In Your Ears

Luke 4:11ff

We live in a world of words. Words come at us from every quarter, the radio, tv, conversations, advertising hoardings and more. We constantly have to make choices about what words we listen to, what words we respond and how to decide which words are worth our effort and which are not.

Human beings are wordy people. We write books, songs, poetry and propaganda. We believe intrinsically in the power of words. We use words to say I love you, I hate you , I don’t believe you and what’s for dinner; often without taking a breath. We pay millions of dollars each year to copy writers, advertising gurus and spin doctors to find the right words to entice, cajole and bully others into doing, buying or following what ever is the most expedient for us.

We use words to labels others, to excuse behaviours to convince others of the rightness of policies, programs and lies. We use words to designate who is in and who is out, who is acceptable and who is not and who are the reason for the situation we find ourselves in.

We understand that words do more than simply communicate an idea, that words are in fact the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating were great orators who knew the power of the word to make a case for an idea, an idea that generated response and action. Powerful men, powerful words.

We may have once said ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names (words) will never hurt me’ but we now know this for the lie it was. Words hurt and words inflict, encourage, and incite harm beyond imagination.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie wrote in his Orders to Soldiers in 1816, ‘All Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be mace prisoners of war and if they resist they are to be shot and their bodies hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fall, so as to strike terror into the hearts of surviving natives.’ The consequences of that statement were felt across the colony up to the late 1800s.

Today we have refugees who arrive by boat labelled as illegal and placed in offshore detention (prison) camps for a decade, and in some cases more without recourse to the legal system, work or appropriate living conditions.

Words are not neutral and call from us the best and the worst, dependent upon who is using them, how they are used and what they are used for. Spend a week watching the commercial tv news and scan the transcript of the words used to introduce and describe each news story. You will be surprised at what you hear.

In today’s Gospel, those gathered in the synagogue, the house of meeting, were surprised by the words they heard, spoken by the living word of God – Jesus. Jesus was the word God spoke into the world to act out of the mystery of the Godhead. The idea of Jesus as the word is made clear to us by John in the prologue to his Gospel – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Jesus was the creative word spoken at the beginning of all creation and as spoken word, was a verb, the word that brings action, doing, into life.

For those who read the Jewish scriptures there was no separation between the word and action. One was the result of the other. One called the other into being. Without a word, a saying, a name, nothing existed or would exist. There is no tree or variety of tree until we give it a name. There is no individual person until we have a name to call him or her. There is no emotion until we have a created a name for it.

Luke has Jesus introduce God’s mission plan, naming it very clearly and laying it baldly before his audience. The idea of God’s preference for the poor is based heavily on tis text. Yet it is not simply a statement of what has long been known by his listeners, the text he uses was one used by Isaiah many centuries before and would have been know by those listening. They would have nodded agreement and muttered their approval of the text of the day. They had heard it before as the readings from the Jewish scriptures were akin to our lectionary, following seasons and festivals with readings appropriate for each.

What surprised the listeners were the words he used just before he sat down. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Or more literally ‘in your ears” and therefore in your knowing and acting.

It has been suggested that the text, written in the past tense, refers to something that has being and is to continue to have being. In other words, this has happened, it is not wishful thinking it is real, then, now and eternally. And you, having heard this are obligated to ensure it occurs. You have heard the word, you are give life to it, bring it into being, making real the words you have heard.

You and I are obligated to make real now what has already happened in the eternal scheme of things. What is real in the spiritual is to be real in the material.

No wonder they asked who he was and imply, how dare he impose such obligations on us? They began to look for reasons to sidestep their responsibilities, something Jesus returns to often in his dialogue with the religious leaders.

We live in a world where, according to recent Oxfam report, 61 people have between wealth equal to that of 50% of the world’s population or 3.7billion people. In 2013 there were 10.2 million people in prison with almost half in USA, Russia and China. In the last major study on homeless there were 100 million people homeless worldwide. Another study suggests that 35% of women worldwide suffer some form of domestic violence. Some 168 million children are caught up in child labour, over half of them in hazardous work.

It appears we are slow to put the word into action. Yet we are not exempt from the obligation to do so. As a result of hearing the will of God for the world it is up to us to make it real, as a nation, a church and individually.

How do we do this?

• ·      By being conscious of how we use words and labels to describe others, are we adding to the violence by the way we speak?
• ·      By critiquing the words we hear used in the media, by politicians and those who wish to control our actions and rejecting any language designed to coerce, manipulate or appeal to our baser emotions.
• ·    By being aware of words that appear rational and reasonable which are used to incarcerate, marginalise and enslave others such as progress, development, economies of scale and more.
• ·      By supporting words that are life giving and empowering such as rights, opportunities and respect for the dignity and life of each of God’s created words (creation) in the world.

These are broad suggestions. The task we share with Jesus is to discern the practical ways in which we can make them real. Jesus did it through obedience, dialogue, respect and experience.

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Go and make it real. Amen.

The Baptism of Jesus

Luke 3:21-22

 

Question: have you ever had the experience of listening to great music or looking at a painting and discovering you are no longer listening or looking at something out there, separate from you, but somehow, in some way you have become one with the sound, the image and the performer? So much so that for a brief moment whom you thought you were has become lost to you and you are completely enfolded within the experience. You are the music, the painting, the performer and they are you. There is no distinction. This is no longer about you are as a solitary human being, you are subsumed into the totality of being.

 

Todays Gospel reading introduces humanity to such an experience, not as the sole possession of Jesus, a special interaction between Jesus and God, but the very reality of our own existence.

 

William Loader suggests that "In a world of above and below, above and below meet in Jesus." I suggest not as the sole possession of Jesus but as the exemplar of an experience that is normative for you and I. Some see Jesus' baptism as the public connecting of God and Jesus, as a way of saying clearly who Jesus is and therefore setting him apart from the rest of humanity.

 

It is interesting that Luke situates the experience with the following words, ‘²¹Now when all the people were baptised, and when Jesus also had been baptised..’ This was not a private experience. It happened as the culmination of the baptism of all present. In some mystical way all present are therefore gathered up in the generosity of God who gives herself fully to Jesus. By association through presence and act all there are included in the proclamation God makes to Jesus.

 

How can this be? Jesus is Gods' son. They are human beings who came for repentance. We are ordinary human beings and therefore can not, by definition, be included in these words.

 

The truth is this: Jesus is God born into human form, material, physical, real and touchable, not in any way unlike us. Gods statement, ‘“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” could be rephrased as ‘You are my person, my fully alive human being, with who I am well pleased’.

 

What Jesus experiences at his baptism, he experiences on behalf and clearly articulates what has happened to all who has been baptised – God has generously flowed out of the Godhead into humanity in such a way that the two have become one – God has become, or is,  the ground of being for every human being. Meister Eckhart, the 14^th century mystic and teacher tells us that, 'You should know that God must act and pour Himself into the moment He finds you ready.' [German sermon 4, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

 

Edward Markquart, suggests that this happens at our baptism. He writes: "In our baptism, similar things happen to us as happened to Jesus when he was baptised: 1) The Spirit of God comes into us and remains in us. 2) We are declared to be a child of God. 3) We hear that God is well pleased with us."

 

Thomas Merton, in his book The New Man, picks up this theme as follows:

For now I had entered into the everlasting movement of that gravitation which is the very life and spirit of God: God's own gravitation towards the depths of his own infinite nature, his goodness without end. And God, that center who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me, through incorporation with Christ, incorporated into this immense and tremendous and tremendous gravitational movement which is love, which is the Holy Spirit, loved me.

 

The mystical insight found with in the baptism of Jesus is this: we are more than our physicality and what we believe gives us concrete being and identity. We are more than the space and time in which we live. And we are often so preoccupied, attached to what we believe identifies us, our troubles, concerns, possessions, relationships and more, that we live a life time without actualising the gift God pours into every human being.

 

Jesus is the example of what is possible when we do. Jesus detaches himself from the concerns of this world and becomes one with the concerns of God, of love, right up to and including obedience unto death. This is the unity of God and person living life to its fullness, with neither holding anything back.

 

Merton writes, “We exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany.” Essential Writings, Cunningham) Yet we are unaware of this possibility for most of our existence, swallowed up by the sensuality of life and the propaganda of consumerism and worldly concerns, we sideline this experience as only belonging remarkable people, of which Jesus is the most remarkable.

 

The baptism of Jesus is the one-ing of God and man and the recognition that all is well with such an endeavour. For us, the people who share in Jesus baptism, Eckhart writes: 

‘People think God has only become a human being there – in his historical incarnation (at his birth) – but that is not so; for God is here – in this very place – just as much incarnate as in a human being long ago. And this is why God has become a human: that he might give birth to you as his only begotten son/daughter, and as no less.’

 

This is the epiphany in the baptism, the moment when Jesus recognises and is filled with the identity of God and holds this experience out to all who share his baptism. We do not know how many others were there with Jesus, yet , mystically, they were all included in and shared in Jesus awakening to his or humanities oneness with God. This gift is given to us all and as we achieve detachment from space and time we begin to live the eternal life which is ours already.

 

I will allow Merton to close our meditation on Jesus Baptism in the following words:

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing.  It is only given.  But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” 

Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

 

Over Christmas we have been reading Luke’s gentle rendition of the Jesus story. Today we step into the adult’s only version of the story as told by Matthew. We leave behind the all-inclusive family photograph of Luke and find ourselves immersed in the violence and noise of the real world.

 

David Lose, writes: "And that is what is at the heart of Matthew’s darker, more adult-oriented story of Jesus’ birth: the promise that it is precisely this world that God came to, this people so mastered by fear that we often do the unthinkable to each other and ourselves that God loves, this gaping need that we have and bear that God remedies."

 

Fear sits at the centre of this story. Herod rules and acts out of fear, the fear that someone somewhere is plotting to take away what he believes is his – the kingdom over which he ruled with fear. He had many good reasons to fear others, everybody from the Romans, his brothers and his political enemies. There were plots and subplots on the go all around him all the time. He was aware of the chatter about the Messiah, the long expected king of the Jews who would regain the autonomy of the Jews at his expense.

 

Herod was no dummy. He had done his homework. He knew the details about this King. In his discussion with the visiting dignitaries from the east, Davis notes, "Hearing that a 'child king of the Jews' is being born, Herod inquires among the religious scholars where 'the Christ' is being born. It is Herod, in this story, who makes the connection between a child king and the Christ." He is fully aware what the story is about and is proactive, wanting to nip it in the bud long before it gets out of hand.

 

It is interesting that Matthew uses the visiting philosophers as the means for Herod to find out about Jesus. It is always interesting how much tyrants, despots and governments do not know about what is going on under their watch despite the intricate intelligent networks they may put in place. Jesus had been born some months before the eastern travellers arrive. If the Gospel writers are to be believed there had been some out of the ordinary activity on or about the day of his birth which, one would have thought, would not have gone unnoticed by Herod’s underlings or Roman informants. The census was a major political undertaking. All security precautions would have been in place. People would have been watching for the unusual. Yet they missed the birth of the Christ child, the single greatest threat to Herod’s reign.

 

It reminds me of the stunt pulled by ‘The Chasers’ tv team in 2007 at APEC in Sydney. ‘The Chasers gang made a mockery of security at the APEC conference held in September in Sydney Australia, and left Aussie police red faced. One hundred and sixty million dollars was spent on security for the conference attended by many world leaders, including the US President, but the Chasers gang in a fake motorcade with joke 'insecurity' badges and a Bin Laden look alike drove to within metres of George W Bush's hotel, but could have driven right to the hotel, as they were not stopped at any security checkpoints.’

We live in a world ruled by fear and the desire for safety and security. We allow governments to plunder our privacy and our rights with draconian laws and security measures out of fear. Fear is not life giving. It simply takes away the possibility of life for all. The measures we give away our freedom to do not ensure safety or security. They simply short circuit life.

 

The three wise men follow a star, across many borders into a foreign land. Theirs is a journey of hope and possibility tinged by some anxious moments at border crossings, on the road and more. They had divined, imagined, the future in the star or the comet and set out to find the child born to be king. They had studied the meaning of the star and the hope of Israel and were able to join the dots as to the coinciding importance of the event. They stepped out in faith and took the risks necessary to know for themselves the truth of the story.

 

When they arrived at the home where Mary, Joseph and Jesus were, they were filled with joy. What they had imagined as possible was indeed true. What they had studied as the hope of Israel was present in the world and the world would not be the same again. Joy, not happiness was theirs, that quiet, deep sense of all is right with the world overcame them and left them assured, not only in terms of their foreseen truth but of the truth of prophecy and hope. At that moment they saw the future more clearly than everbefore and went home, like the shepherds on Christmas day, rejoicing at what they had experienced.

 

On this Epiphany Sunday may we see through the fear drummed up for us by governments and the media,the ‘awful-isers’ as Michael Leunig calls them. May we begin to see as the foreigners were able to see, God shining above the world and the child king, the Anointed, loose in our world in the lives of the innocent, those who do not look like us, those from foreign lands, those who are immigrants and refugees, those without homes or jobs and those who simply are amongst us as neighbours and fellow travellers.

 

May we see God shining out through the world in every creature abounding in nature, the resources we have to care for and share.

 

May we overcome our fear of losing what we have, and unlike Herod, take steps to share what we have with others in the innocence of childlikeness. May we walk in the footsteps of a God who gave up all to become a small vulnerable child in a violent world, without fear of losing the divine identity, full of the joy of being human. Amen