Complacency & Fear - The Saboteurs of Action

Mark 9:38-50

⁴⁹“For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

 

***********************

 

How easy is it to slip into that place where we settle for less or where we avoid thinking or talking about the glaringly obvious until it is almost too late? As we saw in last weeks sermon, the first world has become comfortable with the violence being unleashed on many through out the world and only acting when it is almost too late to do anything constructive about the problem.  Climate change, refugees from war zones and places of internal unrest, domestic violence and more only exercise our imaginations when we are forced to deal with the thousands on our boarders, as is the case in Europe.

 

We always believe, ‘She’ll be right, mate”.

 

We have become  immune to what is happening providing it is not disturbing our piece of mind or preventing us from doing the things we like. It is indeed all about us.

 

Pope Francis is a very salty Pope. He rubs salt into the wounds of society so that society becomes conscious of its in built complacency and is forced to act.  It has little to do with politics and a lot to do with the Christian ethos of loving God and loving self. Of being so in tune with the God within that we live out in a way that seasons the world. The Pope does that. Recently he has taken 2 refugee families into Vatican housing. The cynics might say there is room in St Peter’s for a lot more but the fact is that they are there at his invitation. The Archbishop of Canterbury is also opening the doors of Lambeth Castle for refugees. Here are two men putting their faith where their mouth is.

 

And this is the point. Jesus says you need to put your faith where your mouth is. You need to be the difference, the flavouring, the change in the world. You need to do so, so that this world can live in peace.

 

What stops us from doing so? Complacency. She’ll be alright, somebody else will do it. Or it’s ok they (the government, the church, the wardens, the vicar) will make sure we have what we need to survive. William Loader suggests, "It is not so much that salt ceases to be salt but it becomes contaminated by additions over time, dirt, stones, etc, so that it becomes useless. He (Jesus) links salt with peace. In the context salt is an image of integrity and wholeness."

 

The contaminating additions include a sense of impotence (I am only one person, what can I do?), a sense of entitlement (it has always been this way so it will always be this way), an attitude of blame (well, if only they had listened to me we would not be in this situation or it’s all the government, church, wardens or vicars fault) or perhaps it is that we are ensconced in our own world and just let things go by. It is easy to find ourselves here, and on reflection, there is possibly a little bit of this in most of us.

 

This is not just the case for individuals but also for institutions. We become comfortable with who we are, who we spend time with, and with the way things are. It is been this way for sometime and we think it will remain this way for ever. Institutional church is finding it difficult to maintain its place in the world because the world has changed and it has not. The once prominent position churches such the Anglican and Catholic church once had as the setters and regulators of standards of morality and community is a thing of the past. We now are just one voice amongst many.

 

Our buildings are rarely used outside Sundays, except to make money to keep the doors open for Sunday; where once there were large numbers in both church and Sunday school, now there is but a remnant remaining. Many new approaches have been tried but in a world where choice is just another personal choice option they lose out to entertainment, sport, leisure and catching up on the house work.

 

It is interesting Jesus doesn’t condemn the options, the good options available. He says to not condemn those that do good things which reflect my teachings and principles. If what is happening builds community, restores life and empowers others, then it is to be applauded. Our problem is that it is out side the building and structures we have built for the purpose of worshipping and serving God. We are trapped, as the disciples were in the ‘our way or the highway’ exclusivity. We have ownership of the doing of good deeds and they either must stop or join us in the in-crowd.

 

Charlotte Elia writes, "This text invites communities to identify the self-constructed stumbling blocks that prevent flourishing. In other words, are there subtle ways in which the church sabotages its own ministries?"

 

It is not like we are doing no thing about it. We have tried a range of strategies and have more in place, but they seem not to be having the effect we want. We are not growing or changing. This is a difficult place to be and it asks hard questions of us who find ourselves in this place, such as:

• What is our vision for our church? Is it here to look after my spiritual needs or is it the missionary extension of Christ active in the world?
• Why do we come to church and what is my purpose for being here?
• Are we stuck in the ‘that’s the way we have always done it here’ syndrome, or ‘the we tried that once and it didn’t work’ excuse for not trying something new, or the sense that we have been here or apart of one or more activities longer enough to believe we own that part of the church and can act as gatekeeper to any change mooted?
• How have we reached out to bring others in or are we afraid they will not like what we have or that they will change what we have?
• Has our giving kept up with the need? Are we fully aware of the finances needed to fund the vision of the church as outlined in our strategic plan, in our case the Mission Action Plan, and understand that this may ask us to become more involved financially than previously?

 

While societies, governments and churches often want to change situations they often sabotage the attempts because they fear what that change will require of them. Complacency and fear prevents us from taking the initiative and salting our world, our community, our church. Our answers to the questions I posed will be an indicator of just how far people will go to put their faith where their mouth is.

 

St Oswald’s is at an interesting stage in its life as a church. We are getting less in numbers, we want to grow, we are doing lots of new things but we need to be doing more if we are to survive into the future. Without more people we simply will not have the resources to be God’s missionary church in the world. Without sufficient funds we will not be able to reach out effectively to invite new people in. The challenge we have to take up is how do we do both? How do we underpin the Mission Action Plan with sufficient resources to bring new people into our church? Our present level of giving simply doesn’t do that and we may have to revisit our giving. Besides, we are not a rich parish with endless reserves.

 

Jesus asks us to explore the hard questions, to maintain our faith, our saltiness in such a way that we will be exemplars of hope and change. He is not talking academically or hypothetically but practically. Our complacency and fear can rise up against us: she’ll be right mate, it’s ok the way it is; or we can dig deep in to the saltiness of our lives and give more, do more, take risks and step out to be the person, the people the church we are called to be.

 

Jesus, as always, doesn’t mince his words, the future of the world and the church is up to us. We can not outsource it ‘them’. Amen. 

Welcoming The Marginalised

Mark 9:30-37

 

Each year the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on 21 September. The theme of this year’s commemoration is “Partnerships for Peace – Dignity for All” which aims to highlight the importance of all segments of society to work together to strive for peace. 

 

Here in Australia we are being challenged on a number of levels, both connected to the UNHCR day and words of Jesus as recorded in todays Gospel -

³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Domestic violence, crimes against children and the plight of refugee families appear to be very different issues and require different strategies and approaches, yet they are essentially the same issue – power and control gained through violence and fear.

Aylan Kurdi, William Tyrell and Luke Batty are united in their suffering and raise the question: how seriously do we take Jesus plea to welcome children?

As with most of Jesus pronouncements this one would have made those standing around choke on what ever they were drinking or eating at the time. Children, like women, were possessions, useful to have around but not necessarily valued for who they were. They had a job to fulfil and could be treated as the male wished.

I was talking to a lady from an Asian background and we were discussing domestic chores and how men were beginning to take a more proactive role. She mentioned that in her culture this still had a long way to go. She had recently shared a meal with members of her family. The husband of one of her friends simply sat in his seat, requesting, no demanding to be served, first, got a glass of water, provided with his every need and he did not move from his seat. His wife was up and down like a yo-yo fulfilling every one of his requests. In Jesus time that was the norm.

Children we not useful as children, they were an investment in the future, but right now they were useless and to be ignored. You simply wouldn’t welcome children like you would an adult. In fact you would ignore them, send them away.

Jesus’ words were revolutionary and shocking. They still are.

Despite our elevation of young people we still struggle to treat them as children who are vulnerable and innocent. We rush them onto national televised talent shows way before they are mature enough to understand what is happening (and 15 is too young); we push them to fulfil one after another of a range of unnecessary activities (music, sport and other recreational clubs); we measure, test and label them with diagnostic tools from both the medical (DSM V) and the educational sectors (NAPLAN etc); we hover over them to protect them from monsters under the bed, bad people and accidents of life, they are objects not subjects, they have ceased to be persons who are on a journey, striving for being.

The stories of Aylan Kurdi, William Tyrell and Luke Batty have become headlines for selling newspapers, supporting political interventions and demonising others. They have become the face of a disturbing trend – the recruitment of victims into campaigns and policy making who should never have been victims in the first place.

This is not a comment on their parents, but a comment on society. It speaks directly to how we value people and how we value ourselves. It speaks to a complacency which ignores the obvious until it can not be ignored and then turns the tragedy which occurred into a focal point for boasting about what we will, have or may do about the problem. And the violence continues.

In listening to the Queensland Premier speaking on domestic violence, she referred to working on strategies and programs which are evidence. ‘Evidence based’ is a catchphrase, narrow, overused and of little use. It means we won’t do what is necessary until we have the research to support it and because there is so little known about these areas, and that the context of each situation will always give rise to events outside the evidence, in the end little occurs. It is narrow because it only accepts the scientific method, ruling out tradition, spiritual and cultural solutions which have been with us for a long time.

Jesus ties it together well.

It is connected to power and control. All domestic violence and crimes against children are about power and control or the loss of power and control, cannot be resolved simply by devolving responsibility for these issues to others who will now have power and control of those involved. The argument about who is first is an argument about who has the power to make decisions, impose their will and control the lives of those involved. Jesus says you have it all wrong, you need to listen to those who you are not listening to now, those you have marginalised until they are useful to you. It is not just about creating welcoming spaces for children but about hearing them and responding, learning and sharing with

them. They have something to say and it needs to be heard, but I fear this will get lost on the surge for evidence based programmes and responses.

It is connected to a universal and transcendent presence. Jesus says if you welcome, listen to, respond to, the children, you welcome me, and you welcome God. Humanity cannot solve any of the issues raised by Aylan, William or Luke as single definable objective events. We are all connected to these issues and we can only solve them through dialogue, not just with ourselves but with all involved; by strengthening relationships, that is the meaning of welcoming through hospitality (not food but open arms and doors); and by limiting our reliance on diagnoses and evidence based responses and remembering that it takes a village to raise a child, and violence any where in the world has its home in each of us.

It is connected to practicing the companionship of empowerment. God empowers Jesus who empowers us to empower others. How do we do that?

• By challenging the structures, systems and traditions which give rise to violence.
• By challenging the sense of entitlement that abounds in relationships and not allowing that sense of entitlement to present in our relationships with others.
• By challenging the language used by governments and corporates to disempower and control others.
• By challenging stereotypes and traditional practices and languages with in religions and within the church.
• By giving permission for those who are disempowered to have a voice, and then listening and learning from what we hear.
• By consciously and mindfully reflecting on, and monitoring, our own language and practice, and making changes that empower others.

After I had spoke on a similar issue on Friday at the ABM Board dinner, several people came up questioning my right to speak because of my colour. I think they wanted evidence-based research to prove who I am. They were subtly exerting power in order to avoid dealing with the issues raised. This is what Jesus is addressing.

 

He is saying even those who do not look like they have something to say, are labelled as victims or deemed able to contribute to providing solutions, can. In fact they are key to solving the problem. Those in exile in fact are the only ones who can because they are the only ones who know what it is like, why it is like that and what may be appropriate action.

 

Jesus would stand squarely with the idea of partnerships for peace – dignity for all. And he would turn to us to do the same. AMEN

Haggai Sophia - Holy Wisdom

Proverbs 1:20-21

²⁰Wisdom cries out in the street;

in the squares she raises her voice.

 ²¹At the busiest corner she cries out;

at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

 

 

 

Wisdom is a woman. Her name is Haggia Sophia, “Holy Wisdom” and the Book of Proverbs tells her story this way:

 

Yahweh created me when his purpose first unfolded,

before the oldest of his works.

From everlasting I was firmly set,

from the beginning, before earth came into being,

The deep was not, when I was born,

there were no springs to gush with water.

Before the mountains were settled,

before the hills, I came to birth;

before he made the earth, the countryside

or the first grains of the world’s dust.

When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there,

when he drew a ring on the surface of the deep,

when he thickened the clouds above,

when he fixed fast the springs of the deep,

when he assigned the sea its boundaries

—and the waters will not invade the shore—

when he laid down the foundations of the earth,

I was by his side, a master craftsman,

delighting him day after day,

ever at play in his presence,

at play everywhere in his world,

delighting to be with the sons and daughters of the human race.

 

Where have heard this before? The prologue to John’s Gospel draws a comparison between Jesus who was there at the beginning and Wisdom. John asserts that Jesus is the wisdom of God. In Jesus is the perfect presence of the feminine and the masculine, the coming together of creation and redemption in one earthly being. In a masculine and patriarchal society this seems to us to be nothing more than an oddity. God is and has been for the western mind a masculine figure, a king, warrior, a father. Rarely if ever do we think seriously about God, Jesus, the Spirit in wisdom terms, and even rarer still, in feminine terms.

 

Yet Matthew Fox writes: “Sophia or Wisdom has often been presented as a minor figure in Jewish theology.  However, a serious look at the Hebrew Scriptures reveals that “there is more material on Sophia in the Hebrew Scriptures than there is about almost any other figure.  Only God (under various titles), Job, Moses, and David are treated in more depth.”  There is more written about Sophia than about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, Isaiah, Sarah, Miriam, Adam, or Noah.  But we do not know her.  Sophia, who stands taller than any of them, is ignored.”

 

In New Testament terms the feminine is reduced to bit parts, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, the unnamed women in the Gospel stories, the women who supported Paul, but again rarely in a primary role. The exception of course is Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptiser and Mary the mother of Jesus. Whoever Mary was she was very unlikely to have been the perfect women we have become to see. As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the nomenclature virgin referred more to how she engaged with her understanding of God and what was happening to her at her centre (le point vierge), the capacity and wisdom to see God at work at a difficult time in her life – pregnant and unwed but betrothed.

 

As civilisations and the jewish experience as an example moved away from a reliance on on the land and sort to distance itself from the fertility Gods, often feminine as the feminine is responsible for birthing all things, society became masculine, an imposed order from above not a birthed order from below. In the New Testament church the role of the feminine was usurped by that of the masculine and remained that way until the middle ages. At this time a renewal began, empowering women to regain visibility and recognition, although their writings and pronouncements were often masculine in form, as they had to be if they were to read.

 

Two of such women were Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich. For Hildegard of Bingen, Wisdom (Sapientia in Latin) is present in God from all eternity. She is God's bride and the means through which all created things are brought forth. She gives life energy or "greening" power to all things. She mediates between the transcendent divine and creation, sustaining all things, She is manifest in all human sciences, as well as in the revelatory and redeeming knowledge of God. She is incarnate as Christ through Mary's virginal womb, and she continues to speak through the teachers of the church. She is manifest finally in the redeemed people of God as Mother Church.

 

For Julian of Norwich, Wisdom is identified with Christ, the second person of the Trinity. She is the one through whom we are created naturally and recreated spiritually. "Thus Jesus Christ who does good against evil is our very Mother, We have our being of him, where every ground of motherhood begins, with all the sweet keeping of love that endlessly follows. As truly as God is our Father so truly is God our Mother" ("Revelations of Divine Love," chapter 59).

 

This resurgence of wisdom as the feminine principle has been championed by such as Matthew Fox and Thomas Merton and women theologians such as Joan Chittister, Mary Radford Reuther and more. Merton, an unlikely proponent as he was male and part of a male only order, Trappist monks. Yet he wrote a powerful prose poem entitled Haggai Sophia in honour of wisdom. Women played an enormous part in his dreams and were understood by him to be the prophetic wisdom of God. 

 

In his poem he writes the following (I wish I had time to read it all - it is wonderful):

 

'The feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source of creative realizations of the Father's glory. She is His manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen, glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who know her at all.’

 

He continues: 'Sophia in ourselves is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace. She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from brightness to brightness. She is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice and creative dynamism of the Father.’

 

Is there ever been a time when there was a greater need for ‘this tender counterpart of power, justice and creative dynamism’ to be reimagined and lived? The masculine sense of imposed power and right dominate resulting in unjust systems, cruelty and unending war. It is sad that this sense of feminine is often missing, not just in the males who are in power, but by females who take on the masculine traits that lead to momentary success.

 

Wisdom as the feminine principle is not gender specific. Women have no more of it than men for God evenly distributes it to all. It is to be found in all of creation and is experienced by those who, like Mary and Jesus, are in touch with God at their centre, poor and empty of the ego self, present to the poor and the marginalised and uninhibited by culture, tradition and entitlement.

 

Proverbs 1:20-23, which we read today starts: “²⁰Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. ²¹At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:” and no-one is listening. It is time we started. Amen

Speaking from Exile

He was in his early teens. A fine looking young man struggling to find his way in a white world, often accused of crimes he had not committed, we worked together to overcome the injustices that came his way. When he was 10 he filled a bathtub with water, poured in a bottle of White King bleach, and climbed in. He wanted to be white like all the rest of the kids in his class. He was a young man in exile.

 

Sometime later I was working in the funeral industry and visited the mortuary at Mt Isa hospital. A man had been placed on the slab for forensic examination by the GMO; a blood stained white sheet covered his body.  Freezer doors weeping on one wall, a pile of torn decrepit clothes absent-mindedly flung on the untidy bench as a brief reminder of a life once occupied, and the half closed screen door, all spoke volumes about the place in which we stood. The man was an aboriginal person who had been sleeping on the highway, run over by an eighteen-wheel road train. While it might seem trivial to say his body was badly damaged, it is impossible to know just how much unless you had witnessed the results. Remarkably his face was unmarked.

 

Standing there, I  experienced being in the tomb with the dead Christ, standing on the edge watching as people performed the necessary routines. I knew I was witnessing a scene that would change my life forever. And it did.

 

I struggle to understand why people sleep rough on the road in the path of the ubiquitous semi-trailer. What sense of hope do these people have, or indeed, is hopelessness the only gift our society gives them?  Here was a human being who did not deserve to die in such a violent manner.  Here was someone who had at some time in his life dreamed dreams, held hopes, loved another and possibly fathered and raised children. Where had all that gone, and what part did the dominant culture of our society, including the church I am apart of, have in his decline? Here was the image of Christ crushed into death, not simply by the truck, but by the failure of society to engage and include him. He remained in exile.

 

Talking with the GMO I heard about indigenous teenage suicides. The method chosen spoke eloquently of the hopelessness experienced.  They simply tied something around their neck and on to a fence, sat-down and waited. What is our response or do we rationalize what happened as the life style choice of the individual? Exiled and disempowered.

 

I grew up in a town renown for its violence against local tribes. Visiting the library, reading newspaper cuttings and letters from the mid 1880’s to the early 1920’s, I realised the steps taken by my family to hide my grandmothers’ heritage was a strategy deemed necessary for survival.

 

My grandfather made my Uncle promise to keep my grandmothers indigenous heritage hidden. No one in my family speaks of it; her background is shrouded in mystery. There is only a mother who registered the birth some time later in a different town. No father is mentioned. She had the name of the family she was left with when the small aboriginal community from which Jimmy and Joey Governor, part-aboriginal men who killed 9 people during a fourteen week rampage in 1900, the year of federation, and who inspired the book and movie “The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith” came, were forcibly moved out west at the request of the white community. 

 

While it was our family secret, it wasn’t a secret to the locals. I grew up known as ‘Young Darkie’ or ‘Young Blackfella’; my friend, when angry, called me the son of a drunken bush black; another friends’ father told a group of classmates they could be friends with me but to remember where I came from. Bullying at school was never-ending.

 

My father lived in exile, caught between a world he knew and a world he never knew, growing more bitter and angry as the years went on. He acted out his violence through alcohol, directing it at anyone nearby, particularly his family and I as his eldest son. He was never able to reconcile within himself these two worlds even when he stopped drinking. It was bigger than him and his family. It was the internalised oppression of a people and country from which he was exiled.

These incidents are metaphors for the destruction of the primal spiritual essence of our people and symbolise the battle for the soul of our nation. Our people are suffering from the cumulative effect of internalised oppression giving rise to the situation we see in front of us. It will take imagination, humility and a drastic rethinking of our own lives and the way we find value and meaning in and for ourselves, and others before we will be able to reach out to those we continue to oppress. They, we, are living in exile.

 

Perhaps exile holds the key for the future. ‘Only when you are out of rhythm with the familiar do you begin to investigate and explore the possibilities. Exile is the place in which such an investigation not only can begin, but becomes necessary for both survival and renewal. It is the place where one is forced, as an individual and a community, to reflect on who or what is at the centre of one’s being.’ Both cultures are disconnected from their centre due to the violent history of our country, and in a very real sense, both black and white, are exiled from belonging. Homeless and exiled, the violence continues and can only find peace when we own such disconnection together.

Standing at the edges of the abyss, a place our country has teetered on for sometime, reveals both the emptiness and the fullness of our situation. Emptiness and fullness of place, time and country, language and symbolism, and myth and meaning in a land overflowing with mythic and creative possibilities as yet untapped. Both cultures have been reduced to a literal reading of the situation and are concentrating on solving practical and in your face problems – work, housing, education (all good things) but not that which will change the situation in the long term.

What will change our situation is the conversation from the edge, from exile. This is not a conversation for insiders on both sides, but for the outsiders, those whose voice isn’t heard in conventions, parliaments or peak body discussions. It is not about the pronouncements by high profile leaders or designated spokesmen and women. This is dialogue, the conversation between ordinary individuals, telling stories and sharing both knowledge and ignorance, informing pathways and possibilities. This conversation begins here with you and I, exploring experiences, questioning stereotypes, forming relationships and breaking down walls.

Thomas Merton suggests “The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept.” It is sometimes called Dadirri by indigenous people.  Inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It is a 'tuning in' experience with the specific aim to come to a deeper understanding of the beauty of the other. 

It is listening and hearing, not just to what is said but what is not said, what is felt, what is hidden. This takes great imagination and risk. It takes time, and is not linear. It involves learning in depth, far removed from the head and the rational desire to solve problems.

It requires respect, the capacity to allow others to make the journey at their own pace and in ways we find uncomfortable and counter intuitive. It recognises others as our teachers and removes us from the responsibility of knowing everything. It recognises the reign of God as the companionship of empowerment and looks not for measurable results but fulfilled lives.

 

Merton, in writing to race activist Jim Forrest in the US in the 1960’s said; “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Whatever we do in terms of reconciliation and engagement with indigenous people must keep this in mind. It is not about ideas or solutions, but people. Individuals of goodwill like you and I who are seeking a better world for all, can only do so in relationship with each other and those we share the future with. John Baxter, speaking at a NRW gathering said that reconciliation is relational – it happens between individual people, not cultures. For people driven by easy answers and quick solutions this maybe seen as doing nothing, wasting time and avoiding the problem.

It is the good news Jesus performed. He did little, he wasted time and, as far as the Zealots and others were concerned, he avoided the elephant in the room - the system. Yet he changed the world. We can do the same.  It can only happen through dadirri and communion, and it must begin tonight.

 

 

 

  

Living Liberty

When the Icelandic government announced it would accept 50 refugees, its citizens rallied, using a Facebook event page to volunteer their homes and pressure the government to grant more refugees asylum.

On Sunday, award-winning author Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir set up the page Syria is Calling. The group aims to present Iceland's welfare minister Eygló Harðardóttir a list of volunteers willing to house Syrian refugees.

"We want to push the government — show them that we can do better, and do so immediately!" Bjorgvinsdottir wrote in the group description.

"Refugees are our future spouses, best friends, our next soul mate, the drummer in our children's band, our next colleague, Miss Iceland 2022, the carpenter who finally fixes our bathroom, the chef in the cafeteria, the fireman, the hacker and the television host."

More than 16,000 people had joined the page as of Thursday afternoon, though not all of them are Icelandic. 

Icelandic volunteers, supporters from other countries and many who purport to be Syrians attempting to find their way to Iceland have all posted to the page. Bjorgvinsdottir has offered to pay for the flights of five Syrians and house them with a friend. 

On Monday, Eyglo Arnarsdottir heard about the Facebook group on the news. She was unimpressed with the number of refugees the government said it would accept, so the next day she signed up to volunteer with the Red Cross. 

"It's one of the biggest human crises we've seen in my lifetime at least," said the 35-year-old journalist in Reykjavik. She's waiting to hear from the Red Cross about how she can assist, though she says she could help teach them Icelandic and guide them around her city. 

"I think it's an obligation all of us have to help in any way. With my effort, if I could help one person or one family, it would be worth it."

Sandra Hack Polaski writes, "The second chapter of James opens with an illustration that is as relevant in the contemporary church as it must have been to James's first readers. His challenge is: how do we treat the poor, the homeless,  those unlike us in so many ways that we either avoid them or marginalise them, usually in the nicest of ways?

 

James continues:

^“8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

James is a practical man. He wants to see words and actions aligned and in sync. He noticed that there is a discrepancy in the practices of his audience. They were busy giving the impression that they do not discriminate, that they do accept everyone and anyone, and that position and wealth is of no consequence to them. James notices  they are big on talk but fail in the detail.

They are in fact living in a world where to miss by a centremetre is to be miss by a kilometre. The details matter. Preferring someone over another for what appears good reasons, they have money to help, they provide a good image for the organisation, they have a better grasp of the language, or they simply come from the better suburb etc is, for James, a salvation threatening act.

Now it wasn’t that they were bad people, they just were unthinking and not connecting their personal preferences to the Gospel. They had forgotten that the Good News had liberated them from the class system and set them free to be authentic and real people in relationship with God and others. They were liberated people and therefore need now to live a liberated life, a life outside the cultural and religious laws which defined others clean or unclean, in or out or someone to be seen with in public or not.

Many years ago I held a sportsman dinner with Max Walker as the speaker. To promote the event we gave away some tickets through the local radio station. An elderly lady and her son, who was in a wheelchair won the tickets and came along. In a room of well dressed well heeled socialites they stood out in what was obviously their Sunday best, a little crinkled, a little dusty, a little…well, it wasn’t from the high end of the market. Max Walker walked around the drinks area and shook hands with everyone there. When he came to the lady and her son, he pulled up a chair and sat down and gave them much more time than he gave others. They beamed as if all their dreams had come true. For Max it was natural, something I would think he does without thinking, but it made an impression on those in the room, perhaps outshining his funny and very enlightening talk.

Rick Morley suggests, "James wasn’t telling the church to be good to the poor and thereby earn salvation.” It wasn’t about charity or philanthropy, or motivated by pity or the desire to fix something. " He was saying that if their faith was genuine, they would actually be loving their neighbours as themselves." It would be natural and unforced, below the radar and respectful, not driven by public image issues, the politically correct need to have a social justice or charity support program as part of your business or to maximise tax benefits. You would just do it because it is part of the responsibility of loving your neighbour.

James states, ‘¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” and giving away lots later doesn’t count. He continues, and here is the crux of the matter, ‘¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty”

Augustine has been paraphrased as saying, ‘Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.’ This is the liberty James is talking about. We no longer have to act according to rules set down in the Torah or other moral documents, not even the Ten Commandments. We are to live and act naturally, in tune with our first love and from our virgin centre. 

 

Nicholas Lash in his bookTheology on the Way to Emma’s suggest that the New Testament text is a script to be performed, not privately but collaboratively with others. Just like we interpret other scripts for performance often for a short period, King Lear for example, twe interpret the new testament by performing it as ‘baring witness to, one whose words and deeds and suffering, rendered (or performed) the truth of God in human history.’ We are to live out the story of Jesus, the story of everyone else and the story of God.

How do we do this in our own lives? It takes great care, deep self-reflection and an awareness of who we are. It requires us to spend time in our day to see how we have responded – were our words discriminating, our actions or lack thereof shaming, our inner thoughts derogatory - even just a little. It asks us to put a check on our tongue, a hold on thoughts and a little more thought into our actions.

While these are often but little things, they are the hardest to control and adjust because they are often deeply embedded within and take some shaking free. Yet it is the imperative of liberation – the companionship of empowerment –that we set others free.

We will leave the last word to James:

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.Amen

  

Silent Retreat - Spring and New Life