first witnesses of the resurrection. … Partly because it jolly-well IS terrifying. I don’t know about you but the last time I was walking through the local cemetery and an angel of the Lord screeched down like a meteorite and plonked himself all blazing-white and sizzling on a tombstone, I was pretty alarmed … I can well understand the guards playing dead …
Matthew spares us little of the cosmological terror of the resurrection: Temple curtain mysteriously ripped in two; solar eclipses; the dead walking the streets of downtown Jerusalem. And then this just-about-kamikaze angel. Stephen King, eat your heart out!
And it’s terrifying because somehow the women who go to the tomb realise that the Living God is with them once again – but this time in a way which they have never before experienced, in a way which defies belief and shames the disciples’ betrayal of hope. God’s presence always strikes fear and awe.
But perhaps a later terror will come with the realisation that the resurrection means change. The God who steadfastly and faithfully refuses to allow humankind to cast the divine in a human image, changes the whole ball-game in the resurrection.
We have already considered God’s refusal to repay violence with violence. Death – the ultimate violent act - becomes life. If we want the prophetic foreshadowing and understanding we need look no further than the words of those prophets who remind us that God desires, not burnt offerings, sacrifices and ceremonies, but mercy. In the words of Isaiah:
Peter – and, we presume, the Church – have not yet grasped what the Living God has done in the resurrection – taken a situation played out on a human stage and recreated the entire aftermath in Godly terms – but still well within the human arena.
In other words, the Father, surely the One most hurt and grievously maltreated in the torturous death of the Son, responds, not with the kind of violence that wiped out Jesus, but with a negation of that violence. By refusing to be violent, God destroys violence as a legitimate answer to violence. So instead of death, God brings life. Instead of retribution acted out in rage and bitter fury, God raises Jesus from the dead on the third day and sends him into men and women’s hearts saying, Peace, and Do not be afraid.
Jesus for his part has to reassure the terrified first witnesses of the resurrection. … Partly because it jolly-well IS terrifying. I don’t know about you but the last time I was walking through the local cemetery and an angel of the Lord screeched down like a meteorite and plonked himself all blazing-white and sizzling on a tombstone, I was pretty alarmed … I can well understand the guards playing dead …
Matthew spares us little of the cosmological terror of the resurrection: Temple curtain mysteriously ripped in two; solar eclipses; the dead walking the streets of downtown Jerusalem. And then this just-about-kamikaze angel. Stephen King, eat your heart out!
And it’s terrifying because somehow the women who go to the tomb realise that the Living God is with them once again – but this time in a way which they have never before experienced, in a way which defies belief and shames the disciples’ betrayal of hope. God’s presence always strikes fear and awe.
But perhaps a later terror will come with the realisation that the resurrection means change. The God who steadfastly and faithfully refuses to allow humankind to cast the divine in a human image, changes the whole ball-game in the resurrection.
We have already considered God’s refusal to repay violence with violence. Death – the ultimate violent act - becomes life. If we want the prophetic foreshadowing and understanding we need look no further than the words of those prophets who remind us that God desires, not burnt offerings, sacrifices and ceremonies, but mercy. In the words of Isaiah:
learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the
cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.
In Jesus, these things happened.
But the irony of it is that the change the resurrection demands is not a complete recasting so that something physically different comes into being. Rather, it’s a change of heart, mind and soul; a willingness to reflect on and absorb a newness that is internal but reflected externally.
So, when Judas hands Jesus over in Gethsemane he uses the standard Greek greeting, Cairete! It’s exactly the same word Jesus uses when he appears suddenly to the Mary’s on their way to tell the disciples about the empty tomb. Cairete! sez Jesus. …But now it is a word of hope and life, not a prelude to a death.
Similarly, both the angel and then Jesus tell the Mary’s to tell the disciples to go to Galilee: “there they will see him”. Galilee, the place of Jesus’ early ministry. The northern, marginalised, low-socio-economic hicksville peopled by dodgy characters who dressed funny and spoke funnier. Exactly the kind of people it’s easy to pick on and ridicule – or crucify – when we want to feel better about ourselves. Like today’s gays or disabled or Middle Eastern or different religion or denomination.
So we see Jesus working God’s business on the edges of polite and proper society, among the oppressed and the fatherless and the widow, putting in the “hard yards”, the way many professionals do when they’re on their way to the top.
So what happens when God raises Jesus from the dead? What a climactic victory, eh? That’s one mighty finger in the satan’s face. God rules, OK. So does Jesus get the keys to the Executive Loo? A promotion? A better class of parish where he doesn’t have to spend his time worrying about whether his people will rake up enough cash for his next stipend?
That’s way we humans might think.
But Jesus goes back to the edge. He returns to Galilee. The place where he began God’s work and the same place where he gathers the faithful to send them out to continue God’s work.
So, what’s new? What’s changed? What has resurrection effected? Certainly not a change in the external landscape. But maybe that’s the point – a point we miss when we go hunting for the empirical evidence of a literal resurrection, the eye-witness reportage, the plausible arguments, the minutiae that “prove” what we are supposed to wrestle with and come to as an act of unprovable, undemonstrable faith.
We humans demand evidence of the change and the Living God gives us the same and sez, I’ve been here all the time. Yes, God DOES do something new in raising Jesus from the dead. But it’s not quite the New Thing our human minds initially think it is.
What’s new is that WE begin to realise that God is NOT made in our image, God does NOT think like a human being, God responds to human violence with the non-violence of unrestrained, unremitting love, and God sends us out, Jesus being our example, to every Galilee within our reach to show in our lives and words and deeds the same grace towards others that Jesus showed in his own life and words and deeds.
By raising Jesus from the dead, God shows us definitively that love and peace are God’s ways, not violence and retribution. And this is why we are sent to Galilee, to meet the Jesus who continues to work in the unloved and the victims of violence, that he might send US out again and again to bring, in love and peace, resurrection to those who know no other reality.
See you in Galilee!
Monday, March 14, 2005
NO CHANGE, NO MIRACLE -Lent 5A
I’m looking at a painting of Lazarus stirring from the grave, about to climb out of a sarcophagus. It’s a painting by Vincent van Gogh, one which it has taken me 45 years to discover …
The scholars of art say Vincent, then recovering in a mental hospital from a breakdown, portrayed himself as Lazarus, thus the red hair and circumspect red beard, and used the painting to suggest his own sense of recuperation and returning to life in the world outside the hospital.
It’s a dramatic but colourful depiction, full of the yellow which scholars also say symbolised for Vincent the pulsating, radiating love of God, seen here as the sun – a vigorous yellow, orb-like eye watching, we presume with approval, the unfolding event below.
What strikes me most, however, is the distraught look on Lazarus’ face and the even more distraught visage of a woman who may be Martha, her sister Mary in shadowed prayerful piety ironically hidden in the foreground. This Martha’s arms are outstretched in shock, her mouth gaping in a cry of horror. She looks as if she has run to the tomb upon seeing her brother stirring.
I’m struck, also for the first time in 45 years, by the absence of the joy and celebration I had tended to read into the story. John in fact tells us little about the emotions of the event, other than Jesus’ famous lacrimosity, giving rise (no pun intended) in some translations of the Christian scriptures to the shortest verse in the bible: Jesus wept (in the NRSV translated as Jesus began to weep).
Then I begin to realise, Of course this is not the gay and carefree event so many assume it to be. This is the penultimate power of the Living God in action, as it were before our eyes. (The ultimate act of God’s power will be the resurrection of Jesus himself, the event which this raising of Lazarus foreshadows.)
To experience the power of the Living God is to feel unspeakable awe, the “fear” which strikes us mute as our scrambled brains, filled with empirical knowledge, try to come to terms with what is taking place. …For at the same time as God meddles with the supposedly natural order and obliterates our preconceived and pre-experienced notions of it, yet we are forced to continue living in this world, but now with additional information which defies everything we have ever seen or learned before.
Just imagine looking out the window and seeing someone we knew and love who has died, walking up the drive. How do we greet such a person when they knock on our door? What do we ask them? How do we establish their true identity? Much doubt (Darn, I knew I shouldn’t have had that last tequila sunrise) and many, many questions before we get anywhere near throwing a par-tay.
John is quite clear about the reason God raises Lazarus. It is so that all who witness not just this miracle but every miracle of Jesus, the Son, might come to believe in Jesus, in and through whom we find our salvation from the cul-de-sac of eternal death.
That’s a theological proposition.
But God never acts gratuitously. God is not into party tricks simply to impress people or get something really impressive on the divine CV. Nor is God into one-way, authoritarian relationships. Any miracle in which we recognise the presence and power of the Living God calls us into an action based on what we have witnessed or come to believe.
Certainly, God may be giving us yet another free gift, bestowing yet another blessing, but either or both are meaningless if we ourselves do not begin surfing the bottom line in response to God’s action.
That bottom line is simply to change our own lives. Chances are, that change will have a flow-on effect in the lives of the people and world around us.
Prosaic and challenging as the notion may be, if we are able to witness any miracle of the Living God and subsequently fail to change, then NO MIRACLE has actually taken place! All God has accomplished is indeed a party trick - a pretty impressive one, most like, but nothing worth so much as a text message.
Perhaps, then, part of the initial horror and strickenness of witnessing or participating in a miracle is the subliminal realisation that it will demand personal change. Because God is Spirit, as John reminds us, and therefore invisible, it’s easy enough to cruise along without anything more than cursory reference to the divine. But when the divine acts without ambiguity then suddenly we have to climb out of our spiritual hammocks, fire our life-coaches and begin to get real with God.
The real gift, however, in any miracle we witness is not the miracle itself but the realisation that the Living God invites us, in much the same way as those pulsating crescents of yellow in van Gogh’s painting, into God’s love. Again, we are not simply the passive recipients of God-action but people drawn in by God’s love arc-ing out from the center.
Such a gift in turn allows us to realise our inadequacy to respond fully. And the real miracle happens when we seek the life-giving Spirit who dwells within us and begin to use the Spirit’s power to effect the changes within ourselves which lead to changes in others and the world around us.
This remains the import of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, given fleshly form and spiritual life in order to give hope to the exiles in Babylon. But that hope – and the promise of return to Israel – are not for the purpose of reclaiming dirt and rebuilding dwellings. They exist in order to change the people, and that change in turn exists in order to change the world – for the better.
But when we accept the gift and the miracle without invoking the Spirit to help us change, we end up with situation Paul describes: a focus on human things, leading to our own and others’ death.
The Spirit, however, is lifegiving, precisely because the Spirit fills us with and at the same time leads us into the source of life.
Our own worlds are filled with miracles, divine gifts and blessings. How many do we recognise? It’s easy enough to measure – all we need to do is calculate the amount of change we have undertaken or become aware of consciously participating in.
The raising of Lazarus is so much a part of our tradition that it has become dead theatre and we sit back and politely applaud at the right moment. We know how to respond – but do we know how to change?
Every miracle of the Living God calls us to change in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we can posit a simple formula: miracle = change. No change, no miracle.
As we enter some challenging times, we need to start recognising some of God’s miracles within our own lives and our community. Let us be on the look-out. What miracles will we experience this coming week – and beyond?
The scholars of art say Vincent, then recovering in a mental hospital from a breakdown, portrayed himself as Lazarus, thus the red hair and circumspect red beard, and used the painting to suggest his own sense of recuperation and returning to life in the world outside the hospital.
It’s a dramatic but colourful depiction, full of the yellow which scholars also say symbolised for Vincent the pulsating, radiating love of God, seen here as the sun – a vigorous yellow, orb-like eye watching, we presume with approval, the unfolding event below.
What strikes me most, however, is the distraught look on Lazarus’ face and the even more distraught visage of a woman who may be Martha, her sister Mary in shadowed prayerful piety ironically hidden in the foreground. This Martha’s arms are outstretched in shock, her mouth gaping in a cry of horror. She looks as if she has run to the tomb upon seeing her brother stirring.
I’m struck, also for the first time in 45 years, by the absence of the joy and celebration I had tended to read into the story. John in fact tells us little about the emotions of the event, other than Jesus’ famous lacrimosity, giving rise (no pun intended) in some translations of the Christian scriptures to the shortest verse in the bible: Jesus wept (in the NRSV translated as Jesus began to weep).
Then I begin to realise, Of course this is not the gay and carefree event so many assume it to be. This is the penultimate power of the Living God in action, as it were before our eyes. (The ultimate act of God’s power will be the resurrection of Jesus himself, the event which this raising of Lazarus foreshadows.)
To experience the power of the Living God is to feel unspeakable awe, the “fear” which strikes us mute as our scrambled brains, filled with empirical knowledge, try to come to terms with what is taking place. …For at the same time as God meddles with the supposedly natural order and obliterates our preconceived and pre-experienced notions of it, yet we are forced to continue living in this world, but now with additional information which defies everything we have ever seen or learned before.
Just imagine looking out the window and seeing someone we knew and love who has died, walking up the drive. How do we greet such a person when they knock on our door? What do we ask them? How do we establish their true identity? Much doubt (Darn, I knew I shouldn’t have had that last tequila sunrise) and many, many questions before we get anywhere near throwing a par-tay.
John is quite clear about the reason God raises Lazarus. It is so that all who witness not just this miracle but every miracle of Jesus, the Son, might come to believe in Jesus, in and through whom we find our salvation from the cul-de-sac of eternal death.
That’s a theological proposition.
But God never acts gratuitously. God is not into party tricks simply to impress people or get something really impressive on the divine CV. Nor is God into one-way, authoritarian relationships. Any miracle in which we recognise the presence and power of the Living God calls us into an action based on what we have witnessed or come to believe.
Certainly, God may be giving us yet another free gift, bestowing yet another blessing, but either or both are meaningless if we ourselves do not begin surfing the bottom line in response to God’s action.
That bottom line is simply to change our own lives. Chances are, that change will have a flow-on effect in the lives of the people and world around us.
Prosaic and challenging as the notion may be, if we are able to witness any miracle of the Living God and subsequently fail to change, then NO MIRACLE has actually taken place! All God has accomplished is indeed a party trick - a pretty impressive one, most like, but nothing worth so much as a text message.
Perhaps, then, part of the initial horror and strickenness of witnessing or participating in a miracle is the subliminal realisation that it will demand personal change. Because God is Spirit, as John reminds us, and therefore invisible, it’s easy enough to cruise along without anything more than cursory reference to the divine. But when the divine acts without ambiguity then suddenly we have to climb out of our spiritual hammocks, fire our life-coaches and begin to get real with God.
The real gift, however, in any miracle we witness is not the miracle itself but the realisation that the Living God invites us, in much the same way as those pulsating crescents of yellow in van Gogh’s painting, into God’s love. Again, we are not simply the passive recipients of God-action but people drawn in by God’s love arc-ing out from the center.
Such a gift in turn allows us to realise our inadequacy to respond fully. And the real miracle happens when we seek the life-giving Spirit who dwells within us and begin to use the Spirit’s power to effect the changes within ourselves which lead to changes in others and the world around us.
This remains the import of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, given fleshly form and spiritual life in order to give hope to the exiles in Babylon. But that hope – and the promise of return to Israel – are not for the purpose of reclaiming dirt and rebuilding dwellings. They exist in order to change the people, and that change in turn exists in order to change the world – for the better.
But when we accept the gift and the miracle without invoking the Spirit to help us change, we end up with situation Paul describes: a focus on human things, leading to our own and others’ death.
The Spirit, however, is lifegiving, precisely because the Spirit fills us with and at the same time leads us into the source of life.
Our own worlds are filled with miracles, divine gifts and blessings. How many do we recognise? It’s easy enough to measure – all we need to do is calculate the amount of change we have undertaken or become aware of consciously participating in.
The raising of Lazarus is so much a part of our tradition that it has become dead theatre and we sit back and politely applaud at the right moment. We know how to respond – but do we know how to change?
Every miracle of the Living God calls us to change in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we can posit a simple formula: miracle = change. No change, no miracle.
As we enter some challenging times, we need to start recognising some of God’s miracles within our own lives and our community. Let us be on the look-out. What miracles will we experience this coming week – and beyond?
Monday, March 07, 2005
DIVINE SIGHT
I have to admit that John’s gospel leaves me begging for less. I’m not one of those arch-sentimentalists from whose lips the cliché sublime inevitably and thoughtlessly drips whenever anyone mentions the work of the above-named evangelist!
But every now and then in John I find passages whose clear prose and deft characterisation speak authentically and vividly of real people, real situations, real emotion. At such moments John truly transcends the scratchings of the late first century; he transcends the centuries of scribal copying; he transcends the best, least-fumbling translations of biblical renditionists.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we have one such moment, in the story Tradition has labelled “The Man Born Blind”.
It’s a highly-instructive piece packed with themes and theology, all worthy of investigation, but the centre-piece is the characteristic and powerful Johannine image of light, used here to break open the theological notion of spiritual blindness.
In other words, today through John, backed up by the first book of the prophet Samuel and the letter to the Christian community based in Ephesus, we are invited to consider how clearly we “see” and understand the workings of the Living God and our own role and purpose within God’s world and work.
The story of the anointing of the shepherd-boy, David, as king of Judah in 1 Samuel reminds us of God’s inscrutable ways:
This is the very stuff of authentic spiritual experience, the ability to see beyond the mundane and commonplace to discover God’s involvement in every aspect of Creation. More than that, God is not only involved but engaged in Creation and for us human beings God does not ignore or abandon any part of the world, least of the human part. Put aside the former notions of the separation of sacred and profane!
But in order to understand this divine involvement and engagement we need to see with God’s eyes, we need to be healed of a certain spiritual blindness we learn from the moment we begin to sense our world in our mothers’ wombs, where the miraculously-empirical is apparently our first introduction to the world we are destined to inhabit.
Seeing with God’s eyes may seem impossible or even arrogant – and the reality is most likely that we only ever see partially or momentarily, in blinding glimpses we call epiphanies – but we can train minds and hearts to unfold the natural order of our soul.
It is no different from any prolonged period of training or exercise. No one becomes a mechanic without spending years beneath a car bonnet. Brain surgeons study for years. Our athletes train, often beyond ordinary limits, for hours per day and years per lifetime.
The common factor in every skill is our own desire and willingness to apply ourselves to the task. I have mentioned many times the primary tools in our journey towards divine sight, spiritual maturity, call it what we will: Prayer; Worship; Bible reading and study; Fellowship; and Ministry.
All five go together. All five legitimately call us to engagement because all five offer different ways of understanding God and our individual and corporate journey with and towards God. We cannot advance very far on that journey without making a conscious decision to attend to all these aspects of our spiritual lives.
In the world of popular music the best guitarists invoke the cliché of playing and practising “till they’re fingers bled”. In other words, they work at their art.
In matters of the spirit our invitation is equally simple: to pray, worship, study, “fellowship” and minister till our very souls are bleeding!
This is how we move from spiritual blindness to divine sight.
Note well, however, that I am not suggesting in any way, shape or form that we EVER undertake this journey on our own, in our own power or strength. We ALWAYS journey with God, in Jesus, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Should we find ourselves alone, perhaps wandering the streets disconsolate and traumatised after the statute-driven authorities browbeat, bully and brutalise us, we have this assurance: that, like the man in John’s story today, Jesus himself will hear of it, seek us out and strengthen our faith and resolve.
But with the promise of Jesus’ care also comes a warning. Just as we must attend to our spiritual health, we can also become willfully blind. Divine sight is not simply about seeing the presence of God in ordinary or even ugly things. It’s very much about CHOOSING a particular path, a particular direction. We can just as easily choose to ignore God – and remain blind.
Equally, divine sight is not just about experiencing a fantabulous spiritual rush. God does nothing gratuitously and Jesus calls us to do all things with the Living God in our hearts. Our seeking spiritual maturity is not the stuff of a feelgood movie but an essential part of God’s work here in Westfield and elsewhere.
As the Ephesian correspondence reminds us,
Notice what the writer sez: NOT that we were IN darkness and are now IN light. One we WERE darkness, but now in Jesus we ARE light.
The Living God places an enormous responsibility on our shoulders, within our hearts. We ARE light. We are light for our suburb. We are light for every single person we shall ever meet, in every single place we shall go. We have a responsibility to ensure that our light remains sharp, clear, focussed. And we play our part in that by connection with the Living God through … prayer, worship, study, fellowship, ministry.
In a sense we are all and always born blind. With an appropriate sense of unworthiness and awe we realise that God gains not only from noticing us but also from hunkering down to trudge alongside us, watching the mud sluice away from our eyes, particle by particle, until we – like Jesus himself – radiate light for all who remain in darkness.
May our journey long continue!
But every now and then in John I find passages whose clear prose and deft characterisation speak authentically and vividly of real people, real situations, real emotion. At such moments John truly transcends the scratchings of the late first century; he transcends the centuries of scribal copying; he transcends the best, least-fumbling translations of biblical renditionists.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we have one such moment, in the story Tradition has labelled “The Man Born Blind”.
It’s a highly-instructive piece packed with themes and theology, all worthy of investigation, but the centre-piece is the characteristic and powerful Johannine image of light, used here to break open the theological notion of spiritual blindness.
In other words, today through John, backed up by the first book of the prophet Samuel and the letter to the Christian community based in Ephesus, we are invited to consider how clearly we “see” and understand the workings of the Living God and our own role and purpose within God’s world and work.
The story of the anointing of the shepherd-boy, David, as king of Judah in 1 Samuel reminds us of God’s inscrutable ways:
But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.
This is the very stuff of authentic spiritual experience, the ability to see beyond the mundane and commonplace to discover God’s involvement in every aspect of Creation. More than that, God is not only involved but engaged in Creation and for us human beings God does not ignore or abandon any part of the world, least of the human part. Put aside the former notions of the separation of sacred and profane!
But in order to understand this divine involvement and engagement we need to see with God’s eyes, we need to be healed of a certain spiritual blindness we learn from the moment we begin to sense our world in our mothers’ wombs, where the miraculously-empirical is apparently our first introduction to the world we are destined to inhabit.
Seeing with God’s eyes may seem impossible or even arrogant – and the reality is most likely that we only ever see partially or momentarily, in blinding glimpses we call epiphanies – but we can train minds and hearts to unfold the natural order of our soul.
It is no different from any prolonged period of training or exercise. No one becomes a mechanic without spending years beneath a car bonnet. Brain surgeons study for years. Our athletes train, often beyond ordinary limits, for hours per day and years per lifetime.
The common factor in every skill is our own desire and willingness to apply ourselves to the task. I have mentioned many times the primary tools in our journey towards divine sight, spiritual maturity, call it what we will: Prayer; Worship; Bible reading and study; Fellowship; and Ministry.
All five go together. All five legitimately call us to engagement because all five offer different ways of understanding God and our individual and corporate journey with and towards God. We cannot advance very far on that journey without making a conscious decision to attend to all these aspects of our spiritual lives.
In the world of popular music the best guitarists invoke the cliché of playing and practising “till they’re fingers bled”. In other words, they work at their art.
In matters of the spirit our invitation is equally simple: to pray, worship, study, “fellowship” and minister till our very souls are bleeding!
This is how we move from spiritual blindness to divine sight.
Note well, however, that I am not suggesting in any way, shape or form that we EVER undertake this journey on our own, in our own power or strength. We ALWAYS journey with God, in Jesus, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Should we find ourselves alone, perhaps wandering the streets disconsolate and traumatised after the statute-driven authorities browbeat, bully and brutalise us, we have this assurance: that, like the man in John’s story today, Jesus himself will hear of it, seek us out and strengthen our faith and resolve.
But with the promise of Jesus’ care also comes a warning. Just as we must attend to our spiritual health, we can also become willfully blind. Divine sight is not simply about seeing the presence of God in ordinary or even ugly things. It’s very much about CHOOSING a particular path, a particular direction. We can just as easily choose to ignore God – and remain blind.
Equally, divine sight is not just about experiencing a fantabulous spiritual rush. God does nothing gratuitously and Jesus calls us to do all things with the Living God in our hearts. Our seeking spiritual maturity is not the stuff of a feelgood movie but an essential part of God’s work here in Westfield and elsewhere.
As the Ephesian correspondence reminds us,
For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light - for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.
Notice what the writer sez: NOT that we were IN darkness and are now IN light. One we WERE darkness, but now in Jesus we ARE light.
The Living God places an enormous responsibility on our shoulders, within our hearts. We ARE light. We are light for our suburb. We are light for every single person we shall ever meet, in every single place we shall go. We have a responsibility to ensure that our light remains sharp, clear, focussed. And we play our part in that by connection with the Living God through … prayer, worship, study, fellowship, ministry.
In a sense we are all and always born blind. With an appropriate sense of unworthiness and awe we realise that God gains not only from noticing us but also from hunkering down to trudge alongside us, watching the mud sluice away from our eyes, particle by particle, until we – like Jesus himself – radiate light for all who remain in darkness.
May our journey long continue!
Sunday, January 16, 2005
MORE THAN MAYHEM
5th December 2004 : Advent 2 : Year A
Isaiah 11:1-10 : Romans 15:4-13 : Matthew 3:1-12
In the hospital world – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s public or private – patients often use the state of the world as a metaphor for the turmoil they are feeling and experiencing as they lie in their beds waiting for the next set of observations, the next visit from their doctor, the next test result, the next pill, the next needle – or that stoically-dreaded procedure from which they will awake possibly in great pain.
It matters little whether the concerns are global, local or historical. “It’s a tough world to bring up kids,” the patient sez. “Look at all the drugs.” “So much unemployment.” “It wasn’t like this when I was growing up.” “All this terrorism …” they might say, with a shake of the head.
What they mean is: My world is a mess right now and I’m terrified.
Of course, much of this pseudo-sociological discourse is quite true. The world we live in – if we knew our neighbours intimately maybe we could even say The street we live in – is hardly harmonious. Even if we read nothing but Australian newspapers, listen to or watch little but Australian radio and television, we’d know that global, national, local and economic and social mayhem exist on a level which is deeply disturbing.
Yet we sit here today as mostly silent witnesses to a sometimes tenuously-held belief that more than mayhem exercises our thoughts and indeed our lives. Our belief has a name – Jesus. That belief is held within the often-tense relationship we constantly seek with the Being we call God.
We do not need to live among rubble like so many human jellies waiting for the next shriek from the sky - we do not have to concern ourselves about anything more serious than tomato sauce or red wine stains, while others routinely stain their already-soiled garments with the blood of their dying children because an unseen enemy has destroyed their local hospitals and clinics – we can generally feel secure that our children will arrive at or return safely from school because we do not live in neighbourhoods where snipers routinely “accidentally” target school children …
So we have the much harder task today of grappling with a notion which most piquantly pricks the skin into life of those who really know the minute-by-minute desperation of wondering what the next moment will bring. Even if we never had to think about bombing raids, loved-ones bleeding to death or dead children, we’d need to understand that the world into which John the baptiser came as a spiritual icebreaker for our Jesus WAS such a place of terror, insecurity and desperation.
It was the world of the prophet Isaiah.
And the only reason it was not Paul’s world was because he had grasped the notion of Jesus and fashioned a belief system whose genius transcended human suffering while still seeking to articulate human experience.
I am not wanting to devalue our own Westfield experiences, many of which will be and are as devastating in their own way as those of Fallujah, Ramallah or Kabul.
Anyone here who’s seriously done the hospital thing, complete with catheter and needle-wielding nurse, will readily appreciate the desperation to hear that something more than this present suffering makes today bearable and tomorrow viable.
This is essentially what John the baptiser is trying to say – that Jesus is our viable tomorrow, that Jesus is our hope for more than mayhem. The message is the same as Isaiah’s – exile and occupation do not define his people. What defines them is their faith in the hope of the Living God that harmony will replace uncertainty and terror.
Isaiah is not talking about Jesus – he couldn’t possibly have known, and he wouldn’t have dreamt of befouling his soul with that kind of witchy-pooh chrystal ball-gazing – but he did know the Living God, who is timeless and ageless, whose entrance into our history from the beginning speaks of care and concern for all creation, whose presence and power human beings have always sensed and still do.
We tender, however, to fall upon the shell and ruthlessly and thoughtlessly devour it, discarding the core – a process which leads to literalism, fundamentalism and extremism, leaving a bitter taste and an even more bitter legacy.
Our task in our sitting and waiting is to taste and savour the core – the Living God’s love of all creation – and to proclaim boldly in our lives, our thoughts and words and deeds that more than mayhem guides us, that tomorrow IS viable – not because it’s a gritty piece of wishful thinking we can’t dislodge like leftover food stuck in our teeth – but because paradoxically what we show TODAY is the foretaste of that tomorrow.
And the viable tomorrow is not dependent on what this day brings or threatens or promises to offer but on whether we live NOW as if it were already THEN. The foretaste of tomorrow we waft towards Westfield will inevitably be imperfect but the point is not perfect reproduction of a notion that can only be grasped imperfectly anyway.
The point is authenticity. Do our deeds match our words? If we say God is loving, do we show love ourselves? We say God forgives, but are we forgiving also? We claim a God of mercy: are we too merciful? We believe God cares for the poor and oppressed, but are we involved in the lives and struggles of the oppressed and poor of Westfield? We reckon God heals the sick and makes whole the broken, so are we ourselves participating in that healing and wholeness?
Isaiah, Paul and John today speak of the hope of God’s viable tomorrow. Our deeply-traumatised world – whether of bombed cities or hospital-bound procedures or family crises – needs as desperately as ever to believe in that tomorrow. But unless we ourselves, in Westfield and beyond, live today the viable tomorrow we’ve just encountered through holy scripture then why should anyone believe our message?
All they will see is bits of sticky shell stuck to our lips … But when our words and deeds align, when what we say meets what we actually do, then all our worlds and all the people of Westfield and beyond can indeed begin to believe that despite the terrors and insecurities of this today, what lies beyond is indeed more than mayhem.
Isaiah 11:1-10 : Romans 15:4-13 : Matthew 3:1-12
In the hospital world – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s public or private – patients often use the state of the world as a metaphor for the turmoil they are feeling and experiencing as they lie in their beds waiting for the next set of observations, the next visit from their doctor, the next test result, the next pill, the next needle – or that stoically-dreaded procedure from which they will awake possibly in great pain.
It matters little whether the concerns are global, local or historical. “It’s a tough world to bring up kids,” the patient sez. “Look at all the drugs.” “So much unemployment.” “It wasn’t like this when I was growing up.” “All this terrorism …” they might say, with a shake of the head.
What they mean is: My world is a mess right now and I’m terrified.
Of course, much of this pseudo-sociological discourse is quite true. The world we live in – if we knew our neighbours intimately maybe we could even say The street we live in – is hardly harmonious. Even if we read nothing but Australian newspapers, listen to or watch little but Australian radio and television, we’d know that global, national, local and economic and social mayhem exist on a level which is deeply disturbing.
Yet we sit here today as mostly silent witnesses to a sometimes tenuously-held belief that more than mayhem exercises our thoughts and indeed our lives. Our belief has a name – Jesus. That belief is held within the often-tense relationship we constantly seek with the Being we call God.
We do not need to live among rubble like so many human jellies waiting for the next shriek from the sky - we do not have to concern ourselves about anything more serious than tomato sauce or red wine stains, while others routinely stain their already-soiled garments with the blood of their dying children because an unseen enemy has destroyed their local hospitals and clinics – we can generally feel secure that our children will arrive at or return safely from school because we do not live in neighbourhoods where snipers routinely “accidentally” target school children …
So we have the much harder task today of grappling with a notion which most piquantly pricks the skin into life of those who really know the minute-by-minute desperation of wondering what the next moment will bring. Even if we never had to think about bombing raids, loved-ones bleeding to death or dead children, we’d need to understand that the world into which John the baptiser came as a spiritual icebreaker for our Jesus WAS such a place of terror, insecurity and desperation.
It was the world of the prophet Isaiah.
And the only reason it was not Paul’s world was because he had grasped the notion of Jesus and fashioned a belief system whose genius transcended human suffering while still seeking to articulate human experience.
I am not wanting to devalue our own Westfield experiences, many of which will be and are as devastating in their own way as those of Fallujah, Ramallah or Kabul.
Anyone here who’s seriously done the hospital thing, complete with catheter and needle-wielding nurse, will readily appreciate the desperation to hear that something more than this present suffering makes today bearable and tomorrow viable.
This is essentially what John the baptiser is trying to say – that Jesus is our viable tomorrow, that Jesus is our hope for more than mayhem. The message is the same as Isaiah’s – exile and occupation do not define his people. What defines them is their faith in the hope of the Living God that harmony will replace uncertainty and terror.
Isaiah is not talking about Jesus – he couldn’t possibly have known, and he wouldn’t have dreamt of befouling his soul with that kind of witchy-pooh chrystal ball-gazing – but he did know the Living God, who is timeless and ageless, whose entrance into our history from the beginning speaks of care and concern for all creation, whose presence and power human beings have always sensed and still do.
We tender, however, to fall upon the shell and ruthlessly and thoughtlessly devour it, discarding the core – a process which leads to literalism, fundamentalism and extremism, leaving a bitter taste and an even more bitter legacy.
Our task in our sitting and waiting is to taste and savour the core – the Living God’s love of all creation – and to proclaim boldly in our lives, our thoughts and words and deeds that more than mayhem guides us, that tomorrow IS viable – not because it’s a gritty piece of wishful thinking we can’t dislodge like leftover food stuck in our teeth – but because paradoxically what we show TODAY is the foretaste of that tomorrow.
And the viable tomorrow is not dependent on what this day brings or threatens or promises to offer but on whether we live NOW as if it were already THEN. The foretaste of tomorrow we waft towards Westfield will inevitably be imperfect but the point is not perfect reproduction of a notion that can only be grasped imperfectly anyway.
The point is authenticity. Do our deeds match our words? If we say God is loving, do we show love ourselves? We say God forgives, but are we forgiving also? We claim a God of mercy: are we too merciful? We believe God cares for the poor and oppressed, but are we involved in the lives and struggles of the oppressed and poor of Westfield? We reckon God heals the sick and makes whole the broken, so are we ourselves participating in that healing and wholeness?
Isaiah, Paul and John today speak of the hope of God’s viable tomorrow. Our deeply-traumatised world – whether of bombed cities or hospital-bound procedures or family crises – needs as desperately as ever to believe in that tomorrow. But unless we ourselves, in Westfield and beyond, live today the viable tomorrow we’ve just encountered through holy scripture then why should anyone believe our message?
All they will see is bits of sticky shell stuck to our lips … But when our words and deeds align, when what we say meets what we actually do, then all our worlds and all the people of Westfield and beyond can indeed begin to believe that despite the terrors and insecurities of this today, what lies beyond is indeed more than mayhem.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
THE CHRIST MASS Year A
On Wednesday the 22nd of December 2004 The West Australian newspaper published a photograph on its front page showing a very young girl wearing a head scarf, white jacket sporting a flora motif - and a Barbie tee-shirt. As far as the eye or magnifying-glass could tell, the clothing was fresh and clean, suggesting that it had been presented to her or her surviving parents or relatives, after the devastation which caused her face to be splattered with dark, dried blood and her left eye caked shut.
The pungent heading above the photograph asked the apparently-disingenuous question: If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
Leaving aside the legion of questions which that photo - which screams “set-piece!” and “manipulation!” - raises, almost NO ONE gathered here could fail to answer The West’s puzzling question.
If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
The very fact that we ARE gathered is an answer in itself. I suspect we may not be able to articulate all our reasons for being here but that’s not a surprise. The whole issue of God and God’s dealing with humankind is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the crudely empirical. We fumble with theology precisely because we cannot articulate the one thing we truly and uniquely possess – our experience of the Living God.
And that experience best reveals itself, not in learned volumes, not in creeds or anything written, not even in art or music (though art and music come much closer than words to expressing our experience) – that experience best reveals itself in actions, in that which is corporeal, made real by the will, effort and effect of human bodies. The paradox is that it is the ultra-nano-second speed of the neural transmitters firing in the human brain and beyond that, the ungraspable stimuli which trigger them, that causes the relative precision of physical activity.
Put crudely, our bodies do what they do because our brains tell them what to do. But when our brains sense the Living God even they become inarticulate and imprecise.
So it is little wonder that we might “know” why we’re here and at the same time not be able to give a sensible answer if anyone asks us.But here’s another paradox: even our most garbled responses suddenly provide their own internal eloquence when uttered in response to questions like the West Australian’s If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
If The West seriously wants an answer let it send its newly-embedded reporters into the churches and gatherings of the faithful this Christmass time. Most of us may fail to win essay competitions but we all come with some sense of hope and the Living God calls us collectively to BE that hope.
What hope is left? US! Living witnesses that, as I suggested a few Sundays ago, more than mayhem defines our world. The hope expresses itself through the faithful who are prepared to stand up and say, This is wrong! The hope resides in the voices and actions of faithful people, acting in response to what they read in the gospel and know from their own encounter with the Living God, who rise against injustice, intolerance, lies, oppression and manipulation and speak words and do things in the name of the Living God on behalf of those who cannot say or do them.
We celebrate the birth of Jesus precisely because deep within our beings we have heard or seen or dreamed that God’s own answer to that question, What hope is left? was, and continues to be Jesus.
Ironically, that question is clothed in shadows of despair and whispers desperately of ultimate chaos. But that is precisely the circumstance into which the Living God sends Jesus. That is precisely the circumstance WHY God sends Jesus. … Because of despair. … Because of chaos.
… Because chaos and despair strip away the flossy sentiment and confront us with things that matter most.
They say that an alcoholic – or any person self-destructing on addictive behaviour – does not realise their need for help until they “hit rock-bottom”. Rock-bottom is the place where all the soil of delusion and excuse is gone, where no more layers of deception exist, where the paradoxical effort to arrive at the worst of places suddenly offers us, despite our life-threatening exhaustion, the clarity to enable us to reach the best, most glorious of possibilities.
This was the kind of world into which God sent Jesus. This was the kind of world where God whispered into the soul of a faithful girl who responded in a spirit of faith and co-operation – as a co-worker and co-producer. She did not understand, she could not articulate why she did what she knew she had to do, and like us she would not have won any essay competitions no matter how many people asked her.
But God’s whisper led to her actions. God’s whisper triggered her neural transmitters and she went and conceived and carried and bore and suckled and nourished and nurtured the kid her yet-to-be hubby would name Yeshua and we call Jesus.
All that happened because her world, the world in which she lived, had hit rock-bottom and the embedded reporters of The West Judaean were asking, What hope is left? and the Living God had sed: YESHUA!
And now we find ourselves in a world which may well be nearer to rock-bottom than any of us care to imagine. We again encounter the desperate question but this time the Living God whispers into our souls and sez: JESUS! - and all you lot going to church this Christmass!
From the beginning, the story of Jesus involved human co-operation with God. That human co-operation remains essential. Perhaps we tend to forget.
Perhaps we are buried beneath layers of tinsel, snow-filled carols, thoughts of familial responsibility and anxieties about organising the logistics of the luncheon gathering. Fair enough. These are real things. They won’t go away and they SHOULDN’T go away. Nowhere is it written that soul-work happens without perspiration.
And Christmass is more about our souls than about babies.
But its meaning turns on how we receive a Jesus who was only ONCE a baby. Have we actually understood that Jesus grew up, became an adult, and spent his ministry showing and teaching others how to follow where he led? We assume we celebrate a birth but what rightfully excites our joy is the meaning of that birth – and the meaning speaks about our souls, not our stomachs or blood-pressure …
The meaning of the birth of Jesus is the first, most profound and timeless answer to the question What hope is left? Jesus is the hope, and if we are truly in tune with this Jesus then we too are included within that hope, both as honoured recipients and as gifted co-labourers with Jesus, wandering rock-bottom and inviting the damaged and broken to become part of God’s good news in the very act of accepting and receiving it.
We are part of the hope for that poor manipulated Iraqi girl on the front page of Wednesday’s West Australian. We are part of the hope for the homeless, despairing, unemployed, abused and beaten people of Westfield. We are part of the hope for which the world yearns and now cries for salvation from the myriad evils of injustice and oppression besetting it.
As we celebrate a birth and a baby, let us remember that this is Christmas – the Christ Mass – and that EVERY Mass is about going out into the world: Ite, sed the deacon, Missa est. Go, she sez, It is the dismissal. A Dismissal into a world hungry for love and salvation. May that world – our world – hear the answer, see it, and receive it as our own gift passed forward.
Let us remember that it can NEVER be the Christ Mass until we go out and our own lives and faith provide the answer to the question What hope is left? … Until our own words and deeds show that Jesus – in whatever form the world needs to receive, recognise and understand him – is that hope and we too journey within it.
The pungent heading above the photograph asked the apparently-disingenuous question: If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
Leaving aside the legion of questions which that photo - which screams “set-piece!” and “manipulation!” - raises, almost NO ONE gathered here could fail to answer The West’s puzzling question.
If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
The very fact that we ARE gathered is an answer in itself. I suspect we may not be able to articulate all our reasons for being here but that’s not a surprise. The whole issue of God and God’s dealing with humankind is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the crudely empirical. We fumble with theology precisely because we cannot articulate the one thing we truly and uniquely possess – our experience of the Living God.
And that experience best reveals itself, not in learned volumes, not in creeds or anything written, not even in art or music (though art and music come much closer than words to expressing our experience) – that experience best reveals itself in actions, in that which is corporeal, made real by the will, effort and effect of human bodies. The paradox is that it is the ultra-nano-second speed of the neural transmitters firing in the human brain and beyond that, the ungraspable stimuli which trigger them, that causes the relative precision of physical activity.
Put crudely, our bodies do what they do because our brains tell them what to do. But when our brains sense the Living God even they become inarticulate and imprecise.
So it is little wonder that we might “know” why we’re here and at the same time not be able to give a sensible answer if anyone asks us.But here’s another paradox: even our most garbled responses suddenly provide their own internal eloquence when uttered in response to questions like the West Australian’s If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
If The West seriously wants an answer let it send its newly-embedded reporters into the churches and gatherings of the faithful this Christmass time. Most of us may fail to win essay competitions but we all come with some sense of hope and the Living God calls us collectively to BE that hope.
What hope is left? US! Living witnesses that, as I suggested a few Sundays ago, more than mayhem defines our world. The hope expresses itself through the faithful who are prepared to stand up and say, This is wrong! The hope resides in the voices and actions of faithful people, acting in response to what they read in the gospel and know from their own encounter with the Living God, who rise against injustice, intolerance, lies, oppression and manipulation and speak words and do things in the name of the Living God on behalf of those who cannot say or do them.
We celebrate the birth of Jesus precisely because deep within our beings we have heard or seen or dreamed that God’s own answer to that question, What hope is left? was, and continues to be Jesus.
Ironically, that question is clothed in shadows of despair and whispers desperately of ultimate chaos. But that is precisely the circumstance into which the Living God sends Jesus. That is precisely the circumstance WHY God sends Jesus. … Because of despair. … Because of chaos.
… Because chaos and despair strip away the flossy sentiment and confront us with things that matter most.
They say that an alcoholic – or any person self-destructing on addictive behaviour – does not realise their need for help until they “hit rock-bottom”. Rock-bottom is the place where all the soil of delusion and excuse is gone, where no more layers of deception exist, where the paradoxical effort to arrive at the worst of places suddenly offers us, despite our life-threatening exhaustion, the clarity to enable us to reach the best, most glorious of possibilities.
This was the kind of world into which God sent Jesus. This was the kind of world where God whispered into the soul of a faithful girl who responded in a spirit of faith and co-operation – as a co-worker and co-producer. She did not understand, she could not articulate why she did what she knew she had to do, and like us she would not have won any essay competitions no matter how many people asked her.
But God’s whisper led to her actions. God’s whisper triggered her neural transmitters and she went and conceived and carried and bore and suckled and nourished and nurtured the kid her yet-to-be hubby would name Yeshua and we call Jesus.
All that happened because her world, the world in which she lived, had hit rock-bottom and the embedded reporters of The West Judaean were asking, What hope is left? and the Living God had sed: YESHUA!
And now we find ourselves in a world which may well be nearer to rock-bottom than any of us care to imagine. We again encounter the desperate question but this time the Living God whispers into our souls and sez: JESUS! - and all you lot going to church this Christmass!
From the beginning, the story of Jesus involved human co-operation with God. That human co-operation remains essential. Perhaps we tend to forget.
Perhaps we are buried beneath layers of tinsel, snow-filled carols, thoughts of familial responsibility and anxieties about organising the logistics of the luncheon gathering. Fair enough. These are real things. They won’t go away and they SHOULDN’T go away. Nowhere is it written that soul-work happens without perspiration.
And Christmass is more about our souls than about babies.
But its meaning turns on how we receive a Jesus who was only ONCE a baby. Have we actually understood that Jesus grew up, became an adult, and spent his ministry showing and teaching others how to follow where he led? We assume we celebrate a birth but what rightfully excites our joy is the meaning of that birth – and the meaning speaks about our souls, not our stomachs or blood-pressure …
The meaning of the birth of Jesus is the first, most profound and timeless answer to the question What hope is left? Jesus is the hope, and if we are truly in tune with this Jesus then we too are included within that hope, both as honoured recipients and as gifted co-labourers with Jesus, wandering rock-bottom and inviting the damaged and broken to become part of God’s good news in the very act of accepting and receiving it.
We are part of the hope for that poor manipulated Iraqi girl on the front page of Wednesday’s West Australian. We are part of the hope for the homeless, despairing, unemployed, abused and beaten people of Westfield. We are part of the hope for which the world yearns and now cries for salvation from the myriad evils of injustice and oppression besetting it.
As we celebrate a birth and a baby, let us remember that this is Christmas – the Christ Mass – and that EVERY Mass is about going out into the world: Ite, sed the deacon, Missa est. Go, she sez, It is the dismissal. A Dismissal into a world hungry for love and salvation. May that world – our world – hear the answer, see it, and receive it as our own gift passed forward.
Let us remember that it can NEVER be the Christ Mass until we go out and our own lives and faith provide the answer to the question What hope is left? … Until our own words and deeds show that Jesus – in whatever form the world needs to receive, recognise and understand him – is that hope and we too journey within it.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
QUIETLY AND FAITHFULLY AT WORK
9th January 2005 : Baptism of our Lord : Year A
Isaiah 42:1-9 : Acts 10 34-43 : Matthew 3:13-17
In many ways it is bizarre with the events of the Boxing Day tsunamis and earthquakes still very present to arrive today at a baptism, where we have already heard words about water and dying.
Some sensibilities will find this offensive or insensitive and the temptation is to sidestep our scripture and tradition by politely refusing to emphasise these crucial theological and symbolic aspects of entry into God’s Church. … But such choices are counterproductive because they devalue part of the Church’s greatness and God’s glory, which is about faithfully continuing the work of the kingdom, no matter what befalls us or our world.
The prophet Isaiah speaks with restraint and yet power about this:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
These are images of God’s servant faithfully and without fanfare going about his business, day after day.
It is one of the things at which the Church excels: being present, going about God’s business, reminding the world that whether in the midst of individual, community or national calamity and tragedy, God does not abandon us.
This is one of the crucial underpinnings of the resurrection of Jesus, which is mirrored so powerfully in baptism: that although the calamity and tragedy should reach the ultimate point – the extinction of life – the Living God not only CAN but WILL proclaim the divine imperative to choose life.
And yet even so momentous an event as the resurrection of Jesus occurred quietly, in darkness, without publicity and the PR team, no headlines in the West Judaean, no two-page spread advertising that Jesus was back by popular demand and you could see him at the following locations, courtesy of Abba-Father Enterprises (Inc.) …
Two things come to mind: one is the motto above Carl Jung’s gate, which I’ve mentioned before – VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS, DEUS ADERIT – Called and Not Called, God Will Be There. And the other is an old Redemptorist pewsheet I used to keep on my desk when I worked in a library. It showed a quiet forest scene – it could have been a vignette from our own south-west – tall trees and a long, not-too-winding pathway into the heart of the forest. The heading for that Sunday was God is quietly at work …
I continue to draw strength from both elements of this equation, the refusal of God to abandon Creation, always being present, always mixing with those in need, always THERE, called or uncalled, always “quietly at work”, without fanfare or attention-seeking, acting in our own lives and in the life of Creation, acting through the words and deeds of the faithful.
Today we will baptise J_n into God’s Church (not the Anglican Church), and God will thereby – as we Anglicans understand it – add one to the number of the faithful who, empowered by the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism, will quietly grow in the faith which surrounds him. And God – called and uncalled – will quietly work within J_n, through the love and nurture of his parents and family, and in the prayers and support of his sponsors and we in this community of faith who witness God’s actions this morning.
Yes, we will continue to speak of water and dying, but now we will also add life – new life.
May we all remember our own call quietly and faithfully to continue God’s work in Westfield and beyond, in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit given us at our own baptism …
Isaiah 42:1-9 : Acts 10 34-43 : Matthew 3:13-17
In many ways it is bizarre with the events of the Boxing Day tsunamis and earthquakes still very present to arrive today at a baptism, where we have already heard words about water and dying.
Some sensibilities will find this offensive or insensitive and the temptation is to sidestep our scripture and tradition by politely refusing to emphasise these crucial theological and symbolic aspects of entry into God’s Church. … But such choices are counterproductive because they devalue part of the Church’s greatness and God’s glory, which is about faithfully continuing the work of the kingdom, no matter what befalls us or our world.
The prophet Isaiah speaks with restraint and yet power about this:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
These are images of God’s servant faithfully and without fanfare going about his business, day after day.
It is one of the things at which the Church excels: being present, going about God’s business, reminding the world that whether in the midst of individual, community or national calamity and tragedy, God does not abandon us.
This is one of the crucial underpinnings of the resurrection of Jesus, which is mirrored so powerfully in baptism: that although the calamity and tragedy should reach the ultimate point – the extinction of life – the Living God not only CAN but WILL proclaim the divine imperative to choose life.
And yet even so momentous an event as the resurrection of Jesus occurred quietly, in darkness, without publicity and the PR team, no headlines in the West Judaean, no two-page spread advertising that Jesus was back by popular demand and you could see him at the following locations, courtesy of Abba-Father Enterprises (Inc.) …
Two things come to mind: one is the motto above Carl Jung’s gate, which I’ve mentioned before – VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS, DEUS ADERIT – Called and Not Called, God Will Be There. And the other is an old Redemptorist pewsheet I used to keep on my desk when I worked in a library. It showed a quiet forest scene – it could have been a vignette from our own south-west – tall trees and a long, not-too-winding pathway into the heart of the forest. The heading for that Sunday was God is quietly at work …
I continue to draw strength from both elements of this equation, the refusal of God to abandon Creation, always being present, always mixing with those in need, always THERE, called or uncalled, always “quietly at work”, without fanfare or attention-seeking, acting in our own lives and in the life of Creation, acting through the words and deeds of the faithful.
Today we will baptise J_n into God’s Church (not the Anglican Church), and God will thereby – as we Anglicans understand it – add one to the number of the faithful who, empowered by the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism, will quietly grow in the faith which surrounds him. And God – called and uncalled – will quietly work within J_n, through the love and nurture of his parents and family, and in the prayers and support of his sponsors and we in this community of faith who witness God’s actions this morning.
Yes, we will continue to speak of water and dying, but now we will also add life – new life.
May we all remember our own call quietly and faithfully to continue God’s work in Westfield and beyond, in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit given us at our own baptism …
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Epiphany A05
As most of the planet struggles to come to terms with the overwhelming devastation wrought by the earthquakes and tsunami which struck the coastlines of several countries in south east Asia, India and south eastern Africa, a few people have found comfort in these verses from the first book of Kings:
The first book of Kings suggests that despite the awesome power of the natural world, a power which the Living God may well control, God is not IN that power or those events. In other words, God did not personally and with malice aforethought pound the coasts of Indonesia or Malaysia or Thailand or any other nation where people were killed and lives rudely changed forever.
We might paraphrase 1 Kings with the additional observation: And after the fire, a tsunami – but the LORD was not in the tsunami …
This begs questions like: Could not the God who wrought creation from chaos prevent this catastrophe? Our natural response is to affirm resoundingly that God HAS this power. That God’s hand could have shot down from heaven to provide a barrier between the great waves and the lands those waves threatened.
Many will assume or believe confirmed their bitter suspicion that because God did not perform to these expectations then God doesn’t exist or God doesn’t care or that God is not the all-powerful, all-loving Being we deluded people of faith claim.
Faced with the aftermath, the devastation, the shock, the whimpering children, the rising stench of decaying bodies, we scream for an answer, we demand to know where the Living God was on the morning of the 26th December 2004 between the hours of 6:58 and 7:15 … And all we hear in response to our interrogation is the “sound of sheer silence”, or in the more poetic trad version: The still, small voice of God.
And that sheer silence enrages and inflames the fallacy implicit in our thinking on the problem of evil. WE know as good, decent human beings that WE would not stand idly by while terrible tragedies occur; WE know as good, decent human beings that WE would try to do something to make things right; WE know we would do everything in our power to prevent catastrophe, and in the event of catastrophe provide every assistance, heal the sick, bind the broken, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, offer solace and comfort to the bereaved and traumatised … WE know what WE would do – and so we can’t believe that the Living God isn’t doing exactly the same thing!
The irony of course is that we humans are thinking exactly the same thoughts as God, we are moved by exactly the same impulse towards bowel-wrenching compassion Jesus exhibited, we are overwhelmed by exactly the same heartbreak and outrage at suffering as the God of Creation – precisely because we are made in the image and likeness of the Living God.
At the end of the devastation we can confidently tell the world that God is NOT uncaring or powerless or, worst of all, indifferent – because WE are moving and doing, WE are weeping and digging and bandaging, WE are using what we have and offering it to those who desperately need it now.
On Mount Horeb Elijah hears God’s voice and what he hears are ultimate instructions, instructions which begin with the simple word, GO … Jesus used the same word when he instructed the post-resurrection faithful to share their knowledge of good news with all the world.
It may well be the word the Magoi heard within their soul as they surveyed the ancient Persian night sky. We do not know that one, of course, but we do know that the Magoi – the “wise men”, but not kings – got their camels and their tribute and their retinue together in good middle eastern, ancient-world fashion, and they went …
One of the temptations besetting us today is to toss around throw-away lines about the darkness of the time and hour, the darkness surrounding the events of Boxing Day 2004. But it is a conceit we who claim faith in Jesus can not afford. The journey of the Magoi – their GOING in response to God’s actions in the natural world – marked the nascent understanding and recognition of something we perhaps too easily affirm: that light had come into a dark world.
Ladies and Gentlemen: that light has NEVER disappeared! By what authority does any follower of Jesus speak of darkness now or ANY time since the birth of Jesus?
The Magoi confirmed that even aliens could recognise the light of the Christ. And so the Living God threw down the doors of revelation so that even those who did not belong, even those who had not paid their subscriptions, got a free look … The Magoi confirm that the Living God is available to all people and that the light of Jesus does not dissipate but grows and spreads, carried by prophets and apostles, and most important of all, by ordinary extraordinary human beings like us.
People want to know where God is in this tsunami tragedy – where the light is in this apparent darkness … Show them. God’s is the hand reaching into pockets and purses to offer money to aid agencies. God’s hand puts those extra tins of food into the shopping trolley. God’s love and compassion powers the actions of those who reach the desperate places of the tsunami-stricken. God’s ears listen to the fluttering hearts of south-east Asian children, God’s arms carry those too weak or damaged to walk on their own, God’s tears wash down the graves of the dead. The light of Christ blazes in every act of compassion, mercy, love and generosity, every moment of shared or vicarious pain.
This morning’s pewsheet offers a few concrete suggestions for providing assistance. It may be that some of us find ourselves on the shores of one of the areas affected by the tsunami but we can all bring some of the light WE have received to those who think only darkness prevails.
Our money is not worthless, our gifts are not valueless; our compassion is never wasted, our prayers are never useless.
We are the light of the Christ – may we shine that the glory of the Living God may be seen by all!
[The angel] said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before theMany will already be asking where God was when the tsunami was born, how God could have allowed so many apparently and surely unquestionably innocent people to die and continue dying, why God did nothing to prevent this tragedy.For if any of us had forgotten the thorny braids of the problem of evil, Boxing Day 2004 sent them wildly twisting round and choking our perhaps complacent Christmass equanimity. Searching questions about God and God’s role in Creation and in our own lives once more confront and challenge us.
LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong
that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD,
but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD
was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not
in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it,
he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the
cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here,
Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts;
for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and
killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my
life, to take it away." Then the LORD said to him, "Go..."
The first book of Kings suggests that despite the awesome power of the natural world, a power which the Living God may well control, God is not IN that power or those events. In other words, God did not personally and with malice aforethought pound the coasts of Indonesia or Malaysia or Thailand or any other nation where people were killed and lives rudely changed forever.
We might paraphrase 1 Kings with the additional observation: And after the fire, a tsunami – but the LORD was not in the tsunami …
This begs questions like: Could not the God who wrought creation from chaos prevent this catastrophe? Our natural response is to affirm resoundingly that God HAS this power. That God’s hand could have shot down from heaven to provide a barrier between the great waves and the lands those waves threatened.
Many will assume or believe confirmed their bitter suspicion that because God did not perform to these expectations then God doesn’t exist or God doesn’t care or that God is not the all-powerful, all-loving Being we deluded people of faith claim.
Faced with the aftermath, the devastation, the shock, the whimpering children, the rising stench of decaying bodies, we scream for an answer, we demand to know where the Living God was on the morning of the 26th December 2004 between the hours of 6:58 and 7:15 … And all we hear in response to our interrogation is the “sound of sheer silence”, or in the more poetic trad version: The still, small voice of God.
And that sheer silence enrages and inflames the fallacy implicit in our thinking on the problem of evil. WE know as good, decent human beings that WE would not stand idly by while terrible tragedies occur; WE know as good, decent human beings that WE would try to do something to make things right; WE know we would do everything in our power to prevent catastrophe, and in the event of catastrophe provide every assistance, heal the sick, bind the broken, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, offer solace and comfort to the bereaved and traumatised … WE know what WE would do – and so we can’t believe that the Living God isn’t doing exactly the same thing!
The irony of course is that we humans are thinking exactly the same thoughts as God, we are moved by exactly the same impulse towards bowel-wrenching compassion Jesus exhibited, we are overwhelmed by exactly the same heartbreak and outrage at suffering as the God of Creation – precisely because we are made in the image and likeness of the Living God.
At the end of the devastation we can confidently tell the world that God is NOT uncaring or powerless or, worst of all, indifferent – because WE are moving and doing, WE are weeping and digging and bandaging, WE are using what we have and offering it to those who desperately need it now.
On Mount Horeb Elijah hears God’s voice and what he hears are ultimate instructions, instructions which begin with the simple word, GO … Jesus used the same word when he instructed the post-resurrection faithful to share their knowledge of good news with all the world.
It may well be the word the Magoi heard within their soul as they surveyed the ancient Persian night sky. We do not know that one, of course, but we do know that the Magoi – the “wise men”, but not kings – got their camels and their tribute and their retinue together in good middle eastern, ancient-world fashion, and they went …
One of the temptations besetting us today is to toss around throw-away lines about the darkness of the time and hour, the darkness surrounding the events of Boxing Day 2004. But it is a conceit we who claim faith in Jesus can not afford. The journey of the Magoi – their GOING in response to God’s actions in the natural world – marked the nascent understanding and recognition of something we perhaps too easily affirm: that light had come into a dark world.
Ladies and Gentlemen: that light has NEVER disappeared! By what authority does any follower of Jesus speak of darkness now or ANY time since the birth of Jesus?
The Magoi confirmed that even aliens could recognise the light of the Christ. And so the Living God threw down the doors of revelation so that even those who did not belong, even those who had not paid their subscriptions, got a free look … The Magoi confirm that the Living God is available to all people and that the light of Jesus does not dissipate but grows and spreads, carried by prophets and apostles, and most important of all, by ordinary extraordinary human beings like us.
People want to know where God is in this tsunami tragedy – where the light is in this apparent darkness … Show them. God’s is the hand reaching into pockets and purses to offer money to aid agencies. God’s hand puts those extra tins of food into the shopping trolley. God’s love and compassion powers the actions of those who reach the desperate places of the tsunami-stricken. God’s ears listen to the fluttering hearts of south-east Asian children, God’s arms carry those too weak or damaged to walk on their own, God’s tears wash down the graves of the dead. The light of Christ blazes in every act of compassion, mercy, love and generosity, every moment of shared or vicarious pain.
This morning’s pewsheet offers a few concrete suggestions for providing assistance. It may be that some of us find ourselves on the shores of one of the areas affected by the tsunami but we can all bring some of the light WE have received to those who think only darkness prevails.
Our money is not worthless, our gifts are not valueless; our compassion is never wasted, our prayers are never useless.
We are the light of the Christ – may we shine that the glory of the Living God may be seen by all!
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