WHAT IS VOCATION?

The word vocation means calling. There is a commonly held conviction that calling applies to pastors only. I would like to break that definition. The truth of the matter is quite different: every human being has a vocation, has a calling. By baptism you have already accepted the invitation to carry out your vocation, to carry out your calling. Every Christ follower is a called person. Listen to the words of God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, they apply to each of you: “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born, I called you.” One of the chief tasks of an ordained person is to help people uncover and develop their calling. One of the best theologians I have ever heard describe the nature of calling is Jamie Oliver.

In the latest series on SBS, Jamie Oliver is touring Italy. He begins his journey cooking with a group of monks in a monastery that has one of the oldest herb gardens. While in the kitchen he says something along the lines of “the dinner table is my altar”. Wow! That is exactly right. Hospitality is his priestly calling. 

In the Scripture today James and John leave Zebedee to follow Jesus. I find myself getting in the boat with Zebedee and explaining to him that it is all very well for John and James to follow Jesus into the sunset, at some point they still must eat. In my imagination, I observe James and John following Jesus through an itinerant ministry, healing and preaching. I imagine the disciples returning at the end of the day to Galilee, hungry and exhausted from the day’s work. I notice the thoughtful Zebedee knocking on the door in the place they are staying and bringing in a feast of barbequed fish, caught on his repaired nets. John and James were called to a ministry of preaching and healing. Zebedee’s calling is to be the net holder.

WHAT IS A CALLING?

Calling is a Biblical word to describe how each person has something beautiful to do for God. The Spirit calls us to fulfil a particular task as our unique way of celebrating the Spirits presence in the world. Our calling is our unique way to give glory to God. Each of us has an assignment to do that has our name written on the tag. Each of us has a song to sing, a message to deliver, a special gift of love to offer that no one else can offer.

WHISPERS OF RESISTANCE

The experience of calling is never a smooth path. A calling unfolds slowly and changes shape as it grows and develops. The process involves a bit of searching and testing. Often there are whispers of resistance, of negativity of self-doubt. Thoughts like: “Someone else can do it better” “I do not know enough about God.” “What happens if I fail?” Take heart, the Bible is full of good examples of whispers of resistance: Jeremiah says he is too young, Moses complains that he stutters, Isaiah says that he is a man of unclean lips.

A CALLING BRINGS NOURISHMENT

We answer a call because a calling is something that brings nourishment to our lives and the lives of those around us. Jesus himself said: it is my meat and drink to do my Fathers will. What does he mean? To carry out our calling offers us deep satisfaction, a deep sense of joy and fulfilment. Not only does it nourish our souls, but it nourishes the souls of those around us. When we carry out our calling there is a deep and profound sense that our souls are fulfilled.

SOME HINTS AT DISCOVERING GOD’S CALL FOR YOUR LIFE

I would like to offer some signposts at discovering your call. The first suggestion is this: what human cry in the community disturbs you the most? What are the needs in the community around you that worry you that you notice? A previous senior minister would often say at leaders meeting when somebody had a suggestion as to what we should be doing: “He who gets the vision gets the mission.” What he was suggesting is that the needs and gaps that you notice are often your calling. The very fact that you notice certain needs may arise from your calling. There are plenty examples of this. One that I could offer is a story of Moira Simpson who lives in Benoni South Africa who was bothered by the number of street children in Benoni, she responded by starting a home for them, this was her calling.

A second suggestion relates to finding out what nourishes our soul. Let me explain, sometimes people come to me burdened with the question: “What is God’s will for my life?” I usually respond by asking them: “what is it that you have to do, that you cannot do without? Or what are your deepest desires? What makes you happy? They may respond by saying things like art, music or children make me happy, they are some things that I cannot do without. Bingo! You have found your calling; this is because the deepest desires of our hearts coincide with God’s deepest longing for us.

CONCLUSION

The Spirit calls us to fulfil a particular task as our unique way of celebrating the Spirits presence in the world. It will be different for each of us. Some of us our called to be mothers and fathers, some of us are called to teaching, or music or art. We give glory to God and live life at its fullest when we lean into our calling.

I mentioned Jamie Oliver’s travels through Italy beginning at an Italian monastery. Jamie offers to say grace at an evening meal but makes a faux pas. He prays: “For what we are about to receive may God be truly thankful". I think that is exactly right. When we recognise that the tools of our trade, be they computers, machinery or cooking utensils are sacred vessels and our place of activity, be it a bus, a classroom or a factory is a sanctuary, and we are all priests, God is truly thankful.

Good news

When I was a Methodist pastor, all preachers, lay and ordained, had a preaching assessment. Usually about three or four people were involved, including a senior ordained minister, a warden or a leader, and a member of the congregation. The assessment had a number of sections to be filled in. One section asked: did the preacher offer Good News? Award 1 if yes and continue marking. Award 0 if not and stop marking. Nerve racking. What is the Good News? In one sentence what would you say is the kingdom of God?

The Gospel of Mark is “punchy”, pithy, to the point with little unnecessary detail. The good news is clearly stated: The kingdom of God is near. Repent. Believe.

Some were so captivated by the Good News of the kingdom that they let everything to answer the call to follow Jesus. The Gospel unit ends in verse 21 with John and James leaving their fathers business to follow Jesus. I wonder how he must have felt. What is so compelling, so enticing, so attractive about the Good News of the kingdom of God that one literally abandons everything: business, family, home, relationships, money, to follow it?

We have noted before that the word evangelion is a term that Mark colonised from Rome. After a successful war, Caesar would send out coins, evangelions, announcing the good news of his latest victory in war. Mark brazenly uses this term ‘good news’ (evangelion) to describe the message of Jesus and calls Christ’s kingdom good news – something good something new.

Jesus could have used the word family or community or collective or life group to describe God’s activity in the world. Instead, Jesus uses the word kingdom – a political term. Jesus deliberately used the word kingdom in describing the realm of Gods influence so at the heart of call to follow Jesus is political resistance. Our baptism into the kingdom of God cannot be reduced to spiritual niceties devoid of activism.

The audience of Jesus knew about kingdoms, especially the kingdom of Rome. Living under Roman occupation with the terror that that entails, Jesus’ listeners at first thought he would re-establish an earthily kingdom by force. Perhaps Jesus was tempted by this; when tempted in the wilderness the tempter takes Jesus to a high mountain shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says, “all this I give you if you worship me” (Matthew 8.9). The sons of Zebedee want to sit at his right hand and left hand in his kingdom (Matthew 20.20). Jesus makes clear that his kingdom is not like that at all. When Jesus says that he will suffer and die for his kingdom, Peter says Lord this will never happen. Jesus says to him get behind we Satan your mind is not God’s wavelength (Mark 8.33).

Jesus is in direct disagreement of the kingdoms of his day and offers a different sort of kingdom, a unique way to structure human society. Jesus presents an alternative kingdom. Jesus offers an alternative social and political vision. In order for his kingdom to take shape, the other kingdoms have to be abandoned and dismantled. The way in which Jesus proposes to dismantle the kingdoms of the world is so threatening to those who benefit from exploitation that they put him to death.

Later we will learn about this kingdom of God, but it looks something like the traditions that informed Jesus. For example, his ancestor Moses describes how God’s people were fed with manna, bread from heaven, in the wilderness escape from Egypt. In Jesus alternative social vision, manna is shared with all, there is economic justice for all. Mercy is given to all, , there is no hierarchical system, no religious system of who is in and who is out – all are in – all are embraced, loved, and accepted. Jesus’ alternative kingdom would be a world of nonviolent peace.

The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is at hand. In other words, the kingdom is so close to you, you can reach out and touch it. The kingdom of God means God is everywhere. God is within us; God is among us. God is all around us. The kingdom of God is like breath, you breath it in and out, the breath is in you and outside you. It is around you; it is in every person you meet so that everyone who comes to you, is the face of God. You are a manifestation of God’s kingdom, as is the person you love the most and the person you like the least. This too is frightening, especially for the religious kingdoms of Jesus day. If the reality of God is accessible to all people, all the time, what then of religion? The kingdom of God challenges our security and the safety we have in our religious beliefs. The law and the temple are not absolute. All are invited into a higher relationship beyond law and temple, for those not open to growing in intimacy with God in this way, the kingdom is a threat and good news is bad news.

The Good news is the kingdom of God is at hand. How do you begin to see this way? The method is given – it is the word repent. Repent is not about confessing the manifold mistakes we all make. Repent is from metanoia. Metanoia does mean the radical change of mind, but its meaning lies deeper than that.

The Gospel is written in Greek and is deeply influences by Greek philosophy. According to Greek philosophy reality is seen on four levels.

·         The first is the body or matter.

·         The second is the individual soul.

·         The third is the nous  - the universal soul.

·         The fourth is The One Reality or God.

Meta noia means go beyond the nous. The word meta means go beyond. Metta narrative is the story beyond . Metaphysics means beyond physics. Meta noia means go beyond the level of nous. Repent means that we go beyond our identification with the body, beyond our identification with the individual soul, beyond our identification with the nous or the universal soul – the nous – to find God or experience God who is everywhere.

So how actually do you repent, go beyond the nous? It is not action so much as non-action. You cannot come to God because you are already in God . You cannot come to the kingdom of God because the kingdom is near, it is already in you and around you. Repent is about the surrender to the reality of what is, surrender to the experience of God who is everywhere. Religion and sacraments have deep value in as much as they support our repentance, our metanoia, our going beyond the mind or nous. Denise Levertov in her poem “The Avowal” is a brilliant example of repentance as going beyond the level of Mind to experience the Kingdom of God that is at hand.

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

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.  

We celebrate the baptism of Jesus. I want to be clear that if this baptism is a spiritual act, then to be spiritual is decidedly political AND mystical and the two are connected. By “political” I do not mean party politics as in the Greens, Liberals or Labour. Political means a structural analysis of society and how it is constructed to favour the rich and institutionalise violence against First Nations and the poor. By mystical I mean the breakthrough in consciousness where people experiences God directly, knowing that God is everywhere and that they are in God.

Mark’s Gospel offers a fast-paced beginning: “The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” It races through a hasty beginning to John preaching in the wilderness and the baptism of Jesus. Like John’s Gospel, Mark’s Gospel evokes Genesis. Mark is offering a New Creation of a New Heaven a New earth and a New Way of being human.

These opening verses of Mark’s Gospel are a declaration of war on Roman culture: Jesus is the New Beginning, not Caesar. Jesus is The Good News, not Caesar. Jesus is the Son of God, not Caesar.

To make clear that the New Creation takes place on the periphery and not in institutions, wilderness space is evoked. Wilderness evokes many images, tastes, sights, emotions. You can hear and feel the wind stinging your eyes, you can taste the grit in your parched mouth and your stomach can twist at the loneliness and danger imposed by the emptiness of a wilderness. Usually a desolate space, wilderness is a place where you flee too, especially from political opponents. David fled into the wilderness from Saul when Saul was trying to kill him. The Israelites fled into the desert away from the tyranny of Egypt. Elijah fled into the desert where he was given food of angels. The New Creation of a New heaven and a New Earth happens at the margins.

If Mark’s Gospel is a declaration of war on Roman Culture and Roman nationalism, it is also a declaration of war on Jewish Nationalism. In the poetic imagination of the prophets, Jerusalem would be the place where are the nations would come to learn the way of peace. Isaiah 1.2:

Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

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 anymore.

Mark 1.4-11 challenges the idea that all nations come to Jerusalem. Instead, it is Jerusalem and all of Judea that are leaving Jerusalem and going out into the wilderness. The writers of Mark’s Gospel are subverting tradition, its like driving against the traffic on a highway.

John announces repentance for sin. Sin is not a popular word . In fact, even some of you here insist on its removal from our liturgies. If sin is defined as guilt and shame and feeling less than fully human, then yes, such “sin” has no place in our lexicon. Thomas Cranmer’s “we bewail our manifold sins and wickedness” is hyperbolic, overly pious, and perhaps not helpful, if sin is defined as crushing guilt and paralysing shame, which is self-centred, individualistic and a further demonstration of sin anyway. The repentance John calls for is an agreement to ere I think is and agreement to step out our solidarity with institutions of violence

For a Gospel of few words and quick fast paced sentences, it is surprising to be offered details about what John is wearing: a camel hair cloak and a leather belt. John’s attire is a direct reference to Elijah the prophet. This is important. The writing community of Mark’s Gospel are declaring that the moment of God’s judgment is upon us. Malachi 4.

See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch… Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes…

John’s ministry in the wilderness represents Elijah being sent before the great and terrible day of the Lord. The day has come. Judgement is pronounced. Elijah had pronounced judgment on the Israel’s king Ahab and his son Azariah. Their house subsequently fell. John the Baptist, the new Elijah, pronounces judgment on Herod Agrippa. Then he tells us that one even stronger than he is coming.

Each of us today must hear in our hearts the word of the lord’s judgment. Are you ready to be judged? Here is your judgement. The heavens break open and God’s voice of judgement says….you are my beloved. That is the great and terrible day of the Lord. That is the burning judgement. God says, “You are my Beloved.” How great to be judged.

The mystical moment for Jesus is when the boundaries between heaven and earth dissolve; Jesus ascends from the waters of baptism at the moment the spirit descends from heaven and he becomes the place where heaven and earth meet, where grace and truth embrace and righteous justice and peace kiss (Psalm 85.10). Jesus experiences the universal and eternal truth that God is everywhere, that he is in God and that God is in him, , that we are already in God. This is a discovery of one’s true identity – God within. The same spirit that hovered over the chaos of creation in the beginning, in Genesis, now hovers over the New Creation of a New Heaven and a New Earth .

The Spirit is represented as a dove as a direct challenge to the Eagle that appeared on the Roman standards. In Ancient Rome, an aquila, an eagle was the important symbol that appeared on military banners or standards. Each legion had an aquila. To lose the military standard was serious. The Roman Military protected the aquila and sought to recover it if it was lost in battle. The Spirit represented as a dove is a direct challenge to Roman military insignia.

Here is the genius of the Gospel’s challenge to Roman and Jewish nationalism, we find our identity beyond any label that culture would bestow. Our identity is in God

Today the politics of identity cement our divisions and deepen our hatred. The politics of identity swell as the waters of democracy recede. Indian Hindu against Indian Muslim. Pro Trump vs Anti Trump. Greens vs Liberals. Regions vs cities.

The art of living spiritually that is both political and mystical heals these divisions by discovering a common union in the Divine: if God and I are one, you and I are one.

Ched Meyers in a 2015 blog challenges us to re-write Mark 1 within our own context (he used the word bio-region but I think it means context).

So the people gathered near the Uluru. They left the parliaments of Canberra and gathered near the way maker, Stanley Grant, who was there. People finally understood when he said that the colonisation of the First Peoples was a violent act of war, that the land they called terra nullis, was not a desolate wilderness, but alive with story and pulsating song and vibrating with wisdom.

All manner of Australians left the city and joined in the truth and reconciliation commission in the wilderness near Uluru. “The Great Australian Silence" and the “cult of forgetting on a national scale” came to and end. Truth was given space to be spoken and people really listened, and slowly the path of reconciliation began.

Notes:

Craig Evans, “Mark’s Incipit and the Priene Calendar Inscription: From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, 1 (2000): 68–69, who footnotes his sources as: M. E. Boring, K. Berger, and C. Colpe, Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995).

Grant, Stanly. UNSW Wallace Wurth Lecture. Accessed from: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/unsw-wallace-wurth-lecture-%E2%80%93-excerpt-speech-stan-grant

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.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”

20 He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”

21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”

22 Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ” as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

25 They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, 27 the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

28 This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing. 

One of the most annoying things about free to air television is the timing of adverts. It’s usually when you are caught up in the climax of a Saturday night film when the momentum and emotion is ruined by a Coles advert: “Down, down, prices are down …” 

I have a similar sense of surprise when reading chapter 1 of John’s Gospel. The prologue begins with a beautiful rhythm of lilting poetry with cosmic intonations, only to be interrupted by a rather terse description of John, the witness to the Light: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God … There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” Can you hear the clash of cadence? The hymn moves abruptly from poetry to prose, it clangs like Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” being interrupted by heavy metal grunge.  

This is as it should be. John’s prologue, with its cosmic hymn to the Word, interlaced with references to John, represents the New Creation, a marriage of heaven and earth. The cosmic, divine Word dances out with the breath of God and is beheld by a witness, in this case an earthy and human John. God’s story and John’s story interweave, representing the union of the finite with the Infinite, the time-bound with the Timeless Eternal, the earthling with the cosmic Word.  

John’s Gospel is an obvious and deliberate reiteration of Genesis. In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Genesis 1). In the beginning was the Word (John 1). In John’s Gospel however heaven and earth are joined together in the Word that is made flesh and dwells among us. It’s as if John 1 is a fulfilment of the dream of Psalm 85: ‘Grace and Truth are met together; justice and peace have kissed each other. Truth springs up from the ground; and justice looks down from heaven.’ This is what John witnesses to, that heaven and earth are one, that the Infinite Divine has a home within you, that you and God are one. What that means is that like the Christ, you too are Word of God breathed into the flesh that you call your life and body.  

It’s as if we have two selves. We have a self that is born and will one day die. We also have an eternal self, a timeless self that has never been born and will never die. To discover our identity as children of God is to discover the eternal self. Brother John Martin from Saccidananda relates the following story to help us understand: 

Once there was a poor man living in a small hut outside a village. Every day he went to the village to beg for his food. One day a holy man was passing that way. It was evening so he took shelter in the hut of the poor man. The next day, as he was leaving, he called the poor man and said: under your hut there are precious diamonds. Dig and you will find. Saying this, the holy man left. As soon as the holy man left, the poor man dug in his house and found the precious diamonds. He stopped going to the village to beg and lived like a rich man. He was rich because of the diamonds but had been living like a beggar not knowing the diamonds under his hut. 

We sometimes live like beggars not knowing the eternal self, the precious diamond within. The Eternal Self is the Word that made a Big Bang in the beginning and now vibrates in each one us as the
co-mingling of divinity and humanity. The New Creation that John 1 sings about is to realise and live out the marriage of heaven and earth, that the Divine Word takes shape within our own lives.  

How does the breath of God’s Word breath and love through you? Are you like Elijah? Are you like a prophet? John knew the particular shape he gave to the Word was not to be a Messiah, but to be a signpost pointing the way.  

The whole point of Advent is being incubators to the Word, the Logos, the Wisdom, that God breathes into us. We are each of us the place where heaven and earth meet, the moment of union between divine and human energies. Barbara Brown Taylor explains:  

Like John and all the other evangelists, we are breathers of the Logos. We are words about the Word before we ever say a word. However well or poorly things seem to be working out with that, there is something else at work here that has been pouring itself out for us forever, which the darkness does not overcome. Light from light. Fullness from which we have all received, grace upon grace. Christmas every day. Now it’s your turn, divine child. You’re the next step. So, what word will you be today? What divine energy will you bring to life? All creation waits eagerly to find out.

Fourth Week of Advent: Journeying in the World 

As we come closer to the joy and promise of the Incarnation, we invite you to continue journeying the Way of Love. Consider this week which of the seven practices captured your imagination this Advent. Which challenged you or brought the most joy? Where did you find blessings or cross boundaries? Where is God calling you to witness to salvation being birthed into the world today

Sunday, December 20

WORSHIP
Linger before leaving worship today. Ask God to prepare and send you on a journey into the world to witness to God’s love. 

Monday, December 21

GO
Go out into your neighborhood today. Where do you see God at work? What attributes of God’s love are visible? Ask God to show you how you can celebrate and join in that love. 

Tuesday, December 22

LEARN
Read Luke 2:8-10. When has God surprised you? Share with a friend. 

Wednesday, December 23

PRAY
Set aside a time today to pray for others. Include three minutes of intentional silence, asking God to speak to you. 

Tuesday, December 24

BLESS
If you are gathering with others today, take turns naming a way the person on your right or left has blessed you. 

Wednesday, December 25

TURN
Read Luke 1-2. Give thanks for the birth of the Christ-child. Pray that you may follow Christ Jesus on his Way of Love with your whole heart, mind, body, and spirit

For more Advent resources related to the Way of Love, visit episcopalchurch.org/wayoflove. There, you’ll find links to the full Advent curriculum Journeying the Way of Love, as well as Living the Way of Love in Community, a nine-session curriculum for use anytime.

Advent is about waiting in the wilderness and pointing the way to Jesus the Anointed One.

One of my worst experiences of waiting would have to be the Greyhound bus that I travelled on from Johannesburg to Grahamstown when I was a student. The fourteen hours on the bus is the longest waiting I have ever done. You lean your head against the window to nap, a while later you lean forward and nap some more, and three hours later your sore neck wakes you up and as you glance at your watch you realise that only two minutes have passed in the three hours that you thought you were asleep. I learnt an important lesson in those 14 hours – I am not good at waiting. This makes me wonder how I would have fared in the Stanford Marshmallow experiment into delayed gratification.

In the Stanford experiment, preschool kids were left in a room with one marshmallow. The children were told that they could eat the marshmallow. However, the researcher had to leave the room for 15 minutes and if the 4-6-year-olds could delay eating the marshmallow they could have two when he returned. Two thirds of the children ate the marshmallow. The third that waited and were rewarded with two all went on to achieve remarkable success in their adult lives.

Advent is about waiting in the wilderness and pointing the way to Jesus the Anointed One.

It goes without saying that 2020 has been a wilderness in which the whole planet has waited for most of the year. COVID-19 lockdown, social isolation and quarantine is its own wilderness waiting hell. Many would gladly exchange lockdown for John’s bugs and honey and a camel hair jumper. If Advent is about practising our waiting in the wilderness, by this stage, many are wilderness waiting professional athletes.

Waiting in the wilderness is tough. Although NSW had high rates of COVID, our nightmare wasn’t as long as Melbourne’s, or the rest of Europe who have recently returned to lockdown.

What did people do while waiting in the wilderness of COVID lockdown? Social Media is littered with people’s creative ingenuity and many of us are grateful for their wit which kept us amused in the wilderness of lockdown.

A less helpful drive was all the self-help motivators who pressured us into learning a new skill or craft during lockdown. When you are trying to work from home, or you have just lost your work or friends, or you are trying to home-school your kids, or look after an elderly parent or spouse and get them through COVID alive, upskilling is the least helpful advice - I don’t care how good home-baked sourdough bread tastes.

We are already in a wilderness called COVID19/Climate Emergency/Bushfire season/Recession. Advent places high demands on our waiting in the wilderness. What are we meant to be doing in our wilderness? We are not expected to have well-ordered lives with military routines. However, our waiting is not passive either. Advent is about waiting in the wilderness and pointing the way to Jesus the Anointed One.

The reason the 14 hours on the bus felt so long was because it was passive –it was a waiting that I had to endure to reach my destination. In contrast the waiting that the preschool children in the Stanford experiment did before being awarded a second marshmallow was active. One napped, some sang, some walked around the room, some played with the one marshmallow, sniffing it before putting it down – several times.

Likewise, our advent waiting is active. Advent is not something we get through to arrive at Christmas. It’s a period of actively pointing to Jesus the Christ, the anointed one. With John the Baptist, advent people proclaim the Good News. Make no mistake, this is not a religious pastime nor a new age spiritual hobby. To stay present in the wilderness, waiting and pointing to Jesus, preaching the Good News means you take a stand against toxic political powers, you challenge the economic status quo and re-write history with an unfamiliar perspective. Mark’s Gospel shows us how; it launches right in “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah,[a] the Son of God,[b] 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet…”. In this one explosive sentence Mark’s Gospel has taken a stand against toxic political powers, challenged the economic status quo and re-written history with an unfamiliar perspective. This is the background. In 31 BCE Octavia conquered Mark Anthony. Octavia was named Son of God, the Sacred One, the Anointed one – Augustus. His reign was said to be a new beginning: a time of peace, prosperity, and the end of civil war. Coins announcing his victory and the new world order were distributed – evangelions - which translate as “Good News”. In effect Mark’s opening line says Jesus, not Augustus, is the anointed one. The Kingdom of God and not Rome is the Good News. The Kingdom of God is the new world order, not Augustus. The Kingdom of God is closer than you think, it is at hand, it is present within you as your inner authentic self. Guided by this Inner Self, the Kingdom of God within you, you have been proclaiming the Good News all week. As Barbara Brown Taylor rightly put it:

Preaching is not something that an ordained minister does for 20 minutes on Sundays, but what the whole congregation does all week long; it is a way of approaching the world, and of gleaning God’s presence there.

Like John the Baptist you have been proclaiming Good News. Some of you proclaim the Good News through the unconditional love you show children and grandchildren. Some of you preach God’s healing and presence through visiting and volunteering. Some of you preached through charitable giving and being generous with your finances. Some of you preach hope and faith through your friendship and support to neighbours and strangers. And some of you preach the Good News simply through taking the time to phone someone and you didn’t know that that phone call saved them from a dark tunnel of loneliness or dissolved the fog of their isolation.

We are living in a critical time in human history and our preaching is urgently needed now. How are you proclaiming the Good News?

Third Week of Advent: Journeying with Community 

As we continue our Advent walk, we invite you to see the Way of Love as a journey that includes the community. The witness of Zechariah and Elizabeth who bring infant John to the Temple to be circumcised reminds us of the importance of our faith community to sustaining the Way of Love. Just as the community did for John’s family, communities provide a place for discernment, sometimes challenging us and other times affirming us. Communities celebrate and mark important moments along the journey.

The Way of Love
Sunday, December 13

WORSHIP
Pray for each person as they receive communion. Imagine who you’d like to see at church next week. Invite that person to join you. 

Monday, December 14
GO
Choose to take a different route to work, to school, or to play today. Whom or what did you encounter differently? 

Tuesday, December 15

LEARN
Read Luke 1:64. When Zechariah could finally speak, he began by praising God. For what can you praise God? Share on social media or with a friend. 

Wednesday, December 16

PRAY
Keep a lookout for anyone who might seem lonely, stressed, or sad. Offer this simple invitation: “May I pray for you?” Then offer prayers – silently or aloud – on the person’s behalf as you move through your day. 

Thursday, December 17

BLESS
Identify a blessing you have that you could give away. Share this blessing with your church, a local ministry, or your community. 

Friday, December 18

TURN
Turn away from the busyness of the week and turn toward someone who gives you life or to whom you give life. Give thanks.

Saturday, December 19

REST
In Genesis 1-2, God calls the creation “good” and rests. What can you proclaim to be “good” instead of “not enough” as a witness to God’s love for the world today?

For more Advent resources related to the Way of Love, visit episcopalchurch.org/wayoflove. There, you’ll find links to the full Advent curriculum Journeying the Way of Love, as well as Living the Way of Love in Community, a nine-session curriculum for use anytime.

A reflection on Mark 13:24-37

Last week Doug shared a “litmus test” he had found helpful. It was to ask ourselves “Am I the same today as I was yesterday?” I think it’s probably even more helpful to go a bit further and to ask, “Do I want to be the same tomorrow as I am today?”

When our son Keiran woke up on his 5th birthday, he was very distressed and said “I haven’t grown any bigger!”

In 2007 when I was leaving Macksville after being Rector there for 7 years, I said to the congregation “you don’t have to tell me the answer but think about what have you learned or changed during my time with you?”

Now, as Advent begins, we are encouraged do a very personal spiritual stocktake; “am I the same this Advent as I was last Advent? Has there been any spiritual growth in the last twelve months?” 

Advent is thought of as being the beginning of the new Church Year (we are now in the new Lectionary for Year B). However, you can’t have a beginning without an end, so Advent is as much an ending as it is a beginning. Remember the Slim Dusty song “Looking forward -looking back”. If we were to do that, we would probably see that there’s a strong connection between the old and the new church years.

Recently, in Year A, we have been hearing the theme of inevitable judgement. What has been done with the talents given out? Are the guests dressed properly for the wedding dinner?  Do the lamp bearers have some spare oil ready for the lanterns?  A time will come to separate the goats and the sheep. Now, in beginning of Year B, there is the same sort of theme of judgement. When Jesus comes again the powers in the heavens will be shaken and angels will be sent out to gather his “elect” (the chosen ones) “from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven”. 

Traditionally, Advent is a time of waiting. Yet it is an active type of waiting; not thumb twiddling. So we have the idea of “watchfulness”. 

There are two kinds of Advent waiting. There’s the waiting for Christmas which is all tied up with the story of baby Jesus in the manger and angels and shepherds. We think of Christmas being very cozy and sweet. And then there’s the second kind of waiting; a watchful type of waiting for Jesus triumphant appearance in glory. (Jesus return is mentioned over 300 times in the New Testament). This isn’t waiting for a baby to come on 25th December; this is waiting for our King who says he will return in glory anytime.  

We know that people find waiting for Christmas the easier of these two. Generally, we like to hear Dean Martin singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” and to become all excited that “Santa Claus is coming to Town”.

But today, we have to think about the other type of Advent waiting. In the opening verses of our reading from Mark chapter 13 we hear: “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken”.

That’s unsettling! Yet, a few verses later, there’s the incredible promise which is at the very heart of Advent: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (13:31).

As we start all the Christmas activities such as visiting the Christmas trees in Uniting Church, going to parties and family dinners, card sending and present buying, there’s this amazing promise that outdoes all the glitzy and commercial cultural focus of our time; “God’s words will not pass away!”.

This message of “the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory” will not pass away.

These “coming in the clouds with great power and glory” things are the “looking forward” part of Advent. But, remember that there’s also a “looking back” part of Advent. We remember the God who came to us as Jesus; not just the babe in the manger, but also the King on the cross. 

We remember (have you thought about the possibility that word means to put flesh (members) back on again) that we are the Body of Christ. 

Later on this morning (in the Thanksgiving Prayer at Holy Communion) we will say together, "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." So, we’ll be proclaiming that Jesus is coming again. But do we really believe it?   

Even if we haven’t prayed “Come, Lord Jesus!” many others have. This prayer may well be answered at any time. So, it’s important to pay attention to Jesus warning to “keep alert”. 

Mark seems to be very conscious of time (kairos in Greek). He began his writing (in Chapter1, verse 15) saying “the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near”. Now, in Chapter 13, verse33 in today’s reading, he writes “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”  

We don’t very often behave as if we really believe that Jesus is coming again. And yet, if he is coming again, when? It isn’t logical for us to say “at a time unknown Jesus is coming again but it won’t be today”. 

Meanwhile, the fact is that we are not the same person who heard this message to be prepared and who celebrated Advent last year. And we are not the same person who will celebrate Advent next year. Our circumstances have changed in the last twelve months and will change again in the year to come. The joys and sorrows and hope we bring to this year’s Advent are not the same joys and sorrows and hope we brought to Advent last year and are not the same joys and sorrows and hope we will bring to Advent next year. 

For many people, life in this world is actually not very pleasant. But even those fortunate enough to have a life filled with joy and blessing should not be satisfied to the point of complacency. There is more! There is something better! 

So, we wait for these better (or even much better) times to come. Those who think very deeply about Jesus’ first appearance on Earth; Christ’s first Advent, (Jesus birth in Bethlehem and teaching in Galilee and death in Jerusalem), are the ones who are better prepared to be thinking of, and to be watchfully waiting for, his next Advent.  

It is the way we wait which is the key. Waiting certainly doesn’t and shouldn’t mean stagnating. 

So friends, do we wait passively or passionately? If we are passionate about Jesus promised return the spinoff of that is that there is plenty of motivation to be alert and to keep watch.  

If we are alert, keeping watch, then we’ll be ready to join in with whatever we see God doing in this world around us. The more watchful we are, the better prepared we will be to jump in and work with God in the things God is doing in the world right now.

Our Advent focus is ‘The Way of Love’, Practices for Jesus-Centred Life.  We encourage you to take time out of your busyness to reflect on how ‘The Way of Love’ is taking shape in you.

Second Week of Advent: Journeying with Family and Friends 

As we continue our Advent walk, we invite you to see the Way of Love as a journey that can expand to include family and friends. Mary said “yes” to the call to birth Jesus, God’s Word, into the world and immediately went in haste to share her good news with her cousin, Elizabeth—a four-day journey into the Judean hills. Isn’t that what happens when we hear good news? We are driven to go and tell others. The Way of Love is good news that demands to be shared. Allow the power of Christ’s love to transform our lives and the world.

The Way of Love
Sunday, December 6

WORSHIP

What part of gathering for worship fills your heart with hope? 

Monday, December 7
GO

Read or watch your local news. Where is reconciliation needed? Pray for healing. 

Tuesday, December 8

LEARN

Read Luke 1:45. Consider how your faith is a blessing. Share your faith story with a friend.

Wednesday, December 9

PRAY

Offer a prayer of thanks for each person you encounter – both stranger and friend – silently or aloud.

Take time to listen closely to someone you may not ordinarily take seriously or someone with a different perspective than you. Pray that you hear this person as God does. 

Thursday, December 10

BLESS

Call or write a family member with whom you desire a closer relationship. Share with them how they are a blessing. 

Friday, December 11

TURN

Reflect: Where have I fallen short this week? How can I make amends? Give thanks for the gift of fresh starts that we have through God’s grace. 

Saturday, December 12

REST

Set aside 30 minutes to rest, pause, and breathe deeply with a friend or family member. Give thanks for the restorative power of love in relationship. 

For more Advent resources related to the Way of Love, visit episcopalchurch.org/wayoflove. There, you’ll find links to the full Advent curriculum Journeying the Way of Love, as well as Living the Way of Love in Community, a nine-session curriculum for use anytime.

Diana Lipton, author of a tome on “Unexpected Biblical Tales”, wrote that: 

Readers of all persuasions have a tendency to privilege simple interpretations over complex, unsettling, readings. The more fraught the issue, the more often we find in the history of interpretation that a simple reading has been generated that masks its complexity.1 

So, to the Judgement of the World. Not just a little bit of it. All of it. The phrase “all the nations” is deliberate. Judgement, then, is not about individual  fate  per se. It is about the fate of “all the nations”. 

Furthermore, it is vital to keep in mind that the Parables of the Kingdom are always qualified by the phrase “is like” or “as if”. “The Kingdom of God is as if
…” That opens many doors of enquiry. And it also means that attempting to derive doctrine from parables is a pretty futile exercise. In short, do not take a parable literally. 

Which means that we are faced with questions, the exploration of which may lead “all the nations” through the thicket to enlightenment. 

Philosophy and Religion teacher, Janet Williams, often starts a study session on judgement by asking her students to summarize what they already know. 2 And up pops the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. 

When asked, “What is the criterion by which one is judged?”, they usually agree that the answer is ethical, but disagree on what ethic. Compassion for the poor? Have we been good or bad? Or are we, as Luther suggested, justified by grace, that is to say, through God’s free and unmerited gift of faith in his Son as our Saviour? 

Nevertheless, everyone usually agrees that “there will be a day when humanity will be gathered before the throne of a righteous Judge, who will separate us into two streams, one welcomed into his kingdom of love, one banished forever”.

What do we do with this? It is there in black and white. Unthinkable. Unpreachable. 

Rowan Williams noted that “the Christian engaged at the frontier with politics, art or science will frequently find that he or she will not know what to say,”3 because the languages of these other arenas of life are not at home  with  our theological language. The premature and facile use of Christian interpretation, he  says, “invites judgement of another kind”. 4 So, the “Church judges the world; but it also hears God’s judgement on itself in the judgement passed upon it by the world”. And that judgement amounts to this: 

… that Christian language actually fails to transform the world’s meaning because it neglects or trivializes or evades aspects of the human. It is notoriously awkward about sexuality; it risks being unserious about death when it speaks too glibly and confidently about eternal life; it can disguise the abiding reality of unhealed and meaningless suffering. So it is that some of those most serious about the renewal of a moral discourse reject formal Christian commitment as something that would weaken or corrupt their imagination.5 

It is possible that when the Church fails to understand that, inter alia, “the political realm is a place of spiritual decision …”, it “forfeits the authority to use certain of its familiar concepts or images in the public arena”. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s well-known meditation written for his godson’s baptism in 1944, remarks that 

Our Church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self- preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word or reconciliation and redemption to [hu]mankind and the world. 6 

Bonhoeffer sought a non-religious language in which to proclaim the Gospel, one that would purvey the word of God in such a way as to change and renew the world. He did not seek to modernize or secularize the lexicon of dogma and liturgy. Rather, it would be more like Jesus’ own language and practice, in that it elicits God’s peace within her/his creatures – that is, all the world.

Whether or not it uses the word “God”, it would bring about faith, conversion, hope.7

Bonhoeffer’s paradigm is, quite simply, the encounters between Jesus and those he calls or heals, events in which people are drawn into a new kind of life and identity. In this, “They do not receive an additional item called faith; their ordinary existence is not reorganized, found wanting in specific respects and supplemented: it is transfigured as a whole.”8 

We could call the language Bonhoeffer sought Parables-plus-Jesus, for its seminal context would be that of Jesus’ own life and practice. Such a language is universal because Parables-plus-Jesus are not religious stories or expositions of a tradition. Rather, they are stories of everyday life; they crystallize how “people decide for or against self-destruction, for or against newness of life, acceptance, relatedness”.9 This is what made Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book Women Who Run with the Wolves so powerful. 

Parables do not so much convey a particular truth as provoke discussion and rumination, during which deeper layers of truth will be disclosed. This is, in part, what Jesus and Hebrew prophets meant by “having eyes to see and ears to hear”.10 

The transfiguring of the world in Christ will seem partial or marginal if we have not learned, by speaking and hearing parables, a willingness to lose the identities and perceptions we make for ourselves. All good stories change us if we listen to them attentively. The most serious stories change us radically.11 (Death and Resurrection and all that.) 

Litmus test. Ask yourself, am I the same today as I was yesterday? Theology, wrote   Williams,

should equip us to recognize  and  respond to the parabolic in the world - all that resists the control of capital and administration and hints at or struggles to a true sharing of human understanding, in art, science and politics. It should also equip us to speak parabolically as Christians, to construct our meanings and our acting “texts” about conversion – not translations of doctrine into digestible forms, but effective images of a new world like the parables of Christ.

Therein lies the power of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, which is almost devoid of Christian language. And the force of the witness of the L’Arche Communities lies in what they are, collaborations of those we call handicapped with those we call normal. Is all. No theology. Just living – pun intended. 

With that, I leave you with the parable to ponder afresh over the coming weeks or months. Keep it close to your heart; and you may receive an unexpected gift. 

And what price judgement? More questions. Consider the empty tomb. Only John’s Gospel has two angels sitting inside the tomb, at either end of the grave slab (20:12). Why? This tale calls to mind the Mercy-Seat of God, the Ark of the Covenant surmounted by two golden cherubim, their huge wings touching to frame the empty space of the seat itself (Exodus 25:18-19).12 So John’s Gospel invites us to see the empty tomb as the very judgment seat of God. Is Christ’s resurrection the “incarnation” of God’s word of judgment? Is our judgment about the identity of this Christ the  criterion  which will separate the sheep from the goats? Is this a   valid   question?   Or does John  perhaps  seek  to  reassure us that our Judge is the one who, in surpassing love, gave his life for us, and asks us “Why do you weep?”13 

“Whatever story we tell about judgment is secondary. What has primacy is the greater conviction: God is love, loves us freely, and in him justice and mercy meet and kiss.”14 

Amen. 

Doug Bannerman  2020

Invitation for Advent: The way of Love  

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:17-19   

The Way of Love is promoted by Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry (The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Primate and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church). 

The Way of Love is not a programme, but a way of life. It seeks to live out the  question “how can we deepen our friendship with Jesus Christ at the centre of our lives, so we can bear witness to his way of love in and for the world?”
For centuries Jesus followers have filled the world with love by practising certain disciplines in a rule of life. A rule of life is a pattern for living; The Way of Love is an outline of an Anglican based rule of life. The Way of Love is deliberately spare and spacious so that individuals and groups can flesh it out in ways that are true to their character.

The Way of Love is about committing to seven practices to allow the power of Christ’s love to transform our live and the world.

Turn - Learn - Pray - Worship - Bless - Go – Rest 

Turn: Pause, listen, and choose to follow Jesus  

Learn: Reflect on scripture each day, especially on Jesus’ life and teachings  

Pray: Dwell intentionally with God each day  

Worship: Gather in community weekly to thank, praise, and dwell with God  

Bless: Share faith and unselfishly give and serve  

Go: Cross boundaries, listen deeply, and live like Jesu 

Rest: Receive the gift of God’s grace, peace, and restoration 

Through Advent and Christmas we reflect on each of these practices in turn. Notes for each week for personal or group study are provided in the bulletin. Further resources are available on the website.  

Your sister in Christ
Desiree

I have a friend who tortures the rest of us with his puns. When reading through a long essay that he has posted on Facebook, you are always alert, waiting for the inevitable facepalming pun, that reverses the whole meaning of the story.

I have the same trepidation when reading parables. Like puns, parables have other meanings that subvert a superficial reading of the text. When reading parables, I’m alert wanting to be ready for the inevitable subversion beyond the initial reading.

The trepidation in reading parables reaches its climax in Matthew 25. A quick superficial reading leaves the parables as moral tales, but will a closer reading of Matthew 25, reveal a “pun” another meaning?

The view that Jesus is a spiritual teacher of divine wisdom and that the parables are spiritual sermons is challenged by the political nature of his death and the prophetic subversity with which Jesus challenged the status. The trial and execution of Jesus as an agitator shows that Jesus was a threat to the political and economic interests of the Jewish elite who collaborated with Roman powers to crucify Jesus. Thus, the political and subversive effects of Jesus ministry prevent an overly spiritualised interpretation and force us to consider political and economic understandings. For example, ¨traditional¨ interpretations have described the parable of the talents as being ¨spiritual gifts¨ and not money. The virgins that run out of oil are explained as people who do not prioritise prayer. The five virgins who refuse to share their oil with those who do not have, cannot be justified in the light of Christ's actions and his stories of sharing, for example the feeding of the five thousand and the last supper where his body and blood are “shared”.

The man going on a journey (v14) implies an absent God, if this is assumed to be the God figure. This view of an absent God is exacerbated by the third slave´s interpretation of him as harsh: “I know that you are a harsh man.” The nobleman does not refute this but agrees with the assessment: “you know that I am a harsh man”. In contrast Jesus emphasises the love of God, as do the New Testament writers that follow his teachings: “God is love and those who dwell in love dwell in God” (See 1 John). Matthew 25 is not three separate parables with three separate meanings. A close examination of the Greek text will refute this. Each of the parables is connected to the other with the words hoster gar. My argument is that Matthew 25 should be understood as one parable with three chapters.

If the reader agrees that Matthew 25 represents not three but one parable, then the following argument may be considered:

In Biblical exegesis, when there are three aspects of a text, attention is often drawn to the middle section. In other words the middle ¨chapter¨ of Matthew 25 is the key. The first ¨chapter¨ prepares the reader for the second ¨chapter¨ while the third ¨chapter¨ vindicated the actions of the second ¨chapter¨.  In the light of this argument, the message of the first ¨chapter¨ is to be awake for a new insight which comes in chapter two.

In chapter two the nobleman is not the God figure but an absentee lord who bleeds the land dry even in his absence. Greed is such a drive for him that even in his absence he expects his assets to yield a return. This interpretation is offered in the light of sociological background. Only the wealthy could ¨travel abroad.¨ The nobleman´s wealth was because of injustice. The synoptic Gospels refer to those who join field to field leaving many vulnerable, economically deprived and in debt. In Matthew 24 Jesus offers a similar critique against the temple wealth. The initial hearers of this parable would have resented the nobleman who goes away for a long time, he represents the cause of their economic suffering. This is made clear in Luke’s telling of the Parable which is a direct reference to King Herod: In Luke 19.11 – 27 the image of the noble man is Herod:

12So (Jesus) said, ‘A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. 13He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds,* and said to them, “Do business with these until I come back.” 14But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” 15When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading.

On his return the first two slaves are welcomed into the oppressive paradigm of the nobleman hence he congratulates them. The third slave speaks truth to power and criticises the harsh man who reaps where he does not sow. The nobleman agrees with this interpretation and throws him out into outer darkness. In other interpretations, writers have considered this an image of hell. It is not. It represents the Gospel ideal of solidarity with the oppressed. The outer darkness is to be with those who suffer, who are hungry, naked and in prison. To be in outer darkness is to stand outside the oppressive paradigm. This opinion is confirmed by the third chapter of the parable where those who stood in solidarity with the oppressed are seen to be living the Jesus ideal; in other words feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison and clothing the naked. 

Crudely put, the interpretation of this parable is that the parable is not a story about heaven but rather a story about earth and how we design our economic and political systems in a way that is consistent or inconsistent with the Jesus event.   If you agree with the decoding of Matthew 25 as argued here, we are then equipped with relevant tools with which to understand systems of oppression which is the first step in dismantling them. Some examples include

1)   Criticising exploitive financial services who ¨reap where they do not sow¨ and take advantage of the poor especially.

2)   Criticising corporate institutions who are able to manipulate the markets to their excessive financial gain but to the impoverishment of many. A recent example may be the events that led directly to the Global Financial Crisis.

3)   Exploring ways in which we too can be cast into outer darkness and how solidarity with the poor (the hungry, the naked and those in prison) can take shape.

4)   Baptism for us means being this third slave, the one who speaks truth to power and is cast out into outer darkness to love the poor, the rejected, the hungry, and those who live outside the systems of power.

How do we measure human flourishing? How do we measure the success of the nations of the world? Since the Great Depression, GNP (Gross National Product) was developed as a way to measure how countries were emerging out of the Great Depression into sustainability. GNP was introduced on the floor of congress in the USA in 1937. It was never meant as a way to compare nations. Today GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is closely watched as an economic indicator of a country’s growth. GDP determines whether or not investors decide to make investments in a country or not, obviously low GDP = low stock prices = low earnings = poverty. Using GDP as a measurement, unsurprisingly, the measure of the nations is

1st USA

2nd China

Last Tuvalu.

What GDP hides is how that wealth is shared, where in some rich countries 80 percent of the wealth is controlled by 20 percent of the people. Moreover, tragedies such as bush fires, COVID pandemics, cyclones etc INCREASE GDP as millions are spent in rebuilding countries.

Are there other ways to measure the wellbeing of a country? King Jigme Singye Wangchuckj of Bhutan rejects GDP. Instead from 1972 Bhutan measures the Gross National Happiness. Through randomised interviews, 9 variables are measured:

·         living standards

·         health

·         good governance

·         ecological diversity

·         resilience

·         time use

·         psychological wellbeing

·         cultural diversity and resilience

·         community vitality.

Similarly, Matthew 25:31-46 reveals the key to human flourishing. Those nations that value feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison and serving in love, are those judged by the Son of Man as successful.

According to an old tradition preserved in the Palestinian Targums, wrote Ron Hendel, the Hebrew Bible is the “Book of Memories” (ספר דנכריא) … The remembered past, is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture.” [i]

Ernest Renan states that national identity depends on “the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories”; but significantly, he adds, “Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.” [ii]  I would add that it is a stumbling block.  

National, ethnic, and religious identities are founded on a complex dialectic of memory and forgetting. Israel’s OT memories, a mixture of history, poetry and mythology “are inevitably laced with the unhistorical”,[iii] coloured by literary influences, and political and religious interests. “Culture, history and memory interweave in the biblical accounts of the Patriarchs, bringing to us a past that is”, in Rendel’s words, “a marvellous blend of public memory, religious vision, and literary brilliance”.[iv]  

Today we have Remembrance Sunday in mind. And, as time goes by, I wonder more and more what exactly are we supposed to remember? Is what we “remember” on this day truly historical, or is it a slowly developing mythology? What will the people of the year 4000 CE be saying about our memories – supposing they have access to them? What will their remembrances be? 

The other day I noticed, perhaps belatedly, that the memorial in the Elizabeth Ann Brown Park is now partly cordoned off with notices saying, “Sacred War Memorial, Please Keep Off.”  

Firstly, and particularly in view of the fact that this is NAIDOC Week, it is insensitive to the Bundjalung Nation, the traditional owners of the land which hosts our Memorial; and upon whose land I preach today. The absurdity of the demand is illuminated in the shocking disregard white culture has for Aboriginal Memorials of similar ilk.  

Secondly, my dictionary defines the word sacred as meaning “connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration. So, do we have the seeds of a new religion in our local park? Who is responsible? And will it have a temple like ancient Israel? The National War Memorial perhaps? My imagination reels. A new priesthood of uniformed officers whose habits could well outdo the colourful fineries of the best Catholic liturgical garb?  

What exactly are we supposed to remember? And what is an appropriate way to do so? Canon Rachel Mann in her book Fierce Imaginings, wants us to hear “some of the lost and never-heard voices of the Great War”.  

… to take seriously the stark truth about the loss that the First World War brought about: the loss of countless young men, whose voices never counted in the first place in our society; the loss of the capacity to talk about their wounded experiences by those who survived; the loss of certain myths about manhood; and the loss of a God who providentially ordered history and protected his own. [v] 

With a nod to Ronald Rendel, we must bear in mind that stark truths, especially unacknowledged ones, the hidden ones, tend to get lost in mythologies “laced with the unhistorical”, or disappear altogether.  

In 1959, Geoffrey Hill published two sonnets under the title “Two Formal Elegies for the Jews of Europe”. Much of his work explores the use of art as an act of atonement to give voice to the victims of the Holocaust, and that bears witness to other historical atrocities, all in a world that has become “witness-proof”. The second sonnet ponders the worth and actual nature of sacrifice. 

2

For all that must be gone through, their long death
Documented and safe, we have enough
Witnesses (our world being witness-proof),
The sea flickers, roars, in its wide hearth.
Here, yearly, the pushing midlanders stand
To warm themselves; men brawny with life,
Women who expect life. They relieve
Their thickening bodies, settle on scraped sand.

Is it good to remind them, on a brief screen,
Of what they have witnessed and not seen?
(Deaths of the city that persistently dies…?)
To put up stones ensures some sacrifice,
Sufficient men confer, carry their weight.
(At whose door does the sacrifice stand or start?)
1959[vi] 

Erecting historical monuments, says Hill, to the Holocaust ensures “some sacrifice" by "sufficient men” who carry their weight, but in his sonnet the words "some" and "sufficient" vibrate with doubt. 

And, the poet draws attention to “the inadequacy of witness, which can never fully recapture and convey the experience of the past to those living in the present, even for those events that seem relatively recent.” He “contrasts what is ‘witnessed’ with what is ‘seen’,” and he points to the “deficiencies of memory, as though even those who lived through traumatic events cannot fully comprehend them”.

“That”, said Mark Oatley, “is why we need visible memorials: if we are not to be dishonest, shallow and unreal we need to make the invisible visible.”[vii] And today’s memorials have a much broader canvas, for the unknown and unacknowledged are also represented. Let it be so; but let us not turn them into temples for sacred festivals.  

The original motive for Remembrance Day was, quite simply, to remember the fallen. But that simplicity embraces the unthinkable horror that war brings to individuals, communities and nations. The two-minute silence was first proposed by the Mayor of Cape Town in 1918 – for the whole city, marked by the noon day gun on Signal Hill. It was an awesome experience for the Cape Town citizens. The whole city, silent as a grave. Every day from 14 May 1918 to 14 May 1919. 

So – what do we remember? Certainly, the fallen, the maimed, the mangled lives; but also, perforce, the unknown that has escaped the notice of history and narrative – that is to say, the things we do not know, or have forgotten, or do not wish to bring to mind. So, when we say, “Lest we forget,” let our remembrance be not only for the things we know as historical fact, but also the things we do not know – “Not known because not looked for”, as T S Eliot might have put it.[viii] George Eliot’s concluding paragraph of Middlemarch gives eloquent expression to this. 

… the good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

The other dimension of remembrance, as Mark Oatley remarked, is the “non-negotiable God-given dignity and preciousness of each human life, the beauties and strength of friendship and love, the courage of working for what is just and fair.”[ix] These, too, we must remember in their purity. That is why a pledge for the future is now part of remembrance services. For “we cannot talk about freedom without embracing responsibilities and values”.[x]  

Let us know. Let us remember. Let us change. Lest we forget.

Amen. 

Doug Bannerman Ó 2020

[1] Ronald Hendel Remembering Abraham; Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible Oxford University Press (2005) Preface pX

[1] E. Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Nation and Narration, ed. H.Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 19, 11 (French original, 1882) my italics – Among the many recent studies of these issues, see particularly B. Anderson,  Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism , 2nded. (London: Verso, 1991), 187–206 (“Memory and Forgetting”); and A. D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999).

[1] Op cit Ronald Hendel pX

[1] Ibid

[1] See Fr Kevin Morris, see https://www.smaaa.org.uk/wp/worship/services/preachers-and-sermons/sermons-by-fr-kevin-morris/remembrance-sunday-2017-sermon-by-the-vicar-fr-kevin-morris/

[1] From “Two Formal Elegies: For the Jews in Europe”, Geoffrey Hill (UK, 1932-2016)

[1] Stephen William Grace, PhD “Forms of Memory: The Sonnet in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry” (University of York, English and Related Literature September 2019 p28)

[1] Mark Oatley Monday 12th November, 2007. See https://www.st-albans.dk/publications/sermons/remembrance-sunday-2007/

[1] T S Eliot “Little Gidding” lines 248, 249

[1] Op cit Mark Oatley

[1] Ibid

NAIDOC Theme 2020 ‘Always Was. Always will Be.’  The 2020 National NAIDOC Week theme has been developed to shine a focus on the length of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander occupation of Australia. In our narratives Aboriginal people talk of continuous occupation of being here when time began, we are part of the Dreaming – past, present and future. Anthropologists and archaeologists have dated our sites to being hundreds of thousands of years old, in fact recording some of these sites as being the oldest on this planet. Additionally, the NAIDOC theme seeks to get the community to explore and learn about, and appreciate the wealth and breadth of Indigenous Nations, languages and knowledges of this continent. Exploring and learning about Indigenous understandings of the environment, plants, animals, greater astronomy and cosmology, waters, land use and protection, Indigenous sciences and maths. We need to question ourselves and understand:

How does learning these knowledges expand current western teachings to have a greater understanding of the world around us as individuals, as a community of learners and activists in looking after our environments?  

https://www.naidoc.org.au/sites/default/files/files/2020-naidoc-teaching-resources.pdf