On Monday I took part in a seminar on silence and solitude. As i turned onto the highway near my house I was immediately confronted by two signs put up by council road workers. The first was, "Slow down", followed closely by "Prepare to stop." I recognised the irony of these signs on two accounts, firstly as they were right at the entry of a freeway on which people showed no desire to slow down or stop! The second was that I was going to a seminar on silence an hour or so away and I had to be home to catch a connecting flight to Sydney later that day. So while I sought silence and solitude, I was caught up in the busyness of ordinary life.
One of the sessions at the seminar involved us partaking in a 'slow food" experience. A plate of fruit was passed around and we were invited to notice the colours, textures, aromas and finally the sensation of taste and eating. It was all to be done slowly and with great attention and focus. Comments ranged from how much more pleasurable the experience was, how eating slowly would mean we would eat less, to simply, I enjoyed the time I took to eat the food.
It took me back to the days of my youth when we used to sit around a dining room table as a family and partake in a meal. It wasn't rushed. People didn't have to be any where. We ate slowly and talked a lot. We listened and remembered, spoke and were heard, saw how to respond to others and how they would respond to us, and much more.
In an age of fast food, and even faster lives, there is a need to recover slow food and the intensity of attention it brings into our lives.
It also reminded me, as we begin another Holy Week leading up to Easter, that this week is a slow food week. A time when we stop and digest Jesus the Christ, his life, his death and his resurrection; his intensity of attention to being fully engaged in ordinary life and in his relationship with God.
May we not only "slow down" and not only 'prepare to stop' but actually stop and pay full attention to this pivotal festival of our Christian year.
Friday 26 March 2010
Sunday 21 March 2010
Church in a 100 years?
Today we celebrated 100 years of Anglicanism at Tweed Heads at St Cuthberts, and it got me to thinking, what will Anglicanism look like in 100 years time?
As I looked around the church, with the exception of the choir from Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School (founded 28 years ago by the parish), I wondered who would be in the church with us in in the next 20 years, let alone 100 years from now. And what would their experience be of God, spirituality and worship? How different all that is today from those pioneering days and the glory times of big numbers when going to church was the accepted norm.
Events of the 20th Century have changed that norm. The horrors of wars, the fading optimism of the post-war era, the so-called moral 'revolution' of the 60's and the increasing pace of change brought on by technology and consumerism has indeed changed the place of church and worship in our society.
No longer do we participate in the communal life as we, as a society, once did. We are now passive consumers looking exclusively for 'what is in it for me'. We are focussed on our individualism, pragmatism and rational thought. We seek to explain all things and leave little room for wonder, surprise and transcendence. We are bombarded by information, entertainment, choice - noise - which simply entices us away from the mystery of life. We seek answers and are uncomfortable with questions, we want solutions not the untidy process of life, and we want it all, now.
So, what do we as the church do to ensure that we are in fact still here, actively engaged in worship, in 100 years time? For the purpose of the church is to worship God and to do so in all actions it is engaged in. It is worship first, action and activity second. Worship is our core business, all activity grows out of that worship.
Richard Neuhaus defines the purpose of worship: "The purpose of worship has no purpose other than the worship of God. While worship has many benefits, we do not worship in order to attain those benefits. The simple and radical truth is that we worship God because God is to be worshipped."
It seems to me that worship is what we do, authentic and connected worship, worship that grows out of Scripture, tradition and contemporary life. Worship in the Anglican tradition is solid on the first two, and challenged on the third. Contemporary life, with all its accoutrements, asks questions of who we are, what we do as worship and how we do it. It is fair to say that we must remain attached to authentic Anglicanism in it's worship model of scripture, sacraments and community worship.
Yet it is how that responds to the push and pull of a modern faith experience which is less about religious form and more about spirituality, and less about denominational allegiance and more about discovering a spiritual journey which connects you to your self, others and God, how ever God maybe perceived.
I have watched over more tan 40 years as the church has moved through a number of phases in its engagement with change, from maintaining the tradition, to chasing every whim and marketing ploy available, to retreating into a walled fortress seeming to accept the inevitable while railing against all and sundry for the predicament it finds it self in.
Yet, God has survived greater catastrophes than this and will survive this one. And it's God's unending faithfulness and presence which we need to follow as our model for the future church. That is, let us not be stampeded to chase relevancy as the key to our survival, let us re-mind our self of the purpose of the church and its worship - "The purpose of worship has no purpose other than the worship of God. While worship has many benefits, we do not worship in order to attain those benefits. The simple and radical truth is that we worship God because God is to be worshipped."
If we remain faithful to the purpose of worship we will rediscover a Triune God active in our modern world in places of unexpected enchantment and we will wake to find ourselves involved in a church worshipping in new ways within an old tradition.
Hang in there.
As I looked around the church, with the exception of the choir from Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School (founded 28 years ago by the parish), I wondered who would be in the church with us in in the next 20 years, let alone 100 years from now. And what would their experience be of God, spirituality and worship? How different all that is today from those pioneering days and the glory times of big numbers when going to church was the accepted norm.
Events of the 20th Century have changed that norm. The horrors of wars, the fading optimism of the post-war era, the so-called moral 'revolution' of the 60's and the increasing pace of change brought on by technology and consumerism has indeed changed the place of church and worship in our society.
No longer do we participate in the communal life as we, as a society, once did. We are now passive consumers looking exclusively for 'what is in it for me'. We are focussed on our individualism, pragmatism and rational thought. We seek to explain all things and leave little room for wonder, surprise and transcendence. We are bombarded by information, entertainment, choice - noise - which simply entices us away from the mystery of life. We seek answers and are uncomfortable with questions, we want solutions not the untidy process of life, and we want it all, now.
So, what do we as the church do to ensure that we are in fact still here, actively engaged in worship, in 100 years time? For the purpose of the church is to worship God and to do so in all actions it is engaged in. It is worship first, action and activity second. Worship is our core business, all activity grows out of that worship.
Richard Neuhaus defines the purpose of worship: "The purpose of worship has no purpose other than the worship of God. While worship has many benefits, we do not worship in order to attain those benefits. The simple and radical truth is that we worship God because God is to be worshipped."
It seems to me that worship is what we do, authentic and connected worship, worship that grows out of Scripture, tradition and contemporary life. Worship in the Anglican tradition is solid on the first two, and challenged on the third. Contemporary life, with all its accoutrements, asks questions of who we are, what we do as worship and how we do it. It is fair to say that we must remain attached to authentic Anglicanism in it's worship model of scripture, sacraments and community worship.
Yet it is how that responds to the push and pull of a modern faith experience which is less about religious form and more about spirituality, and less about denominational allegiance and more about discovering a spiritual journey which connects you to your self, others and God, how ever God maybe perceived.
I have watched over more tan 40 years as the church has moved through a number of phases in its engagement with change, from maintaining the tradition, to chasing every whim and marketing ploy available, to retreating into a walled fortress seeming to accept the inevitable while railing against all and sundry for the predicament it finds it self in.
Yet, God has survived greater catastrophes than this and will survive this one. And it's God's unending faithfulness and presence which we need to follow as our model for the future church. That is, let us not be stampeded to chase relevancy as the key to our survival, let us re-mind our self of the purpose of the church and its worship - "The purpose of worship has no purpose other than the worship of God. While worship has many benefits, we do not worship in order to attain those benefits. The simple and radical truth is that we worship God because God is to be worshipped."
If we remain faithful to the purpose of worship we will rediscover a Triune God active in our modern world in places of unexpected enchantment and we will wake to find ourselves involved in a church worshipping in new ways within an old tradition.
Hang in there.
Monday 15 March 2010
Fluffy Grey Bundle of Grace.
Presently reading an excellent book by Terry Hershey called "The Power of Pause" (see links to visit his page/blog).
Terry is on about the importance to pause, to take time out, to smell the roses. His book should be mandatory reading for all over including students studying for their final exams and trying to find some space. It should be compulsory for their parents. It is brilliant (Terry, if you read this, have I given it a big enough plug?)
Friday afternoon I took Monty the dog for a walk and we sat in on the edge of the lake near our house. The bird life was spectacular as was the fish jumping in the late afternoon sun. Around the corner came a family of black swans, a dad and mum resplendent in their deep black regalia and a small fluffy grey cygnet.
They feed quietly along the bank and, as if to show of their prize possession, came right up to the bank where Monty and I was sitting, only a few feet away. They stayed and fed and made sure I got a good look before gliding away as a flotilla of three.
It took my breath away. Awesome in the full sense of that word.
How great it is too share special moments like that, sitting and simply being present to the naked now (another excellent book I am rereading by Richard Rohr - see links for his website).
I did nothing but sit and God revealed his grace, beauty and wonderful creation to me.
I think I will sit some more.
Terry is on about the importance to pause, to take time out, to smell the roses. His book should be mandatory reading for all over including students studying for their final exams and trying to find some space. It should be compulsory for their parents. It is brilliant (Terry, if you read this, have I given it a big enough plug?)
Friday afternoon I took Monty the dog for a walk and we sat in on the edge of the lake near our house. The bird life was spectacular as was the fish jumping in the late afternoon sun. Around the corner came a family of black swans, a dad and mum resplendent in their deep black regalia and a small fluffy grey cygnet.
They feed quietly along the bank and, as if to show of their prize possession, came right up to the bank where Monty and I was sitting, only a few feet away. They stayed and fed and made sure I got a good look before gliding away as a flotilla of three.
It took my breath away. Awesome in the full sense of that word.
How great it is too share special moments like that, sitting and simply being present to the naked now (another excellent book I am rereading by Richard Rohr - see links for his website).
I did nothing but sit and God revealed his grace, beauty and wonderful creation to me.
I think I will sit some more.
Saturday 13 March 2010
Living With Loose Ends
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 - Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Today’s readings drag us into the complicated world of relationships and dysfunction. It is, without putting too fine a point on it, almost assured that relationships will be,at least at sometime in their life, dysfunctional, one side or the other gets out of sync and slips into a place of its own, unable to relate or live with the other. It happens in marriages and friendships, in professional and work areas, on the international and national political stage – it happens in almost all areas of life.
It is the stuff which makes life the most interesting.
Somebody is alleged to have said that it is what makes making up such a challenge and a skill. How to begin again, how to re-mind ourselves, retool our minds, so that what was in dysfunction functions again? How do we see in what appears to be a lost cause the possibility of re-commencement, re-engagement of new life and hope?
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk suggests; “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
Often our approach to this kind of challenge is built around ‘either – or’, ‘one or the other’, resulting in one or more of the parties having to back down so the other wins, all in the name of reconciliation and moving on. Unfortunately reconciliation built on that type of ideology is only temporary, for it builds resentment and hostility in all parties. Those who have backed down resent the loss and those who win think they should have won more.
In Hanh’s suggestion we find the neat little word “and” – “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
And is one of the most useful words we have, unlike or which separates, and, unites – it brings together both sides of an argument and makes them one. It is about the ‘oneing’ of life in all its complexities. It makes one and when things are one they begin to work together to reconcile the differences.
My mobile phone synchronises with my computer. When I connect and hit synchronise the two reconcile or become one – what is on one is on the other – it notes the difference, the double ups and then either deletes or includes as appropriate, and after a few minutes you have the two, one. It reconciles the phone and the computer.
In our second reading today, Paul is battling to achieve the same result with the Christians at Corinth. Paul had, in a sense, raised these people in the faith, nurtured and brought them through only to find now that they are estranged from him because of the influence of other so called Christian leaders. We are not told who, but obviously they were persuasive in getting the Corinthians to follow them and to leave Paul.
Perhaps out of anger, but probably out of concern for those he ‘loved’ and a concern that they are receiving good teaching; Paul responds. He does so with some of the clearest theological teaching we find in the New Testament.
Paul's appeal for reconciliation arises out of a complex, messy human situation. Much as he desires the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, Paul also earnestly yearns for some kind of reconciliation between the Corinthians and himself. These are not two separate issues. Paul recognizes that what goes on in human communities, how we relate to one another, has implications for how we relate to God. It is not just about us; nor is it just about God. It is about how we understand ourselves to be in relationship with God and with one another, all in the same moment. The two are inextricably linked.
To illustrate this, Paul juxtaposes two ways of viewing one another, using the example of the Christ. At one time, he says, we looked at the one we call the Christ and saw, nothing special: perhaps a prophet, perhaps a fool. We judged on the basis of our human experience ("a human point of view"). Then something happened that allowed us to see in Christ the one in and through whom God reconciles the world to God's self. Paul does not specify what this "something is", and it is different for each of us. We experience the presence of God not only in our own lives, but come to recognize the presence of God permeating the entire cosmos. Our way of seeing has changed, as well as our understanding of how we are in the world, as Paul goes on to say "if anyone is in Christ, there is an (ongoing) new creation" (verse 17).
Ongoing, here, does not mean in the sense of evolution, but in the sense that creation, when it is sustained as we are in Christ, is in a constant state of renewal. This on-going act of creation, says Paul, occurs through Christ for it is "In Christ" we experience God reaching out to us and ourselves as creation restored; if we recognize ourselves as a part of this new creation, then we no longer view one another in the same way. Our vision has changed.
Reconciliation is not simply something to be desired; it becomes an imperative because we have experienced reconciliation with the one who has given us (new) life. If, in this most important of all relationships, we find that our "trespasses" (which can also be rendered "missteps") are not held against us, we too are challenged to reach across the boundaries and barriers that separate us, whether due to missteps, misunderstandings, or misconceptions, and find ways to renew our relationships as a part of the on-going act of creation.
Were Paul and the Corinthians reconciled? Holly Hearon suggests: “We do not know. The danger remains that one or the other side will confuse their status as ambassadors with the role of God, and reconciliation with conformity. As it stands, we are only left with the issues and the possibilities. Much as I like tidy endings, I am drawn to the open-endedness of this situation because it gives us room to consider what we might do in this, or any other, situation where we are still searching for the reconciliation that will open up the potential for the renewal of creation. It is in this act, says Paul, that we may become the righteousness of God.”
It is in this sense that the Gospel story of the Prodigal Son is also an incomplete reconciliation story. It ends without the ends neatly tied up. We are not sure of the Son’s motivation for returning, was he really repentant and coming home for the right reasons, or just for a hot shower and a good meal? What was the father’s motivation for accepting him back, true love or an attempt to save face in front of the local community? Where was the older son? Did he ever get over his resentment and reluctance to accept his brother back or did he stay forever out in the garden, unwilling to join the party? And what did the mother think, and did it really matter? What work needed to be done to build on this apparent reconciliation to turn it into a new beginning or did the dysfunctional family remain just that, a work in progress?
Reconciliation is what brings us to the Eucharistic table where we realize the reconciliation between humanity and God wrought by the action of the second Person of the Trinity Christ, fulfilling his relationship with God. Christ’s action was relational, bringing into being the forgiving action of God. The cross and the Eucharist are not Christ’s work but God’s. At no time do they become ours for no action of ours will reconcile us with God.
God through Christ reconciles the world to himself, even though it often feels like there are a lot of loose ends. And there are. God likes it like that.
Today’s readings drag us into the complicated world of relationships and dysfunction. It is, without putting too fine a point on it, almost assured that relationships will be,at least at sometime in their life, dysfunctional, one side or the other gets out of sync and slips into a place of its own, unable to relate or live with the other. It happens in marriages and friendships, in professional and work areas, on the international and national political stage – it happens in almost all areas of life.
It is the stuff which makes life the most interesting.
Somebody is alleged to have said that it is what makes making up such a challenge and a skill. How to begin again, how to re-mind ourselves, retool our minds, so that what was in dysfunction functions again? How do we see in what appears to be a lost cause the possibility of re-commencement, re-engagement of new life and hope?
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk suggests; “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
Often our approach to this kind of challenge is built around ‘either – or’, ‘one or the other’, resulting in one or more of the parties having to back down so the other wins, all in the name of reconciliation and moving on. Unfortunately reconciliation built on that type of ideology is only temporary, for it builds resentment and hostility in all parties. Those who have backed down resent the loss and those who win think they should have won more.
In Hanh’s suggestion we find the neat little word “and” – “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
And is one of the most useful words we have, unlike or which separates, and, unites – it brings together both sides of an argument and makes them one. It is about the ‘oneing’ of life in all its complexities. It makes one and when things are one they begin to work together to reconcile the differences.
My mobile phone synchronises with my computer. When I connect and hit synchronise the two reconcile or become one – what is on one is on the other – it notes the difference, the double ups and then either deletes or includes as appropriate, and after a few minutes you have the two, one. It reconciles the phone and the computer.
In our second reading today, Paul is battling to achieve the same result with the Christians at Corinth. Paul had, in a sense, raised these people in the faith, nurtured and brought them through only to find now that they are estranged from him because of the influence of other so called Christian leaders. We are not told who, but obviously they were persuasive in getting the Corinthians to follow them and to leave Paul.
Perhaps out of anger, but probably out of concern for those he ‘loved’ and a concern that they are receiving good teaching; Paul responds. He does so with some of the clearest theological teaching we find in the New Testament.
Paul's appeal for reconciliation arises out of a complex, messy human situation. Much as he desires the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, Paul also earnestly yearns for some kind of reconciliation between the Corinthians and himself. These are not two separate issues. Paul recognizes that what goes on in human communities, how we relate to one another, has implications for how we relate to God. It is not just about us; nor is it just about God. It is about how we understand ourselves to be in relationship with God and with one another, all in the same moment. The two are inextricably linked.
To illustrate this, Paul juxtaposes two ways of viewing one another, using the example of the Christ. At one time, he says, we looked at the one we call the Christ and saw, nothing special: perhaps a prophet, perhaps a fool. We judged on the basis of our human experience ("a human point of view"). Then something happened that allowed us to see in Christ the one in and through whom God reconciles the world to God's self. Paul does not specify what this "something is", and it is different for each of us. We experience the presence of God not only in our own lives, but come to recognize the presence of God permeating the entire cosmos. Our way of seeing has changed, as well as our understanding of how we are in the world, as Paul goes on to say "if anyone is in Christ, there is an (ongoing) new creation" (verse 17).
Ongoing, here, does not mean in the sense of evolution, but in the sense that creation, when it is sustained as we are in Christ, is in a constant state of renewal. This on-going act of creation, says Paul, occurs through Christ for it is "In Christ" we experience God reaching out to us and ourselves as creation restored; if we recognize ourselves as a part of this new creation, then we no longer view one another in the same way. Our vision has changed.
Reconciliation is not simply something to be desired; it becomes an imperative because we have experienced reconciliation with the one who has given us (new) life. If, in this most important of all relationships, we find that our "trespasses" (which can also be rendered "missteps") are not held against us, we too are challenged to reach across the boundaries and barriers that separate us, whether due to missteps, misunderstandings, or misconceptions, and find ways to renew our relationships as a part of the on-going act of creation.
Were Paul and the Corinthians reconciled? Holly Hearon suggests: “We do not know. The danger remains that one or the other side will confuse their status as ambassadors with the role of God, and reconciliation with conformity. As it stands, we are only left with the issues and the possibilities. Much as I like tidy endings, I am drawn to the open-endedness of this situation because it gives us room to consider what we might do in this, or any other, situation where we are still searching for the reconciliation that will open up the potential for the renewal of creation. It is in this act, says Paul, that we may become the righteousness of God.”
It is in this sense that the Gospel story of the Prodigal Son is also an incomplete reconciliation story. It ends without the ends neatly tied up. We are not sure of the Son’s motivation for returning, was he really repentant and coming home for the right reasons, or just for a hot shower and a good meal? What was the father’s motivation for accepting him back, true love or an attempt to save face in front of the local community? Where was the older son? Did he ever get over his resentment and reluctance to accept his brother back or did he stay forever out in the garden, unwilling to join the party? And what did the mother think, and did it really matter? What work needed to be done to build on this apparent reconciliation to turn it into a new beginning or did the dysfunctional family remain just that, a work in progress?
Reconciliation is what brings us to the Eucharistic table where we realize the reconciliation between humanity and God wrought by the action of the second Person of the Trinity Christ, fulfilling his relationship with God. Christ’s action was relational, bringing into being the forgiving action of God. The cross and the Eucharist are not Christ’s work but God’s. At no time do they become ours for no action of ours will reconcile us with God.
God through Christ reconciles the world to himself, even though it often feels like there are a lot of loose ends. And there are. God likes it like that.
Friday 5 March 2010
Who Feeds Us?
We live in a society built on the ideology of scarcity. What, you might think, is he talking about? Never has there been so much available to us, never has there been so many choices for us to consume. According to Choices Magazine there are more than 80 different brands and types of milk, some 23+ washing powders and over 14 coffee brands on your supermarket shelf.
In terms of banks, mortgage providers and finance brokers the choice is now much more than the big 4. Buying a car is a mire of maker choice and then, if you happen to find the make you want, there are up to a dozen or more choices of model and style. And I haven’t even thought of nail polish and hair colour!
Yet we live wedded to the ideology of scarcity. Enough is never enough to satisfy us. The issue, according to theologian Walter Brueggemann, is whether there is enough to go around - enough food, water, shelter, space. An ideology of scarcity says no, there’s not enough, so hold on to what you have.
An ideology of abundance is just the opposite and is often the ideology of those deemed the poorest in our society. Appearances notwithstanding, there is enough to go around, so long as each of us only takes what we need.
It has always interested me that when I spend time with families who are indeed poor, the willingness to share what little they have, to turn what seems to be a meager supply of food into a banquet of exquisite quality and quantity is overwhelming. There is always enough.
And food and table play a great part in the abundant life. Having grown up in an extensive extended family with 21 aunts and uncles and their partners and their children meant that family get togethers were massive in terms of numbers and catering. In my childhood none of these families were wealthy but the women involved knew how to make a little go along way and how to produce monumental feasting tables. We would all grab a chair and sit around a long series of trestle tables and eat until we could eat no more.
Conversation and laughter filled the air and where there had been conflict or difficulties they seemed to disappear in the convivial atmosphere. Family remained family despite what may have happened. The covenant was repaired and life moved on.
Isaiah 55 takes the prominent place of food and meals in the Bible as a tool for bonding and belonging, of remembering who you are and whom you belong to:
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”
The prophet invited the Israelites, living in exile in Babylon, to come to a lavish meal and receive renewal of covenantal blessings. Isaiah is warning against the very real danger that they would become obligated to or assimilated into the culture of their captors and present benefactors, and adapt to the bread of Babylon. Being assimilated into a foreign way of life and forgetting their roots. Brueggemman again, “Whoever feeds, owns.” Food, he says, comes with a price. “Eat royal bread and think royal thoughts. Eat royal bread and embrace royal thoughts.”
Isaiah reminded the Israelites that who fed them and what they ate were no small matter. Why should they continue with food that did not nourish? The Israelites were a people of different bread, another way, a bread that came as a gift.
In our modern world there are many who offer to feed us; the people we associate with, the ideologies we are exposed to, the pervading culture of consumerism, the idea that God is dead and there are now no rules, that we are special and the centre of our world and more. It is almost inevitable, say the realists, for us to abandon the Greek, Roman and Christian heritage on which western civilization was founded and simply run with the ‘I am god’ pack.
Charles Taylor suggest we have moved from a time and a society in which “belief in God is unchallenged and,…unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”
Stanley Hauerwas agrees, ‘the situation we find ourselves in as Christians is at once a threat and an opportunity.’ He continues, and I agree, “For if you believe as I do that there is an inevitable tension between the church and world,then a world in which belief in God is unchallenged may be one in which Christians too readily assume that they can be at home in the world. So the world in which we find ourselves (today) may be one in which we recover the difference a Christian should make.”
The lack of concern for others, the lack of boundaries and moral assumptions in our children’s (and their parent) lives, the inappropriate behaviours of adults and children, the bullying which is rife across all ages and classes, and the simple mantra of ‘if I say it’s ok for me, it’s ok’, the personalism which rules thinking abroad; all challenge those who hold to the Christian ethos.
Thomas Merton, writing in the early-‘60’s, referred to that age as the post-christian age. I suspect we have moved deeper into this age for we are insatiate consumers of Babylon’s bread, even within those bodies and disciplines such as the church, education institutions, the body politic and the arts, previously critical commentators on Babylon and its ways.
In each Eucharistic service the invitation is given to come to a lavish meal, the well set table of Jesus’ body and blood where we renew the new covenant of love set in place by Jesus death and resurrection. We are reminded in this meal of our heritage, for it looks back to the Old Testament covenant God had with Israel, it takes us into the act of love which Jesus gave us in the New Testament covenant, and leads us forward into the eternal relationship we will share with all the saints who have gone before, in heaven.
At this table, just for a few moments we stand in the eternal space, touching the past present and future, and are reminded who feeds us. It is an ideology of abundance, not scarcity, there is sufficient for all our needs no matter how the circumstances and the voices of this world may suggest otherwise.
It is a theology of difference, for the body and blood of Jesus welcomes us into a new way of seeing the world and puts us firmly in the place of tension, the space-in-between this world and its appetites and the kingdom of God – there but not yet.
We are not fed by this world and we are called to remain true to the One who feeds us. That is the meaning of our dismissal from the table at the end of our service. We are reminded to ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’, not Babylon.
Isaiah challenges the Israelites to return to the covenant table and be fed. We are challenged to do the same.
In terms of banks, mortgage providers and finance brokers the choice is now much more than the big 4. Buying a car is a mire of maker choice and then, if you happen to find the make you want, there are up to a dozen or more choices of model and style. And I haven’t even thought of nail polish and hair colour!
Yet we live wedded to the ideology of scarcity. Enough is never enough to satisfy us. The issue, according to theologian Walter Brueggemann, is whether there is enough to go around - enough food, water, shelter, space. An ideology of scarcity says no, there’s not enough, so hold on to what you have.
An ideology of abundance is just the opposite and is often the ideology of those deemed the poorest in our society. Appearances notwithstanding, there is enough to go around, so long as each of us only takes what we need.
It has always interested me that when I spend time with families who are indeed poor, the willingness to share what little they have, to turn what seems to be a meager supply of food into a banquet of exquisite quality and quantity is overwhelming. There is always enough.
And food and table play a great part in the abundant life. Having grown up in an extensive extended family with 21 aunts and uncles and their partners and their children meant that family get togethers were massive in terms of numbers and catering. In my childhood none of these families were wealthy but the women involved knew how to make a little go along way and how to produce monumental feasting tables. We would all grab a chair and sit around a long series of trestle tables and eat until we could eat no more.
Conversation and laughter filled the air and where there had been conflict or difficulties they seemed to disappear in the convivial atmosphere. Family remained family despite what may have happened. The covenant was repaired and life moved on.
Isaiah 55 takes the prominent place of food and meals in the Bible as a tool for bonding and belonging, of remembering who you are and whom you belong to:
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”
The prophet invited the Israelites, living in exile in Babylon, to come to a lavish meal and receive renewal of covenantal blessings. Isaiah is warning against the very real danger that they would become obligated to or assimilated into the culture of their captors and present benefactors, and adapt to the bread of Babylon. Being assimilated into a foreign way of life and forgetting their roots. Brueggemman again, “Whoever feeds, owns.” Food, he says, comes with a price. “Eat royal bread and think royal thoughts. Eat royal bread and embrace royal thoughts.”
Isaiah reminded the Israelites that who fed them and what they ate were no small matter. Why should they continue with food that did not nourish? The Israelites were a people of different bread, another way, a bread that came as a gift.
In our modern world there are many who offer to feed us; the people we associate with, the ideologies we are exposed to, the pervading culture of consumerism, the idea that God is dead and there are now no rules, that we are special and the centre of our world and more. It is almost inevitable, say the realists, for us to abandon the Greek, Roman and Christian heritage on which western civilization was founded and simply run with the ‘I am god’ pack.
Charles Taylor suggest we have moved from a time and a society in which “belief in God is unchallenged and,…unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”
Stanley Hauerwas agrees, ‘the situation we find ourselves in as Christians is at once a threat and an opportunity.’ He continues, and I agree, “For if you believe as I do that there is an inevitable tension between the church and world,then a world in which belief in God is unchallenged may be one in which Christians too readily assume that they can be at home in the world. So the world in which we find ourselves (today) may be one in which we recover the difference a Christian should make.”
The lack of concern for others, the lack of boundaries and moral assumptions in our children’s (and their parent) lives, the inappropriate behaviours of adults and children, the bullying which is rife across all ages and classes, and the simple mantra of ‘if I say it’s ok for me, it’s ok’, the personalism which rules thinking abroad; all challenge those who hold to the Christian ethos.
Thomas Merton, writing in the early-‘60’s, referred to that age as the post-christian age. I suspect we have moved deeper into this age for we are insatiate consumers of Babylon’s bread, even within those bodies and disciplines such as the church, education institutions, the body politic and the arts, previously critical commentators on Babylon and its ways.
In each Eucharistic service the invitation is given to come to a lavish meal, the well set table of Jesus’ body and blood where we renew the new covenant of love set in place by Jesus death and resurrection. We are reminded in this meal of our heritage, for it looks back to the Old Testament covenant God had with Israel, it takes us into the act of love which Jesus gave us in the New Testament covenant, and leads us forward into the eternal relationship we will share with all the saints who have gone before, in heaven.
At this table, just for a few moments we stand in the eternal space, touching the past present and future, and are reminded who feeds us. It is an ideology of abundance, not scarcity, there is sufficient for all our needs no matter how the circumstances and the voices of this world may suggest otherwise.
It is a theology of difference, for the body and blood of Jesus welcomes us into a new way of seeing the world and puts us firmly in the place of tension, the space-in-between this world and its appetites and the kingdom of God – there but not yet.
We are not fed by this world and we are called to remain true to the One who feeds us. That is the meaning of our dismissal from the table at the end of our service. We are reminded to ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’, not Babylon.
Isaiah challenges the Israelites to return to the covenant table and be fed. We are challenged to do the same.
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