The Amazing Void

Luke 24:1-12

 

Sometimes a nod is as good as wink, don’t you think? As a kid I thought so. If I didn’t get a direct no to something I asked my parents, teacher or someone supposedly in charge, then I took it as a yes. A nod is as good as a wink.  The result; I was in trouble more times than I thought it fair.

 

On Easter eve we need to be careful to not invoke that saying here. The women come to the tomb. They have a special task to do. They had the necessary spices to anoint the body with even though the tomb had been sealed by the Romans. Were they aware of this or were they expecting to have the customary access to the body? They were surprised, not that the stone had been rolled away, like they were expecting to be able to get in.

 

What they were surprised at was the fact that the body was missing. As I am sure you and I would be. What they had expected was not the case. How did this happen? What had happened?  Even the words attributed to the young men in shining clothes only hint at the possibility of a resurrection. It is not enough for the Peter and the disciples. They need more than a nod is as good as a wink, and they go home and put all down to the emotion of the moment.

 

 David Ewart suggest "This passage contains no resurrection. But this lesson also contains trusting the amazing void."

 

What a powerful though for us tonight as we envisage what is to come, “trusting the amazing void”. Nothing is definite. It could be or it could not be. What we seek may come and it may not come. Children waiting for the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and Easter Bunny embrace the amazing void – that huge dark hole between when they start wishing for the special day and when it actually comes.

 

Dogs live in the present moment so much that when you say I’ll be back in an hour, they immediately look at you and go ‘are you back yet?” There is no gap between now and later, all is now.

 

Not for us humans and we often want to rush over the void to the moment when all is as it should be. We will do anything to get by the ‘amazing void”. The idea of trusting it is foreign to us. We need certainty, health, happiness, control. The dark place of emptiness and uncertainty is to be avoided at all costs. Yet for many of us we will spend a great deal of time in that place and be asked to trust it as a place of renewal, hope and possibility.

 

For example:

Only a handful of Rhodes scholars have had a disability but the newest Australian scholar Matt Pierri is not out to change the world, just people’s perceptions.

His own world changed three weeks before his 16th birthday in 2007 when he broke his neck playing Australian football at school and was left a quadriplegic.

He spent the next three weeks in hospital followed by five months in rehab.

The Year 11 student kept up his studies while attending rehab and regaining movement in his hands and returned to school to complete Year 12 the following year. He is now the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship”

He trusted the amazing void.

 

Our world is full of those, who like Matt and for various reasons, have had to trust the untrustable and find a new way of making meaning. Often it is no where as exciting as a Rhodes Scholarship, it is often just the courage to keep on keeping on, doing what needs to be done, and doing it over and over again.

 

Mother Teresa writes in her letters to her spiritual advisors that for some 30 years she had no confirmation of the presence of Jesus. Somewhere along the way Jesus had seemed to disappear yet she kept on doing what she was called to do, even in the midst of the dark and threatening void.

 

Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and writer, Thomas Merton, modern mystic Eckhart Tolle and others all talk about the dark night of soul in which they were forced to trust when all seemed lost.

 

Easter Eve is that moment in the story of holy week. Jesus has died on the cross and been placed in the tomb. Now, when they thought they at least had the certainty of his body, they are left with no thing to mourn. The dark place of mourning just got darker. When you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Murphys’ rule and Murphy was an optimist!

 

Yet there is a glimmer of light, a word that points to the possibility of a risen Jesus. For Mary and the women this sends them running back to the men. For Peter it is just another strange event in his experience of Jesus and seems to far fetched and bewildering to even consider.

 

All this leaves them with a void, an amazing void, a void that is the tomb and the incredulity of the situation. So this is what Jesus talked about at the temple about pulling it down and building it up in three days, is this what he meant? Surely not. Yet…..

 

Sitting in the dark place of hopelessness and bewilderment allows our senses and reason to expand to embrace the possibility, to get us looking for something else, something that transcends and transform our situation. We need to take the time to allow the mysteries held in the void to become clear to us and to speak into our lives, not all at once, a little bit at a time. For Mary and Peter and the disciples the empty tomb and the possibility of a resurrected Jesus was too much to hold at one time, and needed time to allow them to begin to embrace the situation.

 

Loss of health, death of a loved one, a tragic accident, shocking news and more can hurl us into this amazing void from which we will eventually emerge transformed and different, but not all at once. We have to sit in it and allow it to unfold itself one frame at a time over, often, a lengthy period of time.

 

In the Easter story from Palm Sunday to Easter day we are asked to sit in each space and explore the experience of that day, the challenge of Palm Sunday, the love of Maundy Thursday, the violence of Good Friday and now the void of the empty tomb.

 

Each will unfold itself as it will and you will be transformed by the journey. Amen. 

Violence and Sanity

John 18:1 - 19:42

Lopping trees was a daily task my father did to feed his sheep. He didn’t use grain but used the resources of the box, mountain oak or kurrajong to sustain his stock through hard times, or to simply augment their diet. Nature provided all he needed to care for his stock.

 

He would swing the axe into the tree climb up, take the axe and repeat the process until he was where he wanted to be. When he was in the right place, where the best branches were he would begin to cut sufficient only to feed the sheep below.

 

One day he approached a large box tree, two fulsome cuddles round. Strong and powerful in appearance and full of good branches. He swung the axe sideways into the trunk and the tree gave forth a menacing sigh and cam crashing down at his feet. With one blow of the axe, what appeared to be strong and able to live forever, crashed in a heap on the ground.

 

A closer inspection showed it was rotten at the core just waiting for the right incentive to give up the ghost.  Fortunately his faithful dog and horse were not underneath it when it cam down.

 

Good Friday is the day the human project of violence, power and oppression came crashing down. In a few short hours, from dawn till mid afternoon, what had looked invincible fell to the power of obedience and compassion in the life and death of Christ. Death, a synonym for a life violently opposed to a relationship with God, lost it’s battle when Jesus was prepared to live his life to the full, even unto an unjust and cruel death on the cross.

 

Jesus did not avoid the consequences of compassion for all of creation, the consequences for calling out injustice and the machinery of death, be that in the shape of the military economy in power in Jerusalem, or the politically greedy who were manipulating the system for their own wealth and power or the religious leaders who were benefiting from the conflict in the system.

 

Jesus subsumed the violence into his own experience and shared the experience of all those who had been crucified before him for daring to challenge Rome or simply been caught for the crime of survival. Jesus took into himself the violence that was present in those watching and calling for his death.  He understood human beings as having the capacity for great violence and heard it, felt and died from it.

 

For the more, the most challenging part of this story is the crowd, ordinary citizens of the city, mums and dads, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, adults and children, all calling for Jesus to be crucified.  They were loving to their families, caring for their neighbours, observant of religious rules and rituals. They were active community members and would have been seen, in other places, as good people.

 

Yet here they are, calling for the physical destruction of a fellow Jew, a man who had done so much good and had spoken up for them. They wished him a violent death.

 

It is not sufficient to say it was mob think, peer pressure or the manipulation of the crowd by those in power. These were  sane, thinking people, people able to manage their own decisions and emotions, how come they gave it up so easily to resort to violence? These were sane people.

 

Perhaps this is the scary bit. We understand ourselves to be sane and deny our propensity for violence. In fact we deny even the possibility that we too can resort to violence so powerful it crucifies others. Our decisions, words, actions, ideologies are well thought out and sane. There is no way how we think or act is capable of the same violence as the Romans, the crowd, the Nazis or ISIS. Yet..

 

Thomas Merton explored the case of Adolf Eichmann, the leader of the Gestapo who led millions to their death. Merton writes:

 

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.

If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.

 

You may say this was an extreme case. Is it? The recent declaration of imprisonment for those who protest the use of their land for CSG and coal mining by the NSW Government, the treatment of children in detention, the increased spending on weapons of destruction for our military, the destruction of the environment for coal power and more, speaks to our willingness to use violence as and when it is necessary.

 

The increase of bullying, domestic violence, street violence, gun violence, road rage speaks to the  level of violence sitting just below the surface in many of us. AN hour in front of the tv at news time will have us locking every window and door and arming ourselves to protect what is ours! The language of politics, brought into sharp focus by the US elections, but not restricted to that country reminds us the capacity other wise sane people seem to have for violence.

 

 

Merton goes on:

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous……….

The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless. A man can be "sane" in the limited sense that he is not impeded by disordered emotions from acting in a cool, orderly tier, according to the needs and dictates of the social situation in which he finds himself. He can be perfectly "adjusted." God knows, perhaps such people can be perfectly adjusted even in hell itself.

 

The challenge for you and I this Easter is to face the violence within ourselves, to open Pandoras box and take a good long look what is lurking within. It is a dangerous thing to do for we may be forced to realise that the violence in the world also has its home in us, our language, our expectations, our ideologies, our demands.

 

Good Friday is the result of sane people taking sane decisions and enticing good people to follow them. The outcome? The horrific death of the only truly good man. Are we the sane people participating in similar decisions and actions which condemn innocent people to a lifetime in detention centres, to be caught in inhumane living conditions and to be brutalised for our supposed safety?

 

Our does Jesus death save us? It saves us from the illusion of innocence and, if we are willing, wrests the power of violence from us so that we truly can live a non-violent life of obedience and compassion, just as Jesus did. Amen 

Cold Hands, Warm Heart, Dirty Feet (Water):

Cold Hands, Warm Heart, Dirty Feet (Water):

It was a nursing home like most nursing homes. People had gathered in the recreation room as someone special was coming to entertain them. Wheel chairs, walkers, beds on wheels and even some in ordinary chairs! Everybody was excited waiting for the special guest.

Suddenly, he was there. A clown dressed in funny clothes, a red rubber ball on his nose and big floppy shoes! After a jittery start, dropping the juggle balls, losing one of the balloon animals shot off across the room landing on the face of a sleeping lady, he began to meet and greet.

He shook hands with the lady in the front row. She looked at him and said, “Oooh, you have cold hands”. He replied, “Cold hands, warm heart” with all the appropriate gestures. She smiled and said, “And dirty feet.” She went on to say it is what her mother said when she and siblings rushed through the gauze door after a day exploring the bush around their farm house.

Cold hands, warm heart, dirty feet. Dirty feet. The product of active feet, or as in the penguin movie, Happy Feet, feet that are out exploring the world, venturing to new places, engaging with life and different faces. Dirty feet are the result of being fully engaged in life.

Kids get dirty feet playing in the mud, kicking up leaves or footballs, cooking up scams and crazy ideas with friends., and they bring them back into the house. Wipe your feet!, a common cry of Mums from days gone by. Shoes were a luxury. Bare feet the go.

Not only kids, Dad’s boots, garden shoes, garage boots all brought in mud, grease, oil and stuff. Wipe your feet! Or better still, leave those boots outside!

Jesus washes dirty feet. Feet that have been contaminated by the dust of everyday life, that have picked up additives and bits of stuff not normally there. Dirty feet could be a metaphor for the stuff we pick up in our lives, cultural ideas and practices, current fads and fetishes, little compromises and shortcuts diminishing our living as disciples of Christ.

The disciples aren’t dirty. Not really. They have bathed and follow the normal rules of ritual cleanliness. They don’t need as impetuous Peter asks to be washed all over. 

⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.”

The idea of Peter allowing Jesus to wash him is a little further than most of us want to go! Jesus says no, this not about the ordinary acts of cleanliness. This is about the reminder that we if we engage fully with life in this world we will find ourselves picking up dust from the road. Take time to wipe the dust from your feet.

Jesus undertakes this task on behalf of the disciples as:

• A leader – sets the example
• A companion – cares for those whom he shares life with
• A servant – be prepared to do for others what they may not wish to do for themselves.

In doing so he calls them to be:

• Mindful of the dust they collect and to take the time to reflect and let go of those things that become attached to us.
• Mindful of the dust others collect and to take the time to reflect and help them let go of those things that become attached to them.
• And respond with compassion and humility to both their (our) need and the needs of others.

As we come to night to participate in this act together, let us remember it is a community act of compassion and humility we all need and may we be mindful of our responsibility to serve Christ by serving others without question. Whose feet do we wash? Christ's ! Amen 

In The Garden

John 20:1-18

 

In the garden Mary meets Jesus. What a wonderful image. The biblical narrative begins in the garden with Adam and eve and we arrive here at the place where Mary is named by Jesus and she recognises him.

Gardens play an integral role in the this story. The garden on the Mount of Olives where Jesus and his disciples retreat to pray. The same Garden where Judas comes and betrays Jesus. The various gardens and open spaces which play in and out of the Easter panorama. The grotesque garden on Golgotha where Jesus is crucified. And now the garden, the burial place, where Jesus is placed and where he makes his first appearance to Mary.

 

Gardens have always been apart of the Jewish story. The Garden in the two creation stories, the various gardens or timbered places which play apart in the various Old Testament stories. Nature and natural beauty, rugged or otherwise, sit or not from the centre of each story.

 

The incarnation is not just the story of Jesus. It is the indwelling of God in all created subjects and it is appropriate that key stories talk place in gardens, no matter how rustic or ordinary they may be.  The human journey is one in search of Paradise lost, the garden we had but once and lost through our own desire to be the one in charge. Jesus is the fulfilment of that journey, yet it is still a journey – a gift or grace on behalf of  and an act on our behalf

 

Standing outside the empty tomb, still unsure about the suggestions that Jesus is alive, Mary confronts the stranger who joins her. She fails to recognise Jesus but mistakes him for the gardener. When he calls he name she gasps with recognition and drops to his feet.

 

The gardener, what a wonderful image for Jesus and a reconnection with Paradise Lost. Jesus reconnects us to who we were before Adam and Eve became conscious of their ego self and began to live out of illusion and self. Here we have Jesus, the gardener, standing in the space in between heaven and earth and making space for our true self to come alive.

 

Adam and Eve, Mary and Jesus, types of each other at a different place in the story. Adam and Eve self conscious and full of guilt of being found naked and unprepared in the garden Jesus and Mary fully comfortable in a relationship tested by great tragedy and deep love.

 

And it is this relational aspect of the resurrection which is relevant to us today. The difference between Adam and Eve and Jesus and Mary is the innocence and honesty of their relational self-disclosure.

 

We, like Adam and Eve, are conscious of who we are, of the social structures into which we must fit, the consumer mores which drives us to behave in so many ways that go against our essential self. We listen to others and hear things which compel us to condemn ourselves, to strive to be better, to become a new you/me, to find happiness, fulfilment, closure. A journey that never ends.

 

Neither condemns the other. The one for not recognising him and the other for the deep sorrow and darkness she has experienced. There is simply recognition of a relationship, which has survived and will survive forever. There is innocence, a welcoming of the moment in its entirety. Here in the garden all the experiences they have shared, the horror and sorrow of the last few days are gathered up and bundled together as one all empowering experience. 

 

Unlike moderns, this story doesn’t rush for closure, for a moving on from what was painful and unforgettable. Even here they stay in and experience the moment for what it is, the overflowing of longing, hope and presence. Mary is admonished not to hold on too tight or to hang on too long. This, even this, is not the end. There is more to come. The anguish of this experience will be replaced with the anguish of the disappearance of the physical manifestation of Jesus.

 

We like to see what we see, to be able to touch and smell the material essence of life. We are uncomfortable with anything that can’t be explained and therefore have a fear of losing what we now hold on to. It is why death frightens us. Not so much the dying, but the letting go of that which we have held onto, that has given life its meaning. Mary and the disciples now have to face the compete loss, at some point, of the physical, visible, audible Jesus. The resurrected Jesus becomes the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, and this disembodied presence is much harder to explain, claim and relate to.

 

No wonder Mary wants to hold on. How do we make that journey from an intervening God who has the characteristics we can explain in human terms to a God who is spirit and love? A God ever-present and indwelling but intangible and elusive. A God who is alive but in no need of physicality to define presence. A God who is present not just us as humans but to all creatures to the extent each is capable. A God who calls us back to whom we were before we were born.

 

Here is the return to the child, the virgin. A return to the innocence and openness of a some-one who is without judgement and images, with ideas and ideologies, who simply holds in both hands, sees with both the eyes the beauty in all things as they are. Mary does not judge, there are no questions, no please explains, no I want to know why? At no point does she chastise Jesus. She has been so emptied by the experience of his death that she is now ready to engage with a new way of seeing. She is transformed by her experiences and begins to see differently.

 

Being transformed means letting go of our worldly way of seeing things, seeing through the lens of our false our superficial self, by letting go of the things which prevent us from seeing, hearing experiencing as a child does; not in duality but in unity.

 

Legend tells of a young man and a guru walking along the edge of a cliff. The young man asks the guru to explain the meaning of faith. There is a

 

Gentle silence before the Guru replies, Faith is leaning out of the edge of the cliff.

 

The young man smiles, that is simple.

The guru suggests he go to the edge of the cliff and hold out his hands. He does so.

 

The guru asks him what does he feel?

  

'I can feel the updraft coming up the side of the cliff.'

 

The guru smiled and said, ‘Faith is leaning out until all that holds you safe is the updraft.'

 

Mary is in that place for just a moment and begins to understand the call of God on her life.

 

On this Easter day can we reach out to be held up by the spirit of God? Or do we need the material world for our safety net. Amen. 

These Stones Will Speak.

The Story of Creation (Stones):

⁴⁰He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

 

Palm Sunday ushers in Holy Week and Jesus steady journey to the Cross. It begins ok enough. A carefully orchestrated non-violent procession on the outskirts of town mimicking the military parade of might and power just a stones throw away.

 

Happy followers wave their branches beside a smiling Jesus on a young donkey. Some even lay down their cloaks, probably especially brought for the purpose, on the ground in front of the donkey.

 

It was not a benign procession. The imagery is provocative and powerful. In Zechariah 9:9 we read the promise to the people of Jerusalem of rescue from those oppressing them:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
    triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

 

It is powerfully political and religious at the same time. It is aimed squarely at the Romans whose power rules, for now, and at those who appease and seek to keep the status quo. This is not new for Jesus. He has always been political and on the offensive in terms of corruption, violence and oppression. It is the program he set for himself when he announced his ministry in Luke 4 - He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

 

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” ²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

The church is not a benign institution responsible for platitudes, nice music, lovely people; the church is a revolutionary body responsible for bringing in the kingdom of God. It is political for its mandate is the very same mandate Jesus took for himself. We are for the poor, the marginalised and the forgotten. This is not an option but mandatory on all of us to live like this.

 

When the religious leaders suggest that he and his followers tone it down, go through the right channels, work with the powers to be, he replies, ‘“I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

 

What an extraordinary thing to say. How do you reply to such a statement? Surely Jesus mental health was questioned? The man’s nuts!

 

In the last week we have discovered that the 12 Apostles dotted along the coast beside the Great Ocean Road are not 8 as we thought (4 had fallen into the sea), but 13. 5 more have been found. These majestic sand stacks have risen and fallen and been discovered over centuries. What stories do they hold? What things could they tell us if only they could talk. But they do. Science will interrogate them and discover more and more about the birth of our planet and our country, the sea and those who live in it. The stones will speak.

 

Jesus is saying this is not about you and your rational, reasonable selves. This is about the transcendence of God, of me who is indistinguishable from God, one with the Godhead who brought all things into being.  Listen to the stones, listen to the sand-stacks, listen to the trees and you will hear them calling out the words of Zechariah. They praise and celebrate God and call for release from oppression. 

 

Jesus reminds us the Godhead is present in all created things and that to silence the voice of one will result in another speaking out, seeking freedom. That voice maybe heard in the sounds and images of climate change, habitat loss, lack of water and the damage to ecosystems so fragile they have taken years to develop.

 

Jesus’ incarnation is not just about human beings, questionably the most intelligent beings on earth, but for all. “For so greatly did God love the world that He gave His only Son, that every one who trusts in Him may not perish but may have the Life of Ages.” It is only human beings who have a choice. The stones will always cry out in praise and adoration seeking to return to God simply by being a stone. Humans fail to hear the sound other creatures make and fail to see the implication in Jesus statement, you are not the centre of the world. Yes, you were made for relationship with God, but it is not all about you.

 

Others are valued and valuable and you are to take steps to care for the least of these. You are to resist oppression of peoples and creatures, oppose the destruction of the planet for profit and greed, and to ensure all have the opportunity to celebrate the life God has given them.

 

Jesus reminds us of the unity of life – we all co-independent - and challenges the leaders and the rulers to cease the ‘this and that’ of duality. You are alive in this moment. The Good news is here for all, listen and hear it, even the stones on which we are walking are speaking.

 

Thomas Merton responded when someone asked about how he lived out his monastic life, first a little humorously:

 

This is not a hermitage, it is a house. (“Who was that hermitage I seen you with last night?”) What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe. Who said Zen? Wash out your mouth if you said Zen. If you see a meditation going by, shoot it. Who said “Love?” Love is in the movies.

 

He than sobers up: “The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual. Spiritual life is guilt. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and you breathe it.” (Thomas Merton from his essay Day of a Stranger.)

 

Palm Sunday is Jesus return to Jerusalem. It is also the time when he knows his enemies will be coming after him and he only has a short while. He appeals to the ancient prophets and the natural world to give context and meaning to his actions and words. He steps neither backward nor aside from the consequences of speaking out on behalf of all beings who are oppressed by the powerful and the tyrants, secular or religious. He steps forward knowing what the consequences most likely will be.

 

As we stand waving our palm branches and singing our songs are we ready for the decimation of our dreams, our hopes and plans if we take Jesus seriously and follow him to the Cross? Or are we only Palm Sunday Christians? Amen

The Elephant in the Room......

John 12:1-11

An elephant is lying the psychiatrist’s couch. It was a strong couch. He turns, slowly to the psychiatrist and says, “Even when I am in a room full of people, it is like know when notices me.”

 

The elephant in the room. The taboos we don’t talk about. Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, “Don’t mention the war”. It seems in life each one of us experiences an ‘elephant in the room moment’. Or maybe it is more than a moment. The elephant is a permanent resident in the room and people walk around it with out daring to mention that it is there.

 This week a 10 year old girl committed suicide in an aboriginal community in WA, a year or so after her brother had. I spoke to a Maori elder who told me of a 15 year old boy who committed suicide in the same place his Dad did some years before. The Guardian website reported: 'Suicide was the second leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 14 and under in 2014, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. Indigenous children in that age group were 8.8 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to take their own life.' An elephant in the room mainstream media have ignored.

Churches and institutions, countries and governments, families and friends, also have large grey object that is never far from the centre of attention in their space but is never actually mentioned. T

 

Our Gospel today we encounter several such moments. Mary and the expensive perfume. Judas and his consternation at waste. Jesus and the poor will always be with you. All raises large grey shaped images. What are they about? Why would someone waste so much money by pouring expensive perfume on someone’s feet? What is the point? Jesus is not dead. It seems a wasteful actJesus not only condones but applauds.

Judas knows the need in society and does not get it. Why such extravagance while people starve, are homeless and unemployed? I could have used that money to make a difference. The elephant of social justice is loose in the room.

 

Jesus’ reply suggest that this is a systemic problem unlikely to solved by the price of a bottle of perfume and, in actual fact, will be with us permanently until the kingdom of God is firmly in place. The number of elephants in the room are growing.

 

And then there is Lazarus. What is he doing here? Is he here or is it just a rumour? He’s dead isn’t he? We went to his funeral. I know I did. How come he is alive? Or is he? How did (could) that happen?

 

And the questions grow and multiply.

 

What was it like to be dead and now alive? It must have been dark in the tomb. What’s like being dead for 4 days and walking out into the sun again? What did that feel like? What was he thinking about while he was in there? Was he able to think? What did he think when the rock was rolled away and he heard Jesus call him out?

 

And I am sure there were many furtive looks his way, trying to make sense of the situation and not blurting out the obvious questions. The elephants in the room were crowding out the guests. The Gospel writer acknowledges the prominence Lazarus takes by noting that “⁹When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, ¹¹since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”

 

And it’s the same problem they face after Jesus rises from the dead. Having put Jesus in the tomb they thought their problems were solved. Somehow he reappears and the impact, over time, rattles the security of the authorised religion.

 

Yet it is not what happens on Easter morning that intrigues me as much as what happens in the darkness of the tomb. Modern day Christians leap straight from Good Friday into a romanticised Sunday morning without giving Saturday, Easter Eve much attention. It is just that moment from which Jesus returns and that is the only moment it plays in the Easter story.

 

Yet what happens in the tomb is the springboard for the future. Without the deep dark abyss of Jesus confrontation with death, there can be no life giving resurrection, in whatever form you may believe that came. In the darkness Jesus confronts the complete loss of the normality of life he had enjoyed as an incarnated man. Like Lazarus, the normal social intercourse was no longer available and he was left in the darkness of no living thing. Lazarus and Jesus were completely disconnected and free at the very same time, free to become the newly created person that was now available to them.

 

Often it seems to me, moderns want to make the leap from their own particular death experience and arrive at their resurrection without doing time in the tomb. When tragedy, errors, failures, loss of relationships or partners, loss of job and career and more occur we are urged to seek closure and to move on as quickly as possible. Death may have arrived but resurrection is demanded almost immediately. Funerals for example occur as quickly as possible so people can get back to normal. All seems to be solved over a quick cuppa after the funeral and it’s onto the next thing on out agenda.

 

Easter Eve is the solemnest day of the Easter festival. It is the day we sit outside the tomb with Mary and the others trying to come to grips with our loss. Like Mary and Martha outside Lazarus’s tomb we try and find a reason for hope. Sometime before midnight on the evening of Easter eve we, as Christians, participate in the Easter Vigil service, in preparation for what is about to occur and that we celebrate on Easter day, the resurrection of Jesus.

 

It is in the darkness we see the light beginning to flicker into life, hesitantly and fragile at first and then growing stronger and more illuminating as we light up the church. That may be what it was like for both Lazarus and Jesus at the moment the stone was rolled away.

 

For Jesus the stone remained rolled away. Unfortunately for Lazarus, if he was in fact alive, that was not to be the case, but they both shared the life empowering experience of darkness and despair, and stepped forward into our world as evidence of a great spiritual possibility. Transformation. Transformation begins in those moments when all seems lost. Easter is the story of transformation, not just of Jesus the Christ, but of each of us who encounter him in the tomb.

 

For Jesus and the disciples this was not an instant event, but a growing realisation of kinship and freedom, experienced together and forever. For us, it is important we do not slip past the tomb without taking the time to sit in the darkness and experience the more that is to come. For us, it is important we do not seek to move to quickly out of the darkness that invades our lives, jumping from Good Friday to Easter Day without taking in what the darkness brings.

 

Lazarus is one of the elephants in the room when Jesus comes to his home, and the darkness of the tomb can be the elephant in the room in the Easter story. Let’s use this time to experience the transformation the whole story of Easter contains and begin to acknowledge the elephants we walk around in our own lives, communities and society. 

Rejoice With Me........

Luke 15:1-32

 

What is our appropriate response to life? How are we to respond to the events of an ordinary or a not so ordinary day? Life is the stuff that happens to us while we are waiting for life to arrive. In this place we often look past what is already here in search for something that is probably not going to come our way.

 

We strive for success, knowledge, power, wisdom, relationship, control and security, and find ourselves over an over again falling short of the goals we set or hope for  our selves.

 

We look around and see others who appear to have more than us and either give up or double up our efforts to achieve. Daniel Kahneman, Noble prize-winner, when asked what the formula for success is answers as follows: “Skill + luck = success”. To be a great success the formula goes this way, “Skill + great luck = great success”. If this is true, and experience and reading tells me, on all probability it is, then what is our response to life as we now experience it?

 

How do we live with the randomness at the centre of all existence? We couch randomness in the language of choice and causality and forget what happens is not necessarily about the choices we make or a cause we can easily identify. A whole range of seemingly unconnected factors come together in a perfect storm resulting in the situation we find ourselves in. Sometimes this is indeed a happy coincidence, other times it is disturbing and/or tragic.

 

We were watching the story of the development of the A380 super air liner recently, and in it they discussed the incidence in which one of the Rolls Royce engines caught on fire. The cause? A small drop of oil had fallen onto one of the rotors in the engine which, when it got hot, caught fire. A random event no one could saw happen. I noticed also that someone is suing Malaysian Airlines over the crash of MH370 because they, and I quote, " failed to ensure the aircraft safely reached its destination". 

 

I find it interesting people perceive life is not dangerous, vulnerable and random, that somehow we can render life harmless, controllable and predictable. Frankly I do not wish to live in such a world. How far have we come that we take the adventure out of life, that we see death as something we can in fact avoid, or at least put off, and not understand that it is death, the loss of life, that gives its essential value to life?

 

In each of the three stories Luke gives to Jesus, there is only one response: “Rejoice with me……….” In each of these stories someone has experienced misfortune. One the bad luck of losing a coin, another a sheep and yet another had a son leave home inappropriately. For those around them, each event would have been a catastrophic experience.

 

A shepherd has 100 sheep and loses one. It doesn’t seem like a big loss, he still has 99 doesn’t he? Why would he not be satisfied with what he had and put the loss down to something that just happens? Everyone loses a sheep now and then don’t they? Foxes, injury, illness or walking off the edge of the cliff? Why would you spend the time looking and leave behind the 99 you already have? Aren’t you putting what you have at risk? Who is watching over the ones left behind?

 

The theme is repeated with the woman, probably a widow, who loses one silver coin and has 9 remaining coins. She stops everything she has to do and pulls the place a part to chase down the elusive coin. She still has 9 but the washing stays unwashed, the kitchen untidied and the meals unprepared as she searches for 1, 1, coin.

 

The prodigal son, or the prodigal father, depending on how you see the story, reminds us that it is not just objects that get lost, but people, subjects of our love and relationships, who go missing. They or we make decisions separating us and leaving us searching for ways to reconnect and rediscover each other. This story is tragic. A headstrong young man demands his independence and embarrasses his father, and family, in the eyes of the villagers. He leaves, and his grand scheme unravels. and he finds himself returning home with his tail between his legs. His father, who has been waiting for his return, comes out to meet him. His brother doesn’t, and doesn’t want the lavish party his father throws. It seem unfair as he has been faithful and not ever had such a party thorn for him.

 

In all three stories, there is only one response to the onlookers, doubters and critics, “Rejoice with me…”

 

If our first response is to rejoice we will

• Embrace and accept the situation. Not all situations end with us finding the precious item we are looking, but if it’s like my office, I always find something else I lost along time ago! This not a frivolous statement. If we reflect on our situation we will indeed find something we have lost, a new perspective on a situation, a greater understanding of what we already have, an awareness of new possibilities hidden in old hurts and frustrations, and more. And we are to rejoice in what we discover.
• Recognise and value others. For those who lose objects, we may be tempted to respond, it’s only 1 sheep? What’s the point? But that 1 sheep is valued and has a value to the farmer and because of that the farmer is compelled to seek it out. In reference to the prodigal father, both son’s are of value and the older son is being challenged to see, not only what his brother means to his father, but what he also means to him, party or no party.
• Shift from self to others. We often judge a situation from the outside, from what we value, from our life experience and dismiss what it means to others.

Rev Ben Gilmour, a friend of mine who is the minister at the Paddington Uniting Church in Sydney, has just returned from a trip to Jordan and writes:

“We are told by the media that refugees are bad people, just money hungry (economic) or possibly even terror agents. What I witnessed was families just like yours and mine, trying to make the best of it in the face of real terror.

The stark reminder that I can't get out of my head is that, I saw my sister in the face of refugees, my mum and my dad, my nephews and nieces, with all the human dignity and love and complexity that family brings here. There was no us and them, it was only us.”

 

Rejoice with me as we reclaim our humanity and begin to live out of the wonder and wealth found in everyday life. Rejoice with each other as we stand together against the random happenings that define and influence our existence. Rejoice with those like the Syrian refugees who are able to find hope in circumstances we often judge and critique without standing where they are standing.

 

Once we begin to rejoice we recognise the sufficiency of God in all situations and begin to see God at work where once we only saw reasons, causes, faults, failures and hopelessness. The power of rejoicing to unlock possibilities lies in its ability to get us to stop looking at I, me, mine; and to give permission for God, others and each other to blossom and celebrate who they, we are, what is possible and what is already here.

 

Rejoice with me…