9:30am Camillo
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 : Philippians 3:17 – 4:1 : Luke 13:1-9
In the words of the prophet: what do we got here? Today, like. Let’s look at this. First, some really weird stuff going down in the Hebrew scriptures. The seminal episode in which Yahweh promises Abraham – who is at the time still called Abram – that he will have heirs and offspring and descendants. Satisfies the typical male desire to have his name carry on, addressing the male mortality-fear of being the last of his line.
But more than that – we also get the uber-weird bizzo involving animal carcasses hewn in half and a flaming torch and smoking fire pot. This stuff is kind of freaky. Smoking pot indeed! But, for the trivia hounds and houndettes among us, it does explain the Hebrew idiom for “making a covenant”, which literally translates as “to CUT a covenant”, which is what Abe does to the carcasses – cuts ’em in two for the Mysterious Yahweh to move between.
Then we have Paul encouraging the troops in Philippi. Maybe not quite as stirring as Mel Gibson bare-backing a lively pony, wearing Pictish woad, natty hair flying, exhorting the motley crew of Scots clans to fight the invading Sassenachs… But who knows? Best wait for the film before passing final judgement on that one.
And then the godspell. The Guid News. What have we here?
What we have is a bit of an idea that will surface later in the twentieth century as “The Shadow”. Said Shadow is the recognition that each one of us has a built-in dark side. A side that surfaces to one extent or another whenever we think or say or do things that are more or less destructive, and diminish the fundamental goodness both of our own nature and of others. The Shadow operates when we indulge in intentional acts that damage any part of creation.
It’s not something we should fear. Rather, we need to accept it as part of what it means to be human. Late in the eighteenth century the English poet and artist and sometime mystic, William Blake, wrote his well-known poem, “The Tiger” – you know, the one that begins
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night…
It concludes with a question that is difficult to face:
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Is the Living God, the Creator, responsible for this fearsome creature, the Tiger? In the terminology of Carl Gustav Jung, who proposed the concept of the Shadow, maybe the answer is, Yes… We humans are both Lamb and Tiger.
So Jesus in Luke poses the questions:
Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worseand
sinners than all other Galileans?
those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them-- do you
think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in
Jerusalem?
The answer he gives to both questions is: No, I tell you.
He sez: No, I tell you; but unless you repent you will all perish [just] as they did.
First, it’s a recognition that no one can claim to possess a greater level of moral rectitude than anyone else. We are all flawed creatures. AND we are all capable of behaving in destructive – and self-destructive – ways. Don’t let anyone dare doubt that.
I remember still experiencing the craziness of sleep-deprivation when our first child refused to sleep through the night. It lasted two years. I reached a stage where I was terrified of going to bed at night in case no.1 son woke up and cried as soon as my head hit the pillow – and he did it so often that my pessimism had more than ample empirical, measurable evidence upon which to form a powerful fear.
In the throes of sleep-deprived madness I came at times far closer than I would ever want to, to descending into physical abuse of my son. No one is more pleased than me that it never happened – but it left me with a profound understanding of what might drive an otherwise loving parent into that particular darkness of their soul.
That possibility existed within me. I knew it. I could not deny it in any way conceivable. I hated it. But equally I was grateful and relieved that I had never acted on it. What “it” was, was my Shadow self, the part of me that makes me fundamentally no better and no worse than any other human being, and certainly no better and no worse than any parent who actually does cross the awful boundary between dark thought and black action.
But Jesus warns us that we cannot rest with that recognition, however plausible an explanation it may give as to why apparently “nice” people do abhorrently horrifying things – like the man involved in the apparent murder-suicide in Kardinya a few days ago.
But what are we to make of all this? We know from Genesis that God makes extravagant promises. Abram will have descendants more in number than the stars. Yeah, right. At least, a rational person may well scoff. But it is hyperbole – exaggeration for effect. God sez to Abe: Chillax, man. You want your name to continue? It will. Trust me.
On the basis of that promise, Paul tells the folks at Philippi to “stand firm in the Lord.” It’s another “trust God” statement. Don’t let circumstances – or even the perverse parts of our own natures – deflect us from trusting God. And that means, at the very least, God’s presence in any and every circumstance. My sleep deprivation episode, for instance, left me with a secure understanding of God’s grace. I come across stories of people – usually men – who reached a point of uncontrollability and injured or killed their babies and infants, and I understand that that could easily have been me – but for the grace of God, the only thing that stood between me and my son at times. God was with me – and my son - in those difficult times.
But we can become so overwhelmed that we drift away from God as surely as a boat that has slipped its moorings. It’s those times we need to examine the rest of Jesus’ responses: repent. Change our mind, change our heart.
As I have often said, repent is far less about saying sorry than about a fundamental abandonment of thinking and acting that causes us to fly further and further away from God. The further away from God we get, the more distant and tissue-thin seem the promises that Yahweh gave Abram. ...And the harder and harder it gets to “stand firm in the Lord” because of course the Lord is miniscule and the ground is quicksand.
Repentance means first consciously turning back to God. And when we do that, having wandered far off, half-way round our little planet maybe – when we decide to turn back to God, what do we find? We find that God, who seemed so far away and unreachable, is standing right behind us. We turn and our first step causes us to run right into the Living God.
God has stood firm during those times when we were unable to. God has done for us what we were unable to do for ourselves. It is not a new thing either. It is something that is just about definitive. God alone has no Shadow – God alone never fails.
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