Reflection from 14 November 2021

MARK 13 

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

 PERCY SHELLEY'S "OZYMANDIAS"

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

The poem is the result of an informal competition where Shelley and his poet friends took as inspiration a phrase from Diodorus Siculus.Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote Bibliotheca historica, which summarises world history in 40 books. He lived first century BCE Sicily. In the books describing the history of Egypt, Diodorus portrays an Egyptian statue with the inscription: "King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work." Ozymandias is the Greek word for King Rameses II. In Shelley's poem Diodorus becomes "a traveller from an antique land”.

Shelley’s poem Ozymandias is a modern summary of today’s text; that the greatest men, the greatest kingdoms, the greatest empires fade into oblivion. Nothing is permanent. Shall we have a play and see if Ozymandias is indeed a modern interpretation of a Biblical apocalyptic text in Mark 13? 

I met a traveller from an antique land as Jesus was leaving the temple. One of his disciples said to him: “Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.” 

“Look, Teacher! What massive stones!” Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies. “What magnificent buildings!” 

“Whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command do you see?” All these great buildings” replied Jesus, “tell that its sculptor well those passions read. Not one stone here will be left on another, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.” 

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: Peter, James, John. And Andrew asked him privately: “tell us, when will these things happen? And on the pedestal these words appear, and what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 

“My name is Ozymandias.” 

Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you, king of kings; many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. Look on my works. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars ye Mighty, and despair! Do not be alarmed. Nothing beside remains. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Round the decay of that colossal wreck, nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. Boundless and bare, there will be earthquakes in various places, and famines, the lone and level sands stretch far away. These are the beginning of birth pains.

 APOCALYPTIC

Mark 13 is apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic texts are a preacher’s worst nightmare because it is hard to explain and distorted in a quagmire of Hollywood horrors, b grade novels and fundamentalist interpretation. Apocalyptic means uncovering or revealing or making clear. The question is, what does Mark’s Jesus wantto make clear for us? What is Jesus uncovering for us? What is unveiled for you in this text? What do you see as if for the first time? The thing to remember about apocalyptic writing is that it is about the here and now – there is no future date to add to your google calendar.  Jesus moves us out of our comfort zones and confronts us with reality by ripping the cataracts out of eyes. Using apocalyptic language of destruction there are aspects of reality that Jesus wants to make clear for us. What Jesus wants to remind us of is that nothing is permanent. Nothing lasts forever. Only God is infinite. In a moment everything can change.  Like the disciples who were awed at stable eternity of the Temple, one of the great wonders of the ancient world, we too might be awed by the beauty, eternity, and stability of our temple churches, such as St Paul’s, Washington National Cathedral, the Vatican, Notre-Dame… Democracy, a capitalist-socialist economy, the use of coal as energy, private property, our memorials to war … Jesus says it will all be turned to rubble. Our empires will tumble. Institutions will crumble. That which we think will last forever is as fragile as a soap bubble. You think civilisation is making progress? Jesus says every single civilisation “will be thrown down”. Just ask England, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Persia. You think our research and technology will make the world a safer place? Jesus says, “that will be reduced to mere rubble?” Just ask the inventors of asbestos, cfc, and plastic. You think our creeds and faith will last infinitely? Jesus says that is man-made and not one stone of it will be left. Just ask the church in Ephesus, founded in 1 CE but destroyed in 262 CE by the Goths. To all the things we take for granted and assume will always be there, Jesus says they are coming to an end. Or in Shelley’s words to Ozymandias, “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." In short, Jesus says, nothing around us is built to last. 

Many of us here are already aware that life is fragile and cataclysmic destruction in some way awaits us all. We can rightly block our ears and shout back at Jesus: “I know the reality of earthquakes and famine and that life erupts and is left in rubble.” Parents do not expect to bury their children. Yet the unexpected death of a much-loved child makes you feel like the walls of what you thought were your life tumble down, stone after stone, leaving you shattered. People expect their health to flourish but an unexpected illness comes like an earthquake that unsettles even the most stable of relationships. People expect to come home from a hard day of work and relax at home. Yet homes are destroyed by flood and fire leaving your sense of safety and belonging destroyed like the temple. People invest in growing their faith but learn the hard way that when something is gained something is also lost. Deeper faith, deeper prayer, growth in God does not come as cheerful progress but rather like walls coming down as what you believed in is ripped away by new experiences. Our inability to let go will cause misery.

 ETERNAL CHANGELESSNESS?

I love the poetry and effortless breeze of good liturgy. Thanks to my regular attendance at a high church cathedral, many of the ancient collect’s included in Cranmer’s prayerbook have been chanted into my permanent memory. The evening collect is a good example:

Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night,

so that we who are wearied

by the changes and chances of this fleeting world,

may rest upon your eternal changelessness.

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Beautiful words, yet my experience of Jesus is closer to that of Mark’s in chapter 13. Jesus doesn’t answer my restlessness with rest but stirs it up further with more unrest. Wearied by the changes of this fleeting world, Jesus’s answer to prayer is not with changelessness, but even more change. Jesus comes as a divine disrupter, not eternal changelessness. As Jesus once threw over the tables in the temple, he overthrows the neatness of our ordered lives and ushers in a holy chaos. Having Jesus in our life is downright inconvenient. 

 IN THE END IS THE BEGINNING

From our perspective the precariousness of life, the fragility of our institutions, the frangibility of relationships and all we rely on may seem like death. Yet with Jesus these can be the birth pangs of new life. When our world is totally torn apart, and it feels like the end, a new world is made available by God and the pain of death becomes the labour of a new world. In every ending is a new beginning. Jesus invites us to accept with detachment the impermanence of life. Some say accepting that nothing lasts forever gives us the urgency to embrace the present as the precious gift that it is. For others accepting with detachment the impermanence of life inspires patient endurance in any non-violent struggle against oppression. Both perspectives our summed up in Edward FitzGerald’s fable “Solomon’s Seal"

Solomon decided to humble Benaiah. He said to him, “Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find it.”

“If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty,” replied Benaiah,

“I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?”

“It has magic powers,” answered the king. “If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy.” Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility.

 Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day’s wares on a shabby carpet. “Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?” asked Benaiah.

He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile. That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity.

“Well, my friend,” said Solomon, “have you found what I sent you after?” To everyone’s surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, “Here it is, your majesty!” As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweller had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: gimel, zayin, yud, which began the words “Gam zeh ya’avor” — “This too shall pass.” 

Mark 10:46-52

46Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. 

What has been seen cannot be unseen

I began full time ministry in South Africa in the early 2000’s. I was in my early twenties. It was an euphoric time to be South African. Desmond Tutu’s dream of a rainbow nation seemed to be coming true. As one of the youngest ministers at clergy meetings, I was among much older colleagues. Many ministers bore physical, spiritual, emotional, and psychological scars from the fight against apartheid. Some had been jailed. Some tortured. Some had been constantly watched and hassled by the security branch. Fearing for their children’s safety, some ministers had to farm their children out to friends. It is fair to say, that being a minister during Apartheid and standing against the injustices of the law came at great personal cost. I remember asking a senior priest how he managed to find the courage to take a stand against the status quo, against the state, against the police, and even against close family when it came at so great a cost. I shall not forget his reply. “My dear Desiree” he said. “What has been seen cannot be unseen.”  

What has been seen cannot be unseen. Seeing is precisely the crux of authentic discipleship. Following Jesus is not about understanding complex Christian doctrines originally espoused in Greek and Latin. Nor is following Jesus about doing churchy things, although coming to church will help, since none of us can thrive isolated. Following Jesus is not about knowing the liturgy off by heart or even being pious. To follow Jesus is about whether you want to see, or not. Six words summarise today’s message: to follow Jesus is to see. Our wealth as OED Christians cannot protect us from our spiritual poverty nor our spiritual blindness.

What is it that we must see, you ask? While there are many ways to answer this question, a one-word answer is injustice. To follow Jesus is to see the injustice that destroys creation and humanity. Ched Myers is more poetic:  

To see our weary world as it truly is, without denial and delusion: the inconvenient truths about economic disparity and racial oppression and ecological destruction and war without end...  Discipleship invites us to apprehend life in its deepest trauma and its greatest ecstasy, in order that we might live into God’s vision of the pain and the promise[1]. 

About some words in the text

As we look at the text, there are symbols that are worth noting:

“Jericho”

Jesus has been moving south from Galilee towards Jericho. Twice, mention is made of Jericho. Jericho is symbolic of “The Way”, remembering that the first Christians were called people of The Way. Mark is calling us to follow Jesus on the road, on the way to Jericho, on the way to full sight. 

I wonder what Jericho symbolised for the first audience. Does it remind readers of the time that the walls of Jericho came down when people shouted? There is an Old Testament story about a hero called Joshua who fought a battle at Jericho and the walls came tumbling down when people shouted. 

The shouting of Bartimaeus on the road to Jericho could prefigure the fact that at the shout of Jesus, Jerusalem and particularly the temple will be shouted down (Mark 13.2)?   

“Shout”

Bartimaeus cries out. The word is kratzo. It has been used several times in Mark: the demons cry out “What do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth when Jesus first begins his ministry. (3.11 Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, "You are the Son of God!") 

Bartimaeus cries out in Mark 10. The crowds cry out at Jesus’ trial, and Jesus cries out when he dies on the cross. Indeed, at the final cry of the Gospel when Jesus gives up his spirit the temple tumbles.   

“Bartimaeus”

The healing story of Mark 10.46-52 in Jericho reminds us of the healing in Mark 8.31 near Bethsaida.  There are of course some differences. In the first healing story Jesus heals the man twice. In the second story, the blind man’s faith makes him well. In the first story the blind man is brought to Jesus. In the second story Bartimaeus asks Jesus for healing himself while others try to stop him.   

The name of the person Bartimaeus is mentioned and explained. This is one of the only times that the recipient is named. Bartimaeus means “son of a precious one.” The one whom society literally sidelines, is the precious one.  

The crowds at first rebuke Bartimaeus. Rebuke is a strong word. Is it not enough that he is blind, must he be mute as well? The crowds add to his disability by requiring muteness on top of blindness. 

“Jesus, Son of David,” is what Bartimaeus calls out.  The irony is that the blind man “sees” who Jesus is, better than James and John and the other disciples who are blind to the type of Messiah that Jesus wants to be.

There is further irony in Bartimaeus calling out “Jesus, Son of David,” in that David was said to have been prejudiced against the blind and the lame. There is a vague idea that King David “hated” the blind and the lame and forbade them from ever entering Jericho. 2 Samuel 5.8 explains the supposed origins of David’s prejudice against the blind and the lame: “David said on that day, "Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him reach the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul, through the water tunnel." Therefore, they say, "The blind or the lame shall not come into the house."  

“Cloak”

Clothing is a powerful symbol in Mark’s Gospel. Usually, leaving a cloak behind symbolises a journey in transformation. Bartimaeus leaves his cloak, as does the unnamed man at the end of the Gospel after the Resurrection of Jesus. The cloak also reminds us of the woman with the issue of blood who hoped that merely touching the edge of Jesus’ cloak would heal her.  

Our new cloaks

What do we do in reaction to the story in Mark 10.46-52? How is our blindness healed?

On one level, the Scriptures may question how people are treated, particularly differently abled people. In the reading it is not enough that the man is blind, he is muted when the crowds rebuke him. The recent Para-Olympics were an astonishing celebration of the nobility of the human spirit in facing challenges of mobility and other issues. The cry of Bartimaeus is a continuous call for us to assess our own hospitality to difference and those with challenges.  I believe it is not the disabled who are disabled but society who is disabled. If we were to design buildings and processes properly with inclusion as a central value, then so-called disabilities cease to exist as a disability but become another incredible way of being human. For example, if a path is properly designed, two people journey in diverse ways, one on wheels and one in runners.  

On another level, the Scriptures are a reminder of the power of the prophetic voice. At the Crucifixion when Jesus cries out the second temple tumbles down. The prophetic cry is a sober reminder that institutions that are not life giving will eventually tumble.   

Some here today may be called to be on the road with Jesus and Bartimaeus. We may be called to leave behind the cloaks of old patterns, behaviours, and ways. Perhaps one message is that we are to follow Jesus the other half of the way. In the words of Meister Eckhart: “There are plenty that follow the Lord halfway, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends, and honours, but it touches them too deeply to disown themselves.”  The symbol of leaving one’s cloak behind is precisely the pleasure of disowning oneself, of self-renunciation, of setting aside the fragile false ego. Thomas Kelly explains that to follow Jesus all the way to Jerusalem from Jericho is “the astonishing life” where one intends complete obedience, without any reservations to commit our lives in obedience to Christ literally, utterly, and completely.  It is to this that we are all called when we throw of our cloaks and follow Jesus the other half of the way.    

I end with a prayer from Charles de Focauld who left his cloak behind and followed Jesus on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. Brother Charles of Jesus not only gave up possession, friends and honours, he disowned himself too, willingly giving himself fully to God.

The Prayer of Abandonment of Brother Charles of Jesus

Father, I abandon myself into Your hands;  
do with me what You will.  
Whatever You do I thank You.  
I am ready for all, I accept all.  
Let only Your will be done in me,  
as in all Your creatures,  
I ask no more than this, my Lord.  

Into Your hands I commend my soul;  
I offer it to You, O Lord,  
with all the love of my heart,  
for I love You, my God, and so need to give myself--  
to surrender myself into Your hands,  
without reserve and with total confidence, 
for You are my Mother. Amen.

[1] https://chedmyers.org/2018/10/25/the-feast-of-bartimaeus-celebrating-an-old-tome-a-new-home-and-a-sacred-story-by-ched-myers/

Mark 10:35–45

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  

Think of a sunflower, they bow to the sun

Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella) is an Italian film from 1997. It is astonishingly beautiful with many memorable teaching moments. In short, the film is a love story. A Jewish bookseller, Guido, marries the woman of his dreams, Dora, and together with their son they enjoy a fairy tale life. The beauty of their life is interrupted by the cruelty of the Holocaust and their internment as Jews in a concentration camp when Italy is occupied by the Germans in WWII. The love story is about how a father uses his sense of humour and imagination to save his son from the cruelties of life in a concentration camp. Guido convinces his son that the Nazi rules are part of an intricate game and that if he earns enough "points" he will win a tank.

In the film, the narrator, Guido's grown son, looks back and describes his dad's imaginative creation of that ploy as "his gift to me." 

At the start of the film, Life is beautiful, Guido is learning to be a waiter. His uncle, Elesio, has secured him a job in Northern Italy and is training him in the art of being a waiter at a fine dining restaurant. Guido says: “How far do I bow? I suppose I can even go 180 degrees.” Eliseo replies: “Think of a sunflower, they bow to the sun. But if you see some that are bowed too far down, it means they're dead. You're here serving, you're not a servant. Serving is the supreme art. God is the first of servants. God serves men, but he's not a servant to men.” 

“Think of a sunflower, they bow to the sun…Serving is the supreme art. God is the first of servants…”

The lesson from Elesio, that service is the supreme art, is precisely the truth that Jesus wants to impart to his disciples, and what Jesus wants to impart to us.

Mark 10.32-45

As you know, the Gospel of Mark is characterised by Jesus’ disciples, his closest friends, failing repeatedly to understand the purpose of his ministry and the dynamics of the kingdom of God. Three times Jesus has predicted his death and three times the disciples have failed to listen and understand him. Significantly, these episodes where the disciples totally fail to appreciate the ministry of Jesus, are framed by the healing of blind men.

Healing of a blind man 

Jesus predicts his death 

Peter’s failure to understand

Jesus predicts his death 

The disciples’ failure to understand  

Jesus predicts his death 

James and John fail to understand  

Healing of a blind man.   

Ironically the blind men “see” Jesus better than the disciples ever can. People often expect that the “leaders” of a movement are the heroes that have an inside intimacy, knowledge, and experience of the Christ figure at the heart of the Jesus way of life. Mark’s Gospel is a warning to us that “outsiders” often understand more than “insiders” about the type of faith Jesus calls forth. We would all do well to heed this warning and be openly curious and eager to hear what those outside of our faith tradition have to say about us and their understanding of the faith we practice.  

Each time the disciples misunderstand Jesus, he teaches them the fundamental point of the kingdom of God, that the last are first and the first are last. In other words, everything in God’s Kingdom on earth is structured or should be structured with the needs of the most vulnerable at the centre. The only way to operate is by ensuring that policies, procedures, laws, and processes secure the full flourishing of the least, the lost and the last.  

Jesus predicts that his love and service of humankind will lead to his death for a third time. In response James and John ask for positions of intimacy, privilege, and power. Service as the supreme art is Elesio’s message to Guido and Jesus’ message to James and John and the rest of the disciples. The disciples want to sit at the right and left of Jesus when he takes up his throne. What we know, and the disciples are yet to find out, is that the throne of Jesus is the cross. Those on Jesus’ left and right when he comes into his kingdom are two criminals crucified alongside him. The cup that Jesus our king drinks from is not from a jewel inlaid golden chalice usually associated with royalty, but vinegar on a sponge at the end of a stick, offered by a kind soldier. Jesus embodies what Elesio taught, that service is a supreme art.  

Visionary servant leadership

I was ordained in the Diocese of Johannesburg, (in the Church of the Province South Africa). Emerging out of the Apartheid era, the Diocese of Johannesburg totally restructured itself in response to the new situation it found itself in.  The whole concept of what it meant to be an Anglican church in the dawn of the new century was holistically redefined. One of the key aspects of this change in church structure is visionary servant leadership. The fundamental point being made was that leadership is a task not a position. Leaders are but trusted servants, and all Christ followers are fundamentally visionary servant leaders.  

In today’s text Jesus refers to two sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist: “The cup that I drink, you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized”. All of us who are baptised, all of us who share in the sacrament of the Eucharist, share in the visionary servant leadership of Jesus.  

The point about visionary servant leadership as opposed to servant leadership is that we are not meant to be slaves to the false idols of people’s egos, preferences, manipulations, wounds, tantrums, history, traditions, or pride. We serve not as dead sunflowers, bowed so low they touch the ground. We are set free to be visionary servant leaders, to bow as sunflowers who honour the sun. We honour the Christ within people and serve them in ways that allow their true selves, their Christ selves, to shine through. To be visionary servant leaders is to live lives that long for others to have joy.  To be visionary servant leaders is to partner with God in the mending of some part of creation. When we pray, when we love, when we fulfil our highest roles as partners, parents, grandparents, friends, when we authentically love humanity as sunflowers bowing to the sun, we are visionary servant leaders. Perhaps a final image will make this clear. 

Closing image

A story is told about a violinist Fritz Kreisler (February 2, 1875 – January 29, 1962). An Austrian-born American violinist and composer, he was considered one of the greatest violinists of all time because of his tonality and sensitive expression. Kreisler came across a beautiful violin, a Hart, but could not afford it. When he finally raised enough money for the violin, he returned to buy it and learned that it had already been sold to a collector.

Kreisler went to the new owner’s home to persuade him to sell the violin. The collector said that he could not let the violin go. The thwarted Kreisler asked a favour: “May I play the instrument once more before it is consigned to silence?” George Hart had sold the violin to John Adam who, having heard Kreisler play the Hart consented to sell it.

Our purpose as visionary servant leaders is to create the space that allows others to live the life they are meant to live, not as violins reduced to ornaments to gather dust on a collector’s shelf, but rather as violins singing to the world the beauty of their song.

https://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/cozio-carteggio/kreislers-violins/

Mark 10:17–31: Jesus looked at him, and loved him

Introduction

Jesus may have been good at many things, but I don’t think he would have made a good priest/minister/pastor, he doesn’t preach the sort of message that people find comforting. Jesus offers many hard sayings that turn people off and today’s Gospel is as comfortable as a good dose of rabies. Already short on numbers, Jesus is approached by someone that most parish priests would be delighted to have in their churches:

1. If the man is generous with his obvious wealth, he would make a difference to church offerings.

2. Clearly the man has business and management skills and were he to approach me I would be wondering about how I could fast track him onto parish council. In my mind’s eye I can already see lay ministers lining up to sign him onto rosters.

3. The man that approaches Jesus seems to have a sincere spirituality and seems to work well with people and I may even wonder how soon I could be asking him to be a warden.

What does Jesus do when the man approaches with a question? He offers a terse and rather rude rebuff at being called “good teacher.” In answer to the man’s seemingly sincere question Jesus offers a somewhat impatient and brusque answer. (Jesus usually engages in dialogue and conversation by responding to a question with another question or a story). Let’s walk through the story step by step. 

Unpacking Mark 10.17-31

To state the obvious, Mark 10.17-31 is an episode within a series of events that have as a common theme the call to stand in solidarity with the least and the last or “the little ones of history” as Geoff described last week.  

Imagine that the Gospel of Mark is a Netflix binge series. As a TV series, season two of Mark’s Gospel has the healing of blind men in the first and last episode, reminding us that the remaining episodes are about healing our sight till we see the world as Jesus sees it. 

In today’s episode the man approaches Jesus asking about inheritance, in this case eternity: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10.17). Interesting choice of words, inheritance. We are immediately aware of the association of the word with extreme wealth, which prepares us to be unblinded by Jesus’ misquote of the ten commandments.  

At most Sunday Schools the ten commandments are learnt off by heart in return for a lolly or a sticker or a certificate. In case you forget the ten commandments they are relearnt in the catechism for confirmation and recited in the Prayer Book every Lent and Advent. Thus, if we are paying attention, we notice immediately that Jesus recites the decalogue incorrectly, he throws in “You shall not defraud.” Clearly there is a connection between the wealth of the man and economic exploitation.  

The man is a slow learner and claims that he is good and that he has kept the law (10.20). In response Jesus gazes at him in love: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (10.21). Jesus, looking at him, loved him – what a powerful moment in the episode. Jesus looks at him, he really sees him, and he loves him, and then offers a diagnosis, a judgement. Verse 21 of Mark 10 is why all of us should look forward to Judgement. In judgement we are seen, and we are loved. 

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” I would love for us to meditate on this verse and allow it to become our own. I would love for us to sit in silence and allow Jesus to see us and love us. This is the ultimate definition of prayer, to be in the gaze of God’s love, of Christ’s love. 

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him”. I am no psychologist but my experience of ministry among the vulnerable in South Africa has taught me how deeply people desire to be seen and loved. One story among many is this. I was the pastor of a church in an inner-city slum area of Johannesburg. The squatter camp alongside the church burnt down completely during one of the coldest winters. Having exhausted all offers of pragmatic help, one night I stood there, wearing the compulsory priest’s clothing, useless, with my hands frozen in the pockets of my coat, as the squatter camp dwellers scrambled together bits of waste and steel sheeting to rebuild their homes. A man came up to me and said that he was so grateful that I was there. I looked at him surprised and said that I was just standing there doing nothing, what possible help could I have been. He replied that because I was there, the people, and their suffering, was not invisible, they were seen. 

The Redistribution of wealth 

Jesus, having seen the man and loved him, invites him to redistribute his wealth and make the Kingdom of God his highest priority. As we were warned in the parable of the Sower in Mark 4, wealth like a weed with thorns, strangles to death the possibility of the kingdom happening in this man’s life: “Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful (Mark 4.18-19). 

In our capitalist democracy redistributive justice is the highest heresy. As we listen to the hard sayings of Jesus we squirm with tension because we know without a doubt, we are the rich of the world and we benefit from the systems that create wealth for the few at the expense of the many.  

The pheasant joke about the camel being pulled through the eye of the needle is no laughing matter for the rich. The famous assertion that the eye of the needle is a gate near Jerusalem that camels had to crawl through can hardly be taken seriously, it is a way of avoiding Jesus’ hard saying. As Jose Miranda described it, the text has been victim to “manipulation at the hands of bourgeois conscience tranquilizing exegetes” (In Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman, p275). A modern equivalent of what Jesus is saying is something like “the rich enter the kingdom of God when pigs fly backwards, or the rich enter the kingdom when hell freezes over.  

The disciples are shocked. Wealth and health were signs of blessings from God. Like we do today, the poor were blamed for their own poverty. Jesus repudiates this idea, turns conventional wisdom upside down and makes clear that the last are first, the poor have a head start in the kingdom of God, and it is the rich not the poor who are to blame for poverty. 

It would be a grave mistake to read this text individualistically. Jesus is inviting Sabbath-Year practices. In year of the Lord’s favour, or Sabbath Year, debt is released. The poor are also set free. The land itself is returned to itself, to grow as it will. And all humans and animals, for the space of that year, are released from labour and domestication, to live “wild,” and free.  

The reason the rich can’t enter the kingdom of God is that in God’s kingdom there are no rich and there are no poor. If, like Jesus, we really look at people and really love them, we too would design society, families, churches, economics, politics… everything with the most vulnerable and the most marginalised at the centre with their flourishing as our highest goal. The kingdom of God is a place where Mary’s Magnificat comes true, the rich are (joyfully) sent away empty because they have shared their excess with the hungry who are now filled with good things. Let us continue to pray that this kingdom of God may come on earth as it does in heaven.

Divorce is a very emotional and difficult topic for most of us. We all know that marriage is not easy. There is definitely some wisdom in the saying that “success in marriage comes not from finding the right person but from being the right person”. If only it was that simple. 

So many marriages are not successful. Divorce has been happening for thousands of years.  It would be very surprising if any of us had a family that had not been touched by divorce.  

The Church has always struggled with divorce and divorced people. Straightaway we think of Henry VIII. Princess Margaret forbidden to marry a divorcee by her sister, Elizabeth, nominally head of the Anglican Church. Charles and Diana. 

Often preaching on divorce has been insensitive and unhelpful.  I have seen the results of insensitivity to the struggles which follow divorce in our Parish in Canberra in 1980s.Divorce is not only an issue for the Christian church. There is an Islamic saying; “The thing which is lawful but most disliked by God is Divorce!”      

Take heart if you are hurting; it is divorce, not the divorced person that God dislikes! God wants us to have the best and divorce is simply “not the best thing”. It often causes financial hardship and stress, particularly for children. Grandparents can be collateral damage in divorce where their access to grandchildren is blocked or they find themselves as full time carers. Divorce may, in some extreme cases be necessary, but it isn’t always the best thing and it’s clear that it’s not what God wanted for us.  

So, the church tries to do an uncomfortable balancing act by standing up for the sanctity of marriage and yet at the same time proclaiming God's forgiveness to sinners who don’t uphold that sanctity. When I was a Rector, the Bishop’s written approval was required to conduct the wedding of a divorced person. 

On the surface, the subject in Mark today is divorce, but perhaps the main intention of Jesus is to once again show his followers what the Kingdom of God looks like. We are helped by the reading from Genesis chapter 2. Here, in the story of creation, the sovereignty of God is at the heart of it all. God says, “it’s not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner”. Notice that it is God who decides that Adam needs a helper. It is not Adam saying “Hey God, I am not having all my needs met here in this beautiful garden. Could you please make me a helper”? Clearly God, not man, is the one in charge. 

And there’s so much more we can learn from this second chapter of the Bible. If you think about Adam’s situation; he already has support. Adam has God as his superior helper, and he has animals as his inferior helpers. So, our Creator God is actually recognizing that Adam needs a suitable, equal helper / partner. 

When sharing that I was preparing to give the sermon, the deep-thinking woman I was speaking to pointed out something that I had overlooked. She had noticed that, quite out of keeping with the idea of men being the only ones who mattered, the last sentence of our Genesis reading is “therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” The “clinging to his wife and becoming one flesh” is no doubt the main point to take away from the sentence but the woman in my conversation understood that Scripture was going against the chauvinistic culture of the day when it did not say “the woman leaves her father and mother”.   

So, keeping this reading from Genesis in mind, what do we make of the Gospel reading on divorce? It’s helpful to remember that when Jesus spoke these words, he was not teaching or talking to people who were experiencing the brokenness of a marriage failure and had come to him shattered and deeply distressed. Jesus was dealing with opponents who Mark says were Pharisees trying to trap him. There is a political element in that Jesus was in the country of Herod Antipas who had married his divorced ex sister-in-law. These Pharisees remind Jesus that Hebrew law permitted a man to divorce his wife (and he could do that just because he wanted to). In response, Jesus tells them that commandment was written because of hard heartedness and then Jesus refers to Genesis chapter 2 which makes the point that marriage is God’s idea (it is a gift from God).  

We can have a fair idea of what Jesus might have said to those who had failed in their marriage commitments. We know what he said to the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8 11); “Go and sin no more”. Jesus was also gentle with the Samaritan woman at the well who had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband (John 4:4-29).

Jesus offered these women forgiveness and love. 

Now, having answered this “loaded question” from the Pharisees by referring to Scripture, Jesus expands on the problem of how to relate to others by once again talking of “little ones”.

A significant link between Jesus’ teaching about children and his teaching about divorce is that women, in marriage, were and are vulnerable.  Children also are extremely vulnerable.

What Jesus says against divorce and what he says for children in today’s Gospel are connected in that Jesus very clearly puts himself on the side of all those who are weak and vulnerable. 

The church is making a sad error if it takes what Jesus said against marriage breakdown and uses it to chastise those people who, for various reasons, have decided to end their marriage and separate, as if divorce were the one unforgivable sin. Marital separation hurts people, and hurting, vulnerable people are those who are especially loved by Jesus. Hence the Gospel defends those who are victimized in marriage and divorce and defends little children.  

This really is Good News! Jesus cares for, and totally supports, the weak, the vulnerable, and the defenceless. We live in a broken world where people make and break promises, where people find it difficult to keep their commitments, and where people suffer because promises have been broken by other people. Jesus is clearly on the side of those who are hurt by such human chaos and human failing. 

Most of us are uncomfortable around vulnerable and needy people.  Maybe it’s because we are embarrassed that we are OK and that we don’t need help. Perhaps we are frustrated that these needy people can’t look after themselves. Or maybe we are concerned because we think that we simply don’t have the time or resources to offer to help. It may boil down to our worry that vulnerable people present a threat to our own stress levels and our comfortable lives.  

Well Jesus showed us how to react. There’s no doubt where Jesus stood. Jesus is totally in support of the vulnerable, whether they are vulnerable women in marriage or vulnerable children in a dysfunctional family.  

But, is there something more to what Jesus is saying? The things we read here in Mark might not simply be some rules and guidelines for Christian behaviour in marriage and the family – though that is certainly what we see on the surface. Perhaps here in what Jesus is saying we are being given a glimpse of the nature of God and we are discovering the great difference between God and ourselves. 

We need every glimpse of God we are able to have. It is hard to understand God. Do you remember that God told Isaiah “My ways are not your ways”? However, Jesus is the full revelation of the nature and will of God. We see the ways of God in Jesus!   

What are we able to learn about God from the Jesus who Mark shows us here? We learn the Good News that despite our inabilities, our limits, and our failures, God loves us without limit and God is always faithful. We learn that God is a God who heals brokenness, who brings separated parties back together, who reaches out, beyond the bounds of culture, convention and tradition, toward those who are most vulnerable.  

God is on the side of the “little ones” no matter what has caused their littleness. Whenever we feel little; whenever we feel vulnerable let’s be encouraged to know that God really cares.

She cannot buy you anything. She will expect you to buy her
ice-creams, or milkshakes from MacDonald’s. She will not remember your birthday. She will not invite you over for dinner with friends. She will expect you to laugh (authentically) at all her dumb jokes. She will demand your closest attention; you may not scroll through Facebook when talking to her.  She can be innocent and loving. But she can also be noisy, needy, clingy, self-centred, surprisingly cruel; and she can throw the most spectacular screaming tantrums when she doesn’t get her own way, her meltdowns are epic. If you have something she wants she may just take it without asking. She can embarrass you in public. She has no status, nor influence, no income. She relies almost entirely on others for her
well-being.  If you desire to experience God, she must be your best friend. If you want the keys to the kingdom of God, she has them. For it is only in being her friend that you can live a good life.

She is of course a child, one of the little ones who symbolise the message of Jesus and what it means. Beware though, if you cause her any difficulty, if you make life more difficult for her in any way, you will regret it so much it will feel like drowning
(“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck, and you were thrown into the sea”). Who are the little ones? Children, of course. Any who are the least, the lost or the last in society, are the little ones, including outsiders. Outsiders are little ones too.

Deeds not creeds

Mark 9:38–50 is a collection of aphorisms, pithy, pointed sayings that have a sharp end. The theme of the little ones having a privileged perspective on the kingdom of God continues from Mark 9.36. Among the sayings in Mark 9.38-50, outsiders are included as “little ones.” The introduction to the collection of aphorism or pithy sayings is an all too familiar scenario. John points out someone outside their group who is copying their work without a license and needs to cease and desist.  It is not written in the text, but I can imagine Jesus rolling his eyes, grinding his teeth, and doing the first century equivalent of a face palm 🤦. For a change, it is not Peter getting it wrong, but John. Just as John wanted to control who was in and who was out, we do the same. At its best, a license empowers people in a healthy community for servant leadership. At its best a license is practical, it offers a community confidence that those they trust with a license are accountable, trained and operate within beneficial boundaries. Yet these licenses can easily degenerate into the situation depicted with John in Mark’s Gospel 9.38, a way to put up fences and establish power and control.

There is much evidence and anecdote to indicate that 2000 years later, we are not well taught by Jesus. John is operating according to the usual human dualisms, us vs them, in vs out, right vs wrong. Many theorists surmise that religion developed to hold a group together. The origin of religion is that it is a cultural marker that offered tribal identity. Survival is dependent on group cohesion and cooperation and religion originated to support and promote group identity. How much has changed since the origin of religions? We still use religion to build “tribes”. Those that go to heaven and those that go to hell. Protestant vs Catholic. Christian vs Muslim. Muslim vs Jew. Hindu vs Christian. Within Anglican circles there are definite divides between evangelicals and progressives, high church vs low church, conservatives and liberals; too much of “us” vs “them”.

Jesus offers a realistic response to the disciples and to us; to presume the best of everybody unless they state categorically, they are against you.  Jesus validates the liberating practice of outsiders (Whoever is not against us is for us). Jesus goes further in saying that anyone who offers hospitality and compassion to another, is, at that moment, serving Christ (whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward). It is deeds that matter, not creeds.

Metaphorical language

Jesus uses scary imagery to make the point that we should not build fences around who is in and who is out, that can cause difficulties for others (and if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched). The powerfully symbolic language forbids the erection of rigid social boundaries around the community of faith. I have every confidence that Jesus did not mean for his disciples to amputate the legs and hands of wrong doers. The aphorisms Jesus uses are poetic and metaphoric and not meant to be taken literally. The image of hell is precisely that, an image, a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. What we call hell the Bible calls Gehennem in Arabic and Hebrew, the Valley of Hinnom. Today on the Northern slopes of Gehenna are gentrified townhouses for the rich, cinemas and a concert hall. In the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom was remembered as the place where children were willingly sacrificed by their parents to the god Molech. A valley outside the Jerusalem’s walls, Gehennem was the rubbish dump, a place of constantly burning trash fires, and in some places untreated sewerage. Strong imagery for an assertive teaching on welcoming outsiders: not offering a welcome to outsiders is like living in a rubbish head.

Interpreting the metaphors

How do we best interpret the strong imagery and metaphors Jesus uses? My reflection is that Jesus is saying that evil or hell is not out there or over there. Evil, sin, corruption is not in those people in the out group. Corruption is here, within, in the in group. In fact, corruption is as close as your eye, as close as your hand and closer than your feet. Your greatest enemy is not over there, out there. Your greatest enemy is here, in here. Don’t try to change ‘those’ people ‘over there’.  Focus on your issues, focus on your ‘stuff’.  Let the salt and fire purify you. Often good comes from the outside and betrayal from the inside

Concluding image

This week the fence around the Alstonville Anglicans Church came down. This is because we are building a vegetable garden for the community on our verge. I come from South Johannesburg where we know about fences and walls. Fences are a minimum of 2.5m high and topped up with barbs and electric wires. Some even have security cameras and distress alarms. The little picket fence around St Bartholomew’s is about 40cm high – hardly worthy of the term fence. However, I was surprised at how open and inviting the church property now seems. I suspect that it is not only the physical barrier that was dismantled, but God willing, it is symbolic of the breakdown of any psychological, social, invisible and spiritual boundaries too. 

Shotgun

Time flies by in the yellow and green
Stick around and you'll see what I mean
There's a mountaintop that I'm dreaming of
If you need me you know where I'll be

I'll be riding shotgun underneath the hot sun
Feeling like a someone (someone)…

Shotgun is a George Ezra song that made the 2018 top 40. Riding shotgun used to describe the bodyguard that sat alongside the stagecoach driver. Armed with a coach gun the bodyguard sitting shotgun had to ward off bandits when the stagecoach drove through America’s Wild West. Today, shouting “shotgun” or “shotty” means you want the front seat in a car.

Shotgun wars have not died out from America’s Wild West. Shotgun wars are alive and regular in any suburban home with multiple children. Bring family members together in one vehicle and the fight for the front seat could result in sulking backseat passengers on a good day. On a bad day, blood and physical injury is the result of family shotgun wars, if, to secure your shotgun status, you accidently close the door on a rival sibling’s fingers.

Who won the shotgun wars in your family? Marius and I were devoted to our first pet, a Scottish terrier Themba. We had a tiny fiat uno with a 1400 engine. Marius would drive. Themba would ride shotgun. Heavily pregnant with twins I would be squashed into the backseat with a seatbelt barely making it across my body. Before I was pregnant, Themba and I did have a shotgun peace treaty whereby I was allowed to ride shotgun if he could sit on my lap.

The politics of riding shotgun are complex; several factors are considered: seniority, marital status, relationship with the driver, physical conditions, build and in patriarchal contexts – gender. In conservative cultures it would be unheard of for any women to ride shotgun if there was another adult male in the car.

The point is that the fight to sit in the front seat is perhaps a frivolous example of a wider and deeper human tendency: the concern to grab status, privilege, and power for oneself. As the song phrases it, “I’ll be riding shotgun” to feel “like a someone”.

Riding shotgun in Mark 9.30-37

The Gospel for this the 18th Sunday of Pentecost is Mark 9.30-37. We encounter Jesus overhearing the equivalent of a first century middle eastern shotgun argument among his disciples. The disciples’ fight for privilege, position, power, and importance occurs against a backdrop of their inability to understand the work of Jesus and his vision for the kingdom of God. Three times Jesus will predict his suffering and death; three times the disciples will fail to understand. Three times Jesus will use their lack of understanding as the basis for an essential teaching about what the kingdom of God is really like.

If Mark’s Gospel were a Netflix binge series, Mark 9.30-37 is about episode 5 of season 2. “Season 2” of Mark’s Gospel would begin in Mark 8.22 and end at Mark 10.52. Both episodes describe the healing of blind people. In 8.22, Jesus is outside Bethsaida. He takes a blind man aside and must heal him twice before he can see clearly. In 10.52, Jesus heals Bartimaeus; the man born blind. The blind men are symbols of the disciples’ (and our) inability to see Jesus clearly. Like the blind man in 8.22, the disciples will gradually see the different perspective that Jesus offers.

In response to the disciples’ argument for power, prestige and position, Jesus takes a child as a living symbol of the politics of the kingdom of God; the least, the last and the lost. Some interpretations suggest that the symbol of a child is to nudge us into childlike faith and trust. I disagree. The symbol of the child in the context of Mark is the ultimate symbol of the least, the last and the lost, one with no status, no agency, and no influence. The child is a symbol for anyone in society who is weak, vulnerable, with no power, one who is disabled by the powerful. For Jesus, it is those who are the most vulnerable, most ostracised, most powerless who are greatest in in the kingdom. Serving the least, the lost and the last is the avenue of salvation.

The take home message

The principle here is simple; design everything (buildings, public spaces, banks, organisations, groups, society, churches) with the most vulnerable and ignored as the central most important clients and everything and everyone will flourish. I have often said that Jesus is an unrecognised genius. What I am suggesting is that the resources Jesus offers are the greatest keys to authentic success. I believe that the principles Jesus offers can be implemented by all levels of society even without signing up to the church’s creeds and faith. If people want their businesses to flourish, if politicians want their states to be successful, if architects want their buildings to be brilliant, if we want the best possible society, the principles of Jesus are an invaluable resource, even without faith in Jesus.

Here are some examples of the success that is possible when the least and the last (not the powerful and privileged) are put front and centre:

1.   Gravity Payment’s CEO Dan Price introduced a minimum wage of $US70,000 ($AU95,371) in 2015. He was ridiculed and even sued by his brother for this decision. Many were threatened by Dan Price’s move and promised it would never work. He took a pay cut to implement his policy. However, since then revenue tripled. Harvard Business School has researched Gravity and now offers the company as a case study for effective business.

https://www.newsweek.com/ceo-who-raised-company-minimum-wage-70k-says-revenue-has-tripled-1583610

2.   We want the economy to grow as much as possible. What is the most cost-effective way to grow the economy? Noble prize winner Professor Heckman’s research is invaluable in proving that investment in early childhood education, from birth to five years, especially for the poorest of the poor, is the most cost-effective way to grow a country’s economy and reduce debt. https://cehd.uchicago.edu/?page_id=71

3.   Another example of how placing people who experience exclusion or disability front and centre allows all to flourish (and the bottom line) is from research by the centre for inclusive design. Partnering with Microsoft and Adobe, the research shows that when products and services are designed with the needs of people experiencing poverty, disability or the effects of ageing in mind, four times the number of intended consumers are reached and profits are increased. When education adopted an inclusive process, an additional 228,000 tertiary qualifications were earned in Australia which in turn increased employment and salaries by $4.5 billion annually.

https://centreforinclusivedesign.org.au/index.php/the-benefits-of-designing-for-everyone-report/

The point about these examples is that by implementing Jesus’ principle of making the most vulnerable and the least powerful as your primary focus, we all flourish.

As we reflect on making the least, the lost and the last the greatest in our kingdom’s, perhaps we could consider that along with impoverished women and children, Mother Nature herself is extremely vulnerable. Here the message of Jesus is more urgent. Placing the most vulnerable front and centre, in this case, the environment, is urgent for our survival let alone for our flourishing. Yet the government continues to take the direction of the rich and the powerful. Santos and Chevron have been given millions in taxpayer grants for the illusory and non-existent “carbon capture and storage” systems. Chevron and Santos have failed to meet their targets with no penalty or fines. According to the Guardian Chevron released 10.2m tonnes of CO2 in 2019-20, making it Australia’s eighth-biggest emitter.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/20/a-shocking-failure-chevron-criticised-for-missing-carbon-capture-target-at-wa-gas-project

What is needed is structural change beyond the efforts of individuals, but individuals working together in a collective to effect broader societal change. To return to our opening image, our concern is more than who rides shotgun, it is to consider the comfort of those on the backseat who have less room and no control over the air-conditioning or radio choices or even those without access to a car at all. More than that we want to have has our litmus test for any decision, any policy, the benefit it brings to those who are most vulnerable.

23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus[c] laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 

And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” 50 And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.” 52 And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

Wisdom 7.26-8.1, Mark 8.27-38

A bunch of serious medical professionals gathered on Q & A to address the concerns of the children of the nation. “Are we going to die?” asked seven year old Amaya. Of this, Virginia Trioli remarked, “You only ever try to bullshit a kid once.”[1] After that, “you experience their directness, blunt questioning and reasoning as a tonic,” a relief from the evasive spin and jargon of the post modern world.

This interaction highlights a major issue in all our lives to do with listening. As Trioli pointed out, we have seriously underestimated the capacity of youngsters to understand and engage with challenges that discombobulate many adults. Their voices simply have not been heard.

But the buck does not stop there. The business of listening is complex. I am convinced that human beings are almost incapable of real communication, because we all view the world through a multifaceted lens of linguistic, social, cultural, religious and ethnic conventions,[2] alongside the ideologies of power structures associated with gender, race, and class.

When I say something, the hearer immediately translates what I have said into her/his own conceptual framework. I do the same. You do the same. There seems no escape from the cultural myths of our own childhoods.

And how often do disagreements escalate into unmanageable situations, disagreements that usually arise from a misunderstanding of what another has said or done. Peter cannot cope with the notion of a Messiah crucified by elders, lay leaders and tall-steeple preachers.[3] So he takes Jesus aside and “rebukes” him. The Greek word is epitēmao (ἐπιτιμάω), which has a range of meanings, the most extreme of which is “to censure severely.”[4] Jesus responds equally strongly with an insult, “Get behind me Satan!” Their ideals and presuppositions are trading blows, while the real substance of their conversation is lost, and their relationship is bruised.

Oh for a modicum of restraint — and wisdom! Where is the Wisdom grace of our OT lesson?

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle. (Wisdom 7.22-23)

For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of her goodness. (Wisdom 7.25-26)

Where is Wisdom to be found? You cannot buy it; and even the tantalising passage from the Wisdom of Solomon gives little clue about the whereabouts of Wisdom, except that it is something to do with God.

She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
and she orders all things well. (Wisdom 8.1)

The Book of Job “presents the most ironic conclusion of all — the Wisdom of God is only seeing the full range of the world’s variety, including its arbitrariness, its senselessness.”[5] We have grown up to expect order in our world and universe, witness the striving of science to determine that very order and make sense of it. However, even science is at the mercy of human frailty. Furthermore, although we may see orderliness, the “rationality in the material universe,” the more we become aware that that rationality is “lacking in the moral world.”

 We celebrate today the Second Sunday of our Season of Creation; although I am tempted to rename it the Season of Destruction, because that is exactly the course upon which the world is set, guided by human beings who do not listen, and who lack the moral intelligence to understand either themselves or the world around us.

We may devote ourselves to explanation, rational skill, and control, but at the same time we must bear in mind that such skills and control throw into stark relief, the uncontrollable world of human disorder and its suffering. Wisdom is more than explanatory skill on the one hand and intuitive penetration on the other.[6]

The “wisdom” to which the Book of Job directs us, actually avoids interpreting Job’s suffering. He refuses the rationalisations his friends offer. His “answer,” if you will, lies in the troubling passage where he accepts that the sight of God is itself the resolution. This is not simply a passive acceptance of “mystery,” which can be a cop out; Job perceives in the world, a boundless resource of creative gift behind its chaos.[7] In this light, Wisdom is the celebration of order and the cry of protest at what is without order.

Amaya’s question to the medical experts is but one of the many cries of protest, uttered by people who are silenced by those who do not listen, those who belittle and sideline other human beings. Food for thought — even the environment utters cries of protest; witness the extremes of weather and the consequences thereof — firestorms, floods, hurricanes.

Which gives rise to another question posed by Moira Donegan — “What, if it’s too late to save our planet without geoengineering?”[8] Geoengineering means ways that human beings can change the climate through interventions of one sort or another. The answer is clear; the pace of climate change, and the paucity of the human response, have already made that choice. Unbelievably, the dominant power structures of the planet still do not listen, entrenched as they are in their ivory castles built of cash. Houses of cards, actually.

Their deafness is deafening.

 At the National Women’s Safety Summit last week, Thelma Schwartz acknowledged the women who came before her, who laid the foundations for her to be there as an Indigenous woman, as an Indigenous lawyer, and she went on declare that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children have not been seen — they have been silenced … I refuse to be used as a tick and flick measure”.[9]

Her shirt-fronting points to a deeper inquiry about intention.[10] Are political leaders and the mega-wealthy capable of change?

Do they want to change? Those kinds of human conversions, from being deficient to being present, from avoidance to leadership, are substantive, soulful, searching. They are not tick and flick. They require deep reflection, humility and listening.[11]

“To listen without humility is to presume a right to evaluate, to judge, and to control the conversation. Each of these acts is an act of dominance”, and dominance is “ultimately incompatible with one’s ability to listen with humility—to listen for listening’s own sake, without presuming you have a right to control. Listening is humility when it relinquishes dominance.”[12]

As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

 If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

 Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.[13]

[1] Virginia Trioli, Weekend Reads: A little girl's simple question, 28 August 2021

[2] See Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s masterful analysis “G*d - The Many-Named” in John D Caputo & Michael J Scanlon Eds. Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Enquiry (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2007) p117

[3] See C Clifton Black, Commentary on Mark 8.27-38, Working Preacher 10/09/21

[4] See Strong’s NT 2008

[5] Rowan Williams A Ray of Darkness (Plymouth UK : Cowley Publications 1995) p 201)

[6] ibid p202

[7] ibid

[8] What if it’s too late to save our planet without geoengineering? Moira Donegan, The Guardian 26 August 2021

[9] … not when Aboriginal women were 32 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence, 10 times more likely to die due to assault, and 45 times more likely to be victims of violence. Not when she was aware of cases in remote communities where young children, victims of sexual assault, had to “wait, untouched, unshowered, because there was no paediatric specialist to undertake the forensic intimate service”.

[10] Katherine Murphy, “Trying to do our best” is just not good enough from our leaders, The Guardian, Saturday 11 September 20201

[11] op cit Katherine Murphy

[12] Amy Lawton, “Listening as Practice of Humility” in The Immanent Frame,13 February 2018 https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/02/13/listening-as-a-practice-of-humility/ download 2021/09/11

[13] from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by Joanna Macy

Practise what you preach

“Practise what you preach” and “walk the talk” are clichéd and ubiquitous platitudes thrown around in religious circles. It can be ironic and quite fun to watch a “practise what you preach” moment unfolding in front of you. From 2001-2003 I was a Methodist pastor and was required to attend district meetings with our bishop. Usually about 100 ministers were present. At one such meeting the bishop, irritated by interruptions caused by ringing phones, stood up to reprimand us for not turning off our mobile devices. At that precise moment, his phone rang! Hilarious. Similarly, in today’s reading Jesus is tasked with “walking the talk”.

The Gospel of Mark 7.24-37 narrates Jesus’ encounter with a Syrophoenician woman. The encounter follows hot on the heels of Jesus’ admonishment to the Pharisees about their pedanticism with law and tradition. You may remember the take home message in the preceding verses (in Mark 7.1-23); that it is not what goes into the body that defiles, but what comes out that is corrupt. In the case of the Pharisees, overemphasising their scriptures and traditions led to pettiness, jealousy, acquisitiveness, wickedness, deceit, envy, slander, pride, foolhardiness. Yet when a Syrophoenician woman asks Jesus for help, his answer reflects his narrow focus on tradition and the consequent prejudice: “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”. Jesus believes that his mission is to the Jews and what comes out of this narrow focus is a cultural put-down where a gendered outsider is compared to a dog.

Some find it alarming that Jesus displays racism common to his era. If we take seriously the full humanity of Jesus, we can allow for his need to learn and evolve. Furthermore, Jesus is running on empty. He has attempted to honour his need for prayer, quiet and restoration, but his retreat was interrupted by the hungry crowds (Mark 6). Some of Jesus’ brusqueness with the Pharisees (Mark 7.1-23) arises from his fatigue. Again, looking for quiet and peace Jesus “set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice” (Mark7.24).

The heroine in the story is the Syrophoenician woman who stood her ground and expected liberation from Jesus. She makes a theological argument against limiting the messianic banquet to Israel alone. She thus teaches Jesus the meaning of his own message of Good News. In arguing for freedom and wholeness for her daughter, this pagan outsider, this gentile, this Syrophoenician woman, is the transformer, the Christ presence. She is for Jesus a teacher, mentor, and spiritual director. She helps Jesus critique his sense of entitlement and internalised bias. The narrative arc of Mark’s Gospel pivots at this point; from this moment on, Jesus’ mission intentionally focusses on sharing the power and Good News of God’s kingdom with gentiles. One might even say without her we as gentiles might not be here. As Heidi Husted put it: (in the Christian Century, August 16, 2000): “The day the gospel went to the dogs was the day it came to us.  We are some of the “dogs” who have received the good news of the gospel!  When Jesus opened himself up to mission to the whole world, he opened his church to the world.  Now we are to open ourselves to the whole world in mission.”

Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman supports the kingdom’s vision. The vision is radical inclusion. The story addresses some of the obstacles to Jesus’ vision of welcome.

·       The purity codes of the pharisees that exclude people from a meal.

·       The honour of the Jews that limits the inclusion of outsiders

·       The social reconciliation of “us” and “them”

If the Syrophoenician woman can be Jesus’ teacher and mentor in evolving towards radical inclusion and integration, perhaps we too could allow her to be our teacher. She invites us to examine ourselves and our social structures closely and reflect honestly on who or what is excluded?  Where do we draw lines that exclude? What are our blind spots? Who is missing from our churches? What inner attitudes and perspectives keep others out of our committees and boards? For example, why are there so few female principals? Why are LGBTQI people not included in ordained ministry? Why do our churches not reflect the population demographics? What is it about the corporate and political culture that prevents black people, woman and young people from participating more equitably?

What happens when these questions are asked and acted upon? People and societies are transformed to wholeness. Here are some of my Good News moments where “Syrophoenicians” (as a symbol for the excluded) have stood their ground and expected liberation and love from society. I would be interested to hear of your examples.

 1.     Disable bodied people have long advocated for the use of accessible design by arguing for the built environment to be as accessible for as many as possible. Those in wheelchairs certainly find the ramps on our roads more useful, but the interesting thing is that so many others have benefitted too (e.g., prams and bikes use the ramps too).

2.     The concept of universal design is the result of “Syrophoenicians” (the excluded) demanding liberation and love. Universal Design addresses issues of having a different approach for different users, which not only improves and simplifies the way a facility is used but also eliminates user segregation to maximise participation by users of all abilities.

Today is beginning of our Season of Creation. The Season of Creation is the annual Christian celebration of prayer and action for our common home. Together, the ecumenical family around the world unites to pray, protect, and advocate for God’s creation. During the 2021 Season of Creation, from 1 September through 4 October, hundreds of thousands of Christians will be uniting around the theme, “A home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God.”

It is pertinent that at the beginning of the Season of Creation a Syrophoenician woman is our chief theologian. Women are disproportionately affected by environmental issues. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/climate_change/downloads/Women_and_Climate_Change_Factsheet.pdf. Further, there is a significant connection between the degradation of the earth and the oppression of women. The Good News that this story offers is that those most affected by the inequalities of exclusion are the best equipped to respond, those close to the problem are close to the solutions too. My sincere hope is that we pray with the Syrophoenician woman who changed the journey of Jesus. My hope is that she inspires those who are excluded to have confidence to speak-up for we all need their message. My hope is that like Jesus we can make space and listen to the words of the 21st century Syrophoenicians God sends our way. The words of today’s collect adequately summarise these hopes:

O God, whose word is life,

and whose delight is to answer our cry:

give us faith like that of the woman who refused to remain an outsider,

so that we too may have the wit to argue

and demand that our children be made whole,

through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Metaphors

I wonder if Australia is the only place in the world where an absolute lemon is cactus and a dark horse a fair cow, and everyone has an uncle called Bob? I wonder what your thoughts are on the following expressions.

   Stunned mullet

   A few roos loose in the top paddock

   A few stubbies short of a six-pack. ... 

   Have a sticky or have a captain cook…

   Or nice Budgie smugglers Tony Abbott…

Much Australian parlance is metaphor. What is a metaphor? Simply put metaphor is symbolic language. In metaphor, one experience or reality is understood or explained by comparing it to another. Metaphor is the use of symbol to make meaning. An important thing to understand is that a metaphor taken literally is an absurdity. For example, to interpret the metaphor “it’s raining cats and dogs” literally is an absurdity, as is “to throw the baby out with the bath water” and “beating a dead horse”. Metaphor is the only path into today’s lectionary. Yet, if we enter the deeper meaning of these metaphors an experience is offered. One could say “it’s raining hard”. However, “raining cats and dogs” offers an experience, really heavy rain.

Metaphors and the Gospel of John 6:56-69

The point of today’s reading in John 6:56–69 is precisely metaphor. John states in that ‘the Spirit gives life; the flesh is unprofitable’. What John means is that we must understand the use of metaphor in experiencing Jesus; to take a metaphor literally is an absurdity, worse, its death. A literal understanding misses the point about Jesus. Informed by the Spirit it is only through metaphor we grasp the meaning of Jesus. The invitation today is to elevate our minds from the literal to the symbolic, from the finite to the infinite.

I am not trying to be abstract. Metaphor is how religious and spiritual language works. If one wants to experience inner aliveness or vitality or meaning or purpose, we have no option but to embrace metaphor.

It is precisely at the point of metaphor that division and conflict occur in the John’s Gospel. There is conflict between Jesus and the pharisees who overemphasise literalness.  Later in John 6.40-51 the conflict around metaphor is between Jesus and other Jews. Now the conflict is within the group of Jesus’ own followers – Jesus’ use of metaphor causes offense.

The offense is related to fear, fear that Jesus is asking them to let go of their traditions. Instead, Jesus is asking that their heritage be transformed into metaphor, into symbol. I suggest we do the same.

The Eucharist as a metaphor for life

In the meditation on the bread of life in John 6 and in our Eucharist, we are asked to enter metaphor. We are asked to transform our life into the life of God and transform our actions into actions of God.  Jesus said: “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”. The elevation of the bread during the Eucharist and the elevation of Jesus in the ascension is an invitation to elevate our consciousness from the literal to the symbolic, from the physical to the divine.  The finite, the physical, is an expression, a symbol, of the Infinite. 

The bread and wine are symbols of finite reality, symbols of the whole creation, symbols of our lives. The elevation of the bread and wine and the elevation of Christ transforms our finite lives into the body and blood of God, into the manifestation of God’s presence.

Our finite lives are transformed to the body and blood of Christ, a manifestation of God. Our finite actions are transformed into lifegiving actions of Christ.

What does this mean practically?

Seeing our lives as a metaphor for the Eucharist is to transform our life into the life God of life, our actions into actions of God. Thus, whatever we give to others will be the body and blood of Christ. Whatever we receive from others is, similarly, the body and blood of Christ. Every encounter we have with others, within creation is an Eucharistic celebration. Every encounter is then a sacred encounter.

e.g. When I share in an authentic conversation with another, the story I share with them is the body and blood of Christ and they receive it. In offering a listening presence, the listener gives the speaker the body and blood of Christ.

Concluding comments

When the theologian and scientist Jesuit priest Teilhard was unable to celebrate the Eucharist, he made everything his Eucharist in the way indicated above:

Since once again, Lord I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.

My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day.

Protest actions

We are all too familiar with images of protest actions around the globe: 

·  Protests Actions against authoritarian rule in North Africa and the Middle East on 2011 in what is now called the Arab spring ushered in more democratic processes.

·  The Black Lives Matter movement at the height of COVID in 2021 and 2022.

·  The Me-Too movement

·  Our beautiful children acting for Climate Change, frustrated that their adult leaders are doing so little.

South Africa, the country that birthed me, is only who she is today because of Protest Action. From the Free Mandela protest action campaigns overseas, to the well organised, non-violent protest actions in the early days of Apartheid, South Africa today has a narrative of human rights. Thanks to Protest Action, South Africa boasts one of the world’s most sophisticated constitutions. Harvard law scholar Cass Sunstein called the constitution in the new democratic South Africa “the most admirable Constitution in the history of the world.” 

Australia, my adoptive country, has also been changed through protest actions.

Today we have marriage equality in Australia. While we remember the protest actions in 2017 that campaigned for the yes vote for marriage equality, the protest action began in 1978. People who identify as LGBTQIA+ launched what we now know as the Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978, a protest movement that continues to encourage a positive self-esteem for people who are LGBTQIA+.

Australia has a long road to go before we can all relationships with Indigenous Australians anything close to just. However, the Torres Strait Islander man Eddie Mabo achieved an important role in protest action that led to more land rights. The High Court case that eventually overturned the lie of terra nullius was a significant change brought about through the Mabo led protest action.

Today I would like to thank you for your involvement in gentle, persistent, faithful protest action: your participation in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist as protest action 

The protest action that we have witnessed on the news around the globe has taken different forms. Some protest actions have been non-violent. Some protest actions have resulted in death and disability. Other protest actions have witnessed high levels of anger and aggression, such as the frustratingly short-sighted demonstration against lockdown measures in Sydney last week.

 In contrast the Eucharist as protest action is persistently gentle and consistent. There is no destructive anger, although there is the breaking of the bread. There is no blood shed although there is the constant call for the downfall of “The Powers” (whomsoever they may be) and the call for the uprising of the peasants, or the marginalised.

In analysing the John 6 text, one may be tempted to offer a spiritualised interpretation that reflects on the meaning of the Eucharist in terms of what the bread and wine signify during a Sunday Holy Communion Service. Many commentaries offer this over spiritualised interpretation. Such spiritual discussions on John 6 with the inevitable argument over transubstantiation are obsolete and irrelevant for a 21st century reader.

The political undercurrents of John 6 are related to the link made between Jesus the bread of life and manna, the bread of survival in Exodus 16. The manna story culminates in the annual Passover Festival. Passover commemorates how God freed and continues to free people from oppression. Thus, by linking Jesus the bread of life with the Manna story, John is deliberately alluding to the uprising of the oppressed against authoritarian despotic rule.

If the Eucharist is a form of protest action, we ask three questions:  

1. Protest action for whom? In other words, on whose behalf is the protest action for? 

2. Protest action against what? In other words, what do we object to? 

3. Protest action for what?  In other words, what is our vision and what do we hope and work for?  

Protest action for whom? In other words, on whose behalf is the protest action for? 

The Eucharist as protest action is for people who are hungry for life in all its fullness, the commitment that Jesus offers to each of us: “I have come that you may have life in all its fullness” (John 10.10b). For some this hunger may be a physical hunger. For others the hunger may be a deep desire for meaning and purpose.  

The Eucharist as protest action is for the vulnerable, those who come to Jesus and cry: “Sir, give us this bread always.” These words remind us of another dialogue in John’s Gospel, when the Samaritan woman said to Jesus: “Sir give me this water always.” The Samaritan woman is a vulnerable person, someone who is excluded and unwelcome.  

The Eucharist bread is broken for the life of the world. All are invited to share at the table. All are welcomed. These moments of Eucharistic action protest a world where only some are welcomed and only some invited. The Eucharist action is for the vulnerable of the world. But it is also an objection to the brokenness of the world where some have too much, and others have too little.  

Protest action against what? In other words, what do we object to? 

The Eucharist as Protest action objects against a world of injustice where some have too much, and others have too little. In John’s Gospel the people say to Jesus: ‘31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ The reference to the story of Manna is relevant.  

The People of God have escaped from Egypt. Egypt is a place of oppression, a place where life was sucked out of God’s people as they were enslaved to a system of greed symbolised by the pyramids. In Egypt they suffered because some had too much and others too little. God frees them. They are in the desert. While in the desert God must teach them a new system of economics; a system that is not based on greed and a few having too much, and others enslaved to work. God rains down Manna. The people collect it. This teaches them that everything comes from God, all is a gift, it all comes from heaven. When they collect the manna, they will learn that work is a dignified activity where people work with God to mend creation. When they collect the manna, some will gather more, and others will gather less. But those who gather more will not have too much and those that gather less will not have too little. What God teaches them is a new system of economics that will give life to all God’s people. Life for all God’s people is God’s vision for the world, it is for this vision of sharing that the Eucharist action protests for. We live in an insane world where 26 billionaires had the same net worth as the poorest half of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion people[1].

Protest action for what?  In other words, what is our vision and what do we hope and work for?  

The Eucharist as Protest action envisions a world where all have enough, and all are treated with the dignity that is their birth rite as people created in the image of God. The dignity of being human and living a purposeful, whole, and healed life is the vision of the Eucharist. In addition to the manna, another important feature of the Exodus story alluded to in John 6 is the marriage between humanity and divinity. In Exodus, as God’s liberated people travelled through the wilderness, the Ark of the Covenant symbolising the Divine was among them.  The Eucharist re-members that the heart of our reality is the marriage between the holiness of our humanity with the holiness of God’s divinity. Every human is to be honoured because all are a unity of divinity and humanity.

The beautiful thing about the Eucharist is that God achieves this vision of human dignity for us and through us and with us. As Jesus explains to his audience, our task is to believe it: 28Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ 29Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ 

Concluding comments  

Today I would like to thank you.  Thank you for coming faithfully to the Eucharist Feast. Thank you for being part of Protest Action that stands against a world, where so few have too much and so many have too little.  Thank you for being a partner with God in the Eucharist. Thank you for celebrating the marriage of the holiness of your humanity with the holiness of God’s divinity. Thank you for your work with God in mending creation.  

Pictures from Naked Pastor and used with permission, license paid.

[1] This is according to OXFAM. Read more here: https://indepth.oxfam.org.uk/public-good-private-wealth/.

I am often learning great new insights from the sermons of Doug and Desiree. To learn you need to have your attention attracted so, I’ll share a little attention grabber from Mark Twain. “If your son wishes to bring a cat home carrying it by the tail, let him; that experience will teach him more than a thousand words of warning.” There’s also a need to be willing to be interested in learning in the first place.

An important thing I learned in my career as a flying instructor was that the best education, growth and understanding doesn’t come from books or video streaming. The best development happens when there’s strong personal contact. We are all different and we go about our lives in our different ways. Some people are shy, and others are more confident.

I think we all understand that it is necessary to have good relationships with other people in our family or whatever organisations or clubs we belong to. “Not so good” relationships cause stress. Perhaps, the most important question for us as Christians is “do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” When it all comes down to the basics, (or dare I say, the fundamentals), a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity.

Service to others in need, the study of the scriptures, a knowledge of the faith, boldly witnessing to the coming of the kingdom of God; all those things are noble and good. But Christianity so often gets dragged down by issues about “church” (services, music, parish decisions, bishops and priests). We can miss the point that it’s all about Jesus; Christianity IS about getting personal with Jesus.

When we are going out to some significant function, most of us are a little uneasy until we get to know the host. Isn’t it amazing that we hope to spend eternity at the heavenly banquet, in the presence of Jesus, and yet there doesn’t seem to be an urgent sense of really needing to know Jesus well (to have a personal relationship with him) before we arrive at the banquet?

Well, how do we know Jesus? How are we to understand him? “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John. That doesn’t make much sense if you try to take it literally. Bread is bread (crust & dough), and a man is a man. They just can never be the same thing.

That’s the way the people in the story were thinking when Jesus said this to them. When he said that he had come down from heaven, they murmured to one another in their literal-minded confusion; “Hey, isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know so well? How can he now say, I have come down from heaven?” Not for the first time, the people find what Jesus says hard to swallow (pun intended).

Jesus spoke about being the Bread of Life intending to stir the imagination, to touch the hearts of people, to teach them more than just intellectual knowledge. But, because Jesus’ words fell upon the stony ears of people with no imagination or no great willingness to learn, his lesson caused only confusion, anger, and disrespect.

What do we find these days? People hear of Jesus and feel compelled to question what they hear. They say, “How did he do all those miraculous things? Surely, he was just a man; no one could walk on water, no one could feed five thousand people with a few scraps of food. The authors of the Bible must be exaggerating; the story of Jesus reveals more myth than man. These church goers are all self-deluded!” Knockers jump to conclusions about the Bible often without reading it. But what does it actually say and how are we to understand it? Listening to Desiree and Doug, I learn a great deal and find there’s a lot more for me to discover.

Military instructors found it very hard to keep their students interested and motivated in the early 1960s. However, when young fellows like me started to find ourselves being posted into danger in Vietnam, suddenly, we became very serious about our study. So maybe it’s a good thing that our Bible knowledge is challenged; it may well give some people more motivation to study their Bible.

The more you read the Bible, the more you find how it all marvelously fits together. There is a great example today. In the First Testament reading from 1 Kings 19, Elijah is scrambling to get away from the vicious Jezebel and when he gives up and wants to die, he is told by God’s angel to “Get up and eat.” Another reminder that God provides the nourishment necessary for life.

Then in our Gospel reading Jesus (who has provided food for the multitude) is telling those who follow him to eat more. Jesus invites them to experience God’s life-giving food. He had startled them by saying Moses didn’t give their ancestors real bread from heaven in the wilderness when they were hungry. Now he really shakes them up by saying that HE was the bread the Father had sent down from heaven, the only permanent satisfaction for hunger. It had been the same for the woman at the well in Samaria. Jesus told her that the water he would give her would become a spring gushing up to Eternal Life.

So, what are we to think of Jesus? When Jesus says he is the heavenly bread of life, he gives us plenty of clues. Bread is something we eat. Bread nourishes us. Bread sustains us and, at some points in our lives, it even makes us grow. Maybe that's who Jesus is; God come to us to nourish us, to sustain us, and to make us grow.

Something to keep in mind. Maybe, just like bread, Jesus must be consumed to do us any good!

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. If this is true, what does it mean? I believe it means that your soul will never be satisfied with the things that just fill your belly. No food, no loved one, no job, no wealth, no success, no fulfilment, will ever properly satisfy us.

Today’s gospel is a reminder to us that the Christian faith is more than a set of beliefs, a list of intellectual propositions or a rule of life.

Our Christianity is a matter of being encountered by a person, Jesus. Our Christianity is a matter of God getting personal with us, engaging us, taking over our lives, possessing us. To those in the crowd who are hungry and want to fill their stomachs; to those who want to have a pleasant discussion about spiritual matters, Jesus controversially says, “I am the bread of life. Feed on me.”

That’s the symbolism behind our celebration of Holy Communion!  Today, I hope that, as you receive the bread and the wine, which is for us the very body and blood of Christ, that for you, faith will become personal, the word will become flesh, that Jesus will mystically penetrate every fibre of your being, and that your personal relationship with Christ will be nurtured, fed and strengthened.

We are invited to the Lord’s table.  A little tasting platter to excite us and enthuse us as we anticipate the heavenly banquet to come.

Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15

John 6.24-35

In our readings of late, full of signs and wonders, we seem to have been involved in a lot of eating – from the dramatic banquet in Herod’s palace, an occasion of sordid behaviour and death dealing, to picnics in the countryside attended by huge crowds, life giving occasions that never tire the imagination.

Last week we reached the mid-point of John’s seven “signs”, [1] and, today, we pick up the story when “the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there”. So, they hop into boats[2] and sail to Capernaum “looking for Jesus”. When they “find” Jesus, they don’t seem to comprehend who he is: “Rabbi,” they ask, “when did you come here?”

The scene is set for another “I” saying to appear, yet another of John’s dazzling insights. Jesus replies, somewhat caustically in my view,

Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. (John 6.26)

As Desiree remarked last week, Raymond Brown[3] wrought an illuminating comparison of the dialogue in today’s text and the conversation between Jesus and the Woman at the Well.

Our text offers bread:

“Do not work for the food that perishes,” (John 6:27) followed by, “Sir, give us this bread always” (John 6:34);

The Woman at the Well runs a close parallel with water:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again” (John 4:13) followed by, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:15).

This kind of thematic repetition occurs throughout John’s Gospel. Thus, he frequently uses the phrase, “Very truly, I tell you”. Now, “very truly” is the translation of the Greek amēn, a particularly striking emphasis marker, used in our scriptures to introduce statements of pivotal significance. Modern parlance might say “for sure” or “absolutely” or “definitely”; and that element of certainty is crucial to our understanding of John’s use of amēn. On Jesus’ lips it speaks to an assurance that his message is, as it were, guaranteed by God; for Jesus is both the messenger and the actuality conveyed by the message.

For John then, there is no confusion: Jesus is the bread of life, is the water of life, and at the same time is something greater than life as we know it. That is to say, our own lives are not complete in themselves. “My life,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “is outside myself, beyond my disposal. My life is another, a stranger; Jesus Christ.” [4] In John, Jesus is life itself (John 1:4) and has come so “that they may have life” (John 10:10).

The purpose of John’s Gospel is clearly enunciated – “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”, which leads us to consider yet another important word, “believe”. The Greek is pistis, also the name of the Greek goddess of trust, honesty and good faith. She was one of the good spirits to escape Pandora's box and promptly fled back to heaven, abandoning humankind. [5] So “believe” is a weighty word, and it is unfortunate that in the Western world, the word “belief” has escaped the rigour of its origins.

Now let us move to the OT reading. You may remember the line from last week’s Gospel:

Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. (John 6.5b,6a)

There is a similar dynamic in the OT, in which God is constantly “testing” the people of God. God deals with people in general with understanding and compassion, but when it comes to the covenant people of God there is a repeated theme of critique and testing throughout.

We have a perfect example of that in the Exodus reading, when “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness”. (Exodus 16.2) God’s response was to say to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them …”

In essence, God then says three things to Moses.

First, God has heard their complaints. Second, in response to their complaining, God will provide for the people, meat (quails) in the evening and bread (manna) in the morning. Third, God tells Moses that it is when the people access God’s provision of food, then they will know who the Lord is, their God.

Our Gospel text says the same thing, except that Jesus attunes his listeners to God’s faithfulness today, in this very moment. The crowd demand, “Sir, give us this bread always.” But what they demand is actually that which they already have – in the actual presence of Jesus: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6.35)

Scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann, notes a multitude of meanings for bread. [6] Bread has to do with the entire system of creation, from the management of water and soil, to the breeding of good seed, to the economies of the world. Every culture and economic class consumes bread, and if it is not shared, “human life is in jeopardy.” Furthermore, the bread of the Eucharist, that which is blessed and broken, is a potent sign (sacrament) that this “most elemental stuff of the earth is infused with Holy Mystery.”[7]

Bread also connotes cash, the symbol by which we enter the economic world of credit, debt, interest rates budgets, tax incentives, market management and significantly, the high cost of neighbourliness.[8] So “there at the table” of our Eucharist lie issues to do with life sciences, social sciences, theology and economics.

(If you are not persuaded by the reference to economics, you may remember that just after the feeding of the four thousand in Mark, the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Whereupon Jesus cautions them with the words, “Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” That is to say the religious and secular power structures of the Mediterranean world.

We meet because our common work is rooted in the several faith traditions that hark back to manna bread. We become aware, I hope, that all bread is wonder bread, and all bread is laden with sacramental significance.

It is our creator who gives bread to the eater and seed to the sower, the same whom we confess inhabits the bread in ways that we cannot articulate. Consequently, none of the widespread views of our faith communities can escape an accountability given by “the very bread itself,” for as Brueggemann noted, “bread is the guarantee of life to the neediest, the least, the last, the most precarious, the ones without leverage or claim or resource.”[9]

All these issues are on the table when we hear the primal verbs of faith, “to take, to bless, to break, to give again.”[10]

Amen, Amen.

Doug Bannerman © 2021

[1] Water Turned to Wine (John 2.1-11)

Healing of the (Nobleman’s) Son Near Death (John 4.46-54)

Healing of the Lame Man at the Pool (John 5.1-17)

Feeding of the Five Thousand (John 6.1-15)

Walking on the Water (John 6:16-21)

Healing of the Man Born Blind (John 9.1-41)

Raising of Lazarus from the Dead (John 11.1-47)

[2] What? All 5000 of them? How many boats were there?

[3] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: Introduction, Translation, and Notes in The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1966), 267

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics in Ilse Tödt, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ernst Feil, and Clifford Green, trans. and ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works: Volume 6 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 250.

[5] See Polleichtner, Wolfgang (Würzburg) and Büchli, Jörg (Zürich), “Pistis”, in: Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. Consulted online on 30 July 2021 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e926200>. See also https://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Pistis.html

[6] Walter Brueggemann Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (Louisville London: Westminster 2007)John Knox Press

[7] op cit Brueggemann

[8] op cit Brueggemann

[9] op cit Brueggemann

[10] op cit Brueggemann

Introduction

"The common impression is that it is the unintelligent who believe in miracles, but the fact is that it is the great minds who believe most fervently in unforeseen possibilities."

Our focus today is the miracle of Jesus feeding the crowds. The story represents for me the truest miracle. The experience of my ministry is the experience of the miracle of the feeding of crowd – on repeat. I know that the miracle is real, I know that it is possible. More about this later.

Last week Doug Bannerman preached a meditation on possibility. It is with this in mind that I offer the following quote from Harry Fosdick. Harry Fosdick was a Baptist pastor serving in the 1920’s and 30’s. He was one of the early preachers to challenge fundamentalism. Fundamentalism means a literalist interpretation of the Bible. For example, in May 1922, Harry preached a sermon entitled: “"Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" The provocative sermon signalled the public conflict between historic Christianity and modern liberalism. Liberalism means that modern science, ethics, and reason are applied to scripture above doctrine. Harry Fosdick adopted modernist ways of understanding Scripture. Noting his anti-fundamentalist stance, the following quote is interesting. Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, "The common impression is that it is the unintelligent who believe in miracles, but the fact is that it is the great minds who believe most fervently in unforeseen possibilities."

"Unforeseen possibilities." Could this be a lens through which John 6 could be understood?

About John 6:1-21

All four gospels relate the story of the feeding of the crowd in the wilderness. While only Luke offers the story of the lost son and the lost sheep (Luke 15), only John offers the miracle of turning water into wine (John 2) and the raising of Lazarus (John 11). Only in Mark is the teaching offered that “the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The story of the feeding of the multitude is told 6 times and is in all gospels. Cleary the story has significance for the first followers of Jesus and the early communities of disciples.

From a literary point of view the feeding of the multitude is a variation of Old Testament themes. For me Scripture can be compared to another passion of mine – playing Piobaireachd on the bagpipes. In piobaireachd, a player begins the 10-minute tune with the urlar or ground. This is the opening movement. The 4 or 5 parts or movements that follow are variations of the urlar or ground movement, such as the taorluath and crunluath. Similarly, the urlar or ground movement in Scripture is (in my view) the hospitality of Sarah and Abraham in Genesis 18. Here Abraham and Sarah offer three guests, or if the Eastern Orthodox interpretation is to be believed, the Triune God, a feast in the wilderness. This desert hospitality is a product of the harsh landscape in which the story is contextualised. For Abraham and Sarah to refuse refreshment and sustenance for the wandering strangers is to let them die.

The hospitality is the transformation. We transform and are transformed. In hospitality we are transformed from stranger to guest. We are transformed from guest to friend.

Variations of this hospitality in the wilderness theme are scattered throughout the Scriptures. A key variation of the “hospitality in the desert theme” is the Manna Story in Exodus.  In Exodus, Miriam and Moses lead runaway slaves to freedom through a desert and feast on Manna. In other variations of hospitality in the wilderness Elijah is fed manna in the wilderness by angels and again later by ravens. Elijah in turn offers manna to a widow and her son when there is famine in the land. Similarly, Elisha feeds others manna as described in 2 Kings, our other reading for today.

In John 6.1-21 clear reference is made to the Passover, a feast and festival that remembers the Exodus from Egypt through the wilderness to the promised land. The reference to Passover makes the point that Jesus is the new Moses offering a New Exodus from slavery to freedom. John 6.1-21 offers some of the political edge of Mark’s version of the story. In Mark 6.30-44 and Mark 8.1-14, the feast Jesus offers when the crowds are fed bread and fish is contrasted by the banquets Herod offers. In Jesus feast several baskets of bread and fish are left over. In Herod’s banquet nothing is left over except death and destruction. In John 6 Jesus withdraws before they can make him king by force. In Mark and Matthew, the possibility of the crowd being turned into an army under Jesus is strongly intimated.

The mechanics of the miracle of hospitality

As the miracle of feeding happened in Genesis 18 with Abraham and Sarah, in Exodus 16 with Miriam and Moses, in 1 and 2 Kings in the lives of Elijah and Elisha and in the work of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; so too can it happen in our lives. None of the Gospels explain how the miracle happened. All they know was that they started off with very little, but somehow the little became more than enough, it was an abundance with plenty to spare.

Some believe that Jesus empowered by the Spirit of God miraculously undid science and expanded the bread and fish until there was more than enough to share. Others believe that the story Ion John 6.1-21 is a miracle of shared generosity. The interpretation is that the crowds witnessed a young boy sharing his lunch and were inspired to do the same until there was an abundance.

Nobody quite knows how the miracle happened, they just know that it did. On the face of it the situation must have felt hopeless and the offering silly. There is a huge crowd, in a wilderness setting, no markets nearby, and they are hungry. The price tag for a decent feed is overwhelmingly huge. A young boy offers two barley loaves and five fish. It must have seemed a silly offering, one that could hardly make a dent in one boy’s hunger, let alone a multitude (I consider myself an authority on this. I have two young boys who each eat a portion for a normal family of four – at every meal. 2 loaves and five fish is a snack, not even a starter for a young lad).

I have experienced so many similar miracles like the one recorded in John 6.1-21 – I honestly don’t know how they happened, but I know they did. The problems were overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable. The little that I could offer seemed silly, insignificant, and insufficient. Yet I left every time with an abundance. Unforeseen possibilities? Absolutely. I offer only two examples of the many hundreds I could share. 

When I was in Johannesburg, I was an HIV/AIDS activist and I partnered with a group of amazing women living in Orange Farm. Orange Farm is an informal settlement south of Johannesburg. Most live in shacks, there are few roads, no electricity and running water is by means of one shared communal tap. On one of my visits to Orange Farm I became aware of child headed households. Parents had died because of AIDS and older siblings were left to care for the family. 

Hunger and poverty are standard problems in South Africa. There is no Centrelink. There is no social welfare whatsoever. Many of these children were not even documented with birth certificates or identity documents. As far as I knew, I was the only person belonging to any institution that knew about these children. Without knowing how I was going to make it happen, I made a commitment to provide food monthly for the child headed households in extension 1, the area of Orange Farm in which my new friends lived. I offered my two barley loaves and five fish, begged for help from my darling church, from that month onwards the kids each had a grocery hamper to see them through the month. The early months were a nightmare as my idealistic intentions were not matched with admin and management processes. Yet, and I don’t know how it happened, people, businesses, schools, and organisations came on board. The local grocery store packed the boxes and provided a delivery truck and driver to take me to Orange Farm. My 2 loaves and five fish were multiplied to feed a multitude.

Another story. The women in Orange Farm I was working with were worried that the teenagers who headed these child-headed households had dropped out of school to look after young siblings. One of the women used her last paycheck, a mere $50 dollars, to purchase recycled iron and wood to build a shack that would serve as a kindy, so that the older children could leave their younger siblings in safety while they continued their schooling.

Eventually the shack was added onto. I was very moved by this and spoke of the story to others.

Again, I don’t exactly know how it happened, but in the picture below you can see the school that was built to support the education of the children aged 0-6.

  The point being made is this:

·         although we may be in a wilderness and there is nothing around,

·         although the problems we face seem insurmountable

·         and our available resources insufficient and insignificant,

we are asked nevertheless to offer what we have, even if it is as meagre as small fish and two pieces of bread.

·         We offer what hospitality we can in love,

·         we allow it to be blessed acknowledging that it came as bread from heaven anyway,

·         we happily break it for only broken things can be shared, and we distribute our offering confidently, knowing that that our generosity and hospitality is transformed, even if we don’t know how.

What is your wilderness and what is your hungry and desperate multitude? And what bread or fish can you offer? Perhaps climate catastrophe keeps you awake at night, hungry as a multitude in a desert. Offer what you can with love, give it to God to be blessed for it is bread from heaven, and keep doing the little you can, knowing that an abundance consists of many little offerings.

Perhaps your wilderness hunger is mental illness, and the darkness seems insurmountable, and your energy insufficient. Well, what is the little you can offer? Perhaps its only getting out of the bed and having a shower. Offer the little you can do with love and offer it for blessing for it is bread from heaven, trust that the abundance will follow. Nobody knows when or how, but the abundance will follow.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels says:

What makes something bread from heaven? Is it the thing itself or the one who sends it? How you answer those questions has a lot to do with how you sense God’s presence in your life. . . . If you are willing to look at everything that comes to you as coming to you from God, then there will be no end to the manna in your life. Nothing will be too ordinary or too transitory to remind you of God. The miracle is that God is always sending us something to eat. . . . God gives the true bread from heaven, the bread that gives life to the world.

My cello teacher has a way asking me what seems, a first sight , to be a simple question. “What are you thinking when you …?” The question could refer to my bow hold, or how I draw it across the strings, or what my left hand is doing, or what are my fingers doing when they encounter the strings. Provocative! And informing. What I am thinking, what my mood happens to be, or what my state of mind is at any given moment, how I am sitting – all feed into the quality of the sound my darling cello produces. That sound accurately portrays something about my state of being. I mean Being with a capital B.

The possibilities provoked by this mode of questioning are endless. The question, “What do you think about when …”, is a valuable entry into profound reflection.

What do you think about when you enter the church, when you sit, perhaps, in a moment of silent preparation prior to enjoining the mysteries of our faith? And if you think about God, what are you thinking? What do you think about when you take the host into your hand?

Long before he was a saint or bishop, the 4th century Cyril of Jerusalem said

In approaching … make your left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a King. … [and] after having carefully hallowed your eyes by the touch of the holy body, partake of it … [1]

A practice to which many of us still adhere. But what are you thinking as you do that? And what are we doing when we hallow our eyes. We hold God in the palms of our hands, both literally and metaphorically. That is the nature of sacrament. Impossibly possible.

Richard Kearney suggests that “one of the most telling ways in which the infinite comes to be experienced and imagined by finite minds is as possibility – that is, as the ability to be.” That is a curious phrase to adopt for God. But Kearney does not offer us some recently discovered ‘Master Word by which we might unlock the ancient Secret of divine nature. [2] Rather it is a kind of poetic conjecture with which to exercise our spiritual muscles.

Many scriptural passages inform us that what is impossible for us is possible for God. John’s prologue tells us that our ability to become sons of God in the Kingdom is made possible by God: ‘Light shone in the darkness and to all who received it was given the possibility (dunamis) to become sons of God.’ Here, it is crucial for us to keep in mind that the Greek term dunamis translates as either power or possibility, a device of semantic ambivalence that is similar to John’s use of the Greek pneuma which translates as either wind or spirit.

And the Gospels are full of metaphors, images, parables and symbols deployed to communicate the eschatological promise in which the “God of small things,”[3] is vibrantly active. Yeast in flour, pearl of great price, mustard seed growing into the largest tree in the world (poetic licence) in which the birds of the sky can roost, and, of course, an infant. Big things grow from little things, minute things.

The little things are imbued with possibility, a possibility only realised when some other agency cooperates. The baker crafts the dough, the pearl is sold at market, the farmer plants the mustard seed and nurtures its growth, the mother nurtures the infant from the very genesis of conception, the cellist plays the cello. There is, as it were, a gift exchange, the mystery of growth, between the human agent and the little thing.

Christ became a little thing, ‘the least of these,’ when he emptied himself of absolute power (kenosis) echoing Isaiah’s striking phrase, ‘a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.’ (Isaiah 42.1-4) Gospel also hath it that the Judgement of the Kingdom is related to how we respond in history, here and now, to ‘least of these, elakhistōn (Matthew 25.40).

Which brings us to the paradox that although the Kingdom has already come – and is “incarnate here and now in the loving gestures of Christ and all those who give, or receive, a cup of water – it still remains a possibility yet to come.” ‘As “eternal,” the kingdom transcends all chronologies of time.’ Christ indicated this when he said, ‘before Abraham was, I am.’ John (8.58) ‘In short, the Kingdom is (1) already there as historical possibility, and (2) not yet there as historically realised kingdom “come on earth.”’ [4]

Now, I am taking merciless short cuts here, but I am steering towards the idea that creation may be depicted as an endless giving of possibility.

Shortly before her death in Auschwitz, Dutch born Etty Hillesum wrote:

You God cannot help us but we must help you and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.[5]

Centuries before her, Nicholas of Cusa (1404-1464), inter alia, declared that “God is all he is able to be,”[6] a phrase that needs unpacking. Kearney’s words.

Unlike the God of metaphysical omnipotence, … which seeks to justify evil as part of the divine will, … [the] notion of God as an “abling to be” (posse or possest) points in a radically different direction. … Since God is all good, God is not able to be non-God – that is, … defective or evil. In other words, God is not omnipotent in the traditional metaphysical sense[7] … The Divine is not some being able to be all good and evil things. That is why God could not help Etty Hillesum and other victims of the Holocaust: God is not responsible for evil. And Hillesum understood this all too well when she turned the old hierarchies on their head and declared that it is we who must help God to be God. …

If Hillesum and others like her had not let God be God by defending the divine dwelling place of caritas within them, even in the most hellish moments of the death-camps, there would have been no measure of love – albeit as small as a mustard seed – to defy the hate of the Gestapo.[8]

Many figures in literature echo this way of thinking about God, that the possible God relies on human beings to become God.

The immortal Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, wrote:

Why don’t you think of Him [God] as the one who is coming, one who has been approaching from all eternity; the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? What keeps you from projecting His birth into the ages that are coming into existence, and living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don’t you see how everything that happens is again and again a new beginning, and couldn’t it be His [God’s] beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful?

If He is the most perfect one, must not what is less perfect precede him, so that he can choose himself out of fullness and superabundance? – Must not He be the last one, so that He can include everything in himself, and what meaning would we have if He whom we are longing for has already existed? As bees gather honey, so we collect what is sweetest out of all things and build Him.

So, as Evelyn Underhill wrote,

I COME in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

Not borne on morning wings

Of majesty, but I have set My Feet

Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat

That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.

There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;

Not broken or divided, saith our God!

In your strait garden plot I come to flower:

About your porch My Vine

Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;

Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.[9]

Doug Bannerman © 2021

[1] St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 23.21 see CHURCH FATHERS/ Catechetical Lecture 23 (Cyril of Jerusalem).webarchive

[2] Richard Kearney “Re-imagining God” in John D Caputo and Michael J Scanlon Eds. Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Enquiry (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2007) pp51-65

[3] The God of Small Things is the title pf Arundhati Roy’s wonderful novel

[4] Kearney op cit p 53

[5] Etty Hillesum An Interrupted Life (New York: Owl, 1966) p 176

[6] Nicholas of Cusa Trialogos de Possest, in J. Hopkins A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1978) p69. The original Latin is: Deus est omne id quod esse potest.

[7] As understood by Leibnitz and Hegel

[8] Kearney op cit p 69

[9] From the poem Immanence, by Evelyn Underhill, Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse 1917

I want you to think about the best feast you ever had. Relive the experience of the best feast ever, what made the experience so great? What was so wonderful?

Now imagine the worst dinner party fiasco ever. What went wrong? Was it a … Christmas occasion???? Ambrose Bierce in “The Devil's Dictionary” defines Christmas in the following way: "A day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic behaviour". 

Feast or fiasco – the best feast ever or the worst banquet fiasco. Remembering these two experiences is a key to unlocking Mark 6.14-29.

Herod’s Banquet fiasco contrasts Jesus’ Feast of Equals (Mark 6.14-29 and Mark 6.30-44). Herod’s banquet fiasco is an orgy of gastronomic overindulgence rather than a feast. In Herod’s palace are the elite of his day, fat cats who profit at the expense and pain of others.  

Later, we will encounter a new feast. At Jesus’ feast, the people of God share a meal of elegant simplicity. Bread and fish is given to Jesus. Jesus offers to God gratitude for the gifts of the earth and shares bread with a great multitude. (5000 men the Bible says, not counting women and children). This second feast of bread and fish is a miracle of sharing the fruits of the earth. The sharing of bread and fish echoes the story of Manna in the desert when God’s people taste liberation from oppression. Jesus’ feast is the Good News; but it is not where we are today.

We struggle today with the first “meal” – the banquet fiasco of Herod. According to the historian Josephus, Herod had John the Baptist killed because John was just too good at his job. Josephus writes: “When others joined the crowds about John because they were aroused to the highest degree by his words, Herod became alarmed” (in Meyers 2008:14).  Herod was worried that John was such a good public speaker that he might inspire an uprising.

Mark is not interested in writing an historical textbook. Since Mark’s version differs from the historical facts of which Mark would have been aware, clearly there is a writing strategy that he wants us to understand.

Mark writes a parody of the death of John the Baptist. The word parody is important for us. Parody is satire – how one can criticise the powers that be through humour and the appeal to the ridiculous.  Mark’s interest is in explaining the injustice of Herod’s kingdom through parody.

Mark creates a scene by appealing to the ridiculous. Herod and his friends are overindulging.  On a drunken whim Herod makes a promise to his stepdaughter because she pleases him. There is something unsettling about Herod being pleased by his stepdaughter’s dance and we the reader can sense the underlying incestuous nature of the scene. Given that Herod has married his brother’s wife, there is a problem here. The marriage of Herod and Herodias, his brother Phillip’s wife, is how Herod expands his kingdom and the political alliances he forms through marriage. The incestuous nature of Herod’s relationship and how his family dynamics leak into his political relationships explains Mark’s view of the inner circle of Jewish power. Through parody Mark implies that the structures of power are incestuous.  Military, commerce, and government are in bed together.

Herodias, stepdaughter of Herod, asks for John’s head on a platter. Herod obliges to “keep the oath he made”. The head symbolises honour. Herod trades the prophet’s honour to honour his own stupid drunken oath. What is ridiculous is how Herod honours his oath to Herodias because of the law but honours little else in the law. The ridiculous banquet scene is filled with the bitter pain of what it means to lose a truth teller. The parody is there to empower us with insight.

Herod’s banquet is a parody that empowers us. It equips us to do two things. First, it helps us to see oppression as it really is. It puts “success” under a microscope. Power, money, and influence in Herod’s life does not seem as successful as the illusion would make us believe.

Secondly, the parody of the banquet offers an image of the cost of discipleship. The scene is set during the ministry of the disciples who go out in twos to heal and announce the good news (Mark 6.1-14). For truth tellers who announce an alternative world view, the consequences are that the world and its powers will not like it. In short to follow Jesus, to announce grace and mercy and a new way of life, you will lose your head. Oscar Romero knew that. Steve Biko knew that. Dorothy Day knew that. Andrew Wilkie knows that. 

The parody of Herod’s banquet prepares us also for the death of Jesus who dies similarly. Herod was grieved at the death of John. The word for grieve is used again of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. John died; Jesus will die too. Caiaphas hosting a banquet of his own will call for the death of Jesus.   

In concluding I want to leave you with a gift, a present. The gift is a word. Gasvryheid generally translates as hospitality. But it means more than that. Gasvryheid describes the kindness in welcoming a guest. Gas means guest. Vryheid means freedom. Thus, gasvryheid is the freedom of the guest.

This Good News can surely be the foundation of that beautiful word: Gasvryheid – freedom of the guest. Surely the feast that Jesus creates is precisely freedom; freedom from oppression, freedom from some having too much and others having too little, freedom to share so that there is fair balance where we all have enough.

Picture now in your hands two invitations to different parties, two different meals. One invitation is to Herod’s banquet. A second invitation is the feast of bread and fish with Jesus.  What type of meal do we want? Do we want a meal in Herod’s palace? A meal that is toxic because its indulgence is based on the slavery and exploitation of others? Or do we want to share in the meal that Jesus offers? The meal that Jesus offers is gasvryheid – freedom of the guest.

A doctor and a lawyer were talking at a party. Their conversation was constantly interrupted by people describing their ailments and asking the doctor for free medical advice. After an hour of this, the exasperated doctor asked the lawyer, "What do you do to stop people from asking you for legal advice when you're out of the office?" "I give it to them," replied the lawyer, "and then I send them a bill." The doctor was shocked but agreed to give it a try. The next day, still feeling slightly guilty, the doctor prepared the bills. When he went to place them in his mailbox, he found a bill from the lawyer.

The above joke reminds me of a home situation. You may be aware that I am the eldest of four daughters. Two of my sisters are doctors, one in South Africa and the other is a head of department in Tallah hospital Dublin. From time to time my father asks my sisters for medical advice. Their reply is always the same: “Go to your GP.” For this reason, he was reasonably upset to find out that I was given extensive medical advice and a list of medical treatments I could use. He wanted to know why I received medical advice from my sisters while he was merely told to “go to his GP”. Reflecting, I suggested to him that the difference between him and I was perhaps that I took advice while he argued with and then rejected similar advice.

A doctor’s professional advice is received with respect in an hospital environment while it’s doubted in the family home. Similarly, Jesus says he is a prophet is without honour – he is disowned by his family.

Jesus, a prophet with honour except within the home context, is unable to be the transforming presence he wants to be: “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” It is a chilling assessment to consider the ways in which we prevent prophets and other ministers from being effective. We could consider the following questions:

·         What are the ways in which I might be blocking the effectiveness of God’s spirit in me?

·         What are the stumbling blocks in my heart or this community they may prevent a full working of God’s power?

·         What are the ways that I choke faith?

·         Is my unbelief preventing a full experience of God’s work?

Holman Hunt’s painting has Jesus knocking on a door, but the latch is on the inside. The door can only be opened from the inside. With God there is no forcible entry. The decision to allow God to work in our lives is ours.

In Mark 6 Jesus preaches in the synagogue, is rejected, and withdraws. Jesus then re-engages his mission by sending his 12 disciples out in 2’s into the villages. The disciples return joyous at their success. Mark 6 continues the pattern of engagement and withdrawal seen in Mark 1 and 3. In all three chapters Jesus engages, is rejected, withdraws, and then regroups and continues. The purpose of this pattern is to remind the reader or disciples that despite failure the story must go on, discipleship must continue. Remember that Mark’s Gospel is manual on radical discipleship, on non-violent revolution, on disrupting the status quo where some accumulate wealth at the expense of the many. As disciples who partner with God in mending creation, failure is a given. Mark’s Gospel inspires the resilience to continue with a vision of a transformed society in the face of failure.

Jesus is rejected by his family, his relatives, and his own household. Stripped of clan and tribal support Jesus continues his itinerant mission in the village. The word apostolein means to send out. From apostolein we derive apostles. The apostles are sent out into the village with the mission of Jesus. What is their equipment for this mission? In our context they would require WWCC, Faithfulness in Service certification, Safe Ministry Certificate, Police Clearance, evidence of training, references, a role description indicating who they are accountable to and supervised by and a relevant license for ministry. Jesus instead equips them only with the means of travel: a staff, and sandals, but nothing else. Instead, the disciples are to rely solely on the hospitality of the villages they minister in. The hospitality does two things, I think. It keeps the disciples respectful and disables any attempt to impose their views of ministry with force.

Secondly it is reminiscent of Exodus 16. In the same way that the spiritual ancestors under Miriam and Moses relied on the hospitality of God in the wilderness so too must the disciples in Mark rely on God’s hospitality through others. In Exodus 16 God’s people rely on God’s hospitality through Manna. Manna is aphid poo. Aphids are scale insects who eat tamarisk leaves and defecate 130 percent of their body mass. Even today Bedouin shepherds collect “man” or “manna” for food. In English manna is sometimes called honeydew. By relying on manna Moses and Miriam and the escaped slaves learned to live off the land and deprogrammed their reliance on slavery, over consumption and hoarding.

Similarly, Israel was invited to affirm its identity as descendants of escaped slaves at every harvest. The covenant renewal ceremony is outlined in Dt. 26: 5-9, which literally in Hebrew began “Arami oved avi”: a wandering Aramean is my ancestor. Oved is wandering but can also be a “stray,” a “wanderer”, someone who is feral, wild or a maroon, like an escaped slave ("If you look at how the word 'maroon' came about, you will recognise that it was a derogatory term which described the slaves who leave the plantation and did not return). The liturgy at harvest festivals says, in the words of Jim Perkinson:

“we are a social movement of folk who claim as “father” or “mother”—as our ancestral line—anyone in history who has dared to “exit,” to jump away from empire, to leave the oppressive city-state system, re-learn skills out in the wild with herd animals as teachers, live on the land like escaped slaves making common cause with indigenous dwellers who still know how to do such.”

Today is the beginning of NAIDOC week. In our Australian context I often think that the First Nations people are the true prophets who like Jesus are without honour in their own land. Like Jesus the First Nations people have been treated as a ‘scandalion’ by us white colonisers. Should we learn to listen to the God given prophets in our land, the First Nations peoples, much can be learnt.

I spoke earlier of the stumbling blocks to God’s power working in our lives. Australia is one of the most secularised nations. Secularisation and its lack of appreciation for symbol, metaphor and ritual is a significant stumbling block to spirituality flourishing. First Nations people with their wisdom and connection to country and spirit are much needed prophets who can help us to reconnect with what is most real. A closing prayer:

God of all wonder,
We pause in the busyness of our days to listen deeply to the wisdom of this land and those who belong to it.

May our minds be open to dialogue,
May our hearts be open to transformation and

May our hands do the work of reconciliation.

We ask that the Spirit accompany us on our journey of healing on these lands, seas and waterways; We also ask the Spirit of peace be with all those who are living a life of fear, dispossession and distress. We make this prayer in the name of Jesus our brother and friend. Amen.

Sources:

Jim Perkinson, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit. https://radicaldiscipleship.net/tag/jim-perkinson/page/2/. Meyers, Ched. Binding the Strongman.

https://www.cns.catholic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/NAIDOC-Week-for-Parents-2020.p

In Mark 5 Jesus is asked to heal the 12-year-old daughter of a prominent Jewish leader. The journey towards the leader’s home is interrupted by an invisible woman who has bled dry in the 12-year search for a cure for her haemorrhaging. When Jesus resumes his journey to the 12-year-old girl we find that she has died.

The story follows the usual a-b-a sandwich technique used by the writers of Mark’s Gospel: the story of the girl is intercalated by the story of the woman haemorrhaging blood. What unites the story of the woman being healed of her haemorrhaging with the story of the sick daughter is the number 12. The repeated use of the symbol 12 requires that the woman and the girl are the interpretative lens for each other’s story.

The two stories in Mark 5 are experiences of healing. The symbol 12 elevates the meaning of these stories further. 12 symbolises Israel. The 12-year-old daughter of the Jewish leader is in a coma. Her coma symbolises that the faith of the Israelites is dead, it has lost all life and its children are “dead”. By following the teachings of the prophets lived out in the sermons and lifestyle of Jesus the faith of Israel can be resurrected just as the girl is resurrected. The woman haemorrhaging symbolises how the people of the land are bled dry by Temple and Roman authority. The most vulnerable in society, the girl child and the elderly sick woman without a male protector, experience the worst effects of a systemic abuse.

The healing is subversive. While the 12-year-old daughter of a Jewish leader is clearly a daughter of Israel, Jesus uses the term daughter to address the older woman. The reason this is so subversive is that the woman bleeding for 12 years is an invisible outsider, a poverty stricken, ill woman excluded from Israel, excluded from religion, excluded from society, excluded from family and thought to be excluded from God. Moreover, she is told that her faith has healed her; her faith is juxtaposed with the disciples’ lack of faith in Mark 4. The scandal of Jesus is naming an outcast woman as an icon of faith and a true daughter of Israel. What is even more subversive is that Jesus brings direct attention to the fact that she was healed through touch. The purity codes meant that the bleeding woman was unclean and everyone she touched would be unclean. The attention Jesus draws to touch highlights the woman’s courage in stepping over the pure/impure boundary. Jesus, having been touched by the older woman, is also unclean. Yet in his “unclean” state enters the home of a Jewish leader and successfully heals his daughter.

The writers of Mark’s Gospel are provocative in that they have brought to light a story that is taboo and invisible. To state the bleeding obvious (pun intended), the woman “with the issue of blood” is not suffering from a 12-year nosebleed. Her haemorrhaging is not stated, but her bleeding may possibly have been a menstrual period with excessive flow or a type of abnormal uterine bleeding.

Following the example of Mark’s Gospel, we too can bring to light stories of suffering that are taboo and invisible. While the suffering from the COVID pandemic is globally significant, researchers are helping us understand that the shadow pandemic of domestic abuse is horrific. In our context and the context of Mark 5 we bring to light the stories of suffering of women and children rendered invisible by societal structures, in this case the effects of domestic abuse. By making visible the invisible the healing journey can begin.

Jesus differs from the disciples and the crowds in his response to the woman with the issue of blood. While in the busyness of helping others the disciples rush past the older woman, Jesus practices what Carol Gilligan calls “an unhurried presence.” Jesus is centred and grounded, noticing shifts in energy and power. Likewise, we too can learn the spiritual practice of being an unhurried presence and offer compassion to those we journey alongside.

The church together confers baptism on babies and children. Church members pledge their support for baptised children and promise to nourish them in the faith of the church. As these children reach the age of 12 like Jairus’ daughter, it may be tempting to revert to judgement and irritation rather than being the compassionate unhurried presence 12-year-olds need.  From 12 the teenage brain undergoes tremendous development. The neural pruning in the brain means that teens will forget and lose their possessions, they cannot help it. The growth of the limbic system means that teens have roller coaster emotions. The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for executive function like planning, offering thoughtful mature responses and understanding cause and effect. For teens, the connections between the pre-frontal cortex and the rest of the brain are in development until about 18 for girls and 25 for boys. Now add a volatile cocktail of hormones and you could have a perfect storm. Teens need our compassionate unhurried presence in developing their full potential.

Values

In February 2021 Alstonville Anglicans’ leaders were on retreat. They considered what they loved best about Alstonville Anglicans. As stories were shared, something beautiful happened: it was as if a stunning gift floated down from heaven and nestled amidst us. What follows are the best words that we are able to offer, to describe what we love best about Alstonville Anglicans.  When you come to us and when we go to you, this is what we are thinking and feeling about you.

•      Beloved:

•      each person comes into the world as an original blessing from God. Thus, each person is a beloved person: significant, wanted and loved.

•      Belonging:

•      anyone who wants to belong already belongs. We want to welcome each other as a gift, saying, “my greatest difference from you is my greatest gift to you”. Community matters and is protected. We want to consciously enjoy each other hearing “the Christ in me sees the Christ in you.”

•      Being:

•      we are human beings not human doings. Our being present is important. The Spirit of God vibrates within us “like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.”

•      Believing:

•      we are partners with God in living heaven on earth now. We want to be one call among many, offering a provocative but compassionate voice calling for a whole new way of thinking and believing that is loving, liberating and lifegiving.

•      Blessing:

•      As beloved original blessings, we are blessed to be a blessing to others. God is always on God’s way through us to creation, of which humans are a part. We believe everyone is called, that everyone has something beautiful to do for God. We want to be the sort of beloved community that creates space for people to express their calling.

The values above are a statement of how we view you and ourselves, and every stranger that God sends us, who is a friend in waiting. The best news is that there is little for each of you to do, except to be who you already are. Each of you are beloved original blessings. Each of you belong to God and each other. Aware of your inner being, you believe in loving, life-giving and liberating ways. You are a blessing to others, making life even more beautiful for them. This is the energy of Alstonville Anglicans: beloved, belonging, being, believing, blessing.

Many young children climb into bed with their parents because they are scared during the night. Young adults fear what their HSC or university results will be and worry about careers and unemployment. There is widespread concern about global warming. Older Adults fear blood clots after COVID vaccinations; their driving licence renewal tests and failing health. Everyone has some fears and often this is temporarily necessary; for example, we need caution crossing roads. However, some fear is irrational. 

How we deal with fear is the issue. Some people seem to brush fears aside and “get over it” while others seem stuck and even paralysed by fears. Why? What’s the difference? How might we live with a cautious awareness of dangers and, at the same time, live joyfully without anxiousness? Maybe our Bible readings give us the answer. 

Today, we have heard some small parts of the story of Job and the Good News according to Mark. There’s always a connection between First (or old) Testament reading and Gospel. Today the two readings we heard are connected by the subject of water (or sea). 

The people of Israel had a thing about water. They didn’t like the sea. Perhaps that’s why they named what we would call a big lake The Sea of Galilee! The Israelites thought that water was the domain of demons; a place for the evil one. In their minds, water was a place where God had opposition. So, the Israelites feared the sea and preferred to stay on dry land where they thought that they were in the security of God’s power. Israel was not a seafaring nation. The people believed that God was at war with the wild forces that ruled the sea. 

Job Chapter 38 gives God’s profound response to the questions of Job as to why God would allow a good person to suffer. In our first hymn today, we were asking the same questions that Job had been asking. Why God? God’s response is to ask, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements?” Then, in verse 8, there’s the important words that tie in with the Gospel story of the storm at sea when Jesus and his disciples are in a boat. God says to Job “Who shut in the sea with doors …. and prescribed bounds for the sea?” In other words, God is saying “who do you think has control of the sea?”

God’s ironic words “surely you know” remind us of how much we actually don’t know. This is a very sharp and purposeful lesson for us to never think that we know everything that God knows. We are being reminded that this amazing love that God has for us, and for everything that God has created, can be seen in the way the world functions and that God’s love gives meaning to everything.

Well now, what are we able to learn from Mark? Earlier in Mark we have been told about Jesus’ power in teaching; we have seen this power confirmed by Jesus’ defeat of the demonic forces that plague our human existence and make it hard for people to live the life that God intends us to live. 

This 4th chapter of Mark has had a number of parables on the kingdom. Last week we heard the parables of growing seed and the mustard bush. I really appreciated the way Desiree explained that Mark’s message of hope can sustain us against the darkness we encounter. The mustard seed inspires our faith, imagination, patience and endurance. 

This section of Mark finishes with story we heard today of Jesus and the disciples getting into a boat when the evening had come. Jesus wanted to leave the crowd behind and cross to the other side. A storm blows up. We know the story well and, in Sunday School, we probably have all coloured in pictures of Jesus in the boat with big waves about and storm clouds blowing overhead.

There’s a contrast between the behaviour and attitude of the disciples in the boat and the actions and demeanour of Jesus. The disciples are afraid. However, Jesus sleeps through the storm. Jesus simply is not anxious. 

It’s not that Jesus is unconcerned with the reality of evil or that he is uncaring about the fate of his disciples. Yet Jesus is not overcome with anxiety as the disciples are, because he has full confidence in the presence and the power of God to deal with the threats of the stormy sea. 

Jesus has taught that the kingdom of life and justice is a gift from God.  Having faith means accepting that gift and living accordingly. Trusting and living a relaxed, even joyful life without anxiety.  

The disciples in the boat show us that there is a subtle way of not believing. There is a subtle way of not trusting in the Lord. It is being afraid!  A life of fearfulness and constant worrying is a life of subtle unbelief. This unbelief is very subtle because it doesn’t seem like rejection.  Yet, in reality, it is rejecting the peace beyond our understanding that God offers.  Significantly, Philippians 4:4 gives us the formula for a life of peace. It says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”.  

What I see in this story of Jesus and the disciples in a storm at sea is Jesus making it quite clear that being afraid is closely linked to not having faith.  Jesus says in verse 40 “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

If there is faith,…  there is no fear! 

Yes, it’s a tough world. Skyrocketing rental costs are forcing some people into homelessness. (Recently our daughter’s rent went up $100 a week.) The cost of living is rising and seems to be higher than we can manage. It was very relevant that in the first hymn today we sang “children are crying, hungry for food. People are homeless, lost and alone”

The media attention being given to the Tamil refugee family trying to return to Biloela reminds us of our good fortune in Australia and makes us aware that many of the big problems in this world are “out there” in other places. We certainly live in the “lucky country”.  

Because we are afraid of losing our present security and privileges we can easily overlook and refuse to accept the total availability of God’s protection. We can miss out on all that God promises us. Also, if we are insecure, we might not be as welcoming and generous as we might otherwise be.

The story of God’s power in Jesus stilling the storm reminds all of us that fear in the challenges of living a Christian life hides something very grave; a lack of faith! This Gospel story is teaching that our level of fear rises depending on the smallness of our faith. Less faith means more fear. More faith means less fear.

If there is faith, there is no fear of the difficulties and threats we inevitably face in this broken world. Although there may not be rest, with faith there is profound peace.

Our encouragement is in knowing that trusting in God’s amazing love for each of us is what gives us reason to have joy and courage to face the adversities and challenges of our lives.

Ezekiel 17:22-24

22 Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. 24All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.

Mark 4:26-34

26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. 

Introduction

New immigrants to Australia surely provide hours of entertainment to true blue, dinky die, fair dinkum, yocal local Aussies. For example:

·      An immigrant’s terror at all the different things that kill you in country Australia.

·      Bringing a plate to a bring-and-share function because you were asked to “bring a plate” and feeling silly because your plate is empty.  

·      Scratching your head and trying to translate the untranslatable such as this: “pass my sunnies would ya. I gotta make tracks cos I’m meeting the rellos for brekkie at the maccas near the servo”. Even writing this down has caused by spell check to melt down in a hissy fit.

When my family and I first arrived in Australia, it was our gardening habits that amused the locals. We had created a garden bed around what we thought were the most beautiful ferns. The Aussies were in hysterics. Turns out our “ferns” were hated bracken that farmers spent hours trying to be rid of. Besides nurturing the bracken, we were delighted with the arum lilies that we tended with much care. In South Africa these arum lilies are sought after expensive plants. In Australia they are such a dangerous, noxious weed, they are illegal to grow. Even having them on your property could cop you an outrageously expensive fine.

In reflecting on these early experiences, the number one lesson to learn is the importance of understanding context. Context determines meaning. In one context, a flower is highly treasured, in another context that same flower is so noxiously dangerous it can totally destroy one of the world’s most unique biodiversity hotspots.  We can apply this lesson to reading scripture – context determines meaning.

Context of Mark 4: 26 -35

Besides the narrative context of a Biblical passage, we also pay attention to the geographical, economic, historical and political contexts.

Narrative and geo-politcal context

Jesus precedes the parable about the seed growing by itself with the parable of a crop that produces an overabundance (Mark 4.1-9). The crop is out of control.  The story is dangerously and politically subversive. With such a bumper crop, any tenant farmer can pay off the entirety of his debt and have wealth left over. Jesus is threatening the basis of the serf economy of this time. Through this parable Jesus is announcing the good news of the kingdom – the cancellation of debt and the freedom of people – the day of jubilee.

For first century middle eastern Galilean subsistence farmers, mustard is noxious plant (Mark 4.30-32).  Mustard seed is so invasive it is banned from gardens by rabbis because it would take over. Why on earth would anyone plant a mustard seed? It would be the equivalent of a Northern Rivers macadamia farmer planting lantana or alligator weed.  

The flavour of these stories is anarchy. Jesus is comparing the kingdom of God to wild, untamed, out of control growth of both good and bad seed – all of which are embraced. The grain harvest is as feral as the mustard seed harvest, and neither can be controlled, and both are abundant.

Biblical context

The parable of the seed that grows all by itself and no one knows how, and the mustard seed evoke memory from different aspects of the biblical context including Ezekiel, Moses, Exodus and Abraham and Sarah our spiritual ancestors.

Mark uses the parable from Ezekiel in telling the story of the mustard seed. The small sprig planted by Yahweh will bear fruit and the branches will shelter birds in Ezekiel 17.22 as they do in Mark 4.30-32.

In Ezekiel the tree metaphor is two edged: while it refers to the shelter offered by trees (as in Ezekiel 17.22). The tree image also criticises political empires. In Ezekiel 30 God will cause the imperial trees to be cut down, “and upon its ruin will dwell the birds of the air” (Ezekiel 31.4). In Ezekiel 30 and 31 the empire of Egypt will fall. In Mark 4 the empire of Rome and temple religion will fall.

Mark also evokes memories of the Exodus people, runaway slaves, feasting on Manna as it rained down from heaven. The lavishness of the crops described in the parables of Mark 4 point to the abundant provision of God for God’s people in the wilderness of the desert after fleeing Pharoah’s Egypt.

Mark’s Gospel is a manual on political resistance, a “how to” guide for resisting empire. In today’s terms Mark’s manual on effective far-reaching discipleship translates well for those critiquing colonial exploitation, capitalism, racism and oppressive economies that privilege the wealthy by stealing from the poor. In times of fatigue, when hopeful optimism turns to depressing cynicism, Mark’s parables advocate patience, and instil courage and hope. When faced with the powers of oppression Mark’s Gospel inspires faith over anxiety and the keen reminder that the small acts of resistance yield abundant dividends.

Mark’s parables in the context of 21st century Alstonville Anglicans

In our context we may not be faced with the oppressive onslaught of a Roman empire and a corrupt religious institution exploiting the vulnerable. However, Mark’s message of hope against darkness and that the small acts of light are stronger than any darkness, does sustain us. Current struggles that we may be concerned about include the looming climate catastrophe and the struggle for women’s dignity, safety and full personhood in a time when domestic violence against women has never been higher. This week a report was released that indicates that domestic abuse is higher in the Anglican church than the national average. Clearly there is something about the culture, patriarchy and explicit and implicit messages of our Anglican churches that breed a violent environment. It is normal when working for positive transformation to feel despondent. At these low times Mark’s message about the effectiveness of the mustard seed inspires our faith, our imagination, our patience and our endurance as we partner with God for a world of mercy and justice.

On a personal level some may be weighed down by illness, mental health issues like depression or anxiety, grief or loneliness. The journey to full flourishing health and healing takes courage and energy. There may be times when we feel that the struggle to be whole is too overwhelming for us. We may be tempted to give up and give in. Again, Mark’s parables reach into us, reminding us that it is more common than we realise to feel despondent. In moments when we feel our efforts are too small we remember the power of the mustard seed that yields an abundance and kind shelter to others despite its small beginning. Our small efforts work in the long run. We can choose faith over anxiety, creativity and imagination over negativity and patience over apathy.

I conclude with three sentences written on the wall of a Jewish concentration camp in Cologne during World War 2.

I believe in the sun when there is no sunshine.

I believe in love even when there is no one around.

I believe in God even when God is silent.