Monday 25 May 2015

Pentecost - Being Christ in the World.

John 15:26 - 16:15
 
 
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day of the breaking in and breaking out of the Spirit in the lives of all who live a life of love and compassion in Christ. To be en christos is to be empowered to live and love in a manner which challenges the accepted ways of the world. To, in fact, be Christ in the world. You. Yourself. No-one-else.
 
No longer is there a Jesus to turn to for direction, teaching, hope, advice and spiritual comfort. You are on your own. You are to speak as if you are Jesus and to act as if you are Jesus because, for John, you are. And you will experience life just as Jesus did. For you are mystically one with Christ.
 
John writes about the coming of the Spirit at a time when we associate Pentecost with miracles, speaking in tongues and other super-natural events, and yet that seems far from what John has in mind. No where in this farewell discourse does he mention the doing of miracles or speaking in tongues or ecstatic experiences s being the lot of the those he was writing, his community which was beginning to feel the wrath of persecution and the struggles of remaining faithful even within the synagogue.
 
One would have thought if these were to be the tools of a disciple’s life, John would have spoken strongly and clearly about the power available. He doesn’t. Instead he links the disciples lives and experience of life directly to that of Jesus and stresses that the Christ is now in them as God was in him and that is all they need.
 
Jesus is saying that even if I go away, the meaning I came to bring will not disappear. What I have done is to open to you a new understanding of what it means to be human. Trust it. Now that it has been opened, it cannot be closed again. Spong writes that Jesus continues with; ‘The spirit of truth, which proceeds from the father, will come to stand where I have stood.’
 
David Ewart suggests "Whatever else we may want to say on this day of Pentecost about the Spirit, it is important to notice that Jesus always refers to the Spirit as the Spirit of truth. And in John truth is always the way, the life, the light, the joy, the friendship."
 
Here we discover a mystical and mutual indwelling bringing into existence a new being in relationship. It is no longer one of authority but of indwelling friendship. It is a new way of engaging with the divine. The divine is no longer up there, beyond the clouds, but has entered life, your life, my life in the form of the very spirit of truth. This was the spirit we saw in Christ and now will be visibly evident in the lives of those who form the ‘body of Christ’. Us.
 
William Loader, of Murdoch University says, "Jesus is not left behind that we might soar into spiritual fantasy and relish the prospects of more magic and more religion. John promises no such flights and is silent about future miracles. The task of the disciples and disciples after them is to bear fruit, to let the seed sown in death rise to new life. Transitional events are minimised. What matters is life and love."
 
Our life and lives are transformed by the indwelling Christ. It is our actions, thoughts, experiences which become the visible presence of God in the world. Pentecost is not about the supernatural crashing into the world in the form of special effects and magic tricks, it is the empowering of ordinary people to do ordinary things so that extraordinary changes take place in people, places and things.
 
In the Anglican Church there has been a process for young people to take communion after confirmation. When I was a school chaplain I used to alternate the services with 2 out 3 services for the High School students being a Eucharist. Almost all of the young people had neither church background nor any religious education in relation to the sacraments. Yet when the invitation was given many would come forward to take communion. Fortnightly 25% of the 600 students did.
 
Some teachers and other clergy questioned to authenticity them taking communion. Yet these young people made a conscious decision to come forward as did those who decided to stay in their seats. For both groups this was not simply following the crowd but a deliberate act of the will.
 
And it was a truly Pentecost experience every time. They would look directly into you eyes as you distributed the sacrament, moving from bread to wine respectfully and deliberately. While they may not have been regular church attendees outside school, their reverential actions spoke loudly about a deep sacramental and mystical experience of God. They were experiencing being in Christ. They trusted what was within them and stepped forward in faith to receive.
 
John’s Jesus speaks to the ordinary person, saying I know what it is like to be a human who is different to those around me, to march to a different spirit. Jesus says I also know the spirit is sufficient for all your needs, not only your physical needs, but your need to make decisions, to live in a certain manner, to endure hardships and persecutions.
 
It is perplexing when we see the Spirit at work, and adults even Christian adults, respond with questions and doubts, unable to accept that God is at work in ways and in people outside of what we perceive as the normal spiritual way. We simply shut down Pentecost.
 
Here we sit amongst a community of people who are open to possibility. That is why they bring their children to ballet, make school lunches, run exercise classes. It is all about what is now and will be in the future. It is about awakening the spirit with in, going beyond the mind that is. It is the mystical ordinariness of the incarnated spirit of God alive in the daily activities of human beings.
 
In an experience known as the Louisville Epiphany, Thomas Merton expresses what this Pentecost event is, and it is no different to the first event in Acts.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
 
We are challenged on this Pentecost Sunday to see the supernatural possibility in the natural, to see God’s spirit already at work in those around us and to find ways to engage and to be en christos with them. We are not to demand that they change or convert to our thinking but to find ways to befriend and to compassionately be one with them. In doing so we open up the miracle of Pentecost and bring about a new world for all. Amen’
 
 
 
 
 
 

  

Monday 18 May 2015

Thinking About Christian Unity.

John 17:6-19
This week is the World Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  An admirable title for an admirable goal, I am sure but I am a little unsure what the week of Christian unity was about. You may say it’s obvious. It’s about all the various expressions of the Christian church joining with one another in unity.

But what does that mean? What are we trying to unite? What are we trying to bring together as one? Can there ever be a united Christian church considering the varying doctrines, liturgical practices and church governance present in the world, let alone the history of animosity and bloodletting that has gone on over the years.  I can still remember not being able to talk to Catholic girls on the bus only 50 years or so ago!

The resource material for the week posed two questions:
 Which is the path of unity, the route we should take, so that the world may drink from the source of life, Jesus Christ?
Which is the path of unity that gives proper respect to our diversity?[1]

John, the Jewish mystic provides a path for us to follow in the gospel reading of today. And it all hinges on a basic Jewish mystical concept – that God was and is a permeating presence, not an external being. John Spong suggests in his book Tales of a Jewish Mystic, God was that life-giving power that embraces all those who are willing to accept the vulnerability that love always brings. For John, Jesus was not one who had come and then departed and who would someday come again. Jesus was rather a God presence inviting all to enter who he was and is, to be born of the Spirit and to participate in the eternity of God.

This passage is known as the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, a prayer for the church of the Ages in which Jesus would be enshrined as its high priest. Jesus interceded with God on behalf of all who are embraced as God’s body, the Church here on earth, past, present and future. It is a kairos prayer, cutting across all categories of time and peoples to be ever present and ever personal.

Jesus in fact prays three different prayers. He prayers firstly for himself, then for those who had been with him and for those who would believe because of the witness of the disciples.  The primary focus of his prayer is unity but not unity as we would normally think of it. 

It was not a prayer for ecclesiastical unity, a prayer for the institution and its power to exist and to manipulate those within it for its own purpose. The larger the institution, the more the power and the prestige, the money and the influence. We have lived through that stage and have seen the many abuses of power and might that have occurred at state, institutional and personal levels. The recent child abuse expose is evidence enough of how power can be misused.

It was not a prayer for false unity. The Archbishop of Canterbury made this clear at a recent inter-religious conference: “We need to move beyond inter-religious interaction in which we the usual suspects issue bland statements of anaemic intent with which you could paper the walls of Lambeth Palace – and much good would it do you – all desperate to agree with one another so that the very worst outcome could possibly be that we end up acknowledging our differences. … ... True friendships and relationships can withstand honesty about differences in values, opinions and religious understandings and a common commitment to mutual flourishing in diversity.”

It was not a prayer for content or doctrinal unity. It is not about right believing, having the right words and formulas in which to package the authorised belief of this or that institution, theologian or teacher. Getting a uniform set of doctrines or creeds has been historically thwart with angst and appear no closer to being resolved that an the force church council. Anyway doctrinal unity is more about excluding ideas and beliefs which conflict with and undermines institutional stability and power.

It was not a prayer for a unity that can be imposed by any external agenda or program. It is not a law and cannot be legislated fore. Like morality and ethics, unity does not come from the outside. Regardless of the range of laws we may impose on what people can and cannot do, they will continue to do as they wish, when they wish and for whatever reason they wish. Legislated morality will never deal with immoral behaviour. That is a decision that comes from with in and will always over rule the law.

It was, is a prayer for unity that is an internal experience and revelation, something that rises up within and infiltrates us from the inside out. It is being in christ - en christos - an idea that permeates Paul’s writings. It is a prayer for the actuality of the vine and branches in individuals in such a way they are united by their oneness with the divine. It is our individual oneness  with God through Christ that unites us, not any externally imposed form of unity.

In 17:3 ‘John even makes Jesus use the third-person name and title for himself to make this point: Unity comes in knowing “the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent”.’ Spong again:  “The word of God comes from God, reveals the meaning of God, and returns to God”.  It is a mystical experience of oneness in  which individuality is not lost but affirmed, security is surrendered and a new being is entered.

This unity already exists. It is the possession of every believer who has seen into the God who is in us individually and in the church catholic. We are striving to bring about a unity which already exists. We already have what we are searching for and are perhaps afraid to acknowledge. Christian unity is the unity which we share in Christ. It is already present. We simply don’t act on it.

We know that there is enough resources in the world to solve the problem of world poverty. How much does it cost to solve world hunger? A price has been set and estimated by the United Nations to solve this crisis – $30 billion a year. It may seem like a large sum of money, but when compared to the U.S. defense budget of $737 billion in 2012, $30 billion seems more attainable.[2] We have what we need to deal with this seemingly intractable problem but we fail to activate it for a range of apparently rational reasons. It will cost us power, control and may in fact allow others to challenge our position in the world.

I would dare to suggest that the same occurs with in the Christian church. To accept that we are already at one with each other means that we have to let go of our finely tuned theological, doctrinally and liturgical positions and begin to focus on the one essential belief that unites us. It would mean saying yes to sharing resources, facilities, leaders, programs and worship in such away that we begin to give form and shape to the kingdom of God, right here and now.

Just a cursory glance across the suburbs of Melbourne shows us that we have much money, people and time resources tied up in replicating the activities of each other. In pronouncing our manifestation of the Christian faith as more hip, cool, relevant, traditional, evangelical or progressive than that found any where else we are diminishing the visible presence of the kingdom of God in our city. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Even the Anglican Communion is again facing a possible split because we are unable to find unity on doctrine, practice and morality.

John says the unity we seek is mystical and is the possession of all who believe in Christ. There is neither Greek or Jew says Paul because we all share the same baptism through the life and death of Christ. What would it be like if we could only grasp this truth? What would the church look like? What would it mean to come together to worship God? Would we have as many Sunday services in Glen Iris/Ashburton as we have today or would we come together as one?

These are uncomfortable questions in an uncomfortable world yet that is the essence of the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus the high priest has made the sacrifice on behalf of all so that we can all be one in God. No longer are there those who are unclean in doctrine, practice or lifestyle, the Christ has come and set us free to embrace a relationship in God and each other. When are we going to make a start or are we always going to be praying for a Christian unity that has already come? Are we so  blinded by our own religious geography that we fail to see it? Amen

Monday 11 May 2015

What Makes A Person A Person?

John 15:9-17
We were standing on the top of a high dam wall outside Inverell. I was there as part of a large military training exercise, providing welfare support to the contingent of soldiers, engineers and other auxiliary staff.  In front of me, a soldier was being placed in a harness ready to abseil down the dam wall which seemed to fall away into oblivion from where we stood. As the soldier started his descent, the Captain in charge of the exercise turned to me and said, “What about you Sir, are you going over?” I could feel every head turn toward me, waiting for my reply. I was twice her age and right then felt way older than that. Going over the wall was the last thing I suspected I would be doing when I rose that morning. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Sure, I’ll go over.’
 
Have you ever had a moment when you agreed to something and immediately regretted it? Well, I did then. I was put in the harness and I crawled over the edge.  Out there it seemed further down than the started 113 metres (371ft) On command I began the most terrifying few minutes of my life to the bottom of the dam wall. When I finally gained the ground I was possessed with a mix of sheer relief for having survived and a sense of achievement to have overcome my fears and stepped out into what seemed impossible only a few minutes before. Although I was quick to say no to going down upside down when they asked me back up on top!
 
It was a thrilling and scary experience I was glad to have done right there in front of the young soldiers. The young Captain gave me a big high five and a grin as wide as the dam wall and after that we were best of friends with her. As a result I was welcomed as one of them by the soldiers who were there and those who heard the story, and let me tell you, every one heard the story.
 
Last Sunday we suggested that Christianity was a progressive religion. In other words, faith is where our journey in Christ begins, and faith is the engine which propels us to grow and become one with God. We never stand still. Faith takes us into places, experiences and relationships we had previously thought unattainable or highly improbable. Faith propels us out into the open, beyond the protection of our fears and need for control. We are opened up to the possibility of God hidden in the ordinary life.
 
John Spong suggests that this passage is about the transformation of the open, not the redemption of the fallen. In this passage we have begun to move beyond our initial experience of God’s saving grace, from the joy of salvation into the joy of being fully alive. No longer are we enslaved to the power of ego, sin, we are opened up to the transforming journey of life lived in relationship with God.
 
Rene Descartes offered one answer to the question of what it means to be human when he wrote: “I think, therefore I am’. Merton, Eckhart and other modern Christian thinkers such as Desmond Tutu and Pope Francis offers an alternative answer, I am in relationship….therefore I am.’ The Zulus of Africa have a concept called Ubuntu: a person is a person through other people. A person is a relational being means, according to Anthony Howard, ‘implies that you become more fully a person – or all that you can be – in relationship with other people’, with the other. We are hard wired to be in relationship with the other.
 
If we are open we step into the very same relationship with God that Jesus had, a relationship in which we move from strangers to friends, from servants to companions, from one who does not know the mind of God to one who is trusted with the bringing in of the kingdom of God. Life takes on a very different complexion when we are opened up, and open our selves up to an intimacy with God we could never have imagined, in fact we may have feared, was possible.
 
Fear closes us down. Faith opens us up. Fear builds walls where there is no need for walls. Faith finds ways to dismantle the very walls our fear constructs. Faith is found and finds its expression in and through love. The love that we receive from God through the human touch of a Christ who fully lives out his humanity, even unto the cross.  His expression of love for God and humanity was such that he placed no limits on how far it would take him. And he went there because he was willing to obey the commandments of God.
 
These were not laws or rules of spiritual purity and righteousness. They were the commandments that come packaged in God’s dream for the world, a dream for world in which love, justice and peace reigns supreme over and above the law of fear. They were the commandments given to those who had stepped into a transformed relationship with God and were counted as friends, not servants, not people who simply did what they were told to without question or thought. Servants are those who do the bidding of someone they fear. They hide behind statements like, ‘I’m just doing my job’, ‘it is legal therefore it must be ok’, ‘I’m just taking orders’. 
 
The history of the world attests to the horror down to others by servants. The holocaust, prison camps, genocides and killing fields of the world speak eloquently to the violence of the servant.
 
Jesus says our faith takes us to a very different place. It takes us into a relationship where we are accepted as friends, a part of an intimate interaction where we know the mind of God and play an active role in the implementation of God’s dream. We are co-creators of the kingdom of God in a way that brings joy and fulfilment, not only to a divine plan but to ourselves.  We become engaged in a project bigger than our ego self and expand to include others in our life and our dreams. We no longer just do what we are told but use our intelligence, initiative and capacity to build love, peace and justice in our world, both in our immediate world and the world outside and beyond our boundaries.
 
John expresses this idea clearly in this passage as he has Jesus explain our journey on three different levels:
 
·      A journey from servants to friends – from law to love
 
·      A journey into friendship by choice, his choice, the providence of God’s grace
 
·      A journey into love and joy, a complete-ing of our true self and of the kingdom of God.
 
Today we have the opportunity to live into the possibility of faith through gratitude to the unfailing goodness of God. God calls us to step beyond our fears and to take the step into responsible faith, responsible for how we value our friendship with God and how we actively live out that friendship in the world around us. Do we do it as servants who simply follow instructions or do open ourselves up to become co-creators with the Trinity of  a just an peaceful world.  The choice is ours and here, today is a good place to start.
 

Amen 

Tuesday 5 May 2015

Is Christianity A Progressive Faith?

John 15:1-8
Do you remember when sending a letter by post was not called ‘Snail mail’ and when a human being said ‘you’ve got mail’ they meant something in the mailbox (remember them)? Today the post box at the post office sends you an email to let you know there is mail waiting for you. Cars were once only powered by a petrol driven motor, now you can buy a car that runs on batteries - the Tesla has recently been released in Australia. Why some people would say that the only constant is change and hint that change is not always progress. I would suggest that humans are wired for change and progress. Even in their faith.

Christianity is a progressive faith. It is never stagnant nor regressive. It’s very essence is to move into life not into death.  Each action, comment and teaching of Jesus is about transformation and resurrection.
 
We do not, cannot, must not, stand still.
 
For many years my father worked in a vineyard. He worked in the cellar nurturing wine for the winemaker. His product was a growth industry. The grapes grew on vines that had been well pruned and cultured. Then the grapes found their way to crushers separating the skins from the juice and then the juice sat in large vats sitting on top of the skins for colour and taste. This was a  journey and process of transformation that began with the secateurs of the vineyard staff.
 
Jesus uses the very same image here and it is a positive image. This is not about punishment and reward. If you fail to bear fruit you will be pruned and left to fall barren to the ground. Pruning is an imager of encouraging and enhancing transformation. What is dead is let go, what is alive is encouraged to be more alive, more fruitful. The pruner looks for the signs of life and ensures that it is given all it needs to produce.
 
In Jesus the vineyard worker is interested in the here and now. What is going to bear fruit in this place and time. It is earthy realism. Life lived in the present world. That is the Christian faith. It is about bringing justice and peace, God’s dream for the world, into being right where we are.
 
Over the years Christianity has, like other religions, been focussed on the other world, heaven in what ever words used to describe it. Early Christians saw it as their duty to be martyred so as to go and be with the Jesus in heaven. For many this was the goal up until relatively recently in historical terms. For some fundamentalists this is still the goal. To go and be with Jesus as soon as practicable.
 
Unlike Christianity, Islam is other world focus. As a result of the strict adherence to the Quran, history stopped with the death of the Prophet. Therefore there is nothing to live for here. Everything is focussed on their understanding of heaven and of martyrdom. In this sense, Islam is not a progressive religion and will, without a major reformation always struggle to be one.
 
For Christians, faith is an embodied experience lived in the here and now. Incarnation is key to a disciples understanding of the world. Faith is not an escape but an invitation to live here & now, in & of people and creation for that is what God did in and through the life of Jesus. The incarnation of Christ values our humanity. Jesus became like us so we could become like God.
 
The idea of working out our salvation here on earth is that we become more and more God-like and less and less ego-like. It is not that our works save us, but that our works validate and authenticate our status as children of God. Our works give evidence to our faith. We are on the journey to becoming one with God, what Julian of Norwich calls –‘one-ing’. Our lives are combination of little deaths, transformations and resurrections every day.
 
We grow and change, live and die to experiences, make mistakes and endure failures to learn and grow. Thomas Merton suggests that the only person who is inconsistent is the person who is all was consistent, whose views never change, whose perspective on the world always stays the same. He suggests we should not trust such a person because they have never experienced life or have experienced life and failed to reflect, contemplate and process what they have experienced.
 
This is the process of the vineyard John has Jesus use here. Life, in all its joys and sadness, success and failures, slowly cuts away the dead wood in our lives to allow us to leave behind the false self of the ego and to discover the true self of God within us. Marcus Borg suggests that the word repentance refers to going beyond our mind, the mind we have at this moment.  This idea suggests that sin is in some way attached to how we see the world through our ego, that it is all about our self.
 
What was seen as the norm in the past no longer is because we have gone beyond the mind, the thinking we had then. The world is round, not flat, the world orbits the sun, not the other way around, slavery is wrong, women are to be treated the same as men and more show us we have repented and continue to do so.

  
The events of the last few days in Bali point to the fact that this process is continuing and needs to continue. Some 52 countries in the world, including the US practice the death penalty. Nowhere in Australia does but there is still such a statute on the books in NSW. How we treat others who are different to us and come to this country for refuge asks us to repent and go beyond the mind of fear and control.
 
A life lived in Christ:
·      Values past experience – builds on the past, is grateful for what has been done by  and the example of  Jesus
 
·      Focuses on the now – values self, others & the experience of love in the present moment
 
·      Welcomes the future, but lives fully not dies gradually, for it.
 
Each Sunday, in the Great Thanksgiving we remind ourselves of the mystery of our faith, which is not exactly a mystery. The so called mystery of faith reminds us that we are a people of the past, of the present and of the future, not as separate categories but as a whole.  God’s time or kairos breaks in on us, not in a linear or horizontal way, but vertically, cutting through all categories of experience at once. We know Christ has died to deal with the fear of death in all its forms, that Christ is risen and present giving life and resurrection now, and that he will come again to herald in God’s dream for the world, the just and peaceful realm of God.
 
Let us repent and take on the mind of the incarnated God who through the life and death on the Cross embodied the dream of God in this world. Amen