Monday 24 April 2017

Do We Need A Physical Resurrection?




John 20:19-31
Today we come to the story of Thomas whose critical mind puts him at odds with the other disciples. He needs more that the words of others to confirm the presence of the Christ in the world. He needs to see it for himself.  To be there and engage with the physicality of Jesus the Christ in such a way it proves the words of others.
He needs a personal experience.
We live in a world where we need evidence, proof, the truth. We are always seeking to know, see or experience something before we will attest to its truth, its beauty, its existence. Often we say that you had to be there, you won't know until you experience it, you have to se it for yourself. We live in a world which channels Thomas into our everyday life and existence. It is the reason we who value rational thought struggle with myth and the primal experience of those who are yet to be seduced by rational thinking. Wisdom eludes us because it cannot be embodied or experienced in the way provable facts and visible evidence can.
And this poses a problem for us all. Was Jesus the product of a miracle, a virgin birth defying all the physical implications of such an event? Did Jesus who was dead on the cross, placed in a tomb and treated with 100 pounds of nard, walk out of the tomb for all intents and purposes as alive as he was before the crucifixion?
Pastor and author Tim Keller, “The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection.” NT Wright, the Anglican author, argues that without a physical resurrection than can be no viable explanation for the birth of the Christian church.
Both men are examples of our need for evidence, for a physical presence which is, at the same time, beyond the rules and laws of the physical world. Do we need the physical and the miraculous to experience the Cosmic Christ? We may need such if we are only concerned about the man Jesus, if Jesus from Nazareth is the focus of our faith, or if we need an interventionist God to do big things, then perhaps we need the miraculous and the material to maintain our faith. If we only focus on Jesus then I understand where both Keller and Wright are coming from.
But you see it is not about Jesus, it is about the Christ, the Cosmic or universal one who was there at the beginning of all creatures, was present in the life and death of Jesus, and remains with us into the future after this cataclysmic event in the form of the Spirit, the pointe vierge (virgin point) within.
After Jesus, the Christ continues.
This is the crux of our faith, not a belief in the improbable just because, perhaps as some say, God could do the improbable if God wanted to, but a personal experiential faith in the Christ who imbues all with life and gives birth to a life that continues long after the cross. My question is always why does God need to break all the laws to prove God-ness? Why do we always look for these demonstrations of greatness to bolster our faith? Is it more about creating a God that fits into our image instead of finding a God who simply is? If our faith rests only on miracles, virgin births and a physical resurrection is that enough?
David Ewart writes, "John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is –(the Christ). That is why he has written these signs for us. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus (the Christ, not Jesus the human figure)." This is the purpose of Thomas’s critical eye. This is the purpose of the encounter. Thomas doesn’t even touch the physical body. In the end he doesn’t need the physical. He simply needs presence, awareness, the awakening of his inner eye to the truth about Jesus the Christ.[1]
"John is not anti-miracle, but he is critical of the focus on the materiality of miracles and Thomas surely approaches that stance. Blessed are those who believe who did not need the proofs (20:29)."[2] The need for miracles to prove God is God is not what John is about. There is no need for an improbable virgin birth or a risen dead man, what is needed is the capacity to see the invisible – the essence of all being – love – at work in the experience of the Christ.
Thomas arrives and in the presence of his friends experiences the presence, the empowerment, the reality of Christ without the need to verify it by putting his hands in the scars.
I, like John, am not anti-miracle, just don't need miracles to affirm my faith and in a world committed to the physical and the material we need a counter-cultural faith, a faith that is empowered solely by presence and awareness, by stillness and silence, by the unspectacular and the ordinary, by the authentic and the foundational thread tying us all together. In a world of the spectacular we need the value of the hardly noticeable, almost invisible unspectacular presence of the Christ in our ordinariness.
Yes, Thomas had an experience but it was more than a physical experience, it was an experience that opened his eyes to the truth about the identity of Jesus. It was an awareness of the Christ as the centre of all being, the Alpha and the Omega of all existence. It was not of resurrected human being but of the continuing existence of the powerful presence of God in all life. The resurrection, however it occurred, brought to the disciples and those who experienced it an incredible sense of the enduring and unceasing creative power of the Source of all life and it was sufficient to take them out into the world to face whatever the future held for them.
I don’t need my Jesus to be the result of a rule breaking God, I can not do the intellectual gymnastics to embrace the physical resurrection as a necessary part of my faith experience. And I suspect, in the modern world, many mature believers and thinkers are unable to do so. We do not have to because neither did Thomas in the end.
Christ the source of all life who Thomas saw via his inner eye is sufficient in all Christ’s mystical beauty and cosmic presence for a vibrant faith in this world. We need no thing else. Amen



[1] Parentheses mine.

[2] William Loader

Thursday 20 April 2017

Back To The Beginning





9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
 
What strikes me about this little dialogue is the direction Jesus gives to the disciples to return to where it all began. Jesus asks the two Mary’s to go and tell the disciples that they will see him Galilee. The angel had already said that this was the plan that Jesus was going ahead of them to Galilee.
 
It does seem a little odd that the resurrected Jesus would want to go back to the beginning and not to move forward into new places and new territories. A worldly leader would have used this amazing return as the opportunity for an assault on power and control. No politician worth their salt would take a step backward when he or she held the element of surprise.
 
Surely Jesus would want himself and his team to capitalise of the element of surprise his return would bring, surely a resurrected Jesus would attract the crowds and see a massive upward movement in the popularity polls? Surely Jerusalem would have been a better place to go and be seen? Surely there the kingdom of God project would get some traction and bring out about justice, freedom and healing that was so desperately needed?
 
No, they are to go to Galilee and begin again without a leader to grab the limelight and give them the upper hand. The campaign begins again, this time it is not about an incarnate Christ but a Christ incarnate in the disciples. The emphasis shifts from the Son of God to those empowered by the Cosmic Christ, the spirit of the Son of God. The disciples are to be themselves by being empowered by the spirit of God and to live out Christ in their own lives.
 
This is a powerful message. This is no longer about the physical presence of God changing lives and challenging authority, this will be about the ordinary men and women from Galilee standing up and taking responsibility. They return to Galilee for the transition of authority and responsibility, for Jesus to hand over the reins of the kingdom to ordinary men wand women now empowered by the resurrection Spirit.
 
We all have to return to the beginning at some point in our lives be it our faith lives or ordinary lives, to go back to where we first commenced our journey and take the time to recalibrate our compass to ensure we are in touch with the Source of all being. Galilee was the place where they first encountered the Source of Life and it is where Jesus takes them as they begin the second half of their journey.
 
 There is an ad on TV which says, If I only knew then what I know now. Returning to the place where we started our journey allows us space for a new perspective on our life, our achievements and our troubles. It allows us to put down our roots once again and to step forward with a sense of confidence and hope.
 
After the time spent in hidden spaces fearful of the response of the authorities after Jesus death, the disciples have returned to the familiar, in place, in faces and the in activity. They regrouped and rediscovered what drove them to go with Jesus in the first place.
 
They rediscovered their first love and Jesus allows them the grace to do so, the opportunity to grieve his physical loss and to gain the fervour of their first love reborn.  It is this love that takes them on through Pentecost to plant the church in a world that had crucified the Christ. The scenes we see at Galilee reflect the scenes they experienced of Jesus when he first called him – fishing, sharing a fish barbecue and stepping forward to follow Jesus by leaving their boats behind.  This time they do it out of an experiential love of the truth he shared with them, the truth he became to them and the truth he implanted in them through the Spirit. This time they go not blindly and without knowing, but open eyed and knowing what is possible.
 
When we first discover faith when we are young we want it all. We want to change the world, to tell everyone what we have found and to grab it all for ourselves. As we grow older and stuff happens we may become jaded and disillusioned by others and by our expectations of God – our fish love begins to take over. At some point in our lives we begin to discover wisdom not knowledge, stillness not activity and we begin to return to first love, albeit very differently than the first time.
 
It is in these mature and often later years of our lives that we begin to live lives of faith, hope and love based on experience and grace, not energy and enthusiasm of which there was plenty of the first time around for the disciples. Now they and we begin to relax into the presence of the Christ through the Spirit

And trust that all indeed will be well no matter how dark it may seem.
 

On this Easter Day we, you and I, may be being called back to Galilee, back to those first experiences of faith, hope and love in the being of Jesus the Christ and being asked to begin again, but this time with greater mindfulness and focus on the presence of the Source, the Spirit in our personal life and the life of the whole creation. Maybe this glorious, day is the day we begin again without the angst of unknowing and of the expectation of success, only to rest in the knowledge that we are not alone and all things are possible. 

Wednesday 19 April 2017

In The Absence of God.


Three of the Survivors of The Sandakan-Ranau Death March.

Writing a Good Friday sermon is difficult. The violence, injustice and incredible cruelty of the incident is overpowering. The machinations of those involved to maintain power and control, to manipulate those in charge to do their bidding and the fear-full failure of those who followed Jesus is almost impossible to accept. We struggle with the pain of this event and, perhaps most of all, the sense of abandonment experienced by Jesus – by both God and those whom he had lived amongst.
 
John presents Jesus as assured and confident throughout both his Gospel and this event. He is the symbol of one who has unbreakable faith in God. Jesus is depicted by John as an icon to be grasped as the standard of faith for all within the Johnannine community in their battle with tradition and society. On the cross there is none of the brokenness of Gethsemane and the cry of despair we find in Mark.

Even the words ‘It is finished’ (19:30) signify Jesus has confidently completed the task given to him, to make the Father known[1]. While it is often linked to the atoning for sins as if Jesus is saying: I have made the sacrifice of my body which I came to make on behalf of creation, this is not John’s point. This would certainly be the way the author of Hebrews would read it[2], but it is not John’s emphasis, nor is it mine. Instead the focus is Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s commission revealed even in the face of suffering which despite the confidence is real[3]. The effect is to reveal love and expose hate and so offer a new beginning. [4]

What a challenging mission this was and is. It cost Jesus his life. It cost the one who was there at the beginning of creation his being in this world, and revealed that being as the Christ of the Cosmos.  It cost beyond measure, the cruelty was beyond pain and was achieved in great silence and deep stillness.

It was the silence of being laid bare without the comfort of the felt presence of God or those who were close to him. Even if people were there, there is a deep silence in suffering separating the one suffering from all who attempt to be present. It is deep, private, harrowing and uncommunicable. There is no way anyone else can understand the depth of our personal suffering, what ever it is and how ever it manifests itself.
 
The danger is we may try and emulate the response of John’s Jesus and find ourselves unable to be as iconic, stoic or faithful as John portrays it. I doubt that that was the reality.

In 2010 I walked the Ranau to Sandakan death march for the first time. This was the march at the very end of the Second World War the Japanese army forced 2,434 prisoners of war to undertake. Only 6 survived and they men who escaped. When we walked the track we did so for a soldier who died. Mine was Padre Harold Wardle-Greenwood. He was a brave and compassionate man who cared for the dying in his group of 50 on the March. Yet, Lynette Silver writes “Harold Wardle-Greenwood had comforted the dying and disconsolate for so long that he was now broken physically and spiritually. He had lost his faith in a God who, he believed had forsaken them. Indeed,” Silver continues, “it would have taken a man of superhuman faith to have believed such death and suffering was God’s will”.

In 2012 I walked for Padre Thompson. As I sat on the top of the hill where Thompson died, I had little doubt that if it had been me that I too would have felt completely abandoned by God. The hill, even for a well fed well rested reasonably fit person was a challenge, coming after several days of walking through the intense heat, the suffocating humidity, the rain and the unceasing red gluggy mud sticking to your boots. For men who had had no nourishment, were sick with a range of debilitating illnesses and lugging twice their body weight in equipment, it must have been hell only punctuated by the sounds of shots as the guards shot another soldier and rolled them over the edge.

This was suffering that could have been avoided if appropriate action had been taken when it was planned. It was suffering that was covered up and forgotten about for over 40 years. This was suffering that was real and needless. This was suffering of the deep silence only Jesus could share for only the suffering of Jesus on the cross is able to replicate the abandonment these men felt. Keith Botterill, a survivor, comments they kept going in the hope that someone would survive to tell their story. 6 men fulfilled that hope.

John portrays Jesus as confident in God to glorify him for his faithfulness unto death, yet I wonder if that is exactly how Jesus felt? Would Jesus have been disappointed if the situation had been resolved and he had continued to live and be in the world? Would it have been a failure if the Jews and the Romans had recognised the mission of Jesus and changed their way of being?

For us who may find ourselves in the midst of the silence of an absent God, are we expected to be as iconic as Jesus and plough on with unbruised hope? Is this a realistic ask of people facing a diagnosis of cancer for themselves or someone they love; for someone who has lost their livelihood and home; for someone who despite all their efforts are unable to work or get work; for those who are burying families due to the insanity of war; or those unable to be with their family because of incarceration?

Yes, John, you can hold Jesus up as a model but remember Jesus was human as well as divine and felt every abandonment by his friends, every lash of tongue and whip, and every hammer blow, just like those others who were crucified at the same time. He too would have felt submerged in the abyss of a silent God. 

Where does that leave us? Do we join with John and see Jesus the icon of suffering we are to emulate or do we to look beneath the story and see the struggle of a human being deeply broken by a death he would rather have avoided? How do we make sense of his and our suffering? How do we hang on when we are dying, in whatever form that particular death takes, and hope in hope itself.

We can appeal to the resurrection as the evidence of hope but is that always possible, or do we lose sight of Sunday while we are alone in Friday?


There are no quick answers. Yes, John’s Jesus shows how to grasp the hope but be not disappointed if you find yourself incapable of doing so. Jesus has already done it on your behalf for he is the only one who knows the depth of God’s silence you feel. Hang onto him.

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Amateurs - The Love of the Two Mary's




"As so often happens, the great discovery in the drama that is Easter was the work of amateurs.” An amateur is, in the primary sense of the term, a "lover." Our favourite amateur sleuths on TV are lovers – lovers of people, of intrigue and of little hints, the nods and winks that break what seems to be unbreakable alibis and stories. They stumble almost by accident onto the truth and discover the truth.  Our history is full of amateurs who have discovered new stars, new formulas and new ways of doing things the experts would be, and are, jealous of.
 
“…the Mary's went to the tomb out of love”, love for Jesus, love for the truth, love for hope... “. If we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there.” Not inquisitiveness, not fear, not a need to confirm that their worst nightmare had happened. They went out of love, a passionate heart called them forward to stand near and with the one who had held all their hopes and dreams.
 
You see, “Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning.[1]” Love, a word we use much but understand little. Love is a term that has been emasculated of it’s power and it’s beauty in a world were words have only an utilitarian use. 

The Mary’s get up early, and get to the tomb before everyone else. Maybe they wanted to see if they could further care for the body, maybe they hoped they could see him for one last time, maybe…… maybe… they just had to be near him. They had loved him, he them, and love and the memory of that love was all they had left.
 
“And their love was rewarded: “9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”
 
Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski relates a discussion with a young boy who has a plate of fish in front of him. The young boy says, “I love fish.” The Rabbi asks, “You love fish?”. “Yes”, the boy replies, “I love fish.” The Rabbi replies, “ Is it love for the fish that makes you catch it, kill it and boil it?”. He continues, “It is not the fish you love, but you love yourself. You love how the fish makes you feel. You do not love the fish. You love yourself.” He finishes with, "So much of what is called love, is fish love."
 
So much of what passes for love of Jesus the Christ is indeed fish love. We can love Jesus for what we believe Jesus can do for us, from fire insurance to a superman rescue, from rags to rishes, for healing and redemption. There is much of ourselves in this love. We love Jesus as long we are not made uncomfortable, challenged with ideas and opinions that turn our world upside.
 
We love Jesus if we can still  have our overseas holidays, our big houses and our fancy cars. We love Jesus if everything goes our way. We watch politicians invoke God to support ideas God would never entertain. We have sport men and women who thank God for winning a medal or trophy. We love Jesus if our privileged lifestyle continues and suggest others need to love Jesus like us if they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Our love for Jesus can be little more than self love, love of self, and the church is not exempt from such love. Love of liturgy, music,  existence and fancy clobber all smack of self love.
 
What the world and the church need is the love of the Mary’s, that simple love that goes to the one they love despite a broken heart, tear filled eyes and tired bodies, people who are finding the silence of God to be like a black hole into which they may very well disappear. Yet they go to the one they love.

Here in this parish I watch this love happen week in week out. People come with broken hearts, broken bodies and carrying great burdens but they come and they participate in the liturgy or they carry out their small and seemingly insignificant acts of love and they see Jesus. They do the flowers, polish the pews, tidy the candles, prepare the elements for the Eucharist, play the organ, prepare the choir, sing in the choir, make palm crosses, do the pew sheets, count the money, balance the books, run the book sales, manage the website, mentor a student, tidy the church for events such as this, and more, much, much more, and they see Jesus.
 
Being at the tomb and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not the task of the professionals, the clergy, the studied alone; it is the gift of love. Love that makes the journey to the place where mysteries are revealed, and the love that responds with the beauty of grace. And this love is the domain of the amateur, the ordinary person who sees beyond the mechanical actions of the tasks they carry out into the wonders hidden from those who are more learned and studied.

In the midst of a dark world where we name weapons of destruction with sexy names like Mother or Father of All Bombs, what is the response of love? The response is the love of beauty, mystery and wholeness of the ordinary. Someone said to me when asked this question, I just try to do beautiful things in the ordinary everyday acts of my life and hope that will help. It is the only thing that helps.
 
The two Mary’s remind us this Easter by their act of beauty and love, that such acts will never be denied no matter how dark the morning maybe, that beauty and love are their own own reward and only rewards those who let them loose in the world, making no claims of ownership. While I am sure the two Mary’s loved fish, their love for Jesus was no fish love. Amen



[1] John C. Purdy. Chapter 12 of God With a Human Face (1993), republished at Religion Online.Fish Love

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Bearing Fruit




John 12:20-36
 
John the Gospel writer annoys me and the more I read him the more he does. He always has to explain the very thing he just wrote as if those reading it are too thick to get his meaning. And when I am feeling like this I get to thinking he may be right.
 
We are too thick to get what he is writing.
 
The Fathers of the church and scholars through the ages have taken much of what has been written and interpreted it in such a way that the life of Jesus is seen primarily as God’s response to original sin. Apparently we are all inherently bad and need a sacrificial lamb without spot to cast our sins upon for redemption. 
 
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”
 
This is how this verse is often interpreted. Jesus dies so we can live. But we add bits that aren’t there. We add sin and the need for an angry God to be propitiated for our humanity. We add the ghastly event of Good Friday to this, not as a testimony to the commitment of Jesus as the fully conscious human being who stays with the demands of the Kingdom of God right until the end, but as a bloody sacrifice for sin.
 
John, perhaps, captures the natural process of evolution and reminds us that when something individual dies it is reborn somewhere within the species, it leaves behind something to empower, embolden and to add to others. This is the process God chose for creation and it is the process John refers to here.
 
Jesus is just like the significantly insignificant grain of wheat, on its own it contains the essence of daily living, but when it dies it gives birth to much more than it could ever achieve individually. The death of Jesus, as the fully alive sentient being, the culmination of all evolutionary creation to this point is the catalyst for change, for another way of being in the world and for wholeness.
 
This is what is born in the idea of much fruit. Jesus is not specific about what the fruit looks like – is it spiritual, is it social justice, is it found in mystics, activists, lay people or monks, is it found in one strain of religious thought and practice, is it confined to one particular set of dogma, orthodoxy or practice over against another? Jesus simply says it will bear much fruit and just like the grain of wheat cannot give fruit from a pineapple, the essence of the one who dies will be the signifying essence of the fruit. In other words it will be found in the form of other fully alive sentient beings who live for wholeness, justice and respect at the gentle and not so gentle prodding of eternal love.
 

Like gives birth to like . Not like in particular but like in essence and Jesus is bearing fruit throughout this world in all lives in tune with urge for wholeness embedded within all creation by the Source of all love.

Monday 10 April 2017

The Sensual Jesus




Brooklyn_Museum - The Ointment of the Magdalene (Le Parfum de Madeleine) - James Tissot

John 12:1-11
 
If we ever had any doubts about Jesus and his humanity, here is a scene which challenges all our perceptions.
 
The easy place to go is the confrontation between Judas and Jesus over the wasteful use of money. Money that Judas deemed should be used to assist those in need and he makes his very valid point forcefully.
 
Jesus responds with what sounds like a callous response, you will have the poor with you always but me you won’t. Is that a valid and rational point? Is that an excuse for ignoring the waste happening in front of him or is there something else happening here?
 
This scene is a very emotionally charged scene, almost erotic in its telling. Let us listen again to these few verses:
 
“There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” 
 
Wow. This was not rational, formal, respectable dinner party. Deep emotions bubble to the surface in a room charged with deep feelings for each other. A woman not only enters the rooms but bends low over Jesus and pours a large amount of  very strong and sensual perfume over Jesus’ feet an begins to wipe it with her hair. This is a moment that would have taken the breath away from who were sitting in the room. It had the essence of deep love, deep intimate love, deep emotional love.
 
It was a deeply human connection between two deeply human people and Jesus could not have ignored the emotions and feelings that came with this moment. It was seductive, as seductive as any of the temptations he had experienced previously, and he recognised it for what it was – deep feelings not to be ignored but to be recognised.
 
Judas does what we seem to do with these human and juicy bits, he turns away and changes the subject. He goes for the old the money should be used for the poor strategy, but Jesus keeps him in the emotionally perfumed room. This is about deep love and a love that is to be expressed and experienced in the moment.
 

This moment reminds us that this is not just a story we can spiritualise and give the meaning that makes us most comfortable. It is a story of individual people complete with deep emotions and ordinary reactions. If we lose sight of this in this story then we will likely lose sight of it our understanding of Easter and of the people we see around us. People will become objectified – for Judas they become the poor – for us they become widgets in the consumerist puzzle – for Jesus they are people who feel deeply and need places where they can express those feelings without judgement and criticism. And yes, they sometimes may seem erotic as this one does.

Why Did Jesus Die?





Matthew 21:1-11
 
The sign on our noticeboard asks the question, “Why did Jesus die?” and answers it with “Because of his politics.”  This may seem to be a 21st century response to a deep question that is often answered very differently.
 
For many people the answer to why Jesus died has to do with the crash known as original sin resulting in broken relationships and a paradise abandoned, the story of two people who made a decision resulting in the suffering of generations following. This story turns the death of the man Jesus into one of sacrifice and scapegoating as a response to the frailty of humanity, seemingly out of proportion to the supposed sin and out of character for a God who was, we told, the one who created us in the first place.
 
The story John provides us with today, the wandering rabble entering Jerusalem, is  a story of confrontation with tradition, power and the political system. Jesus has known for some time that his pronouncements about his relationship with God whom he intimately describes as father, his identification with key theological themes via the I Am statements in John's Gospel and his general denouncement of both Rome and the Temple elite is not going to end well.
 
His entry into Jerusalem is an acclamation mark on his political protest. David Ewart reminds us that "Jerusalem is not a large city. And what the authors of the Bible take for granted and fail to mention is that while Jesus is parading in on a donkey through one of the back gates, on the other side of the city Pilate is parading in on a war horse accompanied by a squadron or two of battle-hardened Roman soldiers.” He adds, “ Do you think anyone at Pilate's parade heard about Jesus' parade? Heard what the crowd had shouted? Let's see what unfolds in the week ahead."
 
Now its important to understand that while Jesus death is because of a response to his politics, his politics is not the politics the people of his day, or we of our day are used to. It is not a politic of power and control, of power and control for power and control's sake alone. Much of what passes for politics can be reduced to self-interest, the self-interest of maintaining control over others for your own benefit. Policies are made and implemented that are designed to maintain those in power to remain in power.  Policies, no matter how necessary they may be that would threaten a party’s control on government are quickly jettisoned for those which will ensure power remains in the hands of those who have it now.
 
The politics of Jesus is the politics of the kingdom of God. The ramble into Jerusalem is symbolic of the politic of non-violence, community, wholeness and inclusion that is the kingdom of God and runs contrary to the politics of power, exclusion, individualism and oppression. Jesus is joined in this final confrontation with those on the margins of society; women, rural folk, those who have been healed physically and redeemed from impossible lives due to the rules enforced by those in religious and political power.
 
Jesus uses a young donkey, people hail him as King and he enters in defiance of a show of power occurring simultaneously. Jesus is holding up a mirror to society and challenging it to choose the way it wishes to go. Does it continue to live by violence (the Romans), wish to regain independence by violence (the religious leaders) or to offer something new – a vision of the world in which relationships, justice and hope are freely shared with all? Is it ready for a completely new way of doing life ?
 
Sarah Breuer suggests "Jesus didn't come to take over Pilate's system; he came to replace it. When we confess that Jesus is Lord and Christ, the God’s anointed, we are leaving no room for the Pilates of this world." John makes this very clear when he writes “4This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Interestingly this wasn’t what the crowds watching on saw. “11The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”” This is the danger in every protest, march or alignment with the kingdom of God, those involved will be seen as prophets or protesters, do-gooders who are interesting, perhaps have something to say, but they and what they have to say are quickly marginalised and sidelined as an oddity. Jesus was abandoned by many who followed him or stood by the road in a very short time because the politics of the kingdom of God not only challenged those in power but also those under their power.
The difficulty we find with Jesus and his politics of the kingdom is it is not remote, it is not about them, it is not out there – it is personal, intimate and revealing, it is about how we live and act in the everyday. We are implicated in the violence of the prevailing politically system every time we pay our taxes, cast our vote or support one or other of the possible contenders. Somewhere in the week after Palm Sunday people may have begun to understand the implications of following Jesus and realised the cost and decided it was more than they could pay. They had families, businesses and responsibilities and while this kingdom of God looks good on paper it is risky and it was a risk they did not wish to take.
After the procession Jesus makes a full frontal attack on the money lenders and the traders in the temple, a blatant protest against the way the politics of both church and state exploited the anawin or little ones, the ones with out power. While this was an annoyance to those in power it was frightening to those who feared the fallout, the very people Jesus kingdom stood for. And over a period of a week the politicians regained the upper-hand and crucified Jesus. Self interest seems always to triumph even if it is the self interest of better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
If we just look at this story as a story about Jesus the man  who died on the cross we miss the power of Jesus the Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was there at the very beginning of creation and the one we leads us forward as the Omega – our destination as a creation in him somewhere in the future. We miss the truth that this is not about personal frailty, personal sin or even the sinful nature of humanity (original sin) but about the communitarian journey into wholeness – the journey of all of creation to a place where we enter the Garden for the very first time.
The politics of the kingdom are the politics of whole –ing – of making whole, of breaking down all that separates existence into parts. It is a process that began at the beginning of creation and will continue beyond the foreseeable future. It will indeed replace all Pilates, political or religious and take us into places beyond our imagination.

As we walk the dusty road with Jesus do we have what it takes to live out the politics of the kingdom or do we value our own self interest beyond our commitment to the Source of that kingdom? Tough question to answer.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Fourth Day Living - The Day Beyond Hope




John 11:1-45 
 
"LOST: male dog, has one eye, mangled left ear, missing left hind leg and most of his teeth, crooked tail. Answers to the name, ‘Lucky'.
 
In our modern day world I suspect many of us feel a little like Lucky. We are bombarded by bad news – bad news on a world scale, bad news on a local scale and bad news on a personal level. It never seems to stop. You turn on the tv to watch a little news and relax, and all you get is one bad story after another, even the shows which are supposed to entertain are full of anger, bully and violence. Watch an episode or two of Married at First Sight, My Kitchen Rules or The Block to see what I mean.
 
Talk a stroll through the local bookshop or record store (are there any of these any more?) and take a look at the covers, the story briefs or the lyrics and you will be surprised by the  words used, the storylines or violence and horror which seems to permeate almost everything out there.
 
Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, wrote in 1956; “We have a literacy above 90 per cent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. But instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of men with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in a while. But while the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no “immorality” occurs on the screen."
 
Little seems to have changed in the 60 years since he wrote that. There seems to be no end to bad news and we may find ourselves overwhelmed and feeling we are living in the worst of times not the best of times. Despite the capacity for human beings to grow and develop knowledge, skills and quality of life we seem not to have mastered the art of living well together.
 
No wonder we feel a little like Lucky the dog, broken down, dragged out and not all there. We may indeed feel as if we are living in the hopeless days. And it is when we are living in the hopeless days that we are the closest to the sense of another long Gospel reading from John. This is the story of loss and grief, of facing up to the inevitable death that faces us all in some way every day. We receive bad news about our own health, about the health or death of a friend, about the health of our beloved pet, we lose a job, we face divorce, we face financial ruin, we risk everything for a better life only to be told no and more.  For whatever reason we find ourselves living in the hopeless day.
 
Martha, Mary and Jesus find themselves in this very place. Their brother, his friend has died. He gets the news on the day it happens. He is sad but does not rush back but waits 2 days before travelling to their home. Perhaps he was worried about the reception he would get. The disciples were because they intimated it was beyond risky for Jesus to show his face there. Perhaps he was so overcome with the thought of going back and facing it immediately, it was just too much. So it wasn’t until the third day that he began the trip and he arrived on the fourth day, a day when it was going to be too late for heroics such as a healing, the body had already started to decompose.
 
Martha and Mary were both upset at his tardiness intimating he had known about Lazarus’s health prior to his death and hadn’t come back. They were well aware of his ability to heal and couldn’t come to grips with his failure to heal the one he loved. Their confrontation with him may have been a little more forceful than John relates and his defence that this was all for God’s glory probably was not an appropriate answer. And it isn’t ever.
 
Yet here they were in what was to them a hopeless situation.
 
Peter Woods writes that "Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead. He tells his disciples this brutal truth. Only then does he decide to go to nearby Bethany. He arrives on the fourth day. The day that is beyond all hope. All through Scripture the third day is the day that God acts. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day, the fourth." 
 
This is worth keeping in mind as it is the only time it is recorded. The day that is beyond hope is a place where people live and where God is not absent. Yes God acts on the third day, timely and appropriately, before everything decomposes and falls apart and we live and have been taught to live with the expectation that this will happen. But God is not absent from the hopeless day, the day beyond hope. What actually happens in this story we do not know but we do know something happens and Lazarus is somewhat restored, at least in the story if not in real life. God in someway restores equilibrium and balance in so dramatically that in a few verses on from this reading, Jesus future is doomed by those in power who will see to it he dies.
 
We always want God to act within the 3 days, within a timely framework that works for us. We also want God to restore it to the way it was. But it has changed no it is different and uncomfortable. We find the day that is beyond all hope too painful, to dislodging, to traumatic, and it often leaves us with scars we can never erase. Yet if we look closely to that day or days we find God is not absent, stuff is happening to us and others, the ground is shifting and life continues, different, changed but it is still life.
 
Fourth day living is where the church has been since the promised or expected immediate return of Jesus has yet to occur. Fourth day living is the ordinary experience of each of us and has produced wonderful spiritual practitioners, writers and saints. Fourth day living is the norm for the majority of people throughout the world, not the exception in places where God does not appear on the third day to prevent children dying of starvation, people being bombed out of their homes or others feeling the wrath of racism and oppression.
 
It is in fourth day living that we begin to experience the necessity of faith, hope and love; the value of community and belonging; and the expansiveness of God’s presence, even when God seems to have gone missing. Fourth day living pushes our boundaries, reshapes our values and expectations and beckons us forward into an ever-expanding universe open to surprise, beauty and possibility.
 
The truth for Jesus friends is that they have not avoided the inevitable encounter with fourth day living, only postponed it; but they may have lived the days after Jesus’ visit, the day after they experienced for the first time the day beyond all hope, very differently, intentionally, focused and with an awareness they didn’t have before.
 
Like Lucky, they panted for more.