ROAD RAGE AND OTHER SIN(S)

17th June 2007 : Pentecost 3 : year C
1 Kings 21:1-21 : Galatians 2:15-21 : Luke 7:36 – 8:3

I suspect I’ve used this illustration before but since we’re thinking about Sin today it’s worth repeating. Occasion: the “induction Eucharist” of a friend of mine and my wife’s into the Carmelite Order, in the surreal atmosphere of a convent not very many stone-throws away from the hectic pace of Stirling Highway, Dalkeith.

Came the sermon the priest arose, commandeered the pulpit and spake unto us on just this topic: Sin. Not just spake but dissected the sucker in all its grossed-out detail. I know I should have timed it but maybe I was wise not to because it felt like the preacher-man was giving us the benefit of knowing every type of sin it was possible to commit, from the obvious newspaper-headline stuff right down to stealing a paper clip from the office.

It’s a long list, I need hardly tell you. We were all implicated. Some of us were guilty-as. Boy, did we feel … bored out of our tiny minds …

Well, I did. I suspect it terrified a few of those of the True Faith, as it was probably meant to.

But ultimately, with the benefit of a bit of education and (sorry) Richard Rohr, I’d have to say the Carmelite-induction preacher and others of his thinking probably missed a greater point.

What the priest sed was indubitably not untrue but the overwhelming, all-encompassing sadness of Sin isn’t just about cataloguing the types, kinds and grades of it but about recognising how lost all of humanity becomes when we find ourselves, sometimes moment-by-moment, trapped in a cycle of sinful actions that often enter our minds at lightning speed, coming from places we can’t even begin to know the location of.

Among my many occasions for entering full-bloodedly into Sin is when I’m driving. I may seem kind, mild-mannered, even jolly, when I’m in the dress and the scarf and the poncho or whatever but put me on the road behind a steering wheel and who knows what it is or where it comes from but I’m as given to road rage as the next driver. You know the commercial about the Mum who picks her daughter up from school, scolds her for swearing and then proceeds to give a mouthful to some hapless driver who cuts her off as she’s leaving? Compared to me, she’s a pussy, a total wimpette. A mere apprentice road-rager.

Let’s be clear about this. I’m not proud of it but I confess it to illustrate the dynamic that Sin can assume – a suddenness that seems to come from the mythical “nowhere” and then engulfs us in actions we might not normally even think about.

Fortunately, one of the benefits of my listening to Richard Rohr is to understand that this phenomenon is simply a reality. It’s the way I am, at least at the moment. That doesn’t make it okay. It’s part of the large collection of things I “get wrong”.

But what I’ve found myself doing now is almost immediately reminding myself that, Hey, Alistair, you do stupid things too. You’re impatient and discourteous when you’re driving, too. And then I say sorry to God. I literally say, Sorry, Lord. I do stupid stuff too.

The point is that at the same time as putting human propensity for sinning into perspective we need to take it seriously enough sincerely to try to do something about it. In a nutshell, to seek the transforming love, acceptance and comfort of Jesus.

We become obsessed with Sin and its manifestations partly because we’ve secretly or otherwise bought the heresy of dualism and the moral universe created by conservatives. Of course the Living God wants us to live morally. But that’s not the criterion for entry into communion with God. It’s faith. And faith implies nothing about our moral standing.

As Richard Rohr points out several times, Jesus never – that’s NEVER – goes out looking for sinners. He’s not a one-man vigilante squad. He looks for the lost, the people precariously on the edge, the outcasts, the impoverished. The ones, effectively, who have absolutely nothing left to lose and who are therefore totally free to replenish their emptiness with Jesus’ love.

He doesn’t look for the anointing woman but she comes to him. Simon knows she’s a sinner. She knows she’s a sinner. Jesus knows she’s a sinner. Does Jesus judge her? Does Jesus recoil and say, “Whoa, sinner-woman, back off. Back off now. I have a seriously Lawful Pharisee on hand and I’m not afraid to use him!”

We know the answer to these and a legion of other questions.

No, the woman knows her state, she seeks Jesus and expresses her faith in him. He forgives her, it seems just because she needs it.

Ours is exactly the same dynamic. Yes, we need to acknowledge our sinfulness. But let’s not obsess about it. Jesus didn’t. He simply wanted people to come to him so that he could transform them. And the Christian scriptures show this happening time after time after time.

Likewise we need to do it time after time after time because we will probably never get it right all the time. Like the rest of the human creation, sometimes we get it right (Hallelujah!), oftentimes we get it wrong (so let’s sort it with God and get back on track).

We see the roots of all this radical acceptance and lack of judgement in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as this morning’s story of Naboth’s Vineyard. Too often we secretly cheer at the grossed-out image of the dogs licking Ahab and Jezebel’s blood but the real point is that God, though outraged at the abuse of power, at the total disregard of Naboth’s rights, nevertheless refuses to return the royal violence with divine violence.

The Naboth story finely indicates the dynamic of envy and greed that lie at the heart of personal and systemic violence. But what we see in the divine response is the seed of everything that finds fruition on the cross of Jesus – this divine refusal to take on the very worst of human distortions, to become violent, to seek revenge. God – unlike humankind – is NOT into payback. God’s version of payback amounts to saying, Do your worst. I still love you.

This is where Jesus calls us to be. Not seeking the sinner so we can judge them. Not running terrified from the Church’s self-appointed Sinner Squad. But coming to Jesus, acknowledging this weakness of our being and seeking his transformation.

This is what Paul means when he sez I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

This is the state of having come to Jesus. This is what happens when we allow Jesus to transform us: Christ lives in us and we act more and more out of this new reality, a reality in which Sin no longer enthralls us, or does so less and less, and in which we become less judgmental and more loving, open, accepting, welcoming.

Of course we need to take Sin and sinning seriously. But we do not need to let it be our master. We have the solution – our friend, Jesus. It sounds twee and quaint. Maybe it is. But it also happens to be true.

Why don’t we try it this week? At least, for those of us, like me, who still need to. Seek Jesus. Put away the judgements (note to Alistair: and the road rage) and allow Jesus to be the vision in our eyes.

A QUANTUM GOD

3rd June 2007 : TRINITY SUNDAY : Year C
Proverbs 8:1-4, 23-31 : Romans 5:1-5 : John 16:12-15

So I’m back at the University of Western Australia. I’m part of a rough band of what one of my Politics tutors would later call “young intellectuals” and I’m studying English, which in UWA-speak meant English LITERATURE. (We openly scoffed at Harold Robbins – and at anyone sub-literate enough to mention his name.)

But not all is well in the Garden. Rumour has it that in the Department of Philosophy they sit around discussing whether anything exists if they cannot apprehend it with one or more of their five senses. In other words, if yon philosophers can’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell it, does it exist?

Weird, man. Real freaky. I mean, like, “young intellectual” or not, I had no doubts at all about the existence of certain things or people that at any given point in the time-space continuum were beyond the capabilities of my sensory systems.

Flash forward to May and June 2007 and I’m sitting waiting for an appointment and getting real immersed in a New Scientist article on Schrödinger’s cat, the poor beast in a box that’s rigged up to produce cyanide gas if certain conditions prevail.
Schrödinger’s cat is an illustration of the New Physics – Quantum Theory. Deals with matter at sub-atomic levels. That’s small. Smaller than small. Smaller than the topmost atom at the peak of a pinhead small.

Here’s the thing. Schrödinger’s cat sez that until we know what’s happened to the cat by taking a peak inside the box, then at any given moment UNTIL we look, sed feline beastie is both dead AND alive!

Defies logic, doesn’t it? Reminds me of those philosophy students three decades ago.

Problem is, science, in its inimitable fashion, had long since demonstrated that these sub-atomic particles could – and did – exist in several different places ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Controlled experiments can demonstrate, for instance, that an atom can exist in three or more places AT THE SAME TIME.

If it reminds anyone of all those parallel universe stories and movies we keep seeing, don’t worry. It’s not accidental. Yes, we are talking about parallel universes, states of existence, etc. At least fictionally.

Scientifically, no one, apparently, has leapt from Quantum theory and sub-atomic particles to more complex collections of atoms, such as leaves or mice or humans but if I were a gambler I would bet someone’s thought about it …

All of which is a long-winded way of suggesting the Church has long had its own Quantum Theology, namely the doctrine of the Trinity – the One God who is three Persons AT THE SAME TIME; one in three yet three in one.

I have to admit Trinity reminds me again of those philosophy students, and now Schrödinger’s Cat and Quantum theory. Of course the Church doesn’t call it Quantum Theology or anything like that. This is just as well because Quantum theory, as opposed to theology, posits a well-nigh de facto infinity of possible states of existence whereas the Church in its conservative wisdom will only give us three possibilities – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For several reasons Trinity is a most confusing and aggravating doctrine, not least of which is because it IS a doctrine.
For one thing, as I’ve sed on other occasions, despite our best and most ingenious attempts we cannot conceive of or produce a single analogy that adequately describes Trinity. ALL our analogies ultimately fail because none of our analogies can restrict themselves to three and ONLY three different parts.

S. Patrick’s three-petalled clover has a stem, or can’t exist separately from its mother branch or twig. A peeled apple contains things like seeds as well as a peel, flesh and core. Ice, water and steam come close but they rely on external agents and cannot exist independently. That is, ice must have a drop in temperature; steam requires heat. We do not find them together at the same time but rather changing from one form to another.

But, in addition, for those of us who value such things, Trinity seems to exist outside holy scripture. Flashing back to my pew-warming days in the Parish of Christ Church, Claremont, I still remember the then-Assistant Curate, one Peter Basil Ratnam Manuel, now Rector of Bayswater, preaching a Trinity sermon in which he spoke the following sentence: “It’s not in the bible, you know.”

I remember feeling outraged. I felt cheated. I felt as if the Church had pulled a swifty and was operating under false pretences. Silently I screamed, Foul! but young Pete, having amused himself by this shock pronouncement, happily preached on, offering a pretty sound analogy of his own – the sun as heat, light and radiant energy.

At least Peter didn’t try to fob us off the old “it’s-a-Mystery-and-ya-can’t-understand-a-Mystery-or-it-wouldn’t-be-a-Mystery-any-more” line. Not that Trinity isn’t a Mystery but we so often miss the point about Mystery and use Mystery as an excuse to stop thinking about it. The point is that Mystery offers an invitation to participate in, to wrestle with, become involved in it.

And so we must. Because, just as we cannot have a healthy spirituality if we banish Trinity to our back-burners hoping it will fade away, equally we cannot in any healthy way dismiss it as a fanciful intrusion into our comfortable spiritual life by saying, Well, it’s not in holy scripture so it can’t be kosher.

The reason is, as I suggest in the pewsheet, that today, right now, we each have the same sorts of experiences of the Living God as the people of the Christian scriptures.
Namely, we do have those moments when God is for us a caring and protective parent-like figure. But sometimes we find ourselves filled with gut-wrenching compassion of Jesus and know God in that all-consuming way. At other times we move with the creative energy and passion of the Spirit, find words and ideas and strength that seem to come from nowhere.

This is the experience of the early Church. This is our experience. We cannot blame our ancestors in the faith for trying to make sense of it and ultimately creating the doctrine of the Trinity. Privately, I often suspect it was an ill-conceived enterprise but I do understand the impulse to carve out the doctrine.

What these people were doing was actually entering into the Mystery and engaging it, not side-lining it. But just as our Trinitarian analogies inevitably fail, so does our wrestling. But the point is never to win the bout. We ARE talking about the Living God here – and even though Jacob apparently won his wrestle with God, he left with a permanent injury and perhaps a life-long question about who really won …

The point is – and this is true for all of our spiritual journey, engagement and encounter – the point is that we learn and grow and become stronger by these very acts of participation. For instance, I’ve been regular at my local gym for a few months now and I can do more or do it more easily or for longer than I could when I first began. How many bicep-curls does anyone imagine I could do if I simply sed, It’s a mystery to me how anyone can lift that much weight??

But the fact is it IS a mystery how anyone can lift that much weight but by giving it a go, by engaging the dread machines, by continuing to participate in the mystery, who knows? maybe one day I too will be one of those hunky sweaty dudes who exude as much attitude as perspiration and ripple away as if they emerged from the womb that way!

As for valid objections that we don’t find Trinity in scripture, perhaps we expect too much wanting neat answers and ready-made, ready-formed conclusions. It’s as dangerous as missing the point of Mystery because when we get the pro-forma stuff laid out neat-as-a-pin and only have to go through the motions to make it work, then we’re simply acting automatically, without having to do any thinking or engaging.

The Living God is not a series of pre-defined propositions or spiritual templates that we simply call up and accept as-is or tweak to our liking. God asks for a relationship. We can only have a relationship with those beings to whom we bother to talk, with whom we walk, to whom we go to share our joys and sorrows and successes and aggravations. This is what makes a relationship LIVING. This is why I always refer to the LIVING God – to remind myself that God is not a theory but as complex and worthy of my full attention as any other person with whom I seek to be in relationship.

So where do we go with this? Honestly, I don’t know, except to say that the journey has not ended. As good as our relationship with the Living God may be, we ALWAYS have something more to learn, something to bring, offer and receive. Praise be to the Living God for that!

And, of course, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all!

LIFE OUT OF DEATH

10th June 2007 : Pentecost 2 : Year C
1 Kings 17:8-24 : Galatians 1:11-24 : Luke 7:11-17

The late comedian Dave Allen, as those of us who remember him and/or enjoyed his humour will recall, liked to send up the Church and anything or anyone else that took themselves a little too seriously. Thankfully, it’s one of the healthiest spiritual activities available to us because if we can’t laugh at ourselves and our strange and idiosyncratic ways then we’ve drifted far from the possibility of transformation through Jesus: we take on an aspect of certainty that precludes faith and God’s ability to influence us in whole and healthy ways.

But that’s another sermon. Cut back to Dave Allen and his penchant for, among many other things, funeral sketches. I remember one in which two funeral processions are on their way to the graveyard. When they become aware of each other’s presence they begin a Keystone Cops-like descent into slapstick absurdity as they fight to get to the cemetery ahead of their rival. Dave Allen was poking fun at the Irish superstition that if two people are buried on the same day, only the first gets into heaven: the second one has to wait till the next day …

I was reminded of that sketch when I began perusing the gospel. No, we don’t have competing funeral processions. Just the one. But one was enough to ring in the associations. And I can see the point of the website, Girardian reflections on the lectionary, which asserts that Jesus crashes headlong into the funeral procession.

I hope the point will become clearer before too long because although Jesus doesn’t literally come into physical contact with the procession what he stands for, what he’s about, certainly does.

It’s one of those points that seem quite obscure until someone mentions it or explains it – and then it becomes so obvious you wonder why on earth you couldn’t see it in the first place. At least, that’s how it was for me.

The “crash” is between death and life. Life, AKA Jesus, collides with death – the funeral procession of a man whom the town clearly held in some regard, given the large crowd. It’s quite possibly a loud and noisy event, with wailing women and percussive noise-makers giving death a centrality and importance in human culture and thinking that is totally at odds with the view of the Living God.

Well might the people mourn, especially the mother. She’s a widow, therefore reliant on her only son to provide her with sustenance. This was social security in Jesus’ time – and even now in many countries of the world. Without her son the widow may have had to resort to begging on the streets in order to live. She was a woman with very bleak prospects indeed.

Enter Jesus and we know the rest – the only son of God brings back to life the only son of the widow of Nain. Death and life clash with each other and life wins.

Happily the story – unique to Luke – echoes the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Unlike the uber-cool Jesus who simply issues a command to rise, Elijah engages in one of those weird roundabout exercises that result in more questions than answers.

But the result is the same. The sons live and the widows get to enjoy life in a new way, a way that the Living God now infuses with energy and hope.

These parallel stories are not, of course, mere happenstance. It’s not as though our intrepid lectioneers chose the gospel for today and then came across Elijah and the widow of Zarephath by accident. Chances are Luke has modelled his story – found only in his gospel – on the passage from the First book of Kings. He’s already done something similar with Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel and the Magnificat in his infancy narrative.

What it suggests in both cases is that what Jesus does in his own gospel days is not so much unique as the full and proper outworking of the Living God’s desires that have existed for all time and will continue to exist for the rest of it.

In other words, God offers us life. God will not allow us to descend into the closed-off world of death and the creepy boredom of the shadowland, Sheol, where no one can praise God’s name.

And for us as we enter the period after the Easter season with these Sundays after Pentecost, it’s a reminder that life emerging from death is NOT just a groovy jaunt reserved for the Son of God, but is available and promised to all of us, any time, anywhere.

Life clashing with death and being victorious is the ultimate meaning of the good news.

But as Paul’s letter to the community of faith in Galatia reminds us, we can and should see the same dynamic at metaphorical levels also. For Paul, he was in the dead-end business of persecuting the infant Church. Every indication is that he yearned to eradicate the new Jewish sect that had sprung up from the chaos of Jesus’ execution.

Paul was himself a purveyor of death and violence, a complete Hebrew scriptures dude who clearly believed that he was doing God’s work in persecuting the Church. The same Living God turned that around by introducing Paul to Jesus, the peaceful purveyor of life, and so Saul the persecutor became Paul the preacher, and the rest is pretty much as they say …

But the point remains the same: out of death the Living God creates or recreates life. God offers that life to us as a free gift, available with every proclamation of belief and act of faith. I suspect the only reason we don’t get steak knives and fries with that is because the gift of life is probably pretty much secure at the top of the tree.

What, then, are the situations of death we find ourselves battling in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield? I suspect those situations are plentiful. But the question – as we know - really isn’t how many death-dealing and violent places we find ourselves in but whether we have enough faith to accept God’s gift of life.

Our readings today make clear the movement of the Living God in world history and ours. What do we need to do in order to accept the gift of life so that we in our turn can share it with those round about us who so desperately need it?