I want to talk about suffering today. I want to be clear that the suffering caused by the abuse of people, domestic abuse of women, the horrific abuse of children, is totally unacceptable and the injustice of that is to be challenged in every way possible by every means possible and with every breath that we have. Suffering caused by abuse is unacceptable and we are all responsible to do everything we can to stop it. When I talk of suffering today I refer to what we do with the mysterious suffering that can’t be explained.  

Many faithful Christ followers remember the day God failed.  

2 Corinthians 7.14 states: If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 

Except, for some, God was deaf. Earnest, humble prayers were cried. The face of God was sought. Yet God did not answer. God did not hear from heaven. There was no healing in the land. Forgiveness from sin seemed far away.  

I remember the day God failed me. I was 30. In our church and school community was a stunning family with a 6-year-old child that radiated goodness. He became sick very mysteriously, very suddenly and very quickly. He was in a coma for weeks. We prayed for his healing. We fasted. We prayed and we prayed, and we prayed. And he died. If ever there was a prayer worth answering, this was certainly it. Yet God seemed silent. The day the young boy died faith died too. The day he died the idea of a safe universe died too; all were vulnerable to tragedy. Suffering, unbearable to witness, dissolved the parents, his sister, the school community, and the church. Why? Why did an innocent boy suffer and die? Why did the parents have to go through such unimaginable grief? Why did God not answer prayer? Why did God fail us? 

The question put to Jesus in Luke 13.1-9 is universal and timeless: How do we make sense of the intense suffering in our world? In Luke 13 people approach Jesus about the brutality and injustice of Pilate that led to horrific deaths of Galilean Jews. Jesus adds his own example of Jerusalemite Jews who died in a random construction accident when a tower fell. Why did these people have to suffer and die?  

The question about suffering in Luke 13.1 is poignant as we hear these Scriptures in the context of Russia’s death dealing invasion of Ukraine. The collapse of the tower of Siloam is not far removed from the landslides and floods that killed innocent people. Like the questioners we too want assurance. We want meaning. We want an explanation. We want the reason for suffering.  

There are no easy answers to life’s tough questions. And Jesus does not explain away the suffering. Two things are made absolutely clear:

1.    God does not cause suffering,

2.    Suffering can be transformed.  

God does not send or cause suffering. Nor is suffering a result of sin. Both the Jews and the Greek speakers held the view that suffering is the fruit of sin. Some people today still live with a cause-and-effect thinking. Jesus wants to break the equation: sin=suffering. The mindset Jesus wants to interrogate is the belief that if there is suffering there must be sin; and if there is great suffering there must be great sin. Note Jesus’ emphatic and repeated “No!” to his own questions. Jesus absolutely insists that the people who died, whether Galilean or Jerusalemite, were not more deserving of death than others. In other parts of Scripture such as John 9:2-3, Jesus rejects the idea that a man was born blind because of his or his parents’ sin.  

Jesus then invites repentance. As I have explained before, repentance here does not mean asking forgiveness for sin. Instead, repentance from the Greek metanoia means

·         to go beyond the mind you have;

·         or to change your thinking;

·         or rearrange the furniture of your mind;

·         or in the words of Paul in Romans, “be transformed through the renewing of your mind”(12.2). 

The metanoia Jesus invites is downright scary. If God does not cause suffering, if God does not send suffering as punishment for sin, then suffering just is. We have to give up our illusions of safety. We have to give up the idea that if I am good and do the right things suffering will pass me by. There is no insurance policy against suffering. Much suffering is unintentional and unavoidable. In some ways, some suffering is inevitable simply because we are living in an evolving world. If we can open ourselves to the mystery of suffering it is possible to use the energy of suffering to transform the world.  

God does not cause suffering. God does not send suffering as punishment, but the energy of suffering can be harnessed to transform the world.  Christ is our model for using the energy of suffering to transform the world. Some suffering is unavoidable. Instead of wasting that energy we can use it to make a positive difference in the world. Think of the energy of the sun or the wind. Human evolution has found ways of harnessing the power of the sun and the wind to use as fuel. Our suffering energy is potential energy. We can use it in productive ways or waste it. We can make it productive by channelling it. We direct it by our choice. How do we do this? By our loving intention. We can give it to Christ to use it for God’s project of loving union, of bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. The suffering servant songs in Isaiah taught Jesus that suffering can be redemptive for others if it is directed by love. For the pain in suffering, Moltmann writes, “is the lack of love, and the wounds in wounds are the abandonment [of love].”  

This is my interpretation of the parable of the fig tree. Suffering is a reality of being human. The suffering we undergo does produce energy. If we waste the energy of suffering, we are like the fig tree that is green all over but does not bear fruit. Deep prayer or contemplation which is total surrender to God can awaken us to the hidden presence of God in the midst of suffering and our suffering can be fruitful. Deep prayer which is total surrender to God is to give up control over pain and suffering.  

I said earlier that when that young boy died, faith died too. And it was the best thing that could ever happen. The faith that died was the faith in an all-powerful God. The God revealed in Jesus is an all-loving God that gives up power for love. The only power God has is the power of love, and love offers no controlling coercive power over. Bonhoeffer writes that “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York:  Macmillan, 1972), 360.) There is no God in heaven that has power or control over earth. God entered earth, God emptied Godself and took the form of a servant (Phil 2:6) and he was led to a cross. Barbara Brown Taylor in “God in Pain” writes that “Christianity is the only world religion that confesses a God who suffers. It is not all that popular an idea, even among Christians. We prefer a God who prevents suffering, only that is not the God we have got. What the cross teaches us is that God’s power is not the power to force human choices and end human pain. It is, instead, the power to pick up the shattered pieces and make something holy out of them— not from a distance but right close up.” 

The transformative energy of suffering can happen when we live contemplatively, that is to really know that we are in Christ and Christ is in us in this world. We know then that love is strong as death, and that love is the future fulness of our lives.

In Coles a week ago when the shelves were nearly empty, there was a young mum with two small kids. One of them, a toddler was screaming out “I WANT!!!!!”. Mum finally gave in and quiet was restored. 

In the Gospel reading today we are presented with a whole series of wants.  

What do the Pharisees really want when they warn Jesus? These Pharisees here seem to be genuine when want Jesus to “get away from here” and be safe. There were “good” Pharisees.  The Pharisee Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, and the Pharisee Paul who would eventually become an important follower of Jesus. 

The Pharisees say that Herod wants to kill Jesus. Herod is curious about Jesus, especially the suggestion that Jesus is John the Baptist raised from the dead, since he himself had John beheaded.  Interestingly, when Herod has the chance to kill Jesus in Jerusalem, he doesn’t do it, because he wants to get a sign out of him. He wants Jesus to perform a miracle as a great party trick. Jesus refers to Herod as “that fox”. Today foxes are generally thought to connote cleverness or cunning, in Jesus day they were also considered “insignificant”. 

Jesus wants to continue on his way to death in Jerusalem. His sense of purpose is strong! Jesus also wants to gather Jerusalem as a hen gathers her brood; but Israel does not want to be gathered in.  

The very word, want, can be used as a lens through which to view the whole story of the Bible; the big picture of the Bible is that God wants to gather God’s people. Yet God’s people want no part of it. So, God wants to work to win the people’s want back. 

There are so many wants! We all have things we want. Perhaps, we would be more polite and we would say something like “that would be really nice”; but, the fact is we want.  

With floods all along the coast from Gympie to the back of Sydney, there has been much more thinking about climate change. We want governments to sort out greenhouse gasses and rising sea levels. We want better coordination of emergency services. We want more low-cost and emergency housing to be available. 

And we continue to be distressed about the war in Ukraine. With threats of nuclear bombs being used and with hospitals and houses being shelled and with it seeming impossible to set up evacuation corridors for civilians, we want assurances of peace and nuclear disarmament. 

All this leads people to wonder what sort of world their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will grow up in. We hope for peace and stability in the world. We hope for good and compassionate governments. We hope for sensible management of our ecology. 

And what hopes do we have for our families? A good education. A fine career. A loving spouse. Well behaved children. A big house. These are all very understandable human hopes to have. Sometimes, because of our faith, we might hope and pray that those we love would be regularly involved in church, or even be occasional attenders. We would love for our families to have joy in knowing Jesus; for them to have the wonderful peace of living, even now, the quality of life described as Eternal Life. 

But it’s not easy to hold firm and clear spiritual hopes for those we love. We just seem to accept the fact that not many of our family are living the lives promised for them at their Baptism. 

In a hotel somewhere I found a soggy drinks coaster on the bar advertising Becks Beer. On the coaster was printed “LIFE BECKONS …. CHOOSE WISELY”. That’s a great Christian message. What a fantastic short sermon; “Life Beckons .. choose wisely!”. But, if we really want this to happen for someone we love (or for ourselves), it’s really hard to see God making it happen if we don’t consistently pray for it. 

Yet, most of us find it difficult to pray. How do we pray?   I think we can be helped by the words of the hymns we remember. The old hymns such as “Guide me O Thou great Redeemer”, “O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder”, “What a friend we have in Jesus”, “When we walk with the Lord in the light of His word…. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus”, all give us wonderful words for our prayers. There’s also some very helpful new songs such as “Christ be our light, shine in our hearts, shine through the darkness”. 

Yes, in guiding our prayers for a wise choice of life, songs can be most helpful; but only if we actively try to make them helpful. They won’t be beneficial if we don’t make an effort to learn from them. Our great hymns don’t achieve very much if they are only sung because we enjoy singing. 

Sometimes sermons can be helpful too. If only we could remember what was said. In Sydney, at St Andrew’s Cathedral recently, the printed service sheet had a blank page for notes and people around us were jotting down points to remember. I had a parishioner in Surfers Paradise who always took notes in the sermon.  

It’s not really a surprise that there is always helpful guidance in God’s word. There’s not any better value than in regular Bible reading. Sadly, we now live in the most Bible illiterate time for centuries. Our parents and grandparents were much more capable than us in quoting many Bible verses. Our Anglican services were intended to give great emphasis to the reading of Scripture. Being the Bible reader in our services is a most significant role. There is also an important role for Study Groups. Rev Greg is very excited that around 50 people in the Parish are attending our Lenten studies. Not everyone can get to, or cope with, Bible study groups. However, we are all able to learn new things at our own pace and time with our own choice of book. But why not read the Bible regularly? 

Today, in the Gospel, there is again really Good News. Jesus stresses that time is short. He says “I’ll be casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow”. Action should not be put off; there is only today and tomorrow.  After this warning to act now, Jesus once more shows his love and amazing forgiveness. In great encouragement to us, despite all the rejection that he has experienced, Jesus says he constantly desires to gather his people together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. Reading this carefully, we hear Jesus say “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!” 

May our Lenten focus be for us to strive to be willing to have Jesus gather us in. A few Sundays ago we sang “gather us in, the lost and forsaken, gather us in the blind and the lame; call to us now and we shall awaken, we shall arise at the sound of our name” 

Our best want is to rejoice in being promised acceptance and forgiveness. To want to enjoy Jesus’ loving protection as we gather under his wings. May we, once again, make the decision to follow him wherever that leads. 

For at the least the last 6 months, a Bible Verse that has become a mantra for me is “Comfort my People”. The mantra summarises my intention to show up in the world with kindness, patience, presence, and comfort. 

We are only beginning to understand the long-term effects of COVID and lock down.  We have hardly recovered from the intensity of the bushfires. Now we are witnessing and experiencing trauma related to unimaginable flooding. Intercalating the flood updates are images of misery and stress from the Ukraine as they stand up to Russia. I feel such compassion for our people in this region and beyond. I worry about how much more people can take. Comfort my people says the Lord. 

In our meditation on Wednesday, we drew together as one collective self and poured out an energy of comfort, compassion, and peace. Whatever it is you are facing, please know that compassion, comfort, peace, and hope are so much stronger than despair, hopelessness, and suffering. Amidst immense distress the nobility of the human spirit shines so brightly. Within each of us is an Infinite source of peace and care that far out floods any disaster. I see this Divine Spirit at work in each of you and the members of our community. It is this presence of Love, Concern, or God that is in the eyes and hearts of all whom I meet that is the source of my hope. 

I am grateful:

·         for the outpouring of support to those in distress,

·         for those using their skills set to rebuild lives,

·         for every thought, feeling and act of love and compassion, for this energy overcomes any fear and destruction.

Thank you for your presence to others, and thank you also for nourishing yourselves with self-care, self-love and self -compassion.      Desiree

Clouds and Glory: Sermon on Luke 9.28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen;listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen

Transfiguration

We glance at the story of the Transfiguration as the final chapter in the season of Epiphany. As you know epiphany means the manifestation of God. Throughout the weeks of epiphany, we are gradually transformed until we reach our full illumination with Christ in the Transfiguration. Imagine that the season of Epiphany is like a dimmer switch which gradually increases the light in a room from a dim ambiance to full wattage brightness. For Eastern Christians, the feast day of the Transfiguration, is significant. The emphasis on Christian practice in the Eastern Orthodox tradition culminates in the idea of theopoiesis, which means made into God, or divinised or transfigured. The story of Christ’s transfiguration is for all of us, we are also changed into dazzling light. The usual date for Feast of Transfiguration is the 6th of August. The 6th of August is significant for another reason too, it was the day the Americans chose to drop the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Today’s reading of the Transfiguration coincides with another moment in history, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Putin issued many threats in his declaration of war, the most unsettling was for the west. Putin said: “Anyone who tries to get in our way, let alone tries to threaten us and our people, should know that Russia’s answer will be immediate, and it will lead to consequences of the sort that you have not faced ever in your history.”  (Time magazine, 24 February 2022, https://time.com/6150787/putin-us-risk-ukraine-war/). I felt fearful when I heard Putin’s threat and wonder if you did too. I highlight here how history’s timeline records that humanity’s deadliest decisions occur in a liturgical time that honours human potential to be totally transformed by love and light.  Humankind makes decisions for death and destruction on a feast day that celebrates light, transcendence and transformation. How on earth do we hold these two opposites together?

Clouds and glory

It seems that the Scriptures may be ahead of me on this one, the glory and transfiguration of Christ is intricately linked with death, crucifixion, and the mechanics of empire. Cloud and glory go together. The heights of human transformation in the transfiguration are closely associated with the clouds of utter human failure. That clouds and glory go together is evident in three ways. First, failure follows the mountain top experience of transfiguration. We would have thought that having seen the goal of human evolution the disciples might have been better equipped to respond to the world. No, they fail in faith, fail in prayer, and fail in healing. Second, the story of transfiguration is utterly linked not only to the baptism but also to crucifixion of Jesus. The words “This is my Beloved Son” connect the baptism, transfiguration, and transfiguration of Jesus. These three stories are three pivots around which the gospel moves. Third, it turns out that God dwells not in the dazzling clouds of light but in the clouds of darkness. 

Perhaps if we step vividly into the story, it’s resonance may also vibrate within us. 

28 About eight days after Jesus said this, 

The 8 days may refer to the Feast of Booths which celebrates how God looked after the Hebrew people in the wilderness when they escaped Pharoah’s Egypt. The Feast of Booths is a joyful celebration where families live in tents and lean-tos made of palm branches. 

he took Peter, John, and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray Finding peace on the Mountain to pray makes sense to us. There is a primal instinct in us humans about mountains being sacred. Spiritual leaders ascend a mountain to commune with the Divine; Moses ascended Mt Sinai and Elijah nestled in Mt Horeb. Jesus is about to non-violently challenge the mechanics of empire and so withdraws to the mountain to gain strength. The mountain top is an obvious illusion to Exodus and Mt Sinai when God married the Hebrew people in a covenant (see Exodus 19.16). “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud,” God says to Moses, “in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after” (19:9). As the Hebrew slaves people gathered at the foot of Mt Sinai God enclosed them in a thick cloud, with the sound of trumpets, thunder, and lightening. 

As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 

Like Moses on Mt Sinai, and like the burning bush Moses encountered while caring for sheep in the desert, it is as if Jesus becomes all flame.  Peter, James, and John witness something other worldly; not only is Jesus all flame but he is joined in the light by Moses and Elijah. In case we missed that this transfiguration is a new Exodus, Luke makes it plain: “They spoke about his Exodus which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem.”

32 Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him

On the night of Jesus’ arrest Jesus will ask Peter, James, and John to pray with him, they will fall asleep. Similarly, at this key moment in the life of Jesus the three disciples are sleepy too. Just as Peter attempts to grasp the moment a dark cloud descends and covers them. They can see nothing but hear the words that are said also at Jesus’ baptism and the crucifixion: this is my beloved, my son, listen. One moment there was dazzling light that blinds and the next moment there was dazzling darkness that blinds even more.

A dazzling dark cloud of unknowing

It is this dark cloud of unknowing that blinds you, terrifies you and leaves you speechless that is the important symbol for us. Notice that the three disciples worked out for themselves that they had to shut up, previously Jesus had to keep saying, “Be quiet; tell no one.” It is from this cloud of unknowing that God speaks. God is encountered in the dazzling darkness of the cloud that swallows them up. The Gospel is that God Dwells in the Darkness. 

The cloud of dazzling darkness reminds me of a time when I walked Table Mountain. Table Mountain is an iconic feature of South Africa, as is the Tablecloth of cloud that covers it in Spring. When that tablecloth cloud descends, you can see nothing. The signposts are hidden, and other senses are heightened as you walk slower, much slower, for who knows where the edge is. The tourist map you were given is useless and you are left to find your own way when you can hardly see your hand in front of you. Walking within that cloud of unknowing is invigorating though; probably because your senses are so focused on your breathing and taking one slow step after another. You are too caught up in the moment to worry about distractions such as taking selfies and landscape photos. It is this experience that I think of when disciples, saints, mystics, and ordinary people who love Jesus find themselves in the dark cloud of unknowing. The dark cloud is an inevitable event if you follow Christ. 

According to those who have devoted their entire lives to prayer, the dark cloud is where God takes us a part and remakes us, where we die and are resurrected in love. Holy Darkness, Blessed Night is what St John of the Cross will teach us from his dark cloud. Within this dark cloud of unknowing, everything is swallowed up.  All the second-hand faith that has lovingly been given to us by parents, preachers and Sunday School teachers fails us, they are like the useless tourist maps when walking on Table Mountain when the cloud has descended. The usual rules of religion do not work. The means of grace that once sustained us, leave us empty. 

Here is the thing, while I might be surprised at human destruction on the feast day of human transfiguration, the Scriptures anticipate this. The words said at the transfiguration are the same words said at the crucifixion, forever binding the two into a sacred dance. According to our scriptures, cloud and glory go together. 

The dark cloud of unknowing is not a test or something we have to get through. No. In the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Gospel, the dark cloud is where God dwells. To be invited into the cloud is a privilege. Those who come out may not have many words, we may even doubt their sanity, and they may be forever changed. Their message is similar – they would never choose the experience, but now that it has happened, they would never give it back. 

“Today you have heard a story you can take with you when you go. It tells you that no one has to go up the mountain alone. It tells you that sometimes things get scary before they get holy. Above all, it tells you that there is someone standing in the centre of the cloud with you, shining so brightly that you may never be able to wrap your mind around him, but who is worth listening to all the same--because he is God's beloved, and you are his, and whatever comes next, you are up to it.” Barbara Brown Taylor. March 02, 2014. Day One

Lent is the period of 40 days in which we ready ourselves for the mystery of Easter. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Symbolically, we journey with Jesus in the wilderness. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Ashes are crossed onto the forehead with the words “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” or “Repent and believe the Good News”. As we journey into lent with prayer, fasting, alms giving and other disciplines, we take with us a word and a song. The word is Teshuvah. The song is “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen.        

Teshuvah, a word often translated as "repentance," is more accurately understood as turning back (shuv) to God. Teshuvah  means return, repair and renewal. Teshuvah means to [Re]turn to the self you have always been meant to become. A good explanation of teshuvah is from Kalonymous Kalmah Shapira the grand rabbi of Piaseczno, Poland, written while he was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941:

Teshuvah is a creative act,
not a simple return
We return to who we were meant to be
but have not yet become
Growth and possibility
Dormant, a sculpture lies hidden
in a brute block of stone
That is why the process of teshusvah,
as painful and
even as humiliating
as it can be
is in fact
a very joyous,
hopeful act.

 Psalm 51 is sometimes called "Perek Teshuvah" – the great Chapter of Repentance. After King David was confronted with the truth of his crimes and the prospect of judgment, he returned to God for cleansing and forgiveness. David's teshuvah reveals that we also can return to God on the basis of His abundant compassion – God’s rachamim. Rachamim means compassion but a better translation says that it is the wombishness of God. From the very core of creation flows compassion, reminding us that we are loved. Rachamim and Teshuvah, go together. Here is a teshuvah from Cohen: The birds they sang at the break of day. Start again, I heard them say. Start again.

 Anthem By Leonard Cohen

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
They're going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring…Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

You can add up the parts
But you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

 Ring the bells that still can ring…Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

As we begin lent, we may ask:

   Where am I in this moment? 

   Whom have I become? 

   What has been my impact on others, on the earth? 

   What changes do I need to make?

Luke 6:27-38

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches about love, peace, generosity, hospitality, mercy and forgiveness. Luke’s Jesus makes heavy demands on one’s capacity to love unreservedly. Expect nothing in return, he says. Now along with love, I think that the concept of forgiveness is one of the most difficult and misunderstood ideas of the gospel, indeed in the world.

So, I am going to talk about forgiveness, which, as I shall attempt explain, has a multitude of meanings.

The Greek word translated as forgive in our Gospel passage is apoluó (ἀπολύω), meaning to release, to let go, to send away, to divorce. Elsewhere in the NT, the word is used for release of captives and prisoners, remission of debt, the liberation of someone acquitted of a crime in a court of law.

The Old English forgiefan means give, grant, allow; remit (a debt), pardon (an offense); and also give up and give in marriage.[1] It is a compound word comprising for-meaning "completely", and giefan meaning "to give". Furthermore, in late Old English, forgiefan acquired a sense of to give up desire or power to punish, which arose from a Germanic loan-translation of the Vulgar Latin perdonare, which means to give completely, without reservation. All food for thought.

That said, we need to talk about feelings. We often employ anger, say, as a secondary emotion to cover up what we are really feeling. The late Yvonne Agazarian, called such secondary emotions barrier defences – shame, guilt, humiliation, and shyness – which

… guard the threshold of the core of the self … on the other side of which are the forbidden experiences of love and hate, rage and fear, and grief and joy. [2]

In essence, the psyche is afraid of raw, primary emotions like love, hate, rage, fear, grief or joy. Many of us were brought up to not feel all or some of these things. We were not allowed to. I did not find out about anger until I was about fifty years old! Ouch. Barrier defences like shame, which actually feel much worse, are like a wall around the true feeling. Thus, the wounded soul.

Primary emotions are pure, and always legitimate. You know, pure rage is a joy to experience; it is purifying; pure hate has an ineffable integrity; pure grief is painful but growthful. If I hate, I am closer to forgiveness than if I feel humiliated. The problem is that secondary emotions like shame, humiliation or shyness are amorphous, dimensionless spaces devoid of reference points – very difficult to come to grips with; and so, forgiveness becomes problematic when these barrier defences intervene.

Grace Tame recently criticised media outlets that "sought to discredit" her by publishing an old photo of her sitting next to what appeared to be a bong.[3] In an open letter published on Twitter, the former Australian of the Year said the incident let her down as an advocate of the survivor community. She went on to say the country needed to have an "open and honest discussion about trauma and what that can look like".

"It can be ugly. It can look like drugs. Like self-harm, skipping school, getting impulsive tattoos and all kinds of other unconscious, self-destructive, maladaptive coping mechanisms," Ms Tame wrote. "Whilst I do not seek to glorify, sanitise or normalise any of these things, I also do not seek to shame or judge survivors for ANY of their choices.

"For anyone who needs to hear this: it is NOT YOUR FAULT."

When I am beset by humiliation, shame, guilt or shyness, I become paralysed, imprisoned in a space wherein forgiveness is a passing dream. In my efforts to not feel these oppressive things, I blame, I find a way to shift the burden on to someone or something else. My impulse is for vengeance, which, if carried out, is self-destructive, because an untended wound is driven even deeper.

On the other hand, if, somehow, I am able to acknowledge and experience my woundedness, my pain, then I am on the road to healing. And with healing a synthesis occurs; forgiveness simply happens, because it does not affect me any more.

So, I argue that forgiveness is not something you actually do; but rather that it is the fruit of a healing process. That makes it a grace. Forgiveness, if you like, is co-terminus with healing. They belong together, like a horse and carriage. Graceful.

We might recall David’s encounter with Saul, when Saul has resolved to hunt him down. Listen to David as he calls with desperation across the valley …

Why does my lord pursue his servant? For what have I done? What guilt is on my hands? Now therefore let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the Lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering; but if it is mortals, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out today from my share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, 'Go, serve other gods.' Now therefore, do not let my blood fall to the ground, away from the presence of the Lord; for the king of Israel has come out to seek a single flea, like one who hunts a partridge in the mountains.[4]

There is huge pain in that statement, the anguish of one who has been cruelly disconnected from his family, his heritage and his God. David is saying how it is for him, is confronting Saul with his pain, and thereby gains release to forgive. Rage gives way to sorrow, and with sorrow comes mourning, and when the mourning is successfully completed, life is enriched. This can be for some a hard, hard road.

So, my friends, I am not convinced about the “forgive and forget” mantra, because I will guess that the injury has not been dealt with. Forgiveness must include remembering, but without the rancour of no resolution and without the resignation of no relationship, but rather with careful knowledge. So, in the end, forgiveness is, if you like, an emergent property, as it were, of the healing with which it is co-terminus.

If you think about it, that is what the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is about. When you know fully, and are living with it openly, then life abounds. As St Paul reminded us in his letter to the Corinthians,

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 3.12)

 “Forgiveness requires more than just an apology. It requires action”.[5] Thus James Blackwell’s article in The Conversation last Monday. Blackwell refers to PM Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations, pointing out that the effects of the policies that gave rise to the wrongs of the past are ongoing.

“The trauma and pain of these policies, and of being disconnected from country, culture, and community, extends down to their children, and their children’s children”.

All of these problems are fixable by the government, Blackwell notes; but presuming forgiveness on the part of those you have wronged “will not solve any of these issues. Indeed, they are likely to have the opposite effect …”, reducing the ability of the government to engage with these communities, and impacting upon the mental and physical health of Stolen Generations survivors and their families.

“What is needed”, wrote Blackwell “is a national approach to healing …”

To which I would add, “What is needed is a personal approach to self-forgiveness.” That is so difficult. The two go hand in hand.

Vicki Zin’s poem Self Forgiveness[6] begins, “How do I truly learn to forgive myself?”

And ends with: 

The only way to do this

is to try to forgive myself,

while realizing,

that those who also recognize

my true beauty are the ones

that deserve to be part of my life. 

As the haze lifts more and more each day,

I do believe I will find my way again.

Just some more bumps along this

road that they call life.

 Amen.

 Doug Bannerman © 2022

[1] See https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[2] Agazarian Y (1981) In Living Groups: Group Psychotherapy and General Systems Theory. Ed. J E Durkin. New York: Brunner/Mazel

[3] See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-19/grace-tame-responds-to-bong-photo-on-twitter/100845436

[4]1 Samuel 26:20

[5] James Blackwell February 14, 2022 5.05pm AEDT

[6] https://hellopoetry.com/poem/380668/self-forgiveness/

Here’s to the crazy ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg 

Apple’s “Think Different” advert in the 1990’s launched its brand into success. It showed rule breakers such as Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Pablo Picasso, and others. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” voiced by actor Richard Dreyfus, resonated with many: Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

In a world that still seems to reward success, wealth and popularity and power,  “Here’s to the crazy ones” promotes an unusual logic of success.  The unexpected qualities of not fitting in, of being an outsider, of being a little weird or downright strange are highlighted as world changing characteristics. Jesus’ sermon, often called the beatitudes, seems similar to the counterculture logic of “here’s to the crazy ones." We agree it’s true. Crazy changes the world. Who are our outlandish today? Where are the crazy ones hiding? One of the wild ones was Jesus. Today’s Gospel is pure craziness:  Blessed are the poor, the starving, the depressed, and the disposable. You who are rich, full, happy, and well-liked – you’re in big trouble. Here’s to the crazy ones, an upside-down world, a system of blessing that has no respect for the status quo and that middle-class Christianity will find rude. The upside-down view of the world Jesus offers is not new in the beatitudes, it has been developing in Luke from the very beginning:

a)   In Luke 1.56, Mary sings the Magnificat which celebrates what God is doing in the world: looking with favour on the lowly (the poor), sending the rich away empty, filling the hungry with good things (the starving), casting down the might from their thrones and lifting up the lowly (the sad or depressed) and has come to the help of society’s disposable ones. To remind you, Mary sings: “ My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour; for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.  God has mercy on those who fear God in every generation. God has shown the strength of God’s arm, God has scattered the proud in their conceit. God has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.  God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich God has sent away empty.  God has come to the help of Israel.” Notice that Mary is so confident of God’s promised future that she sings of it in the past tense.

b) John the Baptist continues where Mary leaves off:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
    and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

The levelling of hills and the straightening of paths John sings about is the flattening of society brought about through jubilee politics, when debt is cancelled, and economic sharing takes place such that the lowly are raised up and the mighty are cast down.

c) It’s like a Bollywood musical really, Luke’s Gospel. The salvation promised by Mary and John the Baptist comes true in Jesus first sermon (Lk 4), hear it as a song: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed, go free, 

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

The work of Jesus, the vision statement of his work, is a variation of Isaiah. Jesus’ purpose is to be good news to the poor, relief for those imprisoned by utter sadness and freedom from the oppression of being disposable.

d) Jesus’ song comes true in another sermon, the beatitudes (Lk 6): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…” New Testament scholars explain that there are several words to describe the poor, the usual word being tapeinoi, which describes the peasant classes (Richard Rohr and John Feister 1996:130). The word used by both Matthew and Luke in the beatitudes, is ptochoi, which means the empty ones, describing those who are unclean and expendable (Richard Rohr and John Feister 1996:130). In Jesus’ time the poor were those who lived as outcasts: beggars, widows, orphans, the sick, the disabled, the blind and the dumb. Those referred to by the Pharisees as sinners, were the poor that Jesus came to reach (Albert Nolan 2001:27,28). Sinners were the am–ha arez who were peasants unfamiliar with the law and included prostitutes, shepherds, tax collectors and social outcasts (Albert Nolan 2001:29)

In Luke 6.17 Jesus speaks (“sings”) to the crowd he is on a level place: “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.”  Why a “level place”? Because John the Baptist’s understanding of salvation is taking shape in the work of Jesus. The place is levelled because the valleys are filled, and the mountains made low, the lowly are lifted and blessed, the mighty are brought low, the hungry are filled and blessed and the rich are empty.  

Luke 6.17-26 is a freedom song understood best in the light of other songs: Mary’s song “My soul magnifies the Lord”, John’s song “make straight in the desert a highway” and Jesus opening song “The spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news.” These are all songs of nonviolent resistance.  John Dear in Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace, describes Mary’s song as a “manifesto of revolutionary nonviolence and a call, not to arms, but to disarmament and justice….Mary's Magnificat was banned in Argentina in the mid-1970’s, because the Mothers of the Disappeared published it as a call for nonviolent resistance to the military junta. The words are so powerful, they are considered by some to be dangerous.” The same is true for the other songs described above that build into the climax of the beatitudes. The beatitudes are thus not meant to be understood as a new list of Ten Commandments, nor as helpful advice or as a new list of requirements to get into heaven. No. These beatitudes require no work, no achievement, no striving. There is no creed to sign up to, there is no moral code to be judged by. No. We are given a blessing of what heaven on earth looks like when Jesus is central to our reality. Whole groups of people, simply by being who they are, are blessed.

“Blessed be” or “Woe to you”

Before we breathe a sigh of relief, we ask ourselves where we are in the text. There are two sides of the same coin; are we on the side of “woe” or the “blessed” ? As one of the wealthiest nations in the world obviously we are in the second half of the text.

 How then are we crazy ones when we squirm as the woes are handed out? We are rich, mostly happy or drugged to be happy, well-liked, and necessary to our economy. Do we give all this away to “inherit” the blessing Jesus offers? I suggest not. Poverty, illness, and pain are not holy, helpful, nor redemptive in themselves. In fact, Jesus’ healing and love is about Good News, joy, and freedom from suffering. Instead of defaulting into doing, we can sit – sit either with poverty, sadness and emptiness or sit with the woes. We sit in solidarity with God, in solidarity with poverty or woe and we learn the meaning of blessing.    

In response to the beatitudes and in learning the meaning of blessing,  wealthy Christians have stepped out into solidarity with the poor, not to help the poor but so that the poor can help them. It is us the rich that need the help, not the poor who are already blessed by God. Authentic friendship with the poor that offers twice as much listening and humble learning rather than speaking or helping is solidarity with the poor. It comes from the knowledge that at some point, all experience poverty. It is also a recognition that the poor are poor because of how society is structured. Theodore Jennings (1990:183) laments: “Each year there is a new holocaust, a new sacrifice to the Moloch of greed and indifference … The slaughter of the innocents is no fortuitous calamity, but the direct result of economic arrangements that blind us to reality by making us complicitous in calamity. Mortal poverty is not due, as some blasphemously maintain, to an act of God. It is the work of economic idolatry”.

One of the values we celebrate as Alstonville Anglicans is “Blessing.” We believe that we burst into the world as original blessings, that blessing lies at the very heart of our identity. When we insist that we are blessed to be a blessing to others, who we are creates the conditions for others to flourish, so that God is not a noun but a verb, an energy of love moving in us and though us and with us until all woes are healed and all come home to their true identity – blessing.

Books:

1.    Richard Rohr and John Feister 1996. Jesus' Plan For A New World. Cincinnati, OH : St. Anthony Messenger Press.

2.    John Dear. 2003. Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace. Ave Maria Press. Michigan

3.    Theodore Jennings. 1990.  Good News To The Poor: John Wesley's Evangelical Economics.  Abingdon Press, Nashville

Where is our church? What is our church address? Who are the ministers of our church? Would the ministers of the church be willing to stand up? We shall return to these questions again. For now, let us step into the Gospel reading, Luke 5.1-11.

Introductory comments

My husband and I are very proud of our sons. They are chefs. They work extremely hard. They came home late from their shift on a particular day, frustrated, tired and demoralised. It had been a particularly slow day with few orders. The kitchen closes at 2 p.m. They had started to clean and pack up the kitchen early as there were no customers. By 2.10 p.m., the kitchen was spotless, the grill had been cleaned, the floors washed, all the appliances were off and sanitised. It was at this moment that a rather large order came in for a big table. Everyone knew the restaurant policy, that the kitchen closed at 2 p.m. At 2.10 pm, everything was shutdown. Nevertheless, the chefs were forced to start everything up again and prepare meals for a large table. A similar thing is happening for the fishermen in Luke 5.1-11.

Into the Gospel text: Luke 5.1-11

Peter and his colleagues are in their boats, in the shallows. They have finished cleaning and repairing their nets and preparing the boat for the next day’s work. Sure, they have had a poor catch, but tomorrow is another day, right? It is at this point, at the end of the day when everything is cleaned and packed up, that Jesus, a carpenter who probably knows little about fishing, suggests that go out deep again and let down their nets for a catch. Remembering how despondent our sons were in a similar situation, I am amazed at Peter’s willingness to go fishing again.

Jesus says, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answers, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." An abundant catch of fish follows, Simon is literally overcome. There is a self-effacing pattern of model of leadership in the kingdom of God at play here. In the same way that Mary was humbled at the call of God on her life so too is Peter: “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” Peter’s response is an allusion to the response of someone else, who while daydreaming in church one day, was confronted with the Holy.

Into the Hebrew Text: Isaiah 6.1-13

While going about his routine religious duties in the Temple, Isaiah sees a vision of God's glory and experiences a call to serve as a prophet to his people. The out-of-this-world vision makes sense in the context of Scripture. Thseraphs are fiery creatures. They cover their faces reminding people that both Moses and Elijah believed that one could not see the face of God and live. In Exodus 3:6, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God”. In 1 Kings 19:13, “When Elijah heard it [the heavenly voice], he wrapped his face in his mantle”

“Isaiah’s” call to ministry would become one of the most quoted Old Testament books in the NT. The vision of Isaiah provided key ideas that helped the early Christians make sense of their experience of Jesus. Jesus is the answer to Isaiah’s vision. Jesus becomes the place where heaven and earth embrace in marriage, and God’s love heals, enlightens and liberates. In Luke 5 Jesus shares his calling first with Peter, then with all the disciples and then with us.

Jesus’ call and our call

Jesus starts expanding the circle of blessing by asking Simon to join him inside it. He wants to use the boat as a kind of pulpit to speak to the crowd on the shore. We too are drawn into this sacred circle of blessing. We too become the place where heaven meets earth and the love of God is poured out to us and through us to heal, enlighten, and liberate… We become the place where all God’s promises come true. We become the place where poverty and hunger disappear, and the forces of destruction are muted once and for all.  It is our glory to collaborate with Jesus together with Peter, James, John and Andrew and all the disciples down the ages and across the globe. The guidelines are simple. Everything begins with a sincere response to God as made visible in Christ; it continues with humble repentance, and it ends with the promise, "Do not be afraid; from now on you [singular] will be catching people."

The sermon by rights ends here.

However.

Many will hear this as an invitation to ministry, to do more. To do particularly churchy things. Many will hear this invitation as an expectation, to sign up for parish council, to do more Bible Studies, to join more community organisations, to teach Sunday School, to prepare food for the homeless. Please continue to do these things, as they are a blessing to us; however the call is deeper than that… read on.

Others will hear the invitation to ministry as an invitation to be more — to be kinder, more generous, more loving, more religious…more.

The call is more powerful than that.

Ministry involves being just who you already are and doing just what you already do…with one difference…you understand yourself as God’s person in God’s world and for God’s world.

 The point of our sacred space and our sacred actions is to consecrate the way we see our ourselves and consecrate how we see what we do.

 As we consecrate bread and wine, the ordinary things of this world to be an extraordinary channel of God’s grace, so our eyes are consecrated to see the munificent mundane in everything we do as Eucharist action. If we limit our sacred work to our prayer time and our worship time only, friends, we are in big trouble. The point of the Eucharist is that we learn to see everything we do as eucharist action. The holiness with which we receive the body and blood of Christ is no different to the holiness with which we prepare meals, clean the kitchen, make our beds, mow the lawn. The respect and reverence we learn to adopt in receiving Holy Communion is pointless unless we learn to see that all we touch is holy too. Imagine the transformation that is possible if we treat the average broom and the average task of sweeping with the same sense of prayer we have for Holy Communion? These ideas are inspired by two sources, Brother Lawrence who taught the practice of the presence of God and the Rule of Benedict which has had a significant influence on Anglican Spirituality.

Brother Lawrence writes: When we walk in the presence of God, the busiest moment of the day is no

different from the quiet of a prayer altar. Even in the midst of noise and clutter, while people’s voices are coming at you from all directions, asking for your help with many different things, you can possess God with the same serenity as if you were on your knees in church.

The Rule of St Benedict describes what is expected of the cellarer, who is in charge of groceries and other food stores: Chapter 31:10. Qualifications of the Monastery Cellarer “ He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, 11 aware that nothing is to be neglected.”

Concluding comments

Jesus expands the circle of blessing and shares his ministry with Peter and then with us.  We are called to minister. Our baptismal vows are our ordination – we shine as a light for Christ in the world. Where is the Church? Wherever God has placed us. Who are the ministers…the bishops? All of us. This is not a text about doing… it is a text about seeing, about how you see your identity. You are already doing God’s work, being God’s person – do not be afraid.

Welcome Announcement

Let’s begin by reflecting. Reflect on the last time you received some really good news. What was it about this bit of news that made it so good? Was it a long-awaited answer to prayer? A baptism – the welcoming of a person into God’s family and the Christian faith. News from a friend or family member. News that COVID restrictions have eased allowing us to return to some sort of normal life if there is such a thing as “normal”, the realisation that an adversity we are facing was not as bad as first intended or perhaps something else entirely.

Today’s Gospel reading is about the bringing of good news. In fact, our Gospel reading today is Luke’s illustration of an opening scene in the ministry of Jesus. It is Jesus’ manifesto for the work that lies ahead of him. It describes what Jesus came to do and is still doing in lives today.

Over recent weeks we have celebrated the birth of Jesus, learned of his baptism in the river Jordan by John the Baptist, his cousin, and now we see Jesus in the synagogue reading from a scroll by the Prophet Isaiah. When reading the whole of Luke Chapter 4, we first see Jesus deprived and tempted in the wilderness. He leaves the wilderness and returns to Galilee with the power of the Spirit. News is beginning to spread about him, there is amazement, and a high reputation is being built. Later there is rejection and the chapter concludes with Jesus providing healing.

It has been described that Jesus is on a preaching tour. He has been in Galilee and now moved to a synagogue in Nazareth, the town in which he was brought up. Unlike the temple where sacrifices occur, a synagogue was an important institution among the Jews of the day. Originating during the exile, it provided a place where the Jews could study the scriptures and worship God. The synagogue in essence has three main functions – prayer, reading of scripture and teaching.[1] Jesus went to the synagogue as was his custom. It was the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week – the day of rest, the day to worship God. Jesus was there to worship God, to pray, to read, to understand the scriptures and indicate how he would be applying them.

So, there are two questions. Why is this good news and what makes it good news?

News comes in many different forms and describes what has happened or what is going to happen! We, as a human society live in the events that have happened or will happen. A news item can paint a picture that makes us view the world differently from that point on. When it comes to good news, Theologian NT Wright describes the good news as a welcome announcement.[2]

The welcome announcement is that Jesus has come into the world to bring good news and by Jesus’ interactions the scripture which he proclaimed has been fulfilled. This is evident when we read of Jesus standing in the synagogue and reading the words from the Prophet Isaiah, words which glow with the message of God’s pity and compassion. So, we see Jesus finding the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”[3]

As I have prepared for this message today, I have reflected on verse 18 and three points resonate with me.

The first is the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The ‘is’ is very important. It shows God’s presence is at work in all situations. God has poured out Himself through spirit and entered life, God enters Jesus’ life, and enters our lives too!

Secondly, Jesus recognising that he is the anointed one – the chosen one - the one that has been spoken of by the prophets. Filled with the power of the Spirit, Jesus is the anointed one. Anointed to go about and bring hope and healing to a fallen world.

Thirdly, to bring good news to the poor. Whether we like or not our lives are far from prefect. We live in a broken world. There was brokenness in Jesus’ time on earth and there remains brokenness in our world today. Jesus saw himself as coming with good news for the world’s troubled people; for the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. Jesus would be there for each one and that includes you and me. With the power of the Spirit upon Him, Jesus meets every need with love and compassion.

Our God is a God of love, and He cares for His people and the world He created deeply. God wants to redeem His people, you, and me. God sent Jesus as the anointed one through the power of the Spirit to show how to love and care for each other. Jesus is a game changer . An agent for change. His mission is to come alongside the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed to bring hope and bring healing. Jesus asks us to do the same and through the power of the Spirit we are equipped for good works as his followers.

Earlier in the service as the Baptism was being introduced, we heard that Baptism is about Blessing. Each person comes into the world as an Original Blessing. Shortly, Desiree will Baptise Elyse and as part of the Baptism Desiree will use oil to sign a cross on Elyse to show that she is marked as Christ’s own for ever. The oil signifies the Spirit of God and the anointing by the Holy Spirit. Each of us who have been baptised have been anointed with the Holy Spirit and have the Spirit of God working in us around us. As followers of Jesus, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue the work that Jesus started; to show love, to show compassion. Our words and actions are a welcomed announcement, and a troubled world can be viewed differently.

My prayer and encouragement for each of us is that we have the welcome announcement in our lives too! That we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and fill us with power as we go about our daily tasks. That showing love, care and compassion is evident with those we interact with allowing the world to be viewed differently. Amen.

Mark Stuckey, LLM

[1][1] Barclay, W. 1967 The Gospel of Luke – The Daily Study Bible, The Saint Andrew Press

[2] NT Wright -Simply Good News: The Welcome Announcement of Jesus the King (Devotional) https//ntwrightonline.org/youversion

[3] Luke 4: 18-19 (NRSV)

Marriage: The first of seven signs

John’s Gospel uses seven signs as a literary structure to shape the first half of his Gospel. The first of the signs that Jesus offers is at a wedding. The literary message is about the marriage of heaven and earth, the marriage of divine and human so that all may be Christ and Christ may be in all. As St Paul put it in Ephesians 1, God’s plan from the beginning was to unite, in Christ, all things, things in heaven and things on earth.

The wedding at Cana is dramatization if you like, a parable drama, describing God’s ultimate plan of marrying humanity. Jesus is God’s design for the whole world. Jesus the Christ is a person from the future not the past. Jesus the Christ is the ultimate vision of our future reality, of who we are already becoming – a unity of Divine and Human.

A wedding invitation

Usually if there is a wedding there is also a wedding invitation. The wedding invitation for the marriage of heaven and earth dramatized at the wedding in Cana John 2.1-11 appears in John 1.14-17. Hidden in the glorious cosmic hymn of our Christmas reading is the heart centre:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. … From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace…The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

The wedding invitation is John 1.14-17, the Word that lived among us. The English translation “lived among us” fails to capture the power of the original Greek that describes the Word that became flesh and “pitched his tent among us” or “tabernacled” among us. The significance of “tabernacled among us” is two-fold and relies on the fact it vivifies two memories: the Genesis-Exodus epoch and the Exile-Restoration era.

John’s Gospel and the Genesis-Exodus memory

While some are reluctant to engage the Scriptures of the Old Testament, without the background of the Hebrew Scriptures we cannot discern the meaning of the Gospels that introduce us to Jesus. John’s Gospel is a New Genesis and a New Exodus.

If John’s Gospel is a New Exodus a short summation of the Exodus account is necessary to appreciate its relevance to John’s Gospel. The plot of the Exodus story is the group of refugees who escape oppression in Pharoah’s Egypt through a wilderness into a Promised Land flowing with Milk and Honey. The climax of the Exodus saga is pre-empted by the introduction to the story. Moses and Aaron, who with Miriam are the leaders of the refugees, pronounce to pharaoh: “‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.”’ (Exodus 5.1). The Exodus story races fast to the climax where it plateaus and overstates in detail the construction of a tabernacle. The tabernacle, a symbol of God’s presence among the people, is at the centre of the group of refugees who traverse a wilderness in search of a Promised Land. Herewith the point of the story, that the refugees are freed from slavery in order to celebrate a festival to God in the wilderness, with the Tabernacle the heart centre of how God comes close to them and how they come close to God. Now it is evident what Exodus means for John’s Gospel; Jesus the Christ is the New Tabernacle who “pitches his tent among us.” Jesus’ incarnation, the Word made flesh among us, is the way in which we now see God with us and among us. What is the significance of God in Christ tabernacling among us (John 1.14)? The significance of Jesus pitching his tent among is that the destiny of cosmos and human beings as kings and queens of the New Creation is made clear; the unity of the Divine and Human, the enspiriting of flesh or the enfleshing of spirit. As Teilhard puts it, God is always in the business of enfleshing spirit or enspiriting flesh. This marriage of heaven and earth or spirit and flesh dramatized in Cana in John 2.1-11 is already hinted at in John 1.14-17: “…, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

John’s Gospel and the Exile-Restoration memory

“Full of grace and truth” evokes the recitation of Psalm 85:

Grace and truth have met together;
justice and peace have kissed each other.
Truth springs up from the earth,
and justice looks down from heaven.
Adonai will also grant prosperity;
our land will yield its harvest.
Justice will walk before him
and make his footsteps a path.

 (From the complete Jewish Bible translation. Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern.
All rights reserved).

 Psalm 85 is a restoration psalm. A restoration psalm sings of the Hebrew’s best hope after being in exile, in Babylon, away from their temple and home. The restoration hoped for in exile now takes place in the person of Jesus. In Jesus Grace and truth meet, justice and peace kiss, and the human and divine marry, to offer a new and bright future. Grace represents the refreshing love of God that comes from beyond our world, a compassion that is transcendent. Truth is the love of God from within our world, the holiness of our humanity now embraces the holiness of God’s divinity.

Join the wedding

What does all this mean for us? As for Jesus, so too for us. Through the gift of the Spirit of Love, like Jesus, we too are the place where the unity of heaven and earth takes place. We no longer need look for God in the wrong places: out there, up there. God is within, as the truest part of ourselves. The feast and celebration dramatized at the wedding in Cana is that the marriage of grace and truth, begun in John 1.14-17, brought to fruition in John 2.1-11 will go on and on and on in us and through us until it is complete. Welcome to the wedding.

We are in the season of epiphany. As you know, Epiphany means the manifestation of God to the world. There are three aspects of epiphany that are real for us.

First, Christ is shown as the visibility of the invisible God. As Marcus Borg puts it, Jesus is the human face of God. Second, God in Christ is revealed as one of us; epiphany is about God’s solidarity with us. No longer do we look for God “out there” or “up there”. Instead, God is with us and among us. Third, epiphany is about the compassion of God.

We are invited to join Christ in becoming an Epiphany for our generation, so that what was offered to us in Christ back then, can be offered by him, through us, to the world right now.

The question today is how exactly do we become an Epiphany for our generation? How do we embody the spirit of Epiphany, making God manifest in the world around us?

John preached a message of eschatological destruction, that the world was so filled with corruption that the only option was for God on high to descend in judgement and wipe the slate clean. Listen to John’s sermon: “His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ In summary, the message is turn or burn or in Afrikaans, “draai of braai”. You may recognise the word braai as the equivalent of BBQ, change your ways or end up on the barbeque.

The question is, is this how we are to be an Epiphany of God’s kindness, God’s presence in the world? Does Jesus endorse the message of John? I suggest not.

The biblical record as I read it, suggests that Jesus turns John’s preaching on its head. The reading from Luke depicts what happens after the baptism. Jesus, it seems, is the Christ of Epiphany in that he stands in solidarity with humanity and the world’s brokenness by agreeing to be baptised. When Jesus is baptised, it would seem that he is an anonymous member of a great crowd of people who were being baptised. However, the prayer experience that happens to Jesus after the baptism turns John’s message inside out: “and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ What is significant about this statement is that this message – with you I am well pleased – implies that Jesus is guiltless before God. Whatever sin John the Baptist is concerned about, has already been forgiven. Luke tells us Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. This seemingly irrelevant detail implies that Jesus’ work is priestly work, because it was only when a man reached the age of thirty that he could begin to function as a priest.

While John’s message is turn or burn the experience of Jesus communicates to us that being the Christ is bound up in the experience of being loved as a beloved, with whom the Divine is well pleased.

Obviously, the presence of the Spirit in bodily form also recalls the presence of the Spirit at the dawn of creation. In Genesis 1, as creation is created, God pronounces at every moment, “Tov” or ”it is Good”. Likewise, to be an epiphany for our generation is to announce to people at the beginning of their journey, “tov,” very good, blessing, you are beloved, you are touched by Divine favour. I suggest to you that the way we are an Epiphany for our generation is to communicate to the world God loves the fundamental blessing that the world is; that at the beginning of anything, every member of the world is a beloved on whom divine favour rests. 

So where to from here? How do we graduate from John’s message of condemnation to Jesus’ message of grace, that at the beginning we are beloved, and the Divine favour rests on us?

Perhaps the journey to being an Epiphany that manifests divine blessing begins in our own souls as we learn first-hand that we are God’s beloved. Announcing that the world is caressed by divine favour often requires that we experience God’s confidence in us first. We live our own truth as touched by divine favour. The hope is that trusting in our own identity as beloved of God may automatically give confidence to others to trust in their identity as deeply loved.

The human condition is one where our core goodness is challenged by an inner voice of self-criticism, self-doubt, or a tireless, negative feedback loop. Many have found writing and meditating on a beloved charter a helpful spiritual discipline in healing the soul’s tendency to resist the grace of being loved. Below is an example.

 A Beloved Charter

NAME, you are my beloved in whom I delight. On you my favour rests. There is nothing that you can do to make me love you more and nothing that you can do to make me love you less. NAME you did not choose me, I chose you. You are my friend. I formed your inward parts and knitted you together in your mother's womb. NAME you are fearfully and wonderfully made, made a little lower than angels and crowned with glory and honour. You have been created in Christ Jesus for good works which I have already prepared to be your way of life. When you pass through the waters I will be there; and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you, when you walk through the fire you will not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you. I know all your longings; your sighing is not hidden from me. Nothing will ever be able to separate you from my love. Abide in My love.

(A reflection based on Luke 1:39–45, 46b-55)

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.  His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;  he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

One point of view is to see the Incarnation as a once off event. What if there is another point of view, another way to see the Incarnation? What if the Incarnation could also be the fulfilment of human history and the final goal of evolution?

Here is an over brief history of evolution: 

1.    Some 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe emerges out of a Great Mystery. Existence gives rise to space and energy. Energy cools into matter, sub-atomic particles emerge as radical new beings with new powers. Drawn into relationship, subatomic particles transform into atoms of hydrogen. Intense pressures act on hydrogen to fuse helium, a heavier atom. Atoms are new beings with new powers. 

2.    Fast Forward to 3.7 billion years later (10 billion years ago), interstellar dust produces molecules, the basis for later life. 

3.    Let’s fast forward even further. About 4.6 billion years ago our ancestral star goes supernova and gives birth to the sun, the earth, and our solar system. The earth and moon dance around each other and together waltz around the sun gathering mass as they go. After planetary crashes and more dancing, the moon and earth cool down. 

4.    An atmosphere forms giving rise to first rains. Earth comes alive. The earth learns to eat the Sun through photosynthesis. Bacteria and complex cells develop, entering communion with other cells. 

5.    Let’s summarise faster. 460 million years ago, plants and animals move on land.

6.    4 million years ago humanoids leave the forest, stand up, and walk on two legs. The savannah offers the challenges and opportunities for these early creatures to evolve into humans.

7.    100 thousand years ago consciousness develops. Evolution becomes conscious of itself. Modern Humans emerge. Language, shamanic and goddess religions, and art become integral with human life.

8.    Two thousand and twenty-five years ago, in about 4BCE, Mary and Elizabeth meet and sing and dance and laugh and celebrate a new stage in evolution. The new stage in evolution is this: the advent of a human being so open to the divine, so open to Spirit, that his consciousness will become divine consciousness. 

The point being made is this: Life on earth developed over millions of years to produce matter, then, plants, animals and then humans. A point in evolution was reached where consciousness emerged when evolution became conscious of itself. We are thinking creatures, and we inherit every stage of evolution. Just as all humans inherit consciousness as benefactors of evolutionary history, so too do we inherit divine consciousness. Divine consciousness, the marriage of our divine and human selves, is the goal of the universe as reveal in the Incarnation and birth of Christ. 

In the incarnation which Mary and Elizabeth sing and dance around, much like the moon and earth danced around the sun in the beginning, a new destiny of the universe is revealed – the marriage of the divine and human. 

What does all of this mean for us? 

Like Mary we are all pregnant with divine possibility. Mary is theotokos the mother of God but in many ways, she is out mother too. Like Mary we are all birthing Christ into the world in the new era of evolution which is the unity between our divine and human selves. 

Our capacity for transcendence, for growth, for authenticity and our continual desire for justice, truth and beauty in the world are all sacred signs of the divine within us. We discover the spiritual truth that we are in God, that our deepest identity and joy lies in living the truth that we are in God. The universal meaning of the Incarnation is converse, God is in us. As advent people, we are pregnant with the full flowering of God’s love, and we birth this Christ love into the world, moment by moment. How do we know when the Christ is birthed into the world? Ironically, those moments when we are fully human, moments of kindness, gentleness, and presence, are those moments when we are fully divine too. 

Welcome to the Glory of God, the birth of the ones fully alive, human and fully divine. 

Sources and further reading: 

·       Sister Lucy Slinger. The Cosmic Walk. 

·       Bede Griffiths. 

·       Ilia Delio. 

·       Ken Wilbur. 

·       Beatrice Bruteau. 

Irenaeus said the Glory of God is humanity fully alive, fully human, fully God (From Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), 4. 34. 5-7.

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