What Do We Do With The Baby Born Today?

What do we do with this baby born today? Do we celebrate his birth as we celebrate any other birth and rejoice in the safe arrival of another child? Do we use this day to remember a story from so long ago it’s seems little more than a fairy tale to be enjoyed without needing to find anything else there? Do we use this birth as an excuse for consumer excess, the saviour of struggling corporate bottom lines and the over consumption of food, alcohol and gimmickry?

  

What do we do with this baby born today?

 

It depends upon whom we see in the story.

 

If we simply see the boy Jesus, just another human child, we run the risk of making an idol out of a normal person, exalting Jesus to a place in our world he, as a middle eastern, child had no desire to occupy. Idolatry has no place in our lives and particular no place in our Christian faith.

 

This child is special.

 

In the letter to the Hebrews we read:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

There is something else happening in this story, something very important we often miss. The child born this day is the very self-expression of God, not just a reflection or image but the creative essence of God let loose in the world. Here is the one on whom the world depends for its very existence and on whom we depend for our own self-expression. Here is the one sitting at the centre of all creation. Every single element and being evolved and evolving has at its very centre the creative urge for more, for life and for wholeness empowered by relationship and love.

Here is the One who empowers us and who we are empowered to become. In this material world God spoke a word in human form as a dependent child on whom we all depend. Humanity does not stand-alone. Trees, birds’ animals and fishes are not independent beings any more than we are. We are interdependently connected to each other in the ever-expanding universe because of the Word spoken into the world this day.

Jesus is the beginning and the end of our very existence. As the Christ he sits at the centre of all creation and is the goal of evolution – we are moving through relationship toward wholeness empowered by love. We need each other just as we need love in relationship to become united in our diversity.

What do we then do with this child born today?

 

We are to live out our oneness with each other and the natural world we live in, sharing the creative spark, the creative Word God spoke in the beginning and re-spoke this day some 2000+ years ago. We are to recognise our dependence on each other as we continue to evolve and move toward the wholeness that is the Christ, the Word spoken today.

Diverse and particular, self aware and independent we may be, but that is not all we are. We need each other and we need to begin to live as if this is the case. We can no longer demonise, destroy, punish or persecute others or the natural world as if they and it are objects to be used for our benefit. Sharing the essence of God in our very being with them, the violence we do to them is violence done to ourselves. And we pay the price in a segregated and fearful world.

It seems when ever you turn on the television or your social media feed there is violence repeated over and over again. It is time we took back our world and began to live out our interconnectedness and dependence on one another; the coming of the Word of God spoken into a violent world asks us to step up and to live in a relationship respect, justice and love. Our wholeness spiritually, psychologically and physically depends upon it.

What do we do with the baby born today?

We strive to live out the gift of creative wholeness with our partners, our children and our extended families; with those whom we share our neighbourhoods, train trips and offices with; with those who do not look like us, believe like us, live like us; with those who are afraid, lonely, lost and on the edge of our society; that’s what we do.

Our task is to join with every other human being and creature alive on this planet to strive for the goal of wholeness as expressed in the Creative Word of God born this day. We are to avoid being possessed by the need for things and others as possessions; to avoid the rush for self-fulfilment at the cost of the well being of others, and to avoid turning the baby born today into an idol of all that is wrong with our world.

Today we sit with this baby and begin to imagine the possibilities if we could just let him into our lives and stoke the spark already there into a burning for wholeness. 

Same Story, Different Snaps.

Coolamon Baby - Glenn Loughrey 2016

Luke 2:1-20

 

Have you ever been to an event, concert or a holiday destination that has been a major disappointment only to read somewhere later a report waxing lyrical about what an outstanding event, concert or holiday destination it was?  You find yourself asking, did we go to the same event or destination, was the writer ever actually there; it seems like we attend two different events, or concert or holiday resort?

 

For most of my life that has been my experience of Christmas. Growing up in a household where Christmas celebrations quickly descended in an alcohol fuelled disaster, I came to dread Christmas and disbelieve the story we were supposed to celebrate. I listened to the story in church, watched the decorations in the shop windows and witnessed the joyful festivities of others and wondered if we were actually celebrating the same event? Did I somehow live in another dimension were the joy and peace of Christmas simply was unavailable to such as me? I still find this time of the year difficult.

 

This  split can also be found in the Gospel story we just read. Luke provides us with two polaroid prints of the same events but they could not be more different. One is a black and white print of  two scared and lonely young middle eastern people fulfilling the need to be counted by a tyrannical government and expecting their first child. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory, nowhere to stay and a baby due any moment. They take whatever refuge they are offered and find themselves sharing a space with animals and their food troughs. Their baby is born alone and un-welcomed except by the barn animals standing around and his parents. One can only begin to imagine how scared they were.

 

The other is a coloured photo full of lights, surround sound and a cast of thousands.  Here the angel Gabriel comes with the multitudes to announce to shepherds as representatives of those whom God favours the birth of the Anointed One. Terrifying but majestic, an advertising campaign launch bigger than anything a major ad company could dream up. It’s inclusive promises are writ big and bold and are so effective, the shepherds head into town to find out whether this is fair dinkum or not.

 

The little family would have wondered if they were in the same story, if their poverty and homelessness and the brutality of the birth was some how misplaced in a cosmic trailer to the incarnation event. How did they fit and why? How were they privileged to suffer poverty and violence and why wasn’t their child, the Anointed One welcomed in a way commensurate with his title and genealogy?

 

Jesus was born in a violent world. War and occupation was ever present in his life just as it had been in the lives of his parents. There is nothing beautiful about this manger scene and the heavenly messengers in the field fail to make it so. In fact they make it worse. Herod becomes inflamed when he hears of the goings on in Bethlehem and sets about genocide of his own. The isolation of the birth becomes an isolation of a people and a life until the predictable end.

 

How do we make sense of these two pictures and the crumpling of hope so loudly proclaimed? How do we live in the shadow of the manger and the shepherds’ field in a world that has changed little? Unjust wars destroy the babies born in Aleppo, Yemen, Mosul, the Sudan, West Timor, Myanmar and Central Australian indigenous communities. Violence destroys the hopes of little ones in houses in our cities where domestic violence has not lessened. Young people are being traumatised not for a moment but for a lifetime through the dysfunction of a world still clinging precariously to the promise of  ‘peace among those whom he favours’.

 

How do we embrace the hope of those words and the little boy in a food trough and change the world in which we live? The great intentions of God can only become real if they are embodied in ordinary actions every day by those he favours. It is us who has to take the steps to bring about peace on earth. It is us who has to resist the temptation to fear, the beginning of all violence and war according to Thomas Merton.

 

Our fears and anxieties lead us into savaging others with our words and our actions, our anxieties and fears make us defensive and protective to such an extent we have to eliminate or annihilate the other. No one sets out to hurt but does so when it is the most effective to protect him or herself from what they fear. It can start out innocently but escalates beyond imagination as our fears are magnified and feed by the ego self who cannot afford to fail.

 

We can begin by understanding that the baby born in Bethlehem was not a special baby due special attention. The baby born in Bethlehem is an ordinary baby just like your baby, your child’s baby and the babies being born this moment in places like Aleppo. When we do this we normalise the experiences of all born as a baby while elevating each to the sanctity we attribute to the Christ child.

 

In other words the affection and worship we save for Jesus is required of us for all born into this world. We are all, in some mystical way, the embodiment of God in the world. Our birth is special and unexpected, an expression of poverty and dependence we almost instantly seek to forget. Yet it is this innocence, this infinite trust in the love and nurture of God in others we bring with us which empowers us to be one of the many who make up the angelic choir.

 

If only we could let go of our fears and anxieties and begin to trust as we did at our first breath then we would begin to change our world. There would be need for violence for there would be no thing to defend. All would be valued and worshipped, the child born in Aleppo, Mosul or some remote township in Central Australia or the child born in a home near here, as we worship the boy born in Bethlehem.

 

It is the difference in the two scenes in Luke’s Gospel. It is no good the shepherds responding and going to visit the baby or the Wisemen who bring gifts, something must be transformed by the encounter, something has to be changed by what they witness.

 

Tonight as we come to contemplate this event we must come to be transformed by the birth of the Christ child so that we leave here committed to respect, justice and love and not to fear, violence and tyranny. It is up to us. 

O Little Town of Aleppo

(Thoughts on the Sunday before Christmas given at Lessons and Carols Service, 2016)

Tonight we sing carols and read of the much awaited anointed who is to bring peace and goodwill to all. Tonight we begin to dream of Christmas Day and the romanticised meaning story that goes with it. Tonight we think of presents, visits from family members, roast pork and crackling and Christmas pudding. Tonight it is so easy to drift away from the story as is told.

Two scared and lonely young middle eastern people fulfilling the need to be counted by a tyrannical government and expecting their first child. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory, nowhere to stay and a baby due any moment.

They take whatever refuge they are offered and find themselves sharing a space with animals and their food troughs. The event is so traumatic and decisive they and those nearby experience events beyond imagining they can only describe as a choir of angels, darkness snapping light and a sound so dramatic it shakes them up so much shepherds, outcasts, make their way in to see what this is all about.

It was no sweet and delightful event. It was terrifying and it remained so after the birth resulting in, some time later, an exodus to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.

Sound familiar? Is it an ancient story? No. It is the story of refugees and boat people, people escaping war torn countries and the oppression of powerful countries. It is a story that is ever new and everyday. It is a story we have been spared and perhaps that is why we romanticise the images at Christmas the way we romanticise poverty and meaningless work.

Our challenge this Christmas is to embrace the truth at the centre of this story – the brutality of humanity to its own – and to commit ourselves to work for peace and goodwill for all. What happened in the little town of Bethlehem reverberates through our world and we do it a disservice if we remain stuck in a Hallmark card representation.

As we begin this week let us think of another middle eastern city and stand with the child yet to be born.

 

O, LITTLE TOWN OF ALEPPO
How scared we see thee lie,
Above thy ancient, ruined streets
Unholy stars collide.
Yet in some backstreet shelter
A newborn infant cries,
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in Thee tonight

For Christ is born of Mary
And Herod smells the blood
Still Rachel weeps, but angels keep
Their bitter watch of love
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth,
Let weeping cease, and foolish peace
Be born again in us.

How silently, how violently
The wondrous gift is slain
A mother cries and though he dies
Her son shall rise again.
Perceive his broken body
Conceive his future form
And as you grieve, yet still believe
The birth of Isa dawns.

(Peter Greig)

  

In A Dream

                                                 Josephs Dream -  Gaetano Gandolfi

Matthew 1:18-25

When the unthinkable occurs we may find our selves operating in a daze, a dreamlike state where no thing feels real and everything seems a mirage. How did this happen? What does it mean? What do I do now? How am I going to cope with this and the fallout from this situation? We can lose touch with the world we live in and become bambozzzled by anxiety, frustration and stress.

Joseph is just a man. Mary is just a woman. Two material beings plunged into the unreal world of an unwanted child in a time when for this to occur was an outrage. How do you handle not only the possibility of a child but the tragic consequences which was the normal response to such an event? In Matthews retelling of the story agency is given, not to Mary but to Joseph to steer his little family through the crisis.

Joseph was a good man. Mary was a good woman. According to Matthew they hadn’t lived together, they had followed the rules yet, somehow, there was a child on the way. So what to do?

In spiritual matters angels, sleep and dreams play a significant role in discernment and direction. Mary was informed by an angel about what was to occur and Joseph has an encounter with an angel while asleep and dreaming.

Angels have a history. They are the messengers of God, sometimes even, they are the Godhead itself. The Old Testament are full of such stories. They bring a message, interpret a situation and provide direction for the confused and bewildered followers attempting to live out their faith in a material world.

It is no surprise that these encounters occur when one is asleep. They rarely occur when one’s fully awake and engaged in the busyness of life. When we are distracted by our ego self we can fail to see the messenger standing right in front of us. When we are dealing with a disturbing situation, when someone is confronting us or we have been so unbalanced by an event, it is all we can do to defend ourselves in an attempt to stay upright, let alone see the angel present in the situation.

Being asleep is when we allow our subconscious the opportunity to process the events we are working through and to provide us guidance and direction. Sleep is that time when our brain takes the time to recalibrate itself and to put into order the chaos of our days. We miss things when we are awake and busy. We are so focussed on any number of things at the one time that what can be a key element simply isn’t connected with and miss the obvious. Asleep our brain cleans up and puts things together.

One of the things we need to do with computers is to defrag our system, this simply means defragmenting that part of our computer which stores data. A defrag simply puts things back in the right place so what was possibly lost in another place is restored to where it should be. Sleep is the time our brain defrags its storage system and returns things to its proper place.

No wonder one of the wisest pieces of advice is to sleep on it. It does work miracles. In the morning things look different and what seemed impossible before is now so obvious you can’t believe you were so anxious about it.

Dreaming is one of the tools our brain uses to review the day. Sometimes it is a realistic dream, sometimes it is symbolic and metaphorical and may take a little time to unpack, but this parallel world is seen by the ancient worlds as vital to discernment and wisdom. Again being a sleep and entering into a dreamlike world we are open to the present of others, known and unknown because we are no longer relying on our ego for direction.

My father spoke often of his spirit friend who would visit him at night and sit on the edge of the bed. They seemed to have discussed many things and the visitation was real and valuable to my father. He relied on this visitor for advice and direction. It was no doubt a dream like event but it was real, not imagined, for him.

Joseph’s dream like experience is a way of describing the process he went through to make sense of the impossible situation he found himself in. What he had decided to do and how he decided to do it reflect the importance of the event. He wasn’t making a decision on his own. A supernatural experience require(d) supernatural guidance. Being still and silent, asleep, he was able to hear what was there and what he needed to do.

Here we return to the idea of waiting in stillness we discussed last Sunday. There is no panicked running around trying to solve it. It happens in the stillness of waiting, in this case while he is asleep. When we enter into liturgy and the spiritual life we enter into a place of waiting in stillness. Of letting go of ego and allowing what is to come to come, what is to be to be and what we need to discover to appear. This is not simply a passive stillness or waiting but a waiting to see, to see what is to be and how I am to respond.

Joseph responds very differently to what he would have been expected to respond. He didn’t call off the betrothment, he didn’t abandon Mary, he didn’t go away in shame. He was able to discern that something very special was present and he was to take the uncomfortable journey with Mary. He did so because he acknowledged the inner wisdom present in his inner being. He recognised the fingerprint of God and was prepared to go where logic and local law said not to go. He, the ordinary man and Mary the ordinary woman became extraordinary, making it possible for the intersection of the divine and the human, of the perfect and the imperfect, of the infallible and the fallible.

He and Mary made it possible for God to walk among us in the shape of Jesus of Nazareth and experience the enigma that is being human so that humans can aspire to be like God in their relations with one another.

The challenge for you and I is to find the space to be still and wait for the visitation of wisdom. It can happen anywhere and does, indeed happen in our dreams, while we are asleep. But it can also happen, far less dramatically as we sit in the spaces within our liturgy, in the moments before church and the moments after communion. It simply requires us to be still, to wait and to be open to the possibility. Lets try it now. 

Liturgical Waiting

Matthew 11:2-11

²When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.”

 

 

As a child I helped my father on the farm. One of my favourite activities was moving sheep from paddock to paddock. Just the old dog, me and 500 hundred sheep. A great time of reflection, day dreaming and slowness that counteracted the busyness of the school week. It was life in the slow lane.

 

My father had set a standard of slowness. If the dust was raised behind the mob you were moving to fast. Slowness necessitated stillness and the inevitable waiting for the mob to graze and move at their own pace. It wasn’t a life of linear progress or rushing to get this done so you could go and do something else. This was all you had to do and it would come to an end when the end came. Any sign of dust indicated anxiety to be somewhere else with something else and not right where you were. This is a waiting to move on.

 

John the Baptist exhibits this last type of waiting in our Gospel reading today. Are you the one we were waiting for or do we have to wait some more? His question is full of anxiety, frustration and impatience. If this is not it, then we have to hurry up and wait for some more. And what are we waiting for?

 

Jesus replies, wait and see. Stop being anxious and looking for something else; stop being anxious and wanting to be somewhere else; stop being anxious and looking in a linear fashion. Look around you and see what is already here, what is already happening and what you are already in touch with. Yes, you have to wait, but the waiting is to see what is already here, mot waiting for another person, idea, experience or event. The kingdom of God has come near and is here. Wait and see.

 

One of the gifts of being an artist is this waiting to see. Walking home from taking may car to the garage for repairs I wandered slowly back along streets near here and was gobsmacked by what I saw. Melbourne in the morning is a place of great light and I discovered beautiful trees, amazing garden scapes and intriguing little finches buzzing around and was made aware, once again, that the Spirit of God is alive in Glen Iris. We simply have to wait and see.

 

We are often to anxious to move on, shift our seeing, all our senses without allowing ourselves to settle into what we see, feel, hear and sense. We pass a cursory glance across our world and those we share it with and move on, looking for something we already have.

 

We are like John, neurotically looking for that definitive moment to complete our hopes and our dreams.

 

It is a challenge to the church to stop our rushing to succeed and to simply wait as the Bride of Christ and be aware the marriage is alive and active now.  In our Sunday liturgy we are called to let go of our anxious searching and engage in a waiting, a stillness, a welcoming presence open to the Spirit’s embrace. Yet it seems we want to rush through the formalities of worship to get on with our busy lives. We give an hour or so and that is all. We have family commitments, morning tea to run, lunch to serve and a busy week ahead and our minds flit back and forward between these competing anxieties and we struggle to be present here, now in a waiting stillness feeding our soul.

 

The liturgy has been skilfully constructed to give us time out from the busyness of life, although we often do our best to make it as busy as possible. Liturgy is a work in waiting and stillness. It is the process of stopping, of letting go and of being available to wait with what is happening for us in that moment. As Jesus says to John, wait with what is happening and allow your self to hear what the spirit is saying to the church.  We can’t do that if we are anxious to move quickly and efficiently through the various sections of the service.

 

The creed isn’t a linear race we have to finish in so many seconds, neither are the Psalms. They have been devised in stanzas allowing us space to sit with what has come before and wait for what is coming next. The are many places of waiting in our service and it is through these spaces that we begin to unload the baggage we bring with us and unhook ourselves from the need to get a to a defined outcome – usually morning tea!

 

John wanted a definitive answer. Jesus said sit with what is already here and make sense of that. Take time to process and unpack your life and your experience and recognise the depth of that experience. Do not be in a hurry to chase after some golden thread of idealised promise. What is, is. Wait with it and allow it to speak.

 

Our liturgy is a rich treasure of stillness and waiting. Our 21^st century sensibilities finds it difficult to sit with empty space – be it on a wall, in our garden or in our worship, yet it is in this waiting space we discover truth. As you have noticed already this morning we have instituted longer spaces, slower movement and a little less urgency in our service. This will become a pattern which I hope will be helpful.

 

I encourage you to enter the church with quiet waiting as your intention. Using this space before the service as a time for sitting in the place of no-thing doing, allowing your presence to deepen and lengthen ready for the liturgy to come. There is time after church to meet and greet, to chat and swap stories and to share aches and pains. Prior to and during the greeting of peace let us find our centre and be still and know that God is God; that we are more than our anxieties and this is a safe sanctuary for being at rest.

 

Finally I would say, as we begin to explore our liturgy and the treasure it holds, to be still, very, very still, and above all else do not wobble! Waiting without anxiety will open up the vista of the treasures we already have and allow us to avoid repeating Johns frustrations.

 

Let us be still. 

Seeing Differently

Mathew 3

Grand Canyon by David Hockney

Today we meet the hermit from the bush. The bloke who ignores the social requirements for appropriate dress and, by the smell of him, for the use of water for something other than drinking, a man who is on the outside looking in, John The Baptist, so named after the rite he made his own.  It is interesting he wasn’t called John Camel Hair or John Who Needs A Bath or John the Vegan, but he wasn’t. He is John the Baptist.

 

John is also remembered for his aversion to sin. His baptism was predicated on repentance, the recognition of sin by an individual who then takes steps to repent of that sin through the cleansing and renewing act of baptism. Now sin got a bad name when I was growing up. It seemed to include everything that was enjoyable – eating too many lollies, drinking too much soft drink, getting your sibling into trouble, dipping the pigtails of the girl who sat in front of you in the inkwell and many more mortal acts. The last may very well have been mortal if she could run faster than you at recess!

 

Sin has been trivialised to many normal and ordinary acts of being human and it seems it is still in that place. Yet John the Baptist’s idea of sin was much expanded on that of our parents, nuns and the morality police of our youth. John refers to the systemic sins maintaining the status quo, the sins of entitlement due to right acting, of doing what was expected of you and reaping the rewards. It was the sin of identifying clearly the status of each individual, their rights and their responsibilities. It was ensuring those born into privilege maintained that privilege. It is about exclusion of others from the benefits you have based on class, skin colour, health or otherwise, gender and age.

 

²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In other words, the possibility of instituting the promised kingdom does not belong out there, to others or to the future. It belongs here, in you and now. It is calling you and I to make it real – to put love into action and respond to the covenant requirements of kindness – respect, justice and compassion. It is not a task of people like John or even those whom he spoke harshly about; the first is just one man and the latter group won’t change until they have no choice. It is up to you to ensure they have no choice by you own love in action for yourself, others and the world.

 

John wasn’t interested in who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, but who stole the cookie jar and who allowed the cookie jar to remain stolen. He was particularly tough on those in privileged positions and saved his strongest words for them, but he didn’t let the ordinary folk off the hook either. John’s expectation was that is if you recognised your complicity in this corporate sin, then you needed to show evidence of a change of heart, mind and action. He says: “⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

 

Bearing fruit can be as little as sharing the troubles of those who live next door, advocating for a fairer share of society’s wealth for all, ensuring those who on the outside get to come in side. There is no prescription for bearing fruit and there is no particular type of fruit – love, justice, compassion, kindness, advocacy, giving and more – all work if that is what the situation needs.

 

Ben Witherington suggests: "Repentance, or metanoia, to use the Greek word, refers to far more than a simply being or saying one is sorry for past sins, far more than mere regret or remorse for such sins. It refers to a turning away from the past way of life and the inauguration of a new one, in this case initialised by an act of baptism."

 

And this isn’t easy. Those who describe the Christian life as easy and a cop out haven’t tried to live it! It is incredibly difficult to live in such away that each day is a further step toward wholeness and another from stuff we have held onto and has held onto us. It is being prepared to shed our previous static identity and accept the uncertainty of unfinished business.

 

Crabs and other crustaceans do not grow in a linear fashion because of their hard outer shell. Up to 20 times in its lifetime a crab moults, in effect moves out of the old shell and grows a new one. This happens 6 times in the first year. It is a difficult and excruciating time, not to say a vulnerable onee. If your shell is your protection, wandering naked around the sea floor is not a comfortable place to be. Yet it must happen if it is to grow into maturity.

 

Repentance requires we shed our tough and hard formed identities both as a society and as individuals. What served us well in another time and place no longer does. What we have come to accept as the way things are, no longer is appropriate and we have to change structures, ideas, ideologies and religions.

 

John the Baptist calls that the coming near of the kingdom of God – the ever evolving recognition of a new way of seeing. David Hockney, the wonderful English artist, paints what he sees but what he sees in isn’t always what is physically there. He suggests we see two ways – physically and psychologically; physically by recognising objects, like a camera. Seeing psychologically is different. If we look at a scene we will focus on one particular element that takes our eye in that scene. Because we do, that tree, face, animal, colour becomes clearer and larger in our view and seems to be larger and more significant than the rest of the scene. There are a whole lot of reasons why this happens but we rarely if ever see what is there. We see what we see.

 

In art this works well, in community and individual life here is a glitch to be aware of. What we think is the case may not be so because we are seeing, hearing, engaging with it as we see the world – focusing on what is important to or has a specific meaning or interest to us. We may miss what is really happening. We are not called to see physically or one dimensionally as a camera but we are to be aware of the psychological pre-determinants affecting our response to the world.

 

John the Baptist calls us to confront society and ourselves to engage in the very difficult process of moulting, like the crab, and to recalibrate our seeing. In this way we begin to recalibrate the world by helping to break it out of its restrictive shell and welcome in relational wholeness empowered by love - the kingdom of God.

 

Oh and this won’t get easier when Jesus enters the picture. It gets harder, because he increases the requirements and calls more from us. “¹¹He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Seeing through the eyes of Jesus changes everything.

 

John’s repentance is the ongoing reassessment of self and society required of all who profess faith. It requires action and outcomes and can’t be avoided. It is our vocation. How will you see differently when you leave here this morning?