Sermon on John 1.43-51

In John 1.36, the disciples of John the Baptist hear John witness about Jesus, “Look there is the lamb of God”. These disciples then ask Jesus “where are you staying?” and Jesus answers “come and see”. Andrew and then Peter stay or “abide” with Jesus.

 “Abide” is dense with meaning; as the Word of God abides with humanity (John 1.14), as Jesus abides in the Father and the Father abides in him (John 14.11), so too do we “abide” in Jesus as “branches” in a vine (John 15.5). The next day, in Galilee, Phillip follows Jesus and then encourages his friend Nathanael to “come and see.”

There is some banter here between Nathanael and Jesus which we may miss if we disregard context. Nathanael asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Score 1 to Nathanael.

Phillip responds using Jesus language: “Come and See.”

When Jesus meets Nathanael, he says “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Possibly it is a genuine compliment, but equally possible is that it is a “return serve” on the part of Jesus. Before Israel was Israel, Israel was Jacob. Jacob was one in whom there was much deceit. Score 1 to Jesus. Deuce.  

Here is the background.

In Genesis 25.19-20 we read: “This is the account of Abraham's son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean."

Genesis 25.24-26: “When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them."

Jacob means heel grabber which is a metaphor meaning deceives.

Later the twins are adults, Isaac is about to die and wants to pass on his inheritance and blessing to the eldest son, Esau. However, Jacob the deceiver, deceives his father into thinking that he, Jacob, is Esau, and the inheritance passes to Jacob. Esau is furious. Genesis 27.35-36 “But Isaac said, 'Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.' Esau said, 'Isn't he rightly named Jacob (yaʿaqōb)? He has deceived(ʿāqab) me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!'"

As you can imagine, Esau and Jacob are now sworn enemies. Esau swears to kill Jacob. Jacob runs for his life. While sleeping in the wilderness he has a dream or vision which is described as a ladder or stairway connecting Heaven and Earth upon which angels are descending and ascending.

Genesis 28.11: “Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”

Genesis 28.17: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."  He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Much later God changes Jacob’s name to Israel.

With a basic literacy in the stories of the Hebrew Bible, one can see that Jesus’ comment about Nathanael being an Israelite in whom there is no deceit relates to Jacob being one in whom there is much deceit.

Nathanael is suitably impressed by Jesus’ comment and recognises Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel.

Jesus responds that he is the Son of Man, in other words the supremely human one, an example of the human life lived well.

What is significant here is that for the writers of John’s Gospel, Jesus is the New Israel. There is a direct parallel between Jacob, who became Israel, and Jesus who becomes the New Israel.

The significance of this is that all the hopes and dreams and promises of God for Israel are being fulfilled in the New Israel, Jesus. Jesus says: ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ This is literature written so exquisitely because the comment acts as a bridge into the first part of John’s Gospel, the Book of Signs.

John’s Gospel is divided into two halves. The first half is called the book of signs and is structured around the seven signs or miracles that Jesus performs: water is turned into wine at Cana, the centurion’s son is healed, a paralysed man is healed, the hungry are fed in the wilderness, Jesus walks on water, a blind man’s sight is restored, Lazarus is raised from the dead. It is these seven signs that are being referred to in Jesus comment “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Each of the seven signs offers a unique way in which heaven and earth touch. Clearly the comment “you will see heaven opened and angles of God descending and ascending” connects Jesus with Jacob’s dream. The point is that each of these seven signs are sacraments that awake our consciousness to stairways, moments when earth and heaven embrace and the divine and human touch.

The stairway is a symbol of heaven coming close to earth in Jesus. For some commentators, the comment “you will see heaven opened and angles of God descending and ascending”, is the equivalent of the Spirit like a Dove descending on Jesus in his baptism as recorded in the other Gospels. The point being made is that Jesus as the New Israel is a person in whom heaven and earth meet, the marriage between the divine and human, humanity and divinity abiding in each other, the embrace of Grace and truth, peace and justice, according to Psalm 85. Each of the seven sign or sacraments open us to the variety of ways in which the marriage between heaven and earth happens.

Jesus sees Nathanael under the fig tree. Here is the clue to the puzzling reference of the fig tree – it is a symbol of heaven on earth, of a salvation and liberation birthed by God, a symbol of the promises of God for the redemption of Israel coming true. For example: 1 Kings 4.25: “During Solomon's lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees.

Micah 4.4: “but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
   and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.”

It seems that the promise to sit under fig trees and vines is a promise of Shalom, peace built on justice and mercy and experiencing the closeness of God.

It is at this point that we may connect the Old Testament reading from 1 Samuel. It begins with a chilling indictment…”The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”

Perhaps that is how we feel about the 21st century – the word of the Lord is rare indeed and visions are less than widespread, they are not at all.

The emptiness and longing for more that characterises the human condition is precisely this question “where are the places and people where heaven and earth meet? Where are the people, places, and moments where we can taste God, and hear the word of the Lord? Why is God so silent and where might we hear God’s whisper? Where is the stairway to heaven?”

The Christian faith and hope is that as we abide in the Word, and the Word abides in us, we like Jesus are so filled with the presence of God that we are the stairways connecting heaven and earth. As the Word of God breathes in us and through us, we become words of God, vibrating self-emptying love and our very lives are the places and moments where the word of the Lord is seen, we are the visions of God. We can be encouraged by the words of Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

“At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing.  It is only given.  But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” 

 As we abide in Jesus each of us is the stairway to heaven. Each of us is the place in which heaven and earth meet. Each of us is living breathing word of the Lord and each of us a vision of God is made manifest.  

The Greeks gave us democracy and learnt that one can have either democracy or empire, but never both at the same time for long. Rome had to learn a similar lesson. To prevent empire and royal tyranny that later plagued the British, the Romans elected two consuls that would govern together for a year. This worked really well, until it didn’t. One consul went west and conquered Gaul. The other went East and conquered Syria. Why then should the two consuls come together and cooperate? The ensuing civil war in Rome destroyed the Roman empire from within and much of the Mediterranean with it. The Roman Civil war reached its climax when Octavian supported by Italy and Mark Anthony supported by Egypt met in battle near the Ionian Sea (north western Greece). On 2 September 31 BCE, Mark Anthony’s troops were left to fend for themselves while Anthony and Cleopatra suicided in Alexandria. The civil war ended, as did the Roman republic. A deified imperial Roman monarchy was born under Octavian later called Augustus, the One who is Divine, the One who is Worshipped, the Autocrat Caesar.

How did Rome under Augustus maintain such power for so long? Their strength lay in combining military domination with economic control and maintaining political and ideological power.

The military strength of the Romans is well known. The reorganisation of the army into legions, as well as the engineering achievements that were necessary for military control are staggering. The Roman Legions built roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other infrastructure that are still in use today. In fact, some Roman Roads have lasted 2000 years yet the roads in Byron Bay hardly last 6 years! (tongue-in-cheek).

Military domination gave rise to economic control. The infrastructure built by the army allowed for greater commerce as the roads made trade easier. Moreover, as Roman soldiers retired, they settled in “new” areas along the frontier and their finances contributed to trade and industry.

The main strategy of the Romans political power was ideological power. They controlled meaning and interpretation. Caesar’s titles are telling: God from God, Redeemer, Liberator, Saviour of the World. Since Octavian (Caesar) had saved the world from years of unrest and war, he was considered saviour of the word and therefore the divine son of God. Augustus gave thanks to the gods Mars and Neptune for blessing him with victory in war and gifting peace to the world. Religion, war, victory, peace – in that order – are four words that summarise the imperial ideological and political power of Rome. Religion, war, victory, peace. It is important to understand that the perspective of the time was that peace is won through victory in war blessed by the gods.

All this long background is to give you leverage to understand the power of the Christmas story given in our Gospel reading, Matthew 2. Understand this final episode of our Christmas story and you understand the whole Gospel.

Christ’s birth and the magi’s visit

What is the meaning of Christ’s birth and the visit of the magi in the context of Rome’s Empire? Our Epiphany story is subversive, it turns the world upside down.

·         The presence of the magi from the East in the West, in Roman occupied land, is symbolic of the battles between the Romans in the West and Parthia and Persia in the East. Already there is political unrest in the story.

·         In Rome’s Kingdom, Herod is King of the Jews. In our story Jesus is born King of the Jews. More importantly the magi from the East name Jesus as King, bestowing him gifts worthy of a king.

·         In literary terms, the magi are reminders of the magi in the Old Testament especially in the book of Daniel. There is a twist. In the Old Testament, the magi are opponents of the Jews, as in Daniel 1.20, 2.2, 4.7 and 5.7. In Matthew 2 the magi are worshippers of Jesus while the Jewish Herod and his court are his opponents. The point being made by the writers of Matthews Gospel is that Jesus is the saviour of all, Jews, and Gentiles alike. In a world that takes as self-evident the total separation of Gentiles and Jews this is extremely subversive.

·         There are other reminders in Matthew’s Gospel of Old Testament texts. In Exodus Pharaoh slaughtered the innocents to stop the threat of Moses. In Matthew’s writing Herod slaughters the innocents to stop the threat of Jesus. There is of course a twist. While Moses flees FROM Egypt to safety, Jesus flees TO Egypt for safety.

I have made but brief references to the political geography of Matthew 2: the challenge to King Herod, the atmosphere of violence and ongoing war, and the threat to innocent life that power, violence, and war represent. The slaughter of the innocents at the hands of political rulers should be enough to shake us free from our pious pageants and see the season of epiphany as a season of activism, citizen rebellion and political resistance. This is uncomfortable because the true worship of Christmas through the season of Epiphany may demand of us that we participate thoughtfully and thoroughly in movements like “Black lives matter” and “the extinction rebellion.”

A fundamental option

The magi represent for us a fundamental option. Are we part of Herod’s court of fear where we worship Caesar as Saviour, Lord, Son of God, and God from God? Or do we leave Herod’s court and worship Jesus as King, Lord, God and Saviour?

It is not good enough to call the Roman kingdom “bad” and God’s kingdom “good”. Nor is it helpful to call the Roman kingdom “earthy” and God’s kingdom “heavenly”. Neither dichotomy leads a discussion forward, nor does it acknowledge the peaceful intentions of the Roman empire. Both kingdoms, claim divine titles. Both kingdoms offer a saviour. Both offer peace on earth. The Roman kingdom and God’s kingdom differ only in method, they insist on different “recipes” for peace.

For the Roman kingdom, peace is won through victory in war.

In God’s kingdom peace is through nonviolent justice.

By default, we are already in Herod’s Court. There is an opt out clause. We can allow our dreams of peace through justice to disturb us enough to “leave by another road”. In a world that offers peace through victory the Gospel offers an alternative road, peace through nonviolence.

There is a story that I read which sounds like it might be true. A Sunday School practised for hours and hours to make sure their Christmas Pageant was perfect. Everything was brilliant until the moment the wise ones arrived at the scene. Overwhelmed by the moment the young child playing the role of the wise one, took a dramatic bow before the manger holding Jesus before announcing:

 “Greetings, baby, I bring you gifts.

Gold,

Circumstance,

and Mud.”

That’s precisely what Epiphany brings. Gold, much gold in the kindness of neighbours, the endurance and persistence of health professionals at the front line of the pandemic, and the patience of parents housebound with school aged children. We have had Circumstance aplenty. The mud is key. Not into perfectly ordered lives does God plant the seed of God’s divinity, but into the mud of chaos. The literal mud of a home shared by animals. The literal mud walked in from Nazareth by Mary and Joseph and the donkey. But also, the figurative mud, the mud of broken dreams when life isn’t what you imagined it to be. The mud of messed up relationships. Barbara Brown Taylor has a delightful story that happens after Christmas Nativity, after “the happily ever after”.

“…That is when the picture was taken—right then, while the star was still overhead, and the angels were still singing in the rafters. But twenty minutes later, what? The hole in the heavens had closed up and the only music came from the bar at the inn. One of the cows stepped on a chicken and the resulting racket made the baby cry. As she leaned over to pick him up, Mary started crying too and when Joseph tried to comfort her, she told him she wanted her mother. If she had just married a nice boy from Nazareth, she said, she would be back home where she belonged instead of competing with sheep for a place to sleep. Then she said she was sorry, and Joseph said not to think another thing about it. He meant it, too. They both hurt all over and there was nothing to eat and it was cold as the dickens, but you know what? God was still there, right in middle of the picture. Peace was there, and joy and love—not only in the best of times, and also, and especially in the worst of time: (Home by Another Way, pp. 23-3). God comes to us in gold, circumstance, and mud. It’s in the moments of mud that we have to hang onto the Gospel message, God is with you. Emmanuel.

On the first Sunday after Christmas, we meditate on the Presentation of Christ in the temple. Luke 2 makes clear the Jewish nature of Jesus’ upbringing and hints at the devoutness of his parents in fulfilling the requirements of the law. The presentation of Christ in the temple highlights the many ways in which Jesus was a product of his society and culture. Similarly, we can reflect on how we are a product of our society and culture. What is the culture and tradition of your family? What are the major world events that have shaped you? What are the best characteristics of your parents that you which to emulate? In addition to our meditation of the Presentation of Christ in the temple, today is also Candlemas. Candlemas is when the candles that are to be used in the year ahead are “presented” in our “temple” and blessed. The Song of Simeon inspires Candlemas: “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; For these eyes of mine have seen the Saviour, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A Light to enlighten the nations, and the Glory of your people Israel (Luke 2:29-32).” The blessed candles are a living prayer to the Light that enlightens all and the ways in which we share in that light:

“Light kindles light and flame kindles flame. When God sets the world on fire with His love, in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Holy Spirit, there isn’t any less of God at the end of the process, but there’s a lot more of us.” Rowan Williams.

Introduction

Much has been said about the Mary the virgin. This is not a debate I wish to enter now, except to state that today’s advent meditation on Mary invites us to be virgins. We are all invited to be spiritual virgins because the incarnation is a universal principle, not a one-off event. The incarnation is a universal principle because when God became Jesus, God said “yes” to physicality, “yes” to matter. God is always coming into the world, moment by moment, through each of us virgins birthing divinity into materiality.

Mary is a symbol of humankind’s acceptance of God

It is said that Jesus is how God offers the holiness of God’s divinity to humanity, how God is available to humankind. Mary is how humankind offers the holiness of humanity to God’s divinity, a symbol of humankind saying yes to the presence of God. In other words, If Jesus is a living symbol of how God totally gives Godself to creation, then Mary is living symbol of how humanity gratefully and fully receives the gift of God. That is why for some Anglo Catholics there is a devotion to Mary, she represents all of us. When we like Mary are able to say “Let it be,” then we are truly spiritual virgins, and have arrived at Christmas fully prepared and ready.

What does it mean to be a spiritual virgin?

A virgin is one without history, likewise a spiritual virgin discontinues the God of history and gives birth to the God of eternity.

The moment when we teach about God, the moment when we preach about God, the moment when we draw a picture of God, we are at that moment continuing the God of history, the God of the history of the church, the God of the history of religions, and the God of human history.

The moment when we experience God in the secret cave of the heart, the moment when we find God deep within ourselves as our truest selves, that present experience of God is the experience of the God of eternity, and at that moment we have become spiritual virgins.

The God of history is a “second-hand” experience of God offered through liturgy, hymns, preaching and teaching, it is the faith of our Sunday school teachers. The God of eternity is the firsthand experience of God when one is fully present to the present.

What is being described today, needs to be said. Some will intrinsically and immediately understand. Some may be confused and wonder what I am talking about. That is okay, one day the experience will become clear and you will know immediately within your own experience what it means to be a spiritual virgin.

It is okay to not fully understand because Moses also did not understand. Moses, a shepherd, looks after his father-in-law’s sheep in the deserts of Midianite territory. Moses would have spent hours in silence and solitude, caring for sheep in the wilderness areas. One day he passes vegetation that he passes nearly every day for the last 40 years, but this time the vegetation seems to be aflame with the presence of God. Moses has a mystical experience when he  encounters the presence of God at “a burning bush”. He says “Who are you God”. God says: “I am who I am.” In other words, the God of eternity. Moses says: ‘I don’t have a clue what that means.” It was difficult for Moses to relate to that eternal aspect of God. God says, okay, “ I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.” In other words, the God of history.

The God of history desires continuity; divides human beings and demands loyalty. The God of history lies at the heart of religious wars and denominational conflict. God desires that human beings be free from this God of history and authority. The Virgin Mary was chosen by God to discontinue the God of history, (the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob) and give birth to God of ‘I am who I am’. This child, born of a virgin, is not identified with the past but with eternity. This child is not called son of Mary or Joseph, but the Child of God.

 

“Le point vierge”

How do we become spiritual virgins? E become spiritual virgins by living from the eternal centre of our beings.  Thomas Merton describes a “le point vierge” [a virgin point] at the centre of his being:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God …. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.

Thomas Merton says he cannot define le point vierge so he describes his sudden “realization” while on the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville. While shopping Thomas gazes across the many other shoppers and is enraptured:

Then it was as if I saw the secret beauty in their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.”

This is the le point vierge – the virgin point. At the moment of this experience Thomas Merton has discovered that he is a spiritual virgin.

The point of being a spiritual virgin means that we give birth to or we manifest the divine attributes of love and compassion in our human relationships. We are all meant to be mothers of God, as the Swiss Hans von Balthaser says:

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good it is to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us (von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler, 2005, p. 42).

Richard Rohr responds to this quote:

As a man who has taken a vow of celibacy, I will never know what it is like to physically give birth, nor have I ever held the hand of a woman I love in labour—neither sister nor friend. However, I have experienced the birth of Christ in the world many times throughout my life—in big ways and small, sometimes through grand gestures, but more often through simple acts of patience, love, and mercy. To incarnate the Christ is to live out the Gospel with our lives, as faithfully and fearlessly as a woman in labor who holds nothing back in order to bring new life into the world. Center for Action and Contemplation 2020. : https://cac.org/becoming-icons-of-christ-2020-12-11.

We gestate God into the world through every act of love, kindness, gentleness, empathy, and compassion. Sister Illia Delio describes birthing divinity into the world on macro and micro levels:

We can read the history of our 13.7-billion-year-old universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving cosmos. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change (in Oneing 1.1 page 22)

In this final week of advent, we are all invited to be mothers of God, birthing the divine attributes of love, compassion, empathy and kindness into the world. Mary’s story is one that we treasure. Kathleen Norris writes that she treasures the icon of Mary because it confronts her with a powerful question: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? . . . Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a “yes” that will change me forever? [2]

Sources

·          Delio, Ilia. 2013.  Love at the Heart of the Universe in The Perennial Tradition. Oneing: vol. 1, no. 1. Note: This edition of  Oneing is out of print.

·          Norris, Kathleen . 1999. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. (New York: Riverhead Books). Pages 74-77.

·          Rohr, Richard. 2020. Giving Birth to Christ: Becoming Icons of Christ.
Center for Action and Contemplation on Friday, December 11, 2020. Accessed from: https://cac.org/becoming-icons-of-christ-2020-12-11.

von Balthasar, Hans Urs. 2005. Love Alone Is Credible. trans. Schindler, D C. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press). First edition. Note: this quote is wrongly attributed to Meister Eckhardt.

I wonder if you have noticed how much of our spiritual endeavours are frozen into moral imperatives. You should do this; you should do that; you must not do this or that. I suppose it is, in part at any rate, the fruits of dualism, something that seems impossible to avoid as we wend our way along the path of life.

This troubles me, because moral imperatives can quickly become distorted in the interests of political expediency. They transmogrify into laws or regulations that enable one to say “Oh, that is illegal. That is against the law” (or vice versa) – the first response of discomfited politicians. Thus, morality dies a painful death in the hands of leadership, and spiritual endeavour suffocates.

Scholarly discussion of binding and loosing centres around regulations or laws concerning who has authority to do what. The historian, Josephus, reported that “The power of binding and loosing was always claimed by the Pharisees. Under Queen Alexandra [76 BCE to 67 BCE], the Pharisees became the administrators of all public affairs so as to be empowered to banish and readmit whom they pleased, as well as to loose and to bind."1

Rabbis, aka wise men with a spiritual bent, had similar power to decide disputes relating to the Law. That which was permitted in law they declared to be loosed,2 whilst a forbidden practice was called bound.3 To confuse the issue, however, there were different schools of thought. For example, there was a saying: “The School of Shammai binds; the School of Hillel looses.” 4

This manner of discussion is commonplace, but it leads to the frozen-ness to which I have already referred. This bothers me because something has been lost in translation. And I think that that something is our humanity, our divinity, the core of who and what we are.

This month we are to focus on CREATION with a capital C. So, let us start at the beginning.

As I told our Friday congregation last week, the Dutch theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, wrote that our creation myths are “not a cosmological explanation for the origin and nature of the world and human beings,” but rather “a theological elucidation of God and God’s relationship with creatures.”5

The word creature comes from the same Latin root as the word creation. We are creatures, created beings, something we have in common with “all that is, seen and unseen,” as the creed has it.

So, I, a human being, am an integral part of, “all that is, seen and unseen” – closer than breathing. You too. This mystery of what we call existence, however, is one of total reciprocity. “On that day,” said Jesus,” you will know that I am in the Father and you in me, and I in you”.6 That is the closeness of creation. As our Buddhist friends might tell us, 

When a drop of water falls in the ocean, When a speck of dust falls on the ground,
At that moment the drop of water is no longer a drop of water, It becomes the ocean,
And the speck of dust is no longer a speck of dust, It becomes the entire earth.7

In Christian terms the foregoing suggests to me that you and I and the rest of creation are imbued with a sacramental quality. That certainly makes sense in terms of my own understanding of Aboriginal Spirituality. However, like all sacrament, something becomes a sacrament for me when that is my own particular intention. Our world is our sacrament, if that is our intention.

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said,

It is our humble conviction that divine and human meet in the slightest detail contained in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust. 8

So, as we exploit the environment, we permit an avoidable suffering of all creation. The gospel writer Matthew would say we do not bind that suffering, but rather we loose it. To quote Bartholomew again, we refuse to accept the world as a “sacrament of communion”. Schillebeeckx called it a neglect of “the physical and social aspects of salvation”, noting that

Jesus makes visible by his action that the whole of human reality – physical, social, and spiritual – are also part of the sphere of the offer of wholeness of life … 9

In all of this, we have the conundrum of how to access true wisdom; the wisdom to think, pray and act in a way that augments our precious world.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in her book, Holy Envy, that it can be “helpful to be authentically human.” 10 Schillebeeckx pointed to a God, who by nature, “is present to human beings in a deep and hidden intimacy”. 11 The contemplative world will suggest that we can access that wisdom within the practice of silent meditation or contemplation. But that is not necessarily everyone’s path.

In one of my all-time favourite novels by Charles Williams, Prester John, the mysterious, mythical, Priest/King of the Graal makes several appearances. His last one involves an encounter with Barbara, whose 4-year-old son, Adrian, has been rescued from a hideous end by John and a cohort of angels. Adrian wants to go to church, and Barbara blushingly confides to Prester John that “we don’t go as regularly as we should.”

“It is a means,” he answered, “one of the means. But perhaps the best for most, and for some almost the only one. I do not say that it matters greatly, but the means cannot both be and not be. If you do not use it, it is a pity to bother about it; if you do, it is a pity not to use it.”

I leave the last word to Jen Hadfield, a poet who lives on the Shetland Isle of Burra. Her words, as Mark Oakley remarked, “interrogate and bless the natural world … pour light on, and through, the people, animals and landscapes that make her feel “connected and protected.” 12 Her poem, Paternoster, is the Lord’s Prayer as uttered by a draft horse, and one can almost smell the mix of grass and mash on its breath as it repeats the words “it is on earth as it is inn heaven”

Paternoster. Paternoster.
Hollowed be dy mane.

Dy kingdom come.

Dy draftwork be done.
till plough the day

And give out daily bray

Though heart stiffen in the harness.
Then sleep hang harness with bearbells
And trot on bravely into sleep

Where the black and the bay
He sorrel and the grey

And foals of bearded wheat
Are waiting.

It is on earth as it is in heaven.
Drought, wildfire,

Wild asparagus, yellow flowers
On flowering cactus.

Give our daily wheat, wet
Whiskers in the sonorous bucket.
Knead my heart, hardened daily.
Heal the hoofprint in my heart.

Give us our oats at bedtime
And in the night half sleeping.
Paternoster. Paternoster.

Hallowed be dy hot mash. 13

Doug Bannerman  2020

Some say we live in paradise here on the North Coast. Even while the rest of the country struggles under COVID 19, we seem to cruise on unscathed. A little discomfort from the precautions and that’s about it. At least so far anyway. 

In scripture and theology there is this thing called God’s providence. He blesses his people so that they enjoy the bounty of the earth says the Psalmist. Except when they don’t! This Psalm would have been sung in the temple by a very self-satisfied nation. God is on our side- BUT it forgets to mention that God’s covenant always has a clause about the responsibilities of God’s people - God may forgive us breaking the Covenant- but the consequences remain. To put it another way; God may forgive us but the planet won’t. With the drought then bush fires, then Covid19 – we are having a taste of the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels with no thought for the consequences to the planet. We think everything is Jake mate. “Why are you afraid of this little lump of coal?” This is what’s making us prosperous so the national religion Economy opines.

It is worth considering the quote from Carl Sagan speaking about the photo taken of the Earth, from deep space by the Voyager Space Craft.

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

“Saint Bartholomew”

Tomorrow, 24th August, is the day set aside for people all around the world to remember Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr who gives our beautiful church building its name.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Bartholomew is his low profile. We are not even sure who he was. Early sources suggest his full name was Nathanael bar (son of) Tolmai (later, Bartholomew) the
Nathanael who was the friend of Philip and who questioned, "Can anything good come out of
Nazareth" (John 1:46).

There is a suggestion that Bartholomew wrote a gospel, but this writing has not survived. Often, Parishioners in Alstonville have heard the story of his grizzly death by being skinned alive although there is no confirmation that this story is true.

Bartholomew represents a quiet alternative to the more visible and vocal public witnesses often associated with the apostles. Sam Portaro, an Episcopal Priest asks “Is it purely by accident that Bartholomew is overshadowed? Is it merely that his contributions, like so many, were lost for lack of archival care or scattered in subsequent upheavals? Were his contributions intentionally
destroyed by jealous or rival factions of the kind that divided the post-resurrection community into separate cohorts of loyalty to Peter or Paul or Apollos? Was Bartholomew one of those
persons who actually did very little, who only went along for the ride, so to speak? Or was Bartholomew the thoughtful one, prone to process his faith internally and intellectually, without a big fuss?”

We realize that often in the background there are meditative and thoughtful people who go about serving others in a quiet and unassuming way.

More than anything, we owe our Christian faith to the multitude of anonymous scholars and scribes who wrote, tended, and translated the story of Jesus. It’s a blessing for us to be connected with Nathanael bar Tolmai who Jesus greeted saying "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no
deceit!" (John 1:47)

1. In the Parables etc, what view did the early followers of Jesus understand when the word 'devil' was used? What is today's understanding of "devil" in contemporary theology?  

2. Angels: their place in scripture, their place in our lives today.

Bible

The word for “angel” is from the Greek angelos meaning messenger or the Hebrew malak Yahweh transliterates as messenger of the Lord.

In the Old Testament when the word “angel” is used it often denotes simply that a messenger. Sometimes the messenger is a heavenly being. In this case the “angel” is God appearing in human form. The idea here is that no one can see God and live, thus God creates a visible form in which to meet with people. Only later did the idea develop that angels were beings separate from God.

Cherubim and seraphim were winged angels, often with animal faces, glowing with fire that are an aspect of Israel’s culture background incorporated into religion. The main function of cherubim and seraphim is to sing God’s praises. Thus, for us today, the cherubim and seraphim are symbols that remind or invite us to worship God with our whole lives. Seraphim is from the Hebrew seraph meaning burning brightly with fire. Here again is an invitation applicable today: that we are so close to God’s presence through prayer and worship that we allow God’s love to shine through everything we do.

The word for “devil” is the Hebrew language is ha satan meaning an accuser. The word satan is someone’s job description rather than their name. Job 1.6 describes an angel whose job it was to evaluate virtue through accusing Job of not being holy.

Another occasion when reference is made to ha satan is 1 Chronicles 21:6–7; 27:24: “A satan rose up against Israel, and he incited David to take a census of Israel”. Here again this is an opponent or an agitator who offers an alternative view.

Another reference that is used to describe “a devil” is Isaiah. Isaiah 14.12 speaks of a carrier of light (a lucifer) being thrown into an abys because of pride. In the context of Isaiah, however, the image of the morning star (a lucifer or light carrier) being thrown to earth could likely have referred to the demise of the Canaanite religion. Later of course it becomes a reference for the devil, but this idea seems superimposed by later interpreters. Jesus referred to Isaiah 14 when he said to his disciples “I saw Satan fall like lightening from the sky” (Luke 10.18). While some suggest that this is Satan, the devil, others argue that Jesus is announcing the end of judgement and accusation and the beginning of the era of grace.

The above is an all to brief survey that shows that the Old Testament does not offer any concrete evidence for belief in “The Devil” as a monstrous entity opposing God and damaging humans. Note that in Genesis 3, the serpent that speaks to Eve is just that – a talking serpent, not a demon and not “The Devil”.

By the time we reach the New Testament it is clear that there is a belief in “The Devil” and demons. The devil is the leader of evil who opposes God and therefore opposes Jesus. Jesus cast out demons and at times even dialogued with them. For example, Luke 4:35: “But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst of the people, he came out of him without doing him any harm.” Christians are also warned to expect opposition from demonic forces or the devil; James 4.7 instructs “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Clearly some development took place at the end of the Old Testament and before the beginning of the New Testament that concretised a belief in the devil and demons.

The intertestamental period between the end of the Old Testament and before the beginning of the New Testament was marked by conflict, oppression, and division for the Jewish people. The Hebrews suffered oppression from the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, the Jewish elite, and the Romans. Through the experience of suffering and exposure to other religions through war with Persians, Medes, Greeks, and Romans, the idea of the devil developed to explain the cause of suffering. In painting a picture of who the devil was the Jewish people adopted and adapted aspects of the gods from the cultures that oppressed them.

Tradition

Church tradition as expressed in its catechism, liturgies and hymns, continues the New Testament belief in the devil. The Devil is explained as a fallen angel who now leads forces of demons responsible for the evil we find in the world. Perhaps one of the clearest representations of the traditional church’s belief in Satan (the devil) is the Baptismal liturgy: “Do you renounce Satan and all evil? I renounce all that evil. Almighty God deliver you from the powers of darkness and lead you in the light of Christ to his everlasting kingdom. Amen. “ (A Prayer Book for Australia p. 56).

Reason
The questions ask What is today's understanding of "devil" in contemporary theology and Angels: their place in scripture, their place in our lives today? In thinking of your own answer to the question it is helpful to be aware of how different our world view is in comparison to Jesus and the early Christian writers. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007) tracks what we already know; that the enchanted worldview of the early disciples took as self-evident the existence of a spiritual universe where everyone without exception believed in God or gods, demons and angels. This is in direct contrast to our highly secularised, disenchanted worldview where,  at best, belief in God is optional and marginal. Our disenchanted, secularised world view anticipates scientific evidence as answers to questions we might have. Thus many modern scholars explain that Jesus and the early Christian writers need to be read and interpreted within their own context: namely that it is natural for first century people to ascribe illness and suffering to the work of demons and the devil. Moreover, the belief in paranormal entities such as demons and angels is greatly influenced by other cultures. For example, Beelzebub or Lord of the flies is both a Philistine god and a variation of Baal, a god venerated by early Canaanites with whom the Hebrews came into contact. Our modern discoveries would give medical explanations for much of what Jesus, the early disciples and Christian writers experienced. For example, Luke 9.8-42 describes a boy suffering from epilepsy “a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him.” Or Matthew 8.32 describes possible psychosis or schizophrenia: “When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.”

While an over-rationalised, materialist, disenchanted, scientific explanation for the belief in a spiritual realm may be appropriate in an academic setting, pastoral ministry with its various, inexplicable encounters, makes such a view difficult to maintain. The experience of Spirit and also of evil is real, although more “liquid” or diffused, not with the medieval imagination that reduces spiritual realities to animation cartoons. Thus, while some scholars rationalise that angels, demons, and the devil are aspects of a premodern worldview, other highly regarded scholars such as Walter Wink offer an alternative: “I will argue that the “principalities and powers” are the inner and outer aspects of any given manifestation of power… As the inner aspect they are the spirituality of institutions, the within of corporate structures and systems, the inner essence of outer organisations of power. As the outer aspect they are the political systems, appointed officials, the chair if an organisation, laws – in short all the tangible manifestations power takes. Every Power tends to have a visible pole, an outer form—be it a church, a nation, or an economy—and an invisible pole, an inner spirit or driving force that animates, legitimates, and regulates its physical manifestation in the world.” (in 1983/09/01:5 in Naming the Powers).

In summary, in determining your answer to the questions about the devil and angels, it is likely that your view would be situated on a spectrum of belief between non-belief on the extreme left and a belief that angels and demons exist in physical form on the extreme right. My own view is situated in the middle where I acknowledge the reality of spirit but suggest with Walter Wink that it does not take on a physical form that can be photographed or drawn/depicted. Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum, angels and demons are not an article of faith. Nor does a such a belief affect a good relationship with God and others. We can also know that a good God created a good universe, that Jesus has conquered all evil and that the Spirit that is in us was confirmed at our baptism – we are all sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked by Christ: “Christ claims you for his own. Receive the sign of the cross” (Baptism Liturgy).

Introduction

Friends, the season after Pentecost is Green season, a time of growth. Living our questions is a helpful tool to deepen our experience of faith; thus, the congregation is invited to submit questions that we can all reflect on. The following points explain my approach:

 1.       Following Anglican tradition, I frame a response to each of these questions using three main sources of theology: reason, Scripture and Tradition. A fuller explanation of reason, tradition and Scripture is offered in the previous week’s bulletin and on the blog and I entrust the reading of this to you reflections/2020/7/20/QnA.

2.      I do not imagine that what I offer is a definitive response, I hope instead to provide architecture for you to think about your response.

3.      In this spirit, when assertations are made I invite you to receive any these as questions.

 Question 1:

It is often extremely hard to understand the meaning of parables, why would Jesus have chosen this way to explain things? They have often been misunderstood and the true meaning lost.

Godly Play is a process that equips people (adults and children) with skills in spiritual praxis, rather than information only. Materials for each parable are contained in a gold box.

Parable from godlyplayresources.com 1

Godly play introduces parables with the following words:

“Look! It is the color gold.

Something inside must be precious like gold.

Perhaps there is a parable inside.

Parables are even more valuable than gold, so maybe there is one inside.

The box is also closed. There is a lid.

Maybe there is a parable inside.

Sometimes, even if we are ready, we can’t enter a parable.

Parables are like that.

Sometimes they stay closed.

The box looks like a present.

Parables were given to you long ago as presents.

Even if you don’t know what a parable is, the parable is yours already.

You don’t have to take them, or buy them, or get them in any way.

They already belong to you.

You need to be ready to find out if there is a parable inside.

It is easy to break parables.

What is hard to do is to go inside.

I have an idea.

Let’s look inside and see what’s there!

I wonder what this could be?

(from Godly Play Volume 3 by Jerome Berryman)

See also https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd8UFTdIPH2cdkUutFNa1_8Pp_nyyZytc. 

The above is a poetic way to introduce people to the truth of parables, let us now reflect on the reason for the use of parables in Scripture, our Christian Tradition and reason.  

Scripture

Simply put the word parable means to through alongside. In Scripture, different types of parables are offered. In other words, a parable is not a single genre, but there are several ways in which a parable is used. Some parables challenge and provoke (e.g. the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son). Some parables offer examples of Jesus teaching (e.g. the parable of the mustard seed, pearl. Most importantly, Jesus’ actions are parables. For example, on Palm Sunday, he travels into Jerusalem on a colt or on a mother donkey that has just given birth to a colt that is walking next to her. Jesus’ action is parabolic, it is a challenge to the status quo where rulers would ride triumphantly on a stallion. Moreover, the parable is saying something about the sort of Messiah Jesus is.

 In Godly Play when we reflect on the Faces of Easter, we recognize that “the work of Jesus was to come close to people through healing and telling parables. Then Jesus realized that he would have to become a parable.” What Godly play is communicating is that in addition to saying parables and acting in parables, Jesus was himself a parable.

 A purview of parables in Scripture should make clear that a parable is not an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. The reason we can be confident of this is that Jesus died a political death. If Jesus were merely a spiritual teacher who told ethical and moral stories, he would not have offended the Roman and religious leaders of his day who organized his execution, clearly, he was more than an ethical and moral teacher.

 As we turn from resources in Scripture to influences in our Christian Tradition, we plumb the writings of scholars who answer the question as to why Jesus spoke in parables.

 Tradition

Several contemporary scholars are worth consulting including John Crossan, William Hertzog III (Parables of Subversive Speech), Marcus Borg, Ched Meyers and Richard Horsely. For our purposes, the reason Jesus uses parables may be summarized as follows.

 Technique

Firstly, a parable is a technique that forces people to participate in the story.  In this way people remember the story. The parables lure listeners into argument. The parable provides a type of hook that reels people into the subversion Jesus proposes through his kingdom of God campaign. Think about your own reaction to the story of the Prodigal son (read Luke 15). Are your feelings about the elder son, the younger son and the father’s response to both completely academic? Or does the story invite some emotional response such as irritation, a feeling of unfairness or discomfort? I imagine that you know the story of the prodigal son well and that even the mildest reaction to the story points to the powerful technique that the parable is in allowing participation. I would suggest that unless the parable annoys you, it is likely that you have not even scratched the surface of its meaning.

 Turn the world upside down

The second reason Jesus uses parables is that his aim was never to maintain the status quo. Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God is provocative, it turns the world upside down. The parable invites you to see the world as Jesus sees it, upside down. The upside down world view of Jesus is summarized in Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), a type of Constitution for the kingdom of God: blessed are the poor (not the rich), blessed are the peacemakers and blessed are the meek who inherit the earth. The parables both illustrate the upside-down worldview of Jesus and are a tool to enlist your participation in the subversion of an unjust society.  

 Transformation

Thirdly the most important reason to use parables is that for Jesus the kingdom of God is about a transformation in perception. The point of the parable is that it creates in the listener a change in thinking, a paradigm shift A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in approach to underlying assumptions. Many are familiar with the illustration of a paradigm shift where the viewer sees  either the old or young woman. In order to see one or the other, a change in perception or a paradigm shift is required.

 Transformation is a critical factor for the kingdom of God which is why it is so necessary that Jesus adopt the approach. The questioner comments that parables are at times misunderstood. I suggest that the degree to which parables are misunderstood is the degree to which we (or preachers) resist participating in the parable and resist the transforming the parable wants to do to us.

Further, failure to understand parables is often when we (or preachers) force the parable to fit our perception of reality, rather than allowing the parable to do what it is designed to do, namely interrogate our perception which could lead to transformation. An example of forcing a parable into our perception of reality is when we insist on reading the parables from the perspective of the wealthy citizens we are, instead of being cognizant of the economic and political oppression behind the parables.

 Having reflected on our Christian tradition we determine how relevant the parable is for our experience of the Kingdom of God.

 Reason

Reason as a source in theology includes experience. The power of the parable is that although it is culturally and historically specific, the possibility of participating in the parable is timeless. Throughout the centuries the parables have formed the basis for deep prayer and a way to experience the immediacy of God. One example of this is the Benedictine tradition of Lectio Divina. Lection Divina  (divine reading) is a slow, prayerful, repetitive, reading of short parables. Would you like to participate in one such experience?

1.       Read any short parable a few times.

e.g. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

2.      Read the parable slowly now again listening in the silence for any word or phrase that shimmers for you, an image or word that stands out for you.

3.      Write this down.

4.      Read the parable again asking if what you have written down is inviting you to anything. Write this invitation down (if any).

5.      Read the parable again. Would you like to respond to the parable or invitation in anyway?

Question and Answer Series

August

Liturgically, the season after Pentecost is a time of growth. The feast of Pentecost is a time when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit given to all creation. After Pentecost the Holy Spirit (the breath of God’s love) assists our growth in faith; a growth that is symbolized in the church with green garments, green decorations and flower arrangements.

One way that we can develop more confidence in our faith is through asking questions. Thus, every August, during the season of growth, members of the church are invited to pose questions.

How shall these questions be ‘answered’?

QnA reflections are not answers to the questions, but rather a structure in which to reflect on the questions asked. The structure is threefold: reason, tradition and scripture.

By reason we mean any knowledge we produce through the active use of our minds. Reason also includes the role that reflected experience plays in pondering God and life questions. Self-reflective awareness presumes some knowledge of one’s own context, blind spots and assumptions.  Wherever possible we hope to use as a deliberate assumption the perspective from the margins. Jesus offers a preferential option for the poor and thus we practice this virtue as much as possible, aware that we fail before we have begun. Why? Our context as educated westerners, consuming most of the world’s resources, means that our wealth prevents us from noticing information that is clear to the outsider or the marginalized.

By Tradition we mean post biblical theological resources of the early church from the past to the present. Why use tradition? The conviction is that the Spirit continues to be present and at work in God’s community beyond Scripture. Tradition literally means “handed down” and refers to how we treasure insights valued and preserved in previous generations.

By Scripture we mean the canon of the Old and New Testament books. We can briefly mention that the word Scripture means different things to communities. The Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants generally have different “versions” of Scripture. We can also briefly note the influence of differing translations from alternate sources whether the Greek New Testament (NIV, NRSV), the Latin Vulgate, the Septuagint (Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures) and looser more dynamic translations (CEV or Good News Bibles). These few sentences hint at the fraught nature of Scripture as a source and we haven’t yet mentioned the opposing ways in which Scripture is interpreted. Perhaps at this point we pause and state that for our purposes we hope to read the Scripture through the “eyeglasses” of Jesus. Those parts of Scripture that are “in tune” with Christ’s vision of God’s kingdom come clearly into focus. Those aspects of Scripture that are against the Spirit of Jesus fade into the background.

In summary, we reflect on the questions our community poses through the tension of reason, tradition and Scripture, as Anglicans have done since the time of Richard Hooker onwards. As we use the tripod of reason, tradition and Scripture, the invitation is offered to receive the reflections presented as further questions to ponder and not as a definitive answer.

Questions are best submitted at Anglicans.live or left for the person delivering your bulletin or posted at the church

The Rev’d Dr Desiree Snyman

Rector

Alstonville Anglicans Sharing the Good Life

anglicans.live

priest@anglicans.live

Sermon Preached at St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church

Sunday 14 June 2020

2nd Sunday After Pentecost

A critical look at the gospels, and the rest of the bible for that matter, informs us that we cannot take everything literally. There are too many internal inconsistencies to allow that with any degree of rigour.

Rather we need to listen with the ear of the heart, tease out the broader concepts and intentions, so that the spirit of the gospel, the deep wisdom, will penetrate the soul, thence the mind. In my experience, that only comes in the fathomless spaces of deep silence, in which only pure things can gather and coalesce.

Easier said than done. Now for me, the heart of today’s gospel reading is this.

As you enter the house, greet it. 13If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.

The greeting, of course, is the greeting of peace, the common greeting of the Semitic world. The Greek word for peace is eirēnē (εἰρήνη), which gives rise to the English name Irene. It is also the name of one of the Greek goddesses of the seasons.

In 379 BCE the citizens of Athens erected a votive statue in her honour. The original bronze is lost, but the Romans carved marble copies, perhaps the best of which[1] depicts the goddess Peace cradling her child Plutus in her left arm – Plutus, the god of Plenty. The statue was, in fact, an allegory for Plenty prospering under the protection of Peace; and it represented a public appeal for good sense.

That is the appeal when you enter another’s space. The words “Peace be with you” are an appeal for good sense and all that goes with that. So, to stretch a point somewhat, “Peace be with you” can also mean “Have some sense”.

And, to stretch it even furthur, “Have some sense”, as a protest in another context, has the connotation of “I can’t breathe”; words uttered by more than one indigenous person in the world, as they lay dying under the crushing weight of several hefty law enforcement officers; in Australia, David Dungay Jr; in the United States, George Floyd.

There is a perception in Australia, Alison Whittaker wrote recently, that Indigenous deaths in custody are inevitable or natural. Despite 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, no one has ever been convicted.[2] All this a consequence of racist silence and complicity endemic in the legal system itself, together with the way such cases are portrayed in the media; together with a lack of political will; together with the frozen deafness of our leaders. Justice is extremely difficult to obtain in this circumstance.

In fact, we only hear about the indigenous lives lost in custody “because of the persistence, expertise and courage of their families and communities who mourn them. But it is not enough to hear about justice, justice must be done."[3]

There is no good sense and certainly no peace is this sector of our national life. Marcus Borg has cogently argued that liberation from bondage is one of the central meanings of salvation;[4] but here there is no liberation, and the bondage is palpable.

It goes without saying, surely, that Jesus’ teachings and behaviour “reflect an alternative social vision” [5] that operates on the basis of good sense, liberation and peace.

The heart of the matter, in Borg’s words, is that,

God wills, comprehensively, our well-being – not just my well-being as an individual but the well-being of all of us and of the whole of creation.[6]

Our task is to give wings to this and make it real. “How?” is my prevailing question. Each of us have skills in different areas. None of us are perfect in the exercise of those skills. But all of us can try as best we can to use the gifts we have in the service of liberation and justice. That is Gospel.

As one of our latter-day prophets, Leonard Cohen, said/sang,[7]

The birds they sang

At the break of day

Start again

I heard them say

Don't dwell on what

Has passed away

Or what is yet to be

Yeah the wars they will

Be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

Bought and sold

And bought again

The dove is never free

Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)

That's how the light gets in

So be it.

Doug Bannerman Ó 2020

[1] Now in the Munich Glyptothek

[2] See The Conversation, June 3, 2020

[3] ibid

[4] See http://jeankimhome.com/Documents/Resources-Commentaries/BORG-SALVATION.pdf

[5] See https://marcusjborg.org/quotes/

[6] ibid

[7] Anthem, by Leonard Cohen. His 2008 performance in London is stunning.

Thought for the week
Does the Trinity mean anything for us today? I think it does. Here are some ideas.

Trinity and intimate relationships and family life
Since God is Love and God’s very being is relationship, the Love relationships we see in the Trinity are precisely the sort of relationships that we are to experience with each other. The Trinity is The Model of how we are to conduct are partnerships, our sexuality, our marriages and our families. What does it mean in practical terms? It means we love each other with self emptying love.

Church
Trinity says that God is community—three ‘Persons’ loving each other so much that they are one. God is community. But humankind is also community. God’s desire is that these two communities should be one. In other words God’s inner life is a model for our human life.

The church is meant to be the place where we see the unity between God and humans taking shape, where we see the process of self emptying love. People are supposed to see what it means to live in the Trinity by looking at us.

Society
Society too should be structured along the lines of self-emptying love. Society should mirror this inner life of God called the Trinity. In Australia we see some of this taking shape in our care for the vulnerable in the policies that are in place to include differently-abled children at school and in our protection of the welfare of the elderly. At the same time we realise how we fail in our residual racism that we prefer to deny and not own up to. If we take Trinity seriously this will be the basis on which we reflect on our policies as a nation: the deportation of refugees, the protection of the environment through carbon pricing and our care of animals who with the cosmos are invited to share in the divine life of God.

In other words we are to oppose that which works again sharing, mutuality, belonging and service which we see modelled in God.

Picturing God
Because God is Relationship – Trinity – we never, never picture God as Powerful, Violent, Angry, Almighty. Almightiness and Violence doesn’t seem to cope with relationship or with love. Someone once said that Jesus was God’s answer to a bad reputation. Of course God the Creator is not violent. It is we who are violent and the violence we have repressed in ourselves we have projected onto our images of God. For much of human history our images of God were toxic. Since Jesus is all that can be known of God the Creator in a human life, Jesus helps us understand the gentleness and compassion of God in how he described God, in how he welcomed people and in the stories he told.

Our view of salvation

A damaging effect of
individualism in the west is its impact on our view of salvation. Salvation is NOT about an individual having their sins forgiven and then going to heaven as if heaven were a destination and a reward. No. To be saved means to be part of a community – a community of Source, Jesus and Spirit and neighbours.

When we reach out to the poor the lonely and the oppressed we are enabling them to experience something of God’s own love, something of God’s own inner life. The love that we offer each other is no different from the love that God offers God in the Trinity.

John 7 are the words Jesus spoke at the Feast of Tabernacles. Tabernacles remembered the time the Hebrews lived in tents as they travelled in the wilderness for 40 years. You may remember the
story recording in Exodus: the people of God, oppressed by Egypt’s Pharaoh, escape through the desert following their leaders Miriam and Moses.  During that time, they enjoyed Manna (bread) and water from a rock.
At the Feast of Tabernacles, according to the Mishnah (Sukkah), water rituals were part of the
celebration.  A priest would draw water from the pool of Siloam with a golden pitcher, then taking it back to the temple  he would pour it into a bowl next to the altar. In some rabbinic traditions, the water-drawing of Tabernacles is interpreted as the drawing of the Holy Spirit.

In John 7 Jesus is reinterpreting the Feast of Tabernacles promising a greater experience of thirst quenching water – the Holy Spirit.  

What are the dry and empty areas in your life right now?

The rivers of living water are flowing out from Christ to you! Come to Jesus and drink.

“To love another person is to see the face of God”

John’s Gospel was written in about 90 AD by a community
established by John, some 60 years after the death and
Resurrection of Jesus.  In John 17 the writers of John’s Gospel, who continue the influence of the
disciple John, show Jesus in a
personal and private moment of prayer. Having finished his public work, and having finished
teaching and being with his
disciples, Jesus steps into a prayer. We eavesdrop on his words.

…. I am asking on their
behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father,
protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one…

To my mind John 17 seems very much like the final scene in Les Miserables in that they both
depict a prayer at the end of one’s life:

God on high …
hear my prayer.
Take me now …
to thy care.
Where you are …
let me be.
Take me now …
take me there.
Bring me home.
Bring me home.
On this page,
I write my last confession.
Read it well,
when I am last am sleeping.
It’s the story,
of those who always loved you.
Your mother gave your life for you and gave you to my keeping.
Take my hand
and lead me to salvation.
Take my love,
 for love is everlasting.
And remember the truth that once was spoken
to love another person is to see the face of God.

In John 17 we eavesdrop on Jesus’ final prayer. In the epilogue of Les Miserables we eavesdrop on the final prayer experience of Jean Valjean. The prayer of Jean Valjean at the end of Les Miserables and the prayer of Jesus at the end of John’s Gospel seem remarkably similar. Both Jesus and Jean Valjean pray for the people that they have loved that will continue to feel loved and protected by God’s grace. Both Jean Valjean and Jesus look forward to homecoming, Jean Valjean prays “bring me home” and Jesus prays “you and I are one.” Ultimately both Jesus and Jean Valjean portray the message that the love of God and the love of each is one: to love another person is to see the face of God thus in every moment of authentic self emptying love we are one with God and Jesus and the Creator are one.

Dear Friends
I’d like to tell you a story

Once a great order, a decaying monastery had only five monks left. The order was dying. In the surrounding deep woods, there was a little hut that a Rabbi from a nearby town used from time to time. The monks always knew the Rabbi was home when they saw the smoke from his fire rise above the treetops. As the Abbot agonised over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to him to ask the Rabbi if he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The Rabbi welcomed the Abbot at his hut. When the Abbot explained the reason for his visit, the Rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the Abbot and the Rabbi sat together discussing the Bible and their faiths.
The time came when the Abbot had to leave. “It has been a wonderful visit,” said the Abbot, “but I have failed in my purpose. Is there nothing you can tell me to help save my dying order?”

“The only thing I can tell you,” said the Rabbi, “is that the Messiah is among you.”

When the Abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him and asked, “What did the Rabbi say?” “He couldn’t help,” the Abbot answered. “The only thing he did say, as I was leaving was that the Messiah is among us. Though I do not know what these words mean.”

In the months that followed, the monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the Rabbi’s words: The Messiah is among us? Could he possibly have meant that the Messiah is one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one of us is the Messiah? Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even so, Elred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. Of course the Rabbi didn’t mean me.

He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah?

As they contemplated in this manner, the monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah and in turn, each monk began to treat himself with extraordinary respect.

It so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the beautiful forest and monastery. Without even being conscious of it, visitors began to sense a powerful spiritual aura. They were sensing the extraordinary respect that now filled the monastery.

Hardly knowing why, people began to come to the monastery frequently to picnic, to play, and to pray. They began to bring their friends, and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the older monks. After a while, one asked if he could join them. Then, another and another asked if they too could join the abbot and older monks. Within a few years, the monastery once again became a thriving order, a vibrant centre of light and spirituality in the realm.

(Adapted from The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace by Dr. M. Scott Peck)

“12‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The story above is about community and love; this community is not created through slavish obedience to rules or commandments. The experience of community that the monks had was generated through the way that each monk treated the other. Because each monk assumed the specialness of the other, they treated each other with respect and curiosity and value.  The community the monks created was a type of covenant where they were each Messiah for the other.

Desiree

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘home’? What does the phrase ‘to feel at home’ mean to you? As you reflect on home consider stepping into the deepest home within …

“There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over feather beds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget.
This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. … Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.
-Mirabai Starr
“The Calling” from the Introduction to her translation of Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle

Enjoy your time at home this week.
Desiree

One of my favourite Godly Play stories relates the mystery of Easter powerfully.

The final plaque of “The Faces of Easter” by Jerome Berryman is as follows:

“that afternoon Jesus died. The sky grew dark. Jesus was taken down from the cross and buried in a cave a great stone was rolled over the opening of the cave to close it like a door.

Saturday was so quiet you could almost hear the whole earth breathing.

On Sunday, it was the women who had the courage to go on to the tomb just to be close to Jesus.

They wanted to remember even if it was sad.

When they came to the tomb they found that the stone had been rolled back and that the tomb was empty.

Jesus had died on the cross, but somehow, he was still present with them as he is with us, especially in the bread and the wine.

When you look at this side – crucifixion – you know that the other side is Easter.

When you look at this side – Easter- you know that this side – crucifixion – is still there – and you cannot pull them apart. This is the mystery of Easter and that make all the difference.”

In many ways, the Godly Play children come closer to the mystery of Easter than we do. Through Godly Play children understand that Crucifixion and its associated terrors of death, violence and evil are an intimate part of Easter with its message of true joy, a new world and a new creation. As adults we have a habit of glossing over “the bad stuff” too quickly and rapidly changing a conversation to the weather when talk becomes too serious and morbid.

Although today’s story is a powerful experience of Resurrection, it is only an Easter story in so far as real space is given for darkness, doubt, and the absence of life.

Tucked away in the encounter of the Easter Christ is the translation of one unusual Greek word “we had hoped.” Four words, yet they are utterly heartbreaking and surely a summary of what it means to gain maturity.

But. We. Had. Hoped.

But we had hoped – these words ring true for so many people that we have each walked alongside on the road to Emmaus.

But we had hoped. (But.we.had.hoped. That: the marriage would be forever…the sick friend would recover…the child would come home…)

The road to Emmaus is the place where we walk when we are tired of it all, when the false optimism of others in all its over sweet saccharine syrup drips like poison on an already darkened mood.

When I hear myself say “I think I need a drink” or when I am in a better place “I think I need a run” then I know I am on the Emmaus path again.

Frederick Buechner writes that Emmaus is:

The place we go to in order to escape – a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, “Let the whole damned thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway.” . . . Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends

The whole Gospel of Luke is structured like a labyrinth. The Gospel edges forward all the time to Jerusalem where the climax of the story happens. However, the story moves towards Jerusalem in circles, not a straight line. This is symbolic of our pathway to God – who among us has arrived at a deeper faith via a straight path? Our own stories are about The story takes two steps forward towards Jerusalem and them loops out and circles around way then back to the path. It seems to be in these circles of walking away from the path that God rocks up.

The image of Emmaus since early childhood has been burnt into my consciousness as a symbol of what it means to be a friend, a human, a partner, a parent, and church to each other. The walk to Emmaus is this:  we walk alongside each other, listening in conversation. As we walk Jesus is present within us and among us and nourishes us food that is not just food, but everything is sacramental and a path to tasting God.

Acknowledgements:

Frederick Beuchner, The Magnificent Defeat (New York: Seabury, 1966), 85-86

© 2014 By Jerome Berryman. The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 4.

Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah…

I want to understand the holiness and terror of Maundy Thursday through the love poems of Leonard Cohen. I invite you to listen deeply to Hallelujah. I am moved by this poem that is at the very same time utterly mystical, religious, romantic, platonic and sexual. This of course is the scandal of Leonard Cohen’s poetry; he weaves together a Hebrew faith story with the Christ Narrative and his experience of union with the Divine which you may call Nirvana, Enlightenment, Samadhi, Unity Consciousness or simply, Love.

Before Leonard Cohen, I would have told you that the word Hallelujah means praise God. I heard the word hallelujah only one way, Handel’s way: “Hallelujah!” What Leonard Cohen has achieved with his hallelujah, is something that no other artists has come close to. Leonard Cohen has made the word Hallelujah not only a verb of praise, but also a song of Lament, where failures, loss and life are mourned. He has made the word hallelujah a plea for help. Hallelujah is also a prayer of confession and at the same time the grace of total absolution.

This is why I offer the story of Maundy Thursday through the lens of Cohen’s hallelujah. The Maundy story is both joy and sorrow, loss and gain, betrayal and redemption, the end of the story and the beginning of a brand-new story. There is no better way to hold these opposites together, except through the hallelujah of Cohen’s chords that are both minor and major, nostalgic, and blissful. Cohen’s hallelujah enwombs us in a Maundy Thursday Meditation that entwines praise, lament, loss, joy, sorrow, and hope.

Cohen also doesn’t blur the boundary between sexual desire and spiritual longing – he obliterates it altogether. For Leonard Cohen there are no different strands of love. Cohen does not differentiate between our Love for God and our Love for each other – it is one and the same thing. In every moment of intimate love for our sexual partner, we are at that very same moment being desired by God and desiring God too. In every act of tenderness that we offer ourselves in self-compassion – we are loving and being loved by God.

In one word, hallelujah, Cohen combines both the holy and the profane, the sexual and the spiritual, the whole and the broken, the divine and the human. And that is what Jesus does in the foot washing. Jesus is ending separation, obliterating duality. Jesus is unifying the world as the great cosmic Christ that he is. The duality that is dissolved is the delusion that we are separate from God. The separation that is dissolved is the delusion that we are separate from each other. In Jesus’ world there  is no master and slave, god and non-god, teacher, and student. There is only the unity of One Love: the unity of friendship.

We are faced with choice: Are you willing to be part of a new world order, a new heaven and a new earth, where we are intimately related, where we are a part of each other, where I am who I am because you are who you are, where who I am is intimately related to who you are, where we understand that I am in you and you are in me, and that we are in Christ?  Or do you choose the “real” world of rulers and slaves, that includes being slaves to God, slaves to religion, slaves to the powers, slaves to empire and slaves to our own appetites?

Maundy Thursday is both the total failure of Jesus, and the utter success of his vision for a new world order. The crucifixion represents the victory of the Powers, of Empire. Yet in this failure Jesus still sings hallelujah: I will stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my lips but hallelujah. This is so close to psalm 22 that we end a Maundy Thursday Liturgy with it is scary. The end of the psalm 22 that Jesus quotes concludes with a promise of God’s vindication – “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord and all families of the nations shall bow before him.”

Jesus dies like a mangled scarecrow on a rubbish dump outside Jerusalem. Failure? No. The vulnerable God of Love reveals the true love story: that God is broken, but God is broken open to all. When Love breaks, love does not break down, love breaks open. In the words of Rowan Williams:  

“Here indeed is encouragement to persevere when everything seems to be falling apart, and we are few and up against great odds, and history appears to be going against us. (In A ray of Darkness).

Holy Week. Hallelujah.

Holy Week. Hallelujah.

But not Handel’s exuberant, joyous hallelujah chorus, where listeners erupt in utter elation, standing. Who can possibly remain seated when the hallelujah in both the highest notes and lowest tones commands otherwise?  Handel’s Hallelujah has at least three exclamation marks after it – it is an uppercase hallelujah exclaimed from the rooftops, the hilltops, the mountains. HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Holy Week hallelujah is Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Cohen’s Hallelujah is at the same time somber and content. A Holy Week hallelujah is in small case letters, followed by the sigh of a full stop. It contains the mind’s commitment to praise God even when one’s heart is not in it. In between each ha-lle-lu-jah syllable, is the pain of broken dreams, regrets, and sorrows that are yet to be mourned.

Leonard Cohen’s holy week hallelujah has the marriage of joy and sorrow, major and minor chords: “the major fourth…the minor fifth, the baffled king (David) composing hallelujah.” This is precisely the marriage of emotions that cradle us through Holy Week: sadness and delight,  wholeness and brokenness, extravagance and bitterness, the ups and downs of life that we in the second part of life know intimately. 

As Cohen writes: “Love is not a victory march; it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah…”A holy week hallelujah encourages us to praise God through the pain, sadness and struggle that life drags us through, expressing our gratitude in the blessing that life is still good… hallelujah.

May we sit with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane,

brave enough to acknowledge our human blessings

and our divine imperfections

…hallelujah.

May we watch with Mary on Friday as Christ and cosmos are rent asunder,

bold enough to lament our defeats and losses,

yet grateful for the mixed blessing we call life

…hallelujah.

May we sit with Christ in the tomb on Saturday,

courageous enough to hold emptiness with compassion

yet able to announce a broken, but authentic …hallelujah.

I heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do you

Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall and the major lift

The baffled king composing hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain

I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

© Leonard Cohen