7th March 2010 : Lent 3 : Year C
9:30am Camillo
Isaiah 55:1-9 : 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 : Luke 13:31-35
All week I have wrestled with the gospel reading. It’s my usual practice but what was difficult this week was my inability to remember what the reading was about!
The other readings were straightforward enough. Isaiah presents a scene in which Yahweh offers the people of Israel an abundance of nourishment. It is a moment of God’s grace. It is an offering of the things that are essential for life – water and food, with a few delights thrown in, like milk and honey.
It’s not an extravagant gift – it is simply the things that humankind needs. But the whole is given a spiritual cast. This is special stuff. It’s no mere meal, not even a banquet. It is, quite simply, enough. But because it is the gift of God’s grace, even “enough” is more than any human can imagine in their wildest dreams.
And needless to say, only the Living God can provide this sufficiency. And it is only available to those who seek out God and accept the invitation. It’s not a huge demand. It’s not a demand at all.
It’s worth remembering that God does not and will not make demands on any of us. God always invites – and it is always a gracious invitation.
And if it were that easy then perhaps we wouldn’t be here this morning. Perhaps the world would be in a state of peace and harmony, sharing resources of every kind, from food and water to skills and technology.
No. It takes a considerable act of will to abandon the old and familiar – especially when they are damaging and destructive, paradoxical as that may sound. …Because in some ways we become more familiar with our enemies than with our friends. We seem to invest more in hating them, more in gaining knowledge of their ways, of nursing and nourishing old wounds and grievances.
This is clearly an unproductive practice, however comforting it may seem. Ultimately, it is the way of dusty death. The Living God, on the other hand, offers life in all its fullness and it is an abundant offering, made by the ultimate philanthropist – a delightful word whose meaning is lover of humanity.
In contrast to the Living God’s exuberant prodigality – God’s limitless generosity – is the unruly, myopic attitude of human beings.
When Paul writes to the community of faith in Corinth he gives the example of the demanding, puerile attention-seeking misbehaviour of the nation of Israel. They have, says Pauly, spiritual food and drink – the same spiritual nourishment that the Corinth folk possess – but they are not satisfied.
Not because the food and drink on offer are unappetising or lacking in anything we humans need. But because earthly pleasures are too easy, immediate, gratifying. It’s all short-term, of course, which is why people need more and more, seemingly without an end, creating ever-more sophisticated but ultimately hollow and lifeless means by which to access those pleasures.
For Paul, the crux of the matter seems to inhabit the world of entitlement, with its burgeoning suburban sprawl, arrogance. Paul is saying that none of us should take for granted God’s offerings, even though they are graciously made. Nor should we assume that because we are the recipients of such magnanimous favour, we are somehow superior to anyone else. We are not. We have simply fallen flat on our faces and God has rolled us over, and the first thing we see is Jesus, smiling yet profoundly concerned, with a tray of food and drink.
And this, then, is what so wounds Jesus as he gazes upon Jerusalem, the city that is so important in Luke’s gospel – so important that Luke does a straightforward enough editorial on the post-resurrection tradition and has the apostles and disciples hole up in the holy city rather than scatter to their home towns.
He ends with an allusion to Psalm 118 – we bless you from the house of Yahweh – and a full-blooded quote: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yahweh!”
When does that happen? It’s a foreshadowing of his entry into Jerusalem on the day we call Palm Sunday. Jesus is aiming for Passover, timing his arrival so that he will be among the crowds of pilgrims. Luke makes his Jesus determined to meet destiny in “the city that kills the prophets”.
But what he also meets is the perverse nature of those who wilfully reject grace. Grace has been and continues to be offered but Jerusalem – a potent symbol of the people of Israel – gives God the finger and goes its merry way.
We in Camillo need to heed Paul’s warning. We pursue our own plans and desires at the expense both of the Living God and of ourselves. Grace is always available. So much so that one of my unfulfilled schemes is to produce a bumper sticker saying, Grace Happens, because that is exactly how it is. Grace Happens!
But we have to make ourselves available to receive it. And understand that it is given, not because we are better, more worthy, purer, more special, more deserving, better bible bashers or superior scripture students, but because God loves us and “doing grace” is where God is at (man). Whoa.
As last week’s study of Mary Magdalene put it – “I am good because God loves me…not loved because I am good.” Or to paraphrase the title of a book I came across recently, we are (potentially) grace-filled “for no good reason”. In other words, we don’t and can’t earn God’s grace. Grace just flows out of God like a fountain in a lake.
Question is: are we secure enough in our faith to accept this wonderful spiritual freebie? Or do we still need to learn that the grace of God is here-now if only we would reach towards God and accept it?
Showing posts with label God's grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God's grace. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
STANDING FIRM
28th February 2010 : Lent 2 : Year C
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
It concludes with a question that is difficult to face:
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:
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.
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.
Monday, January 07, 2008
ADVENT SUNDAY A 2007
2nd December 2007 : Advent Sunday : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 2:1-5 : Romans 13:9-21 : Matthew 24:36-44
Many of us have seen the movie Home alone, possibly even the two sequels. For those who haven’t, Home alone is the highly-unlikely story of a precocious young boy, something of a misfit in his large, unruly family, who is accidentally left behind when sed family goes on vacation. This sets the scene for a series of slapstick antics as the kid proceeds to outwit a couple of would-be robbers, ingeniously using only the materials he has at hand.
The first movie worked well. We didn’t know the outcome. The kid was very cute despite his precociousness. We had tension, we had sympathy. Durn-it-all, we were rootin for the kid from the get-go and his triumph over evil and disaster was OUR triumph over evil and disaster.
Home alone was a masterful piece of cinema manipulation that drew us into acute identification with the poor abandoned brat, ultimately playing on our own deep fears – maybe fears of abandonment also; fear of attack; fear of threats of one kind or another; fear of an assault on whatever it is we delude ourselves into believing fundamentally holds us together as human beings.
Before I continue let me say that I am indebted for much of what follows to the website Girardian reflections on the lectionary[1] The site’s name comes from the anthropologist René Girard, whose study of society and religion led him to conclude that what drives us is desire, which may lead either to cooperation or conflict. It’s far more complex than that so that will have to do for the moment – or until we find someone who understands it well enough to explain it clearly!
Meanwhile, back at the sermon …
The Church has long, though I suspect not “always” played on people’s fears of rejection and abandonment in order to gain adherents and keep captive the fearful faithful. We all want to belong, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to feel in some way accepted. Such is our desire for belonging and acceptance that we willingly abandon our most fundamental principles and sense of personal integrity – at least in the short-term – in order to achieve it.
As one particular kind of example, this is how extremist groups of every colour, religion and political persuasion gain and retain followers. From the outside these groups may seem obviously dodgy – but offer someone who feels rejected a sense of home, a sense of belonging, a sense of likemindedness – and they willingly become yours. Once that happens it’s relatively easy to manipulate them and keep them for long periods of time.
It’s exactly this dynamic that operates in the conservative dogma of the so-called Rapture, a non-biblical term that has many different shades of interpretation based on selective and sometimes twisted interpretations of a handful of biblical texts. The basis of Rapture theology is that at some point before, during or after the last days – a time of terror known as the Tribulation – Jesus will descend from heaven and lift up the “saved” from earth and meet them in the sky, ushering them into eternity. Those who remain on earth still have a shot at salvation but they will have to suffer some or all of the horrors of Tribulation.
Well … who wouldn’t want to belong to the select group of the “saved”? And who, believing they were “in”, wouldn’t want to do everything they could to ensure they stayed “in”?
As far as that basic scenario goes anyone and any group can play the game – and who hasn’t? The Church is a past master at it. The Church has for centuries set up and demanded adherence on the basis of what Richard Rohr calls “questions of belonging, membership questions; who’s in – and who’s out”.
Part of the problem is that this was never Jesus’ message. He didn’t offer “membership” based on strict and coded principles. One of the reasons the established religion feared him was because he threw out their rule book. He not so much re-wrote their cosy constitution as tore the whole thing to pieces.
How? By allowing anyone and everyone to be members of his organisation! He threw wide the doors. He sed even the blind, the lame, the deaf, the mute – even SINNERS for goodness’ sake!! – could come in and receive God’s welcome and forgiveness. For those of us who like churchy words, it’s called GRACE.
Grace flows freely from a loving God and it sez to anyone who can hear the offer, Come on down!
It’s a totally different – and liberating – attitude from the one that sez These are the rules; you can stay as long as you obey them. If you don’t obey, we kick you out and abandon you to your fate.
Who among us really wants to be “abandoned to our fate”? I know I don’t!
No wonder people likewise are terrified at the prospect of being among those who are “left behind”. It’s what ancient and not-so-ancient peoples did to the elderly and infirm: left them behind under a bush or on an ice-floe or in a C-class hospital (read “nursing home”). No thank you!
One of the problems is that we don’t have to translate the text the way we actually find it. For instance, the word for “taken” could validly be translated as “swept away” or “kidnapped” or “taken by force”. The Latin translation gives us the English word rape and the French version – ravissement – sounds enough like its English equivalent to need no translation.
Is this REALLY what God is going to do to those who belong to the right club, the Salvation Club?
On the other hand, the word that translates as “left behind” occurs commonly in the Christian scriptures, has several different meanings also, and could be rendered forgive. It’s actually the same word sitting ingenuously behind Father, forgive them for they know not what they do; and Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And when we consider that Noah was “left behind” while the rest of the world was “swept away” in evil and violence we start to get a different picture. And do we really need to guess how topsy-turvy the view is when we look at the most well-known of all people ever to be “left behind” – a certain Jesus of Nazareth, abandoned on the cross, soaked in the violence of humanity, refusing to abandon his faith, innocent victim of the world’s evil – and raised from the dead on the third day by the Living God!
The point is we do not need to fear being left behind. Being left behind may actually be the true sign that we are people of faith, people who maybe do not “belong” according to the rulebook, but people who have accepted God’s grace – the only thing we need to do.
It is exactly the same grace operating as Mary of Nazareth enters the final month of her third trimester. Humankind does nothing – can do nothing – to deserve or warrant the coming of Jesus into the world. God sends Jesus in an act of faith as an act of grace.
We who are left behind to meet him need only ask one question – will we truly receive God’s offered grace this Advent Season and understand it at the Christ Mass?
[1] http://girardianlectionary.net/index.html and http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/advent1a.htm
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 2:1-5 : Romans 13:9-21 : Matthew 24:36-44
Many of us have seen the movie Home alone, possibly even the two sequels. For those who haven’t, Home alone is the highly-unlikely story of a precocious young boy, something of a misfit in his large, unruly family, who is accidentally left behind when sed family goes on vacation. This sets the scene for a series of slapstick antics as the kid proceeds to outwit a couple of would-be robbers, ingeniously using only the materials he has at hand.
The first movie worked well. We didn’t know the outcome. The kid was very cute despite his precociousness. We had tension, we had sympathy. Durn-it-all, we were rootin for the kid from the get-go and his triumph over evil and disaster was OUR triumph over evil and disaster.
Home alone was a masterful piece of cinema manipulation that drew us into acute identification with the poor abandoned brat, ultimately playing on our own deep fears – maybe fears of abandonment also; fear of attack; fear of threats of one kind or another; fear of an assault on whatever it is we delude ourselves into believing fundamentally holds us together as human beings.
Before I continue let me say that I am indebted for much of what follows to the website Girardian reflections on the lectionary[1] The site’s name comes from the anthropologist René Girard, whose study of society and religion led him to conclude that what drives us is desire, which may lead either to cooperation or conflict. It’s far more complex than that so that will have to do for the moment – or until we find someone who understands it well enough to explain it clearly!
Meanwhile, back at the sermon …
The Church has long, though I suspect not “always” played on people’s fears of rejection and abandonment in order to gain adherents and keep captive the fearful faithful. We all want to belong, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to feel in some way accepted. Such is our desire for belonging and acceptance that we willingly abandon our most fundamental principles and sense of personal integrity – at least in the short-term – in order to achieve it.
As one particular kind of example, this is how extremist groups of every colour, religion and political persuasion gain and retain followers. From the outside these groups may seem obviously dodgy – but offer someone who feels rejected a sense of home, a sense of belonging, a sense of likemindedness – and they willingly become yours. Once that happens it’s relatively easy to manipulate them and keep them for long periods of time.
It’s exactly this dynamic that operates in the conservative dogma of the so-called Rapture, a non-biblical term that has many different shades of interpretation based on selective and sometimes twisted interpretations of a handful of biblical texts. The basis of Rapture theology is that at some point before, during or after the last days – a time of terror known as the Tribulation – Jesus will descend from heaven and lift up the “saved” from earth and meet them in the sky, ushering them into eternity. Those who remain on earth still have a shot at salvation but they will have to suffer some or all of the horrors of Tribulation.
Well … who wouldn’t want to belong to the select group of the “saved”? And who, believing they were “in”, wouldn’t want to do everything they could to ensure they stayed “in”?
As far as that basic scenario goes anyone and any group can play the game – and who hasn’t? The Church is a past master at it. The Church has for centuries set up and demanded adherence on the basis of what Richard Rohr calls “questions of belonging, membership questions; who’s in – and who’s out”.
Part of the problem is that this was never Jesus’ message. He didn’t offer “membership” based on strict and coded principles. One of the reasons the established religion feared him was because he threw out their rule book. He not so much re-wrote their cosy constitution as tore the whole thing to pieces.
How? By allowing anyone and everyone to be members of his organisation! He threw wide the doors. He sed even the blind, the lame, the deaf, the mute – even SINNERS for goodness’ sake!! – could come in and receive God’s welcome and forgiveness. For those of us who like churchy words, it’s called GRACE.
Grace flows freely from a loving God and it sez to anyone who can hear the offer, Come on down!
It’s a totally different – and liberating – attitude from the one that sez These are the rules; you can stay as long as you obey them. If you don’t obey, we kick you out and abandon you to your fate.
Who among us really wants to be “abandoned to our fate”? I know I don’t!
No wonder people likewise are terrified at the prospect of being among those who are “left behind”. It’s what ancient and not-so-ancient peoples did to the elderly and infirm: left them behind under a bush or on an ice-floe or in a C-class hospital (read “nursing home”). No thank you!
One of the problems is that we don’t have to translate the text the way we actually find it. For instance, the word for “taken” could validly be translated as “swept away” or “kidnapped” or “taken by force”. The Latin translation gives us the English word rape and the French version – ravissement – sounds enough like its English equivalent to need no translation.
Is this REALLY what God is going to do to those who belong to the right club, the Salvation Club?
On the other hand, the word that translates as “left behind” occurs commonly in the Christian scriptures, has several different meanings also, and could be rendered forgive. It’s actually the same word sitting ingenuously behind Father, forgive them for they know not what they do; and Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And when we consider that Noah was “left behind” while the rest of the world was “swept away” in evil and violence we start to get a different picture. And do we really need to guess how topsy-turvy the view is when we look at the most well-known of all people ever to be “left behind” – a certain Jesus of Nazareth, abandoned on the cross, soaked in the violence of humanity, refusing to abandon his faith, innocent victim of the world’s evil – and raised from the dead on the third day by the Living God!
The point is we do not need to fear being left behind. Being left behind may actually be the true sign that we are people of faith, people who maybe do not “belong” according to the rulebook, but people who have accepted God’s grace – the only thing we need to do.
It is exactly the same grace operating as Mary of Nazareth enters the final month of her third trimester. Humankind does nothing – can do nothing – to deserve or warrant the coming of Jesus into the world. God sends Jesus in an act of faith as an act of grace.
We who are left behind to meet him need only ask one question – will we truly receive God’s offered grace this Advent Season and understand it at the Christ Mass?
[1] http://girardianlectionary.net/index.html and http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/advent1a.htm
Monday, October 22, 2007
GOD: THE GOOD COP?
16th September 2007 : Pentecost 16 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 : 1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-19a : Luke 15:1-10
It doesn’t matter which TV channel we watch – every one of them has some sort of “cops n robbers” show. The ABC has excellent programs like The Bill and Cracker, among others; the commercials serve an unending platter of American and, occasionally, Australian fare. We can even tune into SBS and see the marvelous Inspector Montalbano capturing crooks in smooth Italian.
As expressions of the heresy of dualism – good versus bad, right versus wrong – these shows continue the trend we can witness even in holy scripture. Not, of course, cop shows as such; rather, the good guy triumphing over the bad guy – the more blood and violence the better!
Little wonder that we cast God in the role of the Avenger, the Super Cop, the Great Police Commissioner in the Sky, with Chief Inspector Jesus on the ground to hunt down the remaining bad guys and train up a crack squad of Sinner-Seekers.
And boy does this seem to be the case first-up when Jeremiah smacks us in the chops with a divine soliloquy outlining God’s anger at Judah’s faithlessness. This is God Super-Cop in action, the Punisher, the Revenger – the One who visits pain and suffering upon all who fail to conform to the divine design.
They say the devil is in the detail. In this case it’s the divine in the detail, in one small clause that signals hope and something of the true nature of the Living God:
Yet I will not make a full end, sez God. In other words, God will not eradicate Judah, not wipe them off the face of the earth, erasing every record and social security number as if they never even existed.
Yet I will not make a full end signals God’s intention to find a peaceful and merciful resolution. Judah has chosen a particular course of action and, as I suggested a week or so ago, God ensures divine control over the situation by accepting full responsibility for what will happen.
Over the centuries and still today Christians have gleefully purloined passages in the Hebrew scriptures as somehow being predictive of future events, especially Christ-events. Yet I will not make a full end could become one of those chrystal ball phrases even though it refers only to the ultimate restoration of the Jewish people centuries before Jesus.
Even so, when we DO encounter the times of Jesus we find a truer, far more accurate picture of the God of mercy, love and compassion than the projections of the Hebrew scriptures. Paul gives us these straightforward statements to ponder:
Paul contrasts his human behaviour – his violence – with that of the Living God, who displays qualities of mercy, love, grace and faithfulness, doing so with “utmost patience”. Here suddenly is the true nature of our God, the One who “will not make a full end” but will wait patiently for the opportune moment, when the people are ready to understand and receive God’s mercy.
This is very important. While we continue to act out of fear – while our behaviour and attitudes and endlessly-rewound tapes reinforce again and again and again and again that fear – we will continue to conceive of and portray the Living God as a ruthless persecutor who is out for revenge. Needless to say, being otherwise rational creatures, we will also continue to run away from such a God.
And rightly so. Because that ISN’T our God.
The fear we’re talking about is sheer terror. Fear as in the Dave Allen sketch: “Admiral! There’s fifty French froggy frigates on the horizon!” “Thank you, Mr Hardy. Would you kindly fetch me my brown corduroy trousers …”
We shouldn’t confuse this fear with the very appropriate awe and speechless amazement that the word fear indicates in many biblical passages. That’s entirely different.
This fear of the God of revenge keeps us running, keeps us hiding – and it’s often the final barrier God gently removes before we come to an understanding of God’s true nature.
What does Paul say? “Christ came into the world to SAVE sinners …” Jesus is not a bounty hunter. He’s the full human expression of the divine love, mercy, compassion and yearning for relationship.
And as the gospel confirms and emphasises, Jesus isn’t out there looking for sinners. He’s searching, patiently, for those who are lost.
Yes, the stories in this chapter of Luke do equate “the lost” with sinners and sin and sinful behaviour. But as the third story in the series – the lost son and the prodigal father – indicates, God isn’t hunting us down in order to punish us.
God is painstakingly searching for us in order to LOVE us fully. And such is God’s joy when we return, when we come out of our fear-based hovels and chuck out our warped, perverted fear-based distortions of God, that full-blooded celebration is the only option.
God sez, I’ve found Big Al – let’s PAR-TAY! Whoo-hoo!! And God becomes the divine DJ at the divine disco, out-boogey-ing the best of them.
Where does that leave us in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield? First, let’s do a reality check of our picture of the Living God. Are we terrified this disturbed deity is gonna get us and get us good? Or are we secure in God’s love – secure enough to speak about it and share it with confidence and authority?
Second, we have to remember that the Jesus business isn’t just about warm-fuzzies. It’s also about sharing this good news with everyone else who is lost, wounded, damaged, broken. If we’re still fear-based then we don’t have no good news to share. If we’ve come to trust the faithful love, mercy and compassion of the Living God, then boy do we have a good news story to tell and share!
And that’s the question –do we have bad news of a vengeful punisher? or good news of the ever-loving, ever-living Living God? And if we do – then who’s hearing it? Who heard it yesterday? Who’s gonna hear it today? Who’ll hear it tomorrow and the day after and the week after that and next month and next year and … You get the picture …
9:30am Westfield
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 : 1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-19a : Luke 15:1-10
It doesn’t matter which TV channel we watch – every one of them has some sort of “cops n robbers” show. The ABC has excellent programs like The Bill and Cracker, among others; the commercials serve an unending platter of American and, occasionally, Australian fare. We can even tune into SBS and see the marvelous Inspector Montalbano capturing crooks in smooth Italian.
As expressions of the heresy of dualism – good versus bad, right versus wrong – these shows continue the trend we can witness even in holy scripture. Not, of course, cop shows as such; rather, the good guy triumphing over the bad guy – the more blood and violence the better!
Little wonder that we cast God in the role of the Avenger, the Super Cop, the Great Police Commissioner in the Sky, with Chief Inspector Jesus on the ground to hunt down the remaining bad guys and train up a crack squad of Sinner-Seekers.
And boy does this seem to be the case first-up when Jeremiah smacks us in the chops with a divine soliloquy outlining God’s anger at Judah’s faithlessness. This is God Super-Cop in action, the Punisher, the Revenger – the One who visits pain and suffering upon all who fail to conform to the divine design.
They say the devil is in the detail. In this case it’s the divine in the detail, in one small clause that signals hope and something of the true nature of the Living God:
yet I will not make a full end
Yet I will not make a full end, sez God. In other words, God will not eradicate Judah, not wipe them off the face of the earth, erasing every record and social security number as if they never even existed.
Yet I will not make a full end signals God’s intention to find a peaceful and merciful resolution. Judah has chosen a particular course of action and, as I suggested a week or so ago, God ensures divine control over the situation by accepting full responsibility for what will happen.
Over the centuries and still today Christians have gleefully purloined passages in the Hebrew scriptures as somehow being predictive of future events, especially Christ-events. Yet I will not make a full end could become one of those chrystal ball phrases even though it refers only to the ultimate restoration of the Jewish people centuries before Jesus.
Even so, when we DO encounter the times of Jesus we find a truer, far more accurate picture of the God of mercy, love and compassion than the projections of the Hebrew scriptures. Paul gives us these straightforward statements to ponder:
I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me,
because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I
was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I
received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of
our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the foremost. But for that very
reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might
display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to
believe in him for eternal life.
Paul contrasts his human behaviour – his violence – with that of the Living God, who displays qualities of mercy, love, grace and faithfulness, doing so with “utmost patience”. Here suddenly is the true nature of our God, the One who “will not make a full end” but will wait patiently for the opportune moment, when the people are ready to understand and receive God’s mercy.
This is very important. While we continue to act out of fear – while our behaviour and attitudes and endlessly-rewound tapes reinforce again and again and again and again that fear – we will continue to conceive of and portray the Living God as a ruthless persecutor who is out for revenge. Needless to say, being otherwise rational creatures, we will also continue to run away from such a God.
And rightly so. Because that ISN’T our God.
The fear we’re talking about is sheer terror. Fear as in the Dave Allen sketch: “Admiral! There’s fifty French froggy frigates on the horizon!” “Thank you, Mr Hardy. Would you kindly fetch me my brown corduroy trousers …”
We shouldn’t confuse this fear with the very appropriate awe and speechless amazement that the word fear indicates in many biblical passages. That’s entirely different.
This fear of the God of revenge keeps us running, keeps us hiding – and it’s often the final barrier God gently removes before we come to an understanding of God’s true nature.
What does Paul say? “Christ came into the world to SAVE sinners …” Jesus is not a bounty hunter. He’s the full human expression of the divine love, mercy, compassion and yearning for relationship.
And as the gospel confirms and emphasises, Jesus isn’t out there looking for sinners. He’s searching, patiently, for those who are lost.
Yes, the stories in this chapter of Luke do equate “the lost” with sinners and sin and sinful behaviour. But as the third story in the series – the lost son and the prodigal father – indicates, God isn’t hunting us down in order to punish us.
God is painstakingly searching for us in order to LOVE us fully. And such is God’s joy when we return, when we come out of our fear-based hovels and chuck out our warped, perverted fear-based distortions of God, that full-blooded celebration is the only option.
God sez, I’ve found Big Al – let’s PAR-TAY! Whoo-hoo!! And God becomes the divine DJ at the divine disco, out-boogey-ing the best of them.
Where does that leave us in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield? First, let’s do a reality check of our picture of the Living God. Are we terrified this disturbed deity is gonna get us and get us good? Or are we secure in God’s love – secure enough to speak about it and share it with confidence and authority?
Second, we have to remember that the Jesus business isn’t just about warm-fuzzies. It’s also about sharing this good news with everyone else who is lost, wounded, damaged, broken. If we’re still fear-based then we don’t have no good news to share. If we’ve come to trust the faithful love, mercy and compassion of the Living God, then boy do we have a good news story to tell and share!
And that’s the question –do we have bad news of a vengeful punisher? or good news of the ever-loving, ever-living Living God? And if we do – then who’s hearing it? Who heard it yesterday? Who’s gonna hear it today? Who’ll hear it tomorrow and the day after and the week after that and next month and next year and … You get the picture …
Alistair P D Bain
Rector, Anglican Parish of the Holy Spirit
Westfield -:- Western Australia
Monday, September 10, 2007
GOD'S GRACIOUS PARTY INVITATION!
PENTECOST 14 02-09-07
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:2, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1-14
I like parties. I like dinner parties, dancing parties, fancy dress parties, scruffy BBQ parties; I like meeting-new-friends parties, formal parties, impromptu backyard parties- if there’s a party, I’ll be in it. If we have a party, we’ll plan and shop and cook and re-arrange furniture and wear ourselves out; but thoroughly enjoy offering hospitality to our friends and family. Today we have family coming over for lunch to celebrate Father’s Day.
So when I was reading Luke this week, I had a few niggles of guilt. When I give a banquet- well, maybe a BBQ- do I invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? Or do I invite my family and friends? I don’t invite my rich neighbours because I haven’t got any.
I thought back to all the parties we’ve given over the years and the people we’ve entertained, and couldn’t really think of any particularly disabled guests. (A few slightly odd ones, perhaps)
Of course, in Jesus’ time people who were disabled would most likely be in desperate straits, because if you couldn’t work, you didn’t eat: no disability pension in those days. So he was referring to those in society who were helpless and possibly starving.
OK then, I thought: but I haven’t entertained anyone who was starving either: I don’t personally know anyone who is so poor they don’t have enough to eat.
So are we wrong to have parties for our friends and families? I came to the conclusion that Jesus wasn’t saying that, because it would contradict his own lifestyle: the gospels present him as quite a party animal. Luke’s gospel has around eight different stories of Jesus at dinner with various people.
Surely then Jesus didn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever have a party for our friends: that isn’t the point of what he was saying.
The point is that we should give help to people who cannot possibly give anything back to us. The social scene in Jesus’ day was very different to ours, but perhaps similar in that if someone invited a guest to dinner, that guest would be expected to return the favour.
This principle of reciprocity was widely current and accepted in the ancient world, and to a large extent it still is today. We expect people to reciprocate. If I give you a Christmas present, I expect you will give me a Christmas present. If I invite you to my birthday party, I would be a bit miffed if you didn’t invite me to yours!
In business it can be the same: quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This appeals to our sense of fairness and justice: if I help you, I expect you to help me.
That’s all well and good, but does that mean that if I know you couldn’t possibly return the favour I won’t help you?
I think Jesus is telling us that we should seek to give to those who are so needy they cannot give anything in return. I may not be able to invite a hungry refugee to dinner but I can send money to an organisation that will feed her.
Jesus said ‘you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’ This still sounds like we’d be doing a good deed in the hope of a reward, even if the reward isn’t collected until after you die.
Perhaps Jesus is simply saying don’t worry about it, don’t think about rewards because God has it all in hand. And after all, think about how God acts: God gives to us without hope of recompense or reward, because what could we possibly do for God? The Creator of the Universe loves us but doesn’t need or want us to pay back all that we are given.
This passage is about an attitude that leads to action. My attitude should be one of humility: I am no better or worse than anybody else, so it doesn’t matter where I sit at the table. My attitude should be that God has given me everything I have, and I am free to give to those who are struggling without expecting anything in return.
How did the people at the leader of the Pharisee’s dinner respond to what Jesus said? We’re not told, but we can guess that they were not too thrilled. What Jesus said probably sounded quite strange; in those days, the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind were thought to be those from whom God had withheld blessing. Their afflictions were believed to have resulted from sin. They were excluded from the Temple and considered unclean, so why would any good Jew invite them to dinner?
Today, we don’t tend to believe that people are poor, sick or disabled as a result of sin, although sin may be a direct or indirect cause of affliction. A family may be living in poverty because of a corrupt government; a person could be crippled after being hit by a drunk driver. But we don’t look at a disabled person and say he or she must have sinned to be in that condition, as people seem to have done in ancient times. So is there an application of this for us today?
Who do we exclude from our hospitality? Are we truly an inclusive, welcoming church, parish, community, or family? Do we make the good news of the kingdom easily accessible to everyone? We need, as a parish, to take up the challenge of giving away the gospel to all who need to hear it. That includes people who would never darken a church door as well as those who might join us here.
May we go from here encouraged to think about how we can be like Jesus, ready to turn the values of society upside-down if they would have us limit our generosity to people like ourselves.
God’s grace is without limit: God’s parties are open to everyone. Let’s make sure we tell people.
Let us pray.
Loving God,
Thank you for everything, for it is all your gift.
Encourage us to share, to give, and to demand nothing in return.
Encourage us to have attitudes that lead to action.
Encourage us to see that, although our lives may seem small and insignificant, we can make a difference in the world.
When we are tempted to give in to the culture of greed that permeates our world, remind us of Jesus, whose life demonstrated self-giving at its greatest.
For it is in his name that we pray. Amen.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:2, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1-14
I like parties. I like dinner parties, dancing parties, fancy dress parties, scruffy BBQ parties; I like meeting-new-friends parties, formal parties, impromptu backyard parties- if there’s a party, I’ll be in it. If we have a party, we’ll plan and shop and cook and re-arrange furniture and wear ourselves out; but thoroughly enjoy offering hospitality to our friends and family. Today we have family coming over for lunch to celebrate Father’s Day.
So when I was reading Luke this week, I had a few niggles of guilt. When I give a banquet- well, maybe a BBQ- do I invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? Or do I invite my family and friends? I don’t invite my rich neighbours because I haven’t got any.
I thought back to all the parties we’ve given over the years and the people we’ve entertained, and couldn’t really think of any particularly disabled guests. (A few slightly odd ones, perhaps)
Of course, in Jesus’ time people who were disabled would most likely be in desperate straits, because if you couldn’t work, you didn’t eat: no disability pension in those days. So he was referring to those in society who were helpless and possibly starving.
OK then, I thought: but I haven’t entertained anyone who was starving either: I don’t personally know anyone who is so poor they don’t have enough to eat.
So are we wrong to have parties for our friends and families? I came to the conclusion that Jesus wasn’t saying that, because it would contradict his own lifestyle: the gospels present him as quite a party animal. Luke’s gospel has around eight different stories of Jesus at dinner with various people.
Surely then Jesus didn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever have a party for our friends: that isn’t the point of what he was saying.
The point is that we should give help to people who cannot possibly give anything back to us. The social scene in Jesus’ day was very different to ours, but perhaps similar in that if someone invited a guest to dinner, that guest would be expected to return the favour.
This principle of reciprocity was widely current and accepted in the ancient world, and to a large extent it still is today. We expect people to reciprocate. If I give you a Christmas present, I expect you will give me a Christmas present. If I invite you to my birthday party, I would be a bit miffed if you didn’t invite me to yours!
In business it can be the same: quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This appeals to our sense of fairness and justice: if I help you, I expect you to help me.
That’s all well and good, but does that mean that if I know you couldn’t possibly return the favour I won’t help you?
I think Jesus is telling us that we should seek to give to those who are so needy they cannot give anything in return. I may not be able to invite a hungry refugee to dinner but I can send money to an organisation that will feed her.
Jesus said ‘you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’ This still sounds like we’d be doing a good deed in the hope of a reward, even if the reward isn’t collected until after you die.
Perhaps Jesus is simply saying don’t worry about it, don’t think about rewards because God has it all in hand. And after all, think about how God acts: God gives to us without hope of recompense or reward, because what could we possibly do for God? The Creator of the Universe loves us but doesn’t need or want us to pay back all that we are given.
This passage is about an attitude that leads to action. My attitude should be one of humility: I am no better or worse than anybody else, so it doesn’t matter where I sit at the table. My attitude should be that God has given me everything I have, and I am free to give to those who are struggling without expecting anything in return.
How did the people at the leader of the Pharisee’s dinner respond to what Jesus said? We’re not told, but we can guess that they were not too thrilled. What Jesus said probably sounded quite strange; in those days, the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind were thought to be those from whom God had withheld blessing. Their afflictions were believed to have resulted from sin. They were excluded from the Temple and considered unclean, so why would any good Jew invite them to dinner?
Today, we don’t tend to believe that people are poor, sick or disabled as a result of sin, although sin may be a direct or indirect cause of affliction. A family may be living in poverty because of a corrupt government; a person could be crippled after being hit by a drunk driver. But we don’t look at a disabled person and say he or she must have sinned to be in that condition, as people seem to have done in ancient times. So is there an application of this for us today?
Who do we exclude from our hospitality? Are we truly an inclusive, welcoming church, parish, community, or family? Do we make the good news of the kingdom easily accessible to everyone? We need, as a parish, to take up the challenge of giving away the gospel to all who need to hear it. That includes people who would never darken a church door as well as those who might join us here.
May we go from here encouraged to think about how we can be like Jesus, ready to turn the values of society upside-down if they would have us limit our generosity to people like ourselves.
God’s grace is without limit: God’s parties are open to everyone. Let’s make sure we tell people.
Let us pray.
Loving God,
Thank you for everything, for it is all your gift.
Encourage us to share, to give, and to demand nothing in return.
Encourage us to have attitudes that lead to action.
Encourage us to see that, although our lives may seem small and insignificant, we can make a difference in the world.
When we are tempted to give in to the culture of greed that permeates our world, remind us of Jesus, whose life demonstrated self-giving at its greatest.
For it is in his name that we pray. Amen.
Lorna Green, Assistant Curate, Westfield
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