A Grief Observed 1961 (Faber and Faber) journals CS Lewis harrowing journey through grief. The death of his wife left him disgusted with platitudes in sympathy cards he called “pitiable cant”, cant is a synonym for blather or drivel. When he tries to pray for his wife,

“bewilderment and amazement come over me. I have a ghastly sense of unreality, of speaking into a vacuum about a nonentity… Apparently the faith—I thought it faith—which enables me to pray for the dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not.”

Jessica Mesman is a widely published writer whose work has been noted in Best American Essays, writes: “The rubber has met the road, and he (CS Lewis) has found that all the theology in his world cannot fix a blown out tire.” (Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2019/04/24). 

It is so human to feel viciously angry at God when touched by grief. Yet when we learn from loss, we may come to learn that the dead are our closest neighbours who are still with us, although in a different way that what we are used to. Wisdom comes from journeying deeper into grief, if we are not embittered by our loss. Whether we believe in God or not, God is always present to us,  helping us to listen and learn from our fear, our sadness, our dread, our loss and loneliness.

By Desiree Snyman

Students often ask questions in a context where they expect, even hope for, a particular answer. Such is the situation with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In their role of learning and teaching Judaism, these opposing groups often vied, if not for Jesus' approval, then for the satisfaction of proving him wrong.

When Jesus silences the Sadducees (Mt 22.23 ff), for their apparent lack of Scriptural understanding, the Pharisees take opportunity to test Jesus with a question aimed at settling an 'in-house' dispute. Some teachers permitted a distinguishing between lesser and greater commands, while others argued that as all commandments came from God they were of equal value. Hence, they ask Jesus: Which is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus' two-fold answer points out:

* the legitimacy of holding to first principles in the law, and

* the important immediate consequence – the 'what' and the 'how'. Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable. Jesus later extended the neighbour concept with his Parable of the Good Samaritan. Today, we may see a further corollary as we express our love of God and neighbour in caring for our damaged environment.                                                          By John Kidson.

Jesus the Jew, a book written by Geza Vermes, caused controversy when published in 1973. Today it is commonplace to reflect on Jesus’ Jewish background. We have Geza Vermes to thank for that. In 1973, however, Jesus the Jew was provocative title. Why? 

Jesus the Jew was a confrontational title because Christianity has internalised the oldest hatred, anti-Semitism. Moreover, we have over spiritualised our reading of Scripture. Over spiritualised means that we read the Gospels in moral tones, ignoring the justice, environmental, economic, and political impacts of the text. As I have studied and read, my research into Scripture has cleaned a mirror for my attitudes and I have been saddened at how the reflection reveals my prejudice and bias. Our over spiritualised and anti-Semitic bias in reading scripture are like cataracts clouding our sympathy for the context of the Jewish Jesus. Read through anti-Semitic and over spiritualised cataracts, often this parable has been interpreted as an indictment on the religious hypocrisy of the Jews who have had ‘heaven’ taken away from them and given to the Christian gentiles, while our own hypocrisy remains hidden. Many explanations of this parable regard it as an attack on the Jewish leaders of Jesus time. Furthermore, some interpretations of this parable describe how God has sent pastors to the vineyard his church only to have them abused by the tenants until eventually God will (re)send his son in a second coming. Such teachings cassock church leaders in a false piety when they themselves are at times the wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Royal Commission into institutionalised responses to child abuse has been a cleansing, a necessary movement of the Spirit to disallow any such interpretations.

As background to this parable, the authors of our lectionary have revealed their own bias in marrying Matthew 21.33-46 with Isaiah 5.1-7 – song of God’s vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill…
he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes…

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

Tellingly they have stopped short at verse 7, omitting verse 8, which is the interpretive key for us:

Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land!

“Add house to house and join field to field” to where there is “no more room in the land.” What does this refer to? The audience in the first century existed under a multiple tax burden. In addition to levies paid to Roman officials there was also the necessary taxes paid to the temple. In Matthew 23.1-12 Jesus refers to this: “They (the priests and pharisees) tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” The multiple tax burdens which leached life out of the average Jew living under Roman and Temple rule is one of the reasons Jesus became angry. In Matthew 20.12-13 we read: “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

When one was no longer able to pay one’s taxes and debts, a loan was taken out. When the loan could not be paid, land was forfeited to the wealthy city-based class from whom you were awarded a loan. You hired yourself out as a labourer to the very land you used to own.

Imagine now that the land you owned and loved that supported you and your family for generations was totally destroyed and then replanted with a vineyard. For at least five years the land would bear no fruit which means you had to have enough savings to pay wages without an income. This highlights that only the extremely wealthy could afford the luxury of digging up a workable farm to replant with vines. Imagine being in near poverty working on this farm. As part of your work agreement you are allowed to plant vegetables in between the vines to feed your family, as long as you pay some of this harvest to your already wealthy property owner. Step into scene, you are hungry and tired, you have been working in the sun, your children are suffering and starving, the small amount of food you are able to grow to feed an undernourished family is taken from you as payment for using the land to grow it, land that once belonged to you. These labourers would have longed for a Messiah to come, to destroy all those who generated wealth at the expense of the peasants, and to overturn the tables of history so that the poor would be rich and the rich, poor. Perhaps you can have sympathy for the violent revolt the desperate tenants resort to, especially if their religious hopes are for a Messiah who would violently destroy the oppressors and support their uprising.

Yet Jesus warns that such an uprising will not be effective and lead to a spiral of violence and not have a happy ending for anyone. The ominous question “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” possibly alludes to the siege of Jerusalem in 70CE, a decisive event where the Roman army destroyed the city and Temple of Jerusalem. Josephus the historian suggests that 1.1 million people were killed in that siege. Aware that such a brutal response to an uprising against Rome was possible, the audience in Matthew’s Gospel reply to Jesus question, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death.”

I suggest that in this parable Jesus is inviting listeners to question for themselves the spiral of violence and its lack of efficacy in overcoming evil. A more nuanced approach is needed, where we are as wise as serpents but as gentle as a dove. Since Jesus does not intend to be the sort of Messiah who will lead a violent uprising against corrupt leadership, many will reject his Messiahship. The unusual messiahship Jesus offers will be a cornerstone for the new community he inaugurates, a new community that adopts the beatitudes as its constitution. To opt for violence instead of the beatitudes means that one will always stumble against the character of the Christ, the cornerstone is, for some, a stumbling stone.

As we allow the parable to interrogate us, unless we are widows, we as wealthy readers examine the extent to which our lifestyle rests on the exploitation of others, like the wealthy landowner in the text. Is it possible to imagine a new future that subverts the imbalance of the rich being too rich at the expense of the poor who are made poorer?

I suggest a new future is possible. St Francis of Assisi is a living parable of how the spiral of violence described in Matthew’s Gospel can be undone. After Jesus, St Francis has had the greatest impact on human history. He is credited with the non-violent destruction of the feudal system of Europe, a feudal system which is summarised in Matthew’s parable in 21.33-46. In Matthew’s parable, the wealthy landowner sends his son to collect the “taxes”. St Francis was the son of such a rich noble, however instead of perpetuating his father’s wealth, Francis rejected the lifestyle completely. He lived a life of solidarity with the poor and sick. St Francis not only rewrites the parable, by refusing to be an agent of destruction on behalf of his wealthy patriarch, he also heals the spiral of violence destroying the marginalised and the earth.

As a hero of the faith St Francis empowers us with a creation spirituality that heals a spiral of violence. Compare and contrast is perhaps not the best way to highlight the example St Francis offers us, but this method summarises his impact below:

1.   While we may have been taught that we are born in original sin, in contrast creation spirituality celebrates that we are as an original blessing, blessed to be a blessing to others.

2.   While we may have been taught that the nature of humans is that they are sinners, in contrast creation spirituality celebrates that we the baptised are the anointed kings and queens of the new creations.

3.   While we may believe in a divided world, in contrast creation spirituality teaches the interconnectedness of all things; rich and poor, humans and animals, animate and inanimate are linked together as interdependent siblings. It is because the world is enjoyed as an undivided whole that St Francis sings a hymn to sister moon and brother sun.

4.   While we may see the world in dualistic terms and define some areas as secular and others sacred, in contrast St Francis teaches the divine permeates all things. Creation spirituality notes that all things pulsate with God’s breath, God’s energy.

Similarly, since the world vibrates with the energy of Christ, the universe itself is the body of Christ and the Risen Lord Jesus is worshipped as the Cosmic Christ present in all that is.

There are two great pleasures in life. One of them is eating delicious food the other the emotional, physical, and spiritual communion of two lovers. So, it is no wonder that it is the Marriage Feast that is used to symbolise the superlative, spiritual experience of communion with God. It is an auspicious, euphoric time. It is so sad when communion with God is projected into a future experience, Pie in the sky by and by.  This is especially upsetting for the poor and disadvantaged of the world. So often, for the suffering and poor ‘religion’ a drug, an “opiate of the people” (Karl Marx), stopping them from questioning why is there no banquet now and causing them to accept their lot, their predestined place in the world. Thus, this most wonderful experience has become a tool of oppression. This is NOT the meaning of the parable. The wedding feast is NOW. We are being invited NOW. Unfortunately, sometimes we get distracted by what we think are the important things i.e. work and making money or even securing a nice house, which means we miss the FEAST. The FEAST is found in the sharing or God’s abundance not in things or activities but in real communion with God in creation and other humans. God is not in some faraway place called Heaven waiting for us to arrive for a heavenly banquet. God is here. God is now. The banquet is laid out before us. Bog in!

Over billions of years the Gardener of the Universe created a beautiful blue planet and filled it with life and caused humans to tenant it. However, the tenants thought they knew better and rather than work with the Gardener decided to dominate this world and fought amongst each other for the position of most power. They cut down the trees, killed the animals, poisoned the spoils and hurt and killed each other as well as enslaving the animals and other humans in order for their tribe to be the biggest and strongest.

The Gardener of the Universe was so upset that the humans were destroying rather than promoting life on this beautiful world that the Gardener decided to bring into being a child who would try to tell them about the wonderful life- enhancing fruit that could be had from their world. The child came to them and told them they could have abundant life if they would but attune themselves to love; the Life of the Universe.

Some heard the child and believed, but most could not give up their power, control and domination so took the child and killed the child horribly.

As the millennia rolled by the number of humans on the planet grew. Some remembered the child and the Gardener and sort to follow the love promoting way of life.

On October 4th each year one person in particular is remembered, a monk named Francis. For him the earth and all its creatures belonged to the Gardener and were his brothers and sisters to be loved and cherished. Francis saw that the Gardener’s beautiful planet needed saving along with the humans who were destroying it.

Today unfortunately, the domination continues and the power of humans to destroy grows ever stronger, and yet the Spirit of the Child and Gardener still call us to love and peace. The story is not finished. It is not too late to reject power and domination and live in love and glorious harmony with each other and this beautiful planet we call Earth.

However, the consequences of human behaviour begin to grow dire and the foretastes of the great burning are already being felt.

Can you believe that it is now seventeen Sundays since Pentecost? Seventeen Sundays since we began using green liturgical colours. Green is the colour for living and growing. That means, for hundreds of years, church people have spent most of each year identifying themselves as “Greenies”. 

So, it’s not a new thing for church people to have a focus on Creation as many denominations choose to do in the month of September. This is our fourth Sunday thinking about Creation and this week the focus is on water. Our bodies need us to drink water; plants need water to grow and we need water for washing. In science at high school, I was taken by water being called the “universal solvent”. Water dissolves most things. Even most of our Alstonville red mud.

Our lectionary today has chosen for us, in addition to the Gospel, a most appropriate reading from Exodus Chapter 17. In Exodus, God’s people were learning a lesson. After years of slavery where they needed the Egyptian leaders to look after them, they are now in the desert learning that they needed God to look after them.

For Jewish people, it’s important to regularly retell their history stories. (I was impressed by one New York rabbi who encouraged positivity by writing that it was necessary to think more of the Exodus from Egypt than the horror of the 1940s Holocaust.)   In Exodus today, there’s one of the many murmuring stories. The people were thirsting and complained against Moses. Can you imagine Church people complaining about their leader? Well, when Moses did as God asked him, water flowed from a rock. God provided life-giving water. We are not able to thank God enough for the gift of water that we seem to take for granted as we turn on our taps today. We can show God our appreciation by our careful conservation and management of this gift of water.

So, it’s helpful in this month of Creation, and this Sunday of water, to have Exodus give us something to think about. But, you know, we only scratch the surface of what’s in the Bible. We only scratch the surface in our regular Sunday readings. There’s so much to think about and so many different ways of looking at the messages God gives us.

Last week we heard Matthew telling about Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard. Some workers spent the whole day in sun in the vineyard, others worked half a day and others just a short time late in the day, but they all got the same pay.  

I told the Friday congregation that this was a good example of how generous God is. Our generous God giving people things they are not entitled to and probably don’t expect.

And then I came to Church on Sunday and Desiree explained this same lesson, seeing it from a different angle. I went wow! Isn’t that interesting! Isn’t that good! Desiree made a lot of sense to me when she said, “My reading of the parable is that Jesus evokes debate about justice and economics”.  That’s what being God’s people is all about. Being involved in the welfare system. How are the people around us coping and being treated? That’s why we have Anglicare (where Desiree got the figures she gave us) and St Vinnies and the Salvos). God’s people are to debate and to be outspoken about the way Kings and Governments lead their people.

Today’s Gospel reading has skipped quite a bit of what Matthew has to report since the story of the workers’ pay. We’ve skipped over the very important events of the triumphant entry to Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple. (Jesus overturning the money changers’ table and setting the animals free).

Now, today, we have Jesus’ brilliant response to questioning of his authority. Jesus answers a question with a question; “was John’s baptism from heaven or was it of human origin?” If it was from heaven, then surely you should have believed him? If the answer is no there will be trouble with the people who follow John.

Then Jesus began another parable by asking the question “what do you think”. Jesus is being similar to a teacher preparing students for HSC indicating this is important. Make sure you know this!

Jesus tells the chief priests and the elders of the people a parable of two sons, one of whom says to his dad “I am not going to work in the vineyard”, but eventually does. And the other son who is full of promises to go, but who disappears and never gets to do any work.

Jesus wants people to consider the issue. To think about something pretty straight forward. This is a multiple-choice question with only two answers to choose from. Which son did the father’s will? Of course, they rightly choose the first son as the one who 'did the will of his Father'.

This is excellent teaching technique. Jesus has led his audience, so critical of what he has said and done, to actually own their answer.  Jesus has led his audience to make their own decision about the way to do the Father's will.

It is not a question of saying the right words and going through the right rituals. We are actually called to do what the Father wants. It’s the way we live that counts; not the things we say.

Jesus is attacking the so-called 'religious people' who go through the motions of being God-directed people, mouthing the right words and performing the right rituals, but not putting their lives where their words are.

Then, what Jesus says after this is probably the most difficult thing for people to hear and to accept. A statement which doesn’t seem fair to the people who always come to church. Jesus says to these good religious people, “I tell you; tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Tax collectors and prostitutes were considered as sinners absolutely beyond acceptability. They were pagans.)

So, is this the most annoying thing that Jesus ever said? “Bad people are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you!” Jesus is being very challenging, but he is actually asking people to reflect and decide; well which of these two sons is me?  Which do I personally think is the way of righteousness?

In the Western world, over centuries, Christian morals and ethics had gradually become the accepted values of the nations. However, in our rapidly changing and increasingly secularized world, Christian values no longer play this important role in society at large. It’s interesting that even atheists have argued that society will suffer without religious morals and values. Our society is in danger of losing its soul and Christianity has the opportunity to prevent that when we demonstrate lives that show evidence of God’s kingdom. We pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. When we show that we are striving to do God’s will; if we Church-goers, who listen to the Gospel, are doing what we are saying, things can change. When we don’t; when the so-called sinners of our day don’t see any example of the right way to go about things, where can they put their hope and trust? Where can they learn?

So, there’s big messages in today’s readings but, as always, there is good news. The good news is that change can really take place. No matter what that first son said to his father, he can do the right thing. What we have done in the past does not have to guide what happens in the future.

Intro

Isabel Allende is at the top of my list of favourite authors. In “Sum of our Days” she summarises her son’s threefold philosophy that he applies to all relationships:

·         it isn’t personal,

·         everyone is responsible for his or her own emotions and

·         life isn’t fair so don’t expect it to be.

In contrast Isabel writes that the angst that ruins her poise is because

·         she takes everything personally,

·         feels responsible for the feelings of others, even complete strangers, and

·         cannot and will not reconcile herself with the fact life isn’t fair.

It’s not fair. Is this your reaction to the parable? It’s not fair? The conventional interpretation of the parable is that of allegory, that God the vineyard owner is generous. This parable stresses the lavishness of God's grace and our inability to earn favour with God. We, like the workers, are reprimanded for grumbling “it’s not fair” and urged to imitate the generosity of God. I wholeheartedly disagree with this interpretation.

The text and the text’s context

Here are some observations about the text:
The immediate context for the parable is the rich young ruler asking what he needs to do to inherit eternal life.

Jesus says in Matthew 19:

If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you; it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you; it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The parable of the vineyard workers occurs after Jesus’ formal accusation on wealth. Wine is a luxury product. The owner is likely one of the rich elites, not a subsistence farmer. The idea that the owner represents God is hardly likely when Jesus chooses solidarity with the poor and warns of the dangers of wealth.

Usually the owner would send a supervisor to hire workers, yet here the owner hires workers himself; why, we are not told. It appears that he either doesn’t know what he is doing or is stingy, wanting to get away with the least number of workers, because he returns to town three times to hire workers for what appears to be a bumper crop.

I imagine that for an Australian reader of the parable, the scene is unfamiliar. In Australia it is not often that you can just employ someone off the street. Workers need the correct visas, insurance must be covered, registration with the ATO is necessary, super is compulsory etc. In contrast, “piece workers”, were something that Marius and I grew up with. Usually at traffic intersections, the unemployed would line the roads, vulnerable and desperate for work. It is this that colours my imagination as I hear the parable. When the owner approaches workers at the end of the day asking, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ my blood boils with anger and sympathy. With few exceptions, people want to work, the workers may have appreciated being hired earlier with the first mob. The workers explain, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ Here victims of social injustice are being blamed for the social injustice. The owner implies that they are lazy.

My reading of the parable is that Jesus evokes debate about justice and economics. This is not a moral story with a spiritual meaning about late believers going to heaven. Spiritualising the parables is a device that we the wealthy use to avoid the cost of discipleship, just like the rich young ruler asking about “buying” eternal life with legal obedience to laws. This is an earthly story with political and economic significance. The parable is conscience raising, inviting the audience to examine the many ways in which the systems at play oppress them. For us as wealthy readers, the parable scrutinises the ways in which we benefit from the exploitation of others. Jesus’ mandate is summarised in the Our Father: may it be on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is God’s transformed future available now. In heaven, work is shared, and wealth is distributed so there is enough for all. Therefore, in the present God’s people challenge injustice and work towards restructuring economic policy.

If this parable is about raising our awareness of how labour and economic practices privilege some at the expense of others, it has much to say to our Australian context, especially in relation to tax, Medicare, and welfare.

The text and our context

Kasey Chambers (2018[i]) quotes Minister Michaelia Cash who expects “that those who can work should work and our welfare system should be there as a genuine safety net, not as something that people can choose to fund their lifestyle.”[1] This is typical of the coalition’s narrative. When asked if he could survive on the Newstart allowance; Matthias Cormann dodged the question with the comment “it’s a transitional payment[ii]”. These comments reveal the unstated prejudice on which the coalition operates: ”

·         Those on Newstart are dole bludgers (a strange and uniquely Australian term)
·         "The best welfare is a job”
·         Those receiving welfare are a drain the rest of us.

It is simply wrong to assume that the pittance the unemployed and pensioned are expected to survive on is expensive for the budget. The days of Robin Hood are dead and gone. Nowhere in our economy do we take from the rich and give to the poor. Unconscionably, the opposite is true. We take from the poor to give to the rich.

The Cost of Privilege (2018) was researched and written by Emma Dawson and Warwick Smith employed by Per Capita. Commissioned by Kasey Chambers CEO of Anglicare, the report proved that the richest 20% of Australians cost taxpayers over AU $68 billion per annum. That is around $37 a week from every worker in the country. In contrast, assistance provided to people with disabilities cost $31.721 billion ($17 a week per worker). In 2018, Newstart (unemployment benefits) cost us $10.994 billion ($6 a week per worker).

Continuing the fantasy of a “trickle down” economy is like insisting that the tooth fairy is real. Yet in response to the recession our government has brought forward tax cuts. The Australia Institute states that early tax cuts would be a windfall to high-income earners but an 'ineffective stimulus' for our economy[iii]. The report from the Australia Institute provides modelling of how 91 per cent of the benefit from tax cuts would go to the richest 20 per cent of Australians, with the bottom 50 per cent of earners receiving just 3 per cent of the benefit. The government was urged to increase jobseeker.[iv]

Concluding comments

Today’s parable of the vineyard workers is the lens through which we ask ourselves the questions: how do we read Scripture? How does scripture read us? Nicholas, Allende’s son is right; life isn’t fair. We can allow the parable to lure us into a debate about justice, as opposed to fairness, and work as partners with God in mending a hurt and hurting world.

[i] Kasey Chambers “Australia takes from the poor to give to the Rich” in The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-takes-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-rich-20180404-p4z7sn.html. Retrieved 19 September 2020.

[ii] Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the ABC’s Sabra Lane that the payment was “transitional” and was only for a “very short period”. From https://theconversation.com/are-most-people-on-the-newstart-unemployment-benefit-for-a-short-or-long-time-120826. Retrieved 19 September 2020.

[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/07/early-tax-cuts-would-be-windfall-to-high-income-earners-but-ineffective-stimulus-report-says. Retrieved 19 September 2020.

[iv] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/07/early-tax-cuts-would-be-windfall-to-high-income-earners-but-ineffective-stimulus-report-says. Retrieved 19 September 2020

[v] https://mccrindle.com.au/insights/blog/australias-income-and-wealth-distribution/

Season of Creation

Watching the media at the moment it seems leaders can’t do anything right. And the leaders themselves are vying for top position, power and influence. In our Exodus reading for this week you could say Moses is having a Dan Andrews moment. People questioning his leadership.

Whether it’s Koala’s, water sources, energy sources, freedom of movement, our pay check or in the case of Jesus, spiritual and moral authority, it seems leadership has to deal with a shrill outcry if people feel fearful or if they feel the status quo is being challenged and therefore their sense of security or authority.

In short we don’t like being uncomfortable in any way at all and some feel this more than others. Jesus makes the point it’s those who have the least to lose who trust the visionary leader the most. Those who have the most to lose are the first to try and find a way to undermine the visionary leader. Following a ‘vision’ is uncomfortable, even scary for those of us with the most to lose.

Moses had water issues. So do we! According to the CSIRO our Rainfall has been dropping 10mm near the coast to 50mm further inland every 10 years and is projected to continue to do so. Drying trends and water scarcity issues are affecting large areas of Australia (and the world). Water has been identified as a catalyst in areas experiencing national and civil conflict, according to Australian Defence Analysts. The underlying cause is Greenhouse Emissions and the resulting Global Warming.

There are Jesus figures and Moses figures, trying to lead us to do something about Climate Change, and the underlying causes. However, fear and denial seem to rule the day.

Who will we support and follow?

Does looking up at the stars at night make you wonder about God?

There are approximately 100 billion stars in our Galaxy. The Hubble telescope revealed that in the small section we can observe - there are around 200 billion galaxies. As for distances they are almost incomprehensible (especially to someone who thinks it’s a long way to Perth).

Down here on Earth watching little fairy wrens raise their chicks fills one with delight and awe at such complexity and beauty. We are just beginning to understand the physical, chemical and biological patterns and processes involved in our world.  What we are discovering leaves us with a feeling of wonder, it makes us feel there must be a creative, spiritual force, a mind, God somehow intimately connected to it all.

I wonder, is there sentient life on other planets contemplating the greatness of God?

God is incomprehensibly great!

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari makes the case that our human laws and social rules are just that. We’ve made laws and rules to enable us to function as a society. We’ve used God to justify them or claimed God gave them to us, (but that doesn’t mean s/he did). The Ten Commandments or the Divine Right of Kings are just two examples. We don’t follow the Ten literally anymore. A wife is no longer considered ‘property’ for example. As for the Divine Right of Kings, English speakers ended that idea with the beheading of Charles I, and are not too keen on “Presidents for Life”.  However, the Chinese think the latter is okay. Every society has different structures and rights and responsibilities, and they change and evolve. These are human institutions. We kid ourselves thinking God follows our rules or notions of fairness or is US written large - unless we believe that in the beginning humans created God.

Life in God’s Universe is like the parable of the labourers. Our ideas of what is fair and what’s not don’t apply. Sometimes “Good people” have terrible lives and “Bad people” have terrific lives and visa versa. We get different abilities or lack of them, and life offers us different opportunities. Our planet could be wiped out by an asteroid tomorrow.

Our Universe does follow God’s rules, it follows these patterns rigidly it seems, in as far as we understand them, and based on those rules - our actions have real outcomes. Our universe’s rules govern how nature and the universe works which we haven’t always understood but are slowly beginning to. Knowledge of these rules means we can begin to control the outcome of what happens to our little planet and beyond. Human ingenuity and the possibilities for the future of life are both exciting and frightening.

What do we want that outcome to be? The possibilities of both Utopian and Dystopian outcomes are in our grasp, now. God is great!

The Tragedy of the Commons

by Desiree Snyman on the 13th of September 2020 at Alstonville Anglicans

Read Matthew 18.21-35

Once upon a time there were two fields. One field was privately owned. The owner-farmer was wise. He knew that after grazing cattle for a while on one part of the field, the cattle had to be moved to another part of the field to allow the land to recover. He never had more cattle than the land could cope with. The land prospered.

The second field was a common resource – the commons. The commons was shared by a number of cattle herders who were entitled to graze the land with an allotted number of cattle. These cattle herders were cunning, but not wise. They soon realised they could maximise profits if they increased their herd. While the increased herd benefitted individual herders with more earnings, the land suffered from overgrazing to the detriment of all: the herders, the cattle, and the land.

The story I have told is a metaphor by William Lloyd’s 1833 pamphlet and later Garit Hardin’s 1964 published article “The Tragedy of the commons.” The point of the metaphor observes that the privately owned property prospers because the owner has a vested interest in its longevity. The tragedy of the commons is that what is held in common is destroyed to the detriment of all because of individually focused decisions.

How do you solve the tragedy of the commons? Imagine you are one of the cattle herders on the commons and you have observed the deterioration of the commons due to overgrazing. How would you convince your fellow herders to forego some profit short term to sustain the whole enterprise long term? The tragedy of the commons, as Aristotle summarises simply in Politics is that “what is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.”

In September, the worldwide church celebrates the Season of Creation. The focus of our reflection, inspired by Gardin’s article, is the Tragedy of the Commons. The tragedy of the commons is a lens through which we experience the climate emergency. The commons is the ocean, the atmosphere, water, soil…the whole environment in fact. The tragedy is that actions and decisions which may benefit a few with higher profits, is to the detriment of our survival.

How do we respond to the tragedy of the commons? To go back to the metaphor, how do we encourage the cattle herders not to overgraze? The answers to the metaphor are the same answers we give to the climate emergency. How do we encourage people to give up personal comfort, and personal benefit to sustain the whole? More importantly what do we do when they don’t cooperate? Fundamentally the issue posed by the tragedy of the commons is a question about community and what to do when it goes wrong, and this is where Scripture steps in.

Matthew 18 is about community and what to do when community breaks down. For example, how to respond to conflict, how to value the most vulnerable in community, how to communicate and the role of forgiveness in repairing community. The question today posed in verses 21-35 is when things go wrong, do you forgive and if so, how many times. Jesus answers that we forgive continually. Forgiveness is easy to understand, often hard to practice.

Jesus then muddies the issue of forgiveness with a confusing parable. Well, confusing to me at any rate. The books, commentaries, and sermons I have read about this parable make me feel like I’m the only sober person in a room full of inebriated friends, or the only inebriated one in a room full of sober Methodists. If this parable is meant to illustrate the value and function of forgiveness and that we are meant to forgive because we are forgiven, it fails.

The first slave owes 10 000 talents. Either the amount is hyperbolic, or its highlighting a narrative context. Galilee and Pereia owed Herod Antipas 200 talents per year in tribute. Overall, Herod earned 900 talents per annum. This amount of 10 000 talents is either 50 years’ worth of tribute from Galilee and Pereia or 10 years of Herod’s annual income. In other words, this first slave is a high-level bureaucrat responsible for vast sums of money.

The second slave owes the equivalent of half a Roman legionnaire’s salary or an annual wage of a labourer. In Australian terms my best guess would be the denarii is about 65 000 dollars. The debt owed by the second slave to the first slave while large, is nevertheless payable.

Bearing in mind that Jesus has just said we are to forgive 70 times 7, the king forgives a debt of 10 000 talents in one breath but withdraws the forgiveness in the next breath. The king passes sentence and the slave is tortured for eternity as opposed to the earlier punishment of merely being sold as a slave. The king has forgiven only once, according to Jesus, he still owes 489 clemencies. I hope you can sympathise with my confusion. So, what is going on here?

If the first bureaucrat could be sold into slavery at the whim of a king, or worse, tortured, the parable implies something about the system they are in. No one is safe, no matter how high up you are, how much power you have, and no matter how much money you have. Money, power, and position do not protect you from the system of debt and profit.

Even the king is undermined. Even if the king exchanges a policy of brutal tax exploitation for the cancelation of debt, the world doesn’t change because his subordinates, his bureaucrats are still caught in the system of debt and profit. The king’s hands are tied, and he is forced to bow down to the power of the system.

What this parable says to me is that there is a difference between change and transformation: you cannot change one element in a violent domination system and expect society to transform; that is like rearranging furniture on a sinking Titanic. In order for Christ’s vision of an alternative society to take shape, and the ethics of mutuality, solidarity and generosity to be practical, the whole domination system must change.

Peter’s question (how many times you forgive) indicates how much he buys into the system Jesus intends to overthrow. Who counts mercy? Like grace, mercy, generosity, and friendship are abundant; they are too priceless to count. Jesus’ alternative is cooperation, generosity, leaders as servants, and offering help without counting the cost. The alternative Jesus offers requires radical, integral, and holistic transformation of attitudes, spirituality, beliefs, economics, faith, and business models. Jesus is proposing a revolution so great that it doesn’t only change the people, it changes the entire system itself. 

Here in lies the relevance of the parable of the unmerciful king for our climate emergency (or impending catastrophe depending on how you interpret the science). The parable calls for a total transformation and predicts the failure of one or two changes in making a difference to our world. It is not enough to change one aspect of our technology for another technology and expect creation to heal. For example, it is not enough to change diesel cars for electric or coal for solar panels and expect that to be a solution to our climate emergency/catastrophe. The climate emergency demands a whole system approach, an holistic and integral transformation of faith, spirituality, finance, business, education, health … everything.

Jesus’ background in Judaism holds the concept of shalom as central to a healed world. Shalom is a vision of interconnectedness, that we are one with each other, with the creator, and with the environment. Other cultures have similar understanding. For the Maori, shalom is whakapapa; for Africans, shalom is ubuntu; for Tibetan Buddhists, tendrel. Shalom, ubuntu, tendril, whakapapa have a similar energy – that we are all connected to God, to each other and to every atom in creation through an innate web of relationships.  

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).

Sermon Notes Pentecost 10
9th August
Based on Matthew 14:22-33

COVID has changed many things. From today we are required to wear face masks. Putting our service online isn’t easy but it’s worthwhile as many people are watching and discovering new faith.  One of many groups that was shut down but is now meeting again is AA where lives are changed by recognizing the need to depend on a “Higher power”.

People saying that they believe in a “higher power” are not often confronted and it’s not too risky to say you are “spiritual” or even “religious”. But some people think it’s sort of dicey to tell others that you “believe in God”. You could be challenged if you are game enough to say “I am a Christian and I believe that Jesus is God”.

This raises a really important question; who is Jesus? How do you know what to believe when you hear some people talking of Jesus as being “just great prophet” or perhaps saying Jesus was only a brilliant teacher? Or the Jehovah Witnesses teaching that Jesus is just one of many Gods?

There was a King of Siam who, in the 1800s, had an English teacher. They got on really well until the Englishman spoke about “water becoming so hard that an elephant could walk on it”.  The King became angry and ended the friendship. The King hadn’t ever experienced ice and he wasn’t prepared to believe something that he couldn’t understand. What should this king have done?

Well, it’s not easy to know what we should do about things we don’t understand. I know many well educated people who are sometimes accepting of things they don’t understand such as computers or wifi. However, it’s not uncommon to run across someone who totally refuses to accept things they can’t understand.

There are times when we miss out on knowing the truth either because we are not prepared to make an effort to investigate or, like that King, we refuse to trust in something we aren’t able to see. This is the problem that Jesus disciples had.

In today’s scripture, a group of Jesus’ disciples have difficulty in recognising him. They don’t know that the figure they see walking along in the roaring waves is actually Jesus. The disciples are in a boat. “The wind was against them,” driving them way out to sea. As dawn breaks early in the morning, they see a terrifying sight. A figure walking toward them on the sea! “It is a ghost!” they yell out in fear.

Then Jesus spoke to them; “Take heart, it is I; don’t be afraid.”  Presumably, even when Jesus spoke to them, they still were not sure it was Jesus because it was then that Peter said something very strange; “Lord, if it is really you, order me to come out on the water to you.” What an odd thing for Peter to say; “Jesus, if it’s really you tell me to do this amazing thing”. That’s how Peter thinks he will know him. If this figure on the water is Jesus he will say “come on! Get out of the boat”.

And that’s how we will know Jesus. Jesus is the one who extravagantly and recklessly commands us to leave the safety of the boat; to step into the sea, and test the waters, to show what our faith is made of. That’s Jesus.

There’s a song sometimes sung at funerals “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me”. When you think about that, it’s pretty tough isn’t it?  Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling us to risk our life; to throw caution to the wind, to step out of the boat and defy death.

Early in the Gospel story, Jesus calls a group of very ordinary people to drop their nets, leave their business and their families, and go out with him on a perilous sea called discipleship. So maybe we shouldn’t find it strange for one of those people to now say, “Lord, if it is really you, call me to get out of the boat and walk on the waves”.  

I studied theology at the Bible College of Queensland with some great young people who had given up successful careers with bright futures. There were teachers, occupational therapists, classical musicians, managers, computer programmers who had given up well paid careers to serve as poor missionaries.

Who would have commanded them to do such a thing? Could it have been Jesus?

In the hills behind Coffs Harbour, there’s a very successful ministry given to sufferers of drug and alcohol addictions. It’s called Sherwood Cliffs. I know that they received regular financial help from a young couple who were both on limited incomes. This couple had made a promise of regular support to Sherwood Cliffs on top of what they were already committing to their church.  How could they, on their limited incomes, make such a commitment?   They said, “we just thought this was the sort of thing that our Lord Jesus would expect of us. We both know how important our youth are and how tough it can be growing up these days. So, we made this commitment.”

Is this the sort of thing our Lord would expect of us? What sort of Lord would expect such sacrifice?
Could it be Jesus?      

The good news is that, when Peter climbed out of the boat, even though the going was rough, even though he almost sank and perished, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him, just at the right moment. He helped Peter back into the boat, he stilled the wind and the waves, and Peter was saved.

But if Peter had not moved, had not obeyed Jesus call to walk on the water, then Peter would never have had this great opportunity for recognition and rescue by Jesus.

I wonder if many of us are only splashing about in the safe inshore shallow water and consequently are missing out on opportunities to test our faith. If we want to be close to Jesus, this Gospel story today is suggesting that we need to get out of the boat. We are being encouraged to take ourselves out into the deep, dark sea.  We’ve got to prove God’s promises through trusting God’s promises, through risk and adventure.

Henri Nouwen was a great Dutch teacher, psychologist and Priest. He wrote many books, but my favourite was The Wounded Healer. Nouwen gave up a brilliant career of international lecturing and served in an institution named Daybreak as a carer for the severely disabled. What made him do it? What force drove him to this place of giving to others rather than taking all he could get?

Someone had called him to step out of the boat, to risk walking on water, to defy the forces of nature, to swim against the stream, to come closer to him, to venture out into the storm.

Could it have been Jesus?

So if in the dead of night, or maybe near dawn, you should hear a voice, calling your name. If there’s a strange voice calling you to get going, to sail away, to risk the storm and to defy the waves; there’s a good chance that voice could belong to none other than your very Lord and Saviour.

Who would dare to call an ordinary, not very spectacularly faithful person like you or me to be adventurous and to take a bit of a risk?

I think you know who.

“Hope”

In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 15:21-28, a Canaanite woman who has given up hope for her daughter, begs Jesus to heal the girl. Though the woman and her daughter are outsiders, Jesus miraculously reaches out to them and heals the little girl. This story shows us an image of Jesus acting with grace and powerful compassion. It’s a story that encourages us to have hope.

St. Athanasius was a great theologian of the fourth-century. In a brilliant little book, On the Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius writes that the entire world benefits from the incarnation of the Word even before being aware of it. “You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that house the whole city is honoured and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so it is with the “king” of all; he has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death that formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.”

This explains why our hope is valid. It gives us a foundation on which we are able to build our Christian ethics and our Christian life. Jesus is Lord! We have a reason for our hope. The kingdom of God is here! Life that is lived in the light of that saving knowledge is eternal.

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?

Ah! The parables! Enigmatic entities whose meaning is not immediately clear, Spirit filled seeds of creation, brimming with promise of life and vitality. Some seem simplistic, others baffling, yet others tiresome. The shorter they are, the more meaningful they seem to be. The longer ones invite unfortunate critical analysis that destroys the purpose of their formulation, the presence of the living God.

Think of The Pearl of Great Price, or the Treasure Hidden in a Field - one-liners that carry a stupendous wealth of Presence. No other words are necessary. One is invited into a liminal space of boundless possibility that is - really, truly, madly - ineffable.

Rowan Williams once referred to Christ as a “riddler”, “one who makes us strangers to what we think we know,” whose “sharp and enigmatic words … oblige us to imagine ourselves anew …”

So, in considering the parable of the Sower, let us not get entangled in the details, but seek the greater truth, the Sower Herself. Forget the possibilities for careful agriculture, husbandry of soil types, farmers negligent or otherwise, weeds and what not; the Sower in this tale is extravagant, reckless,
abandoned, indiscriminate. Seed is scattered everywhere.

The late R S Thomas’ poem
Raptor has in part,
You have made God so small
setting him astride
a pipette or a retort
studying the bubbles,
absorbed in an experiment
that will come to nothing
I think of him rather
as an enormous owl
abroad in the shadows
I have heard him crooning
to himself, so that almost
I could believe in angels.

(Based on Matthew 14:13-21)

Jesus said to his disciples “You give them something to eat”
We are often just like the disciples in this Gospel story of loaves and fishes. We think that we are not very well equipped and have little or nothing to offer others.

It’s distressing for us to see advertisements on TV showing babies dying of starvation,
families living in tents in muddy refugee camps and kids living in poverty without the proper school uniform or food. These advertisements move us from distress to despair. Often, we think “Jesus, please just send them away!”. At other times, our sincere prayers are “Jesus, we want you to work some kind of miracle and to look after and feed these unfortunate people”.

In this story of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus shows that he can take what little we have to offer, bless it, and give it back to us so that we are then able to bring fulness to the needy.

In Holy Communion, Jesus transforms the eucharistic bread. He also transforms us into Eucharistic people. The meal of Jesus is always obtainable. The twelve baskets of leftovers collected by the
disciples are a lesson to us that the miraculous nourishment provided by Jesus is still available for those who seek it.

As long as there are people looking for the gifts Jesus offers, this nourishment can never be totally used up. But the Gospel story also tells us that Jesus wants disciples who are prepared to distribute his gifts. Jesus calls us to become his “subcontractors” to nourish the needy.

Jesus certainly works an amazing miracle. The miracle is seen as Jesus asks each one of us, “What do you have?” This isn’t necessarily a question about money; perhaps it’s about other resources such as time or a special talent.

The reality is that we don’t have much. Just a couple of fish in our basket, and a few loaves. But Jesus encourages us to take what little we have and to recklessly share it. Jesus desires us to give it away. We are urged  to share our meager resources with the multitudes.

Whenever we respond to this urging of Jesus, the real miracle is that whatever we have to share turns out to be enough.

Matthew 13 is chock full of parables that start with the words, “The kingdom of God is like …”

In the OT, the phrase “kingdom of God” is, an eschatological concept that first appears in the prophets. Eschatology refers to a future world in which all human hopes will be fulfilled according to God’s purposes.
Micah (4.1-4) describes it attractively; all peoples shall stream to it, and

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.

Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come  

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;

but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid …

Jesus asks the disciples “Have you understood all this?” and they say “Yes!” I wonder what they mean? Is it “Yes!” to Micah’s image, which I presume they knew; or yes to the string of parables laid out for them like a necklace? How do you see it? Do you say “Yes!” that readily? What do you respond to?

Jesus’ response, his punch line if you will, is telling. “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” The old treasure, the Scribe’s treasure, was the “Law and the Prophets,” in which they were comprehensively schooled. The Scribes were the guardians as it were, and significantly they were guardians of social cohesion.

Jesus indicates that the old and the new belong together; the new being that which Jesus has laid before his disciples in his life, teaching, and works. In the language of the old dispensation, the disciples are to be the Scribes of an enlarged treasure that contains the old and the new, strongly indicating that the new Scribes will be agents not just of personal change, but also of social change. “A new heaven and a new earth.”

Rev Doug Bannerman