Monday 28 November 2016

Be awake, Jesus is back!

Matthew 24:36-44

Today is Advent Sunday beginning the count down to the coming of Christ in to the world. It is the count down to the beginning of the end to the ruthless power of violence, persecution and isolation presently deemed to be in charge of the world. The coming of Christ into the world is to usher in the reign of God and to bring about a change of orientation and the end of the ego self as the reigning image of power and entitlement.

Today is also the beginning of the year of Matthew, a writer with an end-time or apocalyptic orientation. Matthew believes history is divided into two ages -- a present, evil age that God would soon replace with a new age, the reign or kingdom of God. The old age is marked by idolatry, sin, injustice, exploitation, sickness, enmity between nature and humankind, violence, and death. The new age will be characterized by the complete rule of God and by authentic worship, forgiveness, mutual support, health, blessing between nature and humankind, and eternal life.

For Matthew, God is acting through Jesus Christ to effect the change. The birth, life, and resurrection are the first phase of the transformation, with the complete manifestation arriving with the second coming. Meanwhile, Matthew’s community lives in a conflict zone between the ages. God calls the Matthean community to follow the instruction and model of the Matthean Jesus.

Some scholars affirm that many in Matthew’s congregation were losing confidence in the coming of the Realm. The apocalypse was delayed. Their witness was fading. Matthew wrote to encourage them to continue. (Ron Allen)

For a community enthused by the hope of regime change and the possibility of freedom from both the tranny of the Romans and the seeming assault on their values and beliefs, the return of Christ and his Kingdom couldn’t come to soon. It hadn’t, it didn’t or hasn’t.

Or did it?

Many cartoonists have commented on this desire to find Jesus and to find Jesus in his return to the world. It is often a comment on those who knock on our door with the desire to convert us to their vision of faith with the question, ‘Have you found Jesus?

Well, one of my favourite t-shirts is this one – “I have found Jesus-he was behind the sofa the whole time”.

I have been accused of being heretical for wearing it, but I suspect it captures something of the apocalyptic message of this passage. Be awake, Jesus is already here, have you missed him?

If we are always looking west we will never see the sun rise in the east. Until 1697 all swans were believed to be white. No one had seen a black swan until Dutch explorers led by Willem de Vlamingh became the first Europeans to see black swans, in Western Australia. It has become a way to describe events we are unable to predict because there is no precedence, experience and awareness on which to base our judgement. The election of Donald Trump could be a black swan event.

We do know the coming of Jesus was one such event and the second coming of Jesus through the coming of his spirit in the world after his resurrection is another such event. Matthew is often read to speak of that time when his kingdom will come in power and turn on its head the world in which we live, ushering respect, justice and compassion – the with-ness of relational wholeness empowered by love.

Do we still live waiting for that event, for if we do I fear we short change the gift of the spirit and the capacity we have to live in the kingdom which is to come, now.

My t-shirt is a reminder to me to:
·      Be awake to the now, to the spirit of Christ at work in the ordinariness of material being. Jesus may not be physically behind the sofa but he is to be found in all those places where the structures of power and tyranny, capitalism and false democracy are challenged by those who represent equality, compassion, justice and inclusion. What is more apocalyptic than that? The Anglican churches with prayer rooms for their Muslim friends or including LGBTI within the leadership of their church or making space for those who are different and deemed less than us, and more. Those who stand against the systemic violence of war, winners and losers, banned for life and builders of walls and barriers to freedom.

·      Be awake to the opportunities I never expect to have, the black swan experiences which open up possibilities for my voice to be heard, my love as a verb to be experienced or my simple presence next to someone who is being excluded, oppressed or avoided to be felt.

·      Be awake to the truth that Christ has already returned through the power of his spirit and it is my responsibility to be ready to act, speak and be the prophet of the reign of Christ, now. This is not something coming from above or in the future, this is to come from within and now; from within this material existence and from within me and it is now, this very moment I am being called to love – to be the action of love in this world.

I witness this amazing second coming everyday.
·      I see it here in this parish. When someone gets sick, faces  the loss of someone they love or the possibility of their own death, I witness Christs spirit at work in this congregation – the kingdom of God acts. People visit, ring, prayer, cook, wash and are just present. People tell me when I ring offering assistance, ‘Not to worry Vicar, I am being well cared for by my friends here.” I have had others say how much their ‘St Oswald’s family” have done in their time of need.

This is an example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I also see it in the efforts people make to support refugees, homeless, unemployed; to go to rallies and marches; to advocate on those who are excluded.
This is another example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I see it in the capacity of people to continue to live as joy and hope for others when the odds are stacked against them. For example:
o   ARtlifting is a US program using art to engage homeless people. It is not therapy or feel good helping. Homeless people explore their artistic talents and the folk at ArtLifting  run exhibitions, art shows and auctions, selling the art and lifting people from dependency to independence.

o   I see it the work of Slingshot which has launched Australia’s first ever Indigenous start-up accelerator program called Barayamal. The accelerator aims to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs build successful business ideas into worldclass products.

o   I see it in a record for the University of Western Australia where six Aboriginal medical students will graduate this weekend, including Vinka Barunga who wishes to become Derby’s first indigenous doctor.

o   I see it in the many ways, places and people who are embodying the spirit of Christ and revolutionising the world, we just have to be awake.


Matthew does have a focus on the second coming, we do live in the in-between times, not as a place of being in limbo, but as a place where the second coming is ours to institute. Be ready, be awake, and act as if Jesus has already come. Amen

Monday 21 November 2016

The With-ness of Being

At the back of the house where we stayed on our break runs a little river. It gurgles and gargles alongside large native trees, over the remnants of such trees laying across it and over little rocky rapids as it makes it way down to the meeting of waters, a place where, as the name suggests it reaches other little rivers.
 
I went for a walk in the bush behind this spot and wandered along beside another of these little streams that seemed to me to giggle and laugh its way down hill over trees and rocks, alongside little eddy’s which were havens for those who didn’t want the wild ride the middle of the stream offered.
 
Beside both of these creeks were banks inhabited by  a multitude of life, animate and inanimate. Multi hues of greens, browns, yellows etc covered the banks hiding a variety of life and activity only partially glimpsed by the naked eye.
 
We drove through the forests above Marysville to marvel at the savagery of nature and the capacity it has for returning to continue the search for wholeness and fulfilment. The sense of interconnectedness and relationship as different species worked together to bring back life under the stately skeletons of eucalypts who perished in the fires was awe inspiring.
 
Charles Darwin concluded his last chapter of his ground breaking book with the following:
 
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. ……….. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
 
Darwin encapsulates for us a series of ideas relevant to our celebration of the reign of Christ on this the Feast of Christ the King. In the last few months and longer we have experienced the upsurge of isolationism, populism and blame sharing most of us have not previously experienced. It seems that many of the givens in our society  have been overturned and replaced by ideologies and movements determined to wreak havoc on our sense and sensibilities. The rise of the right in Turkey, Brexit, the rise of the right and one nation here, the success of Donald Trump and the possibility of the extreme right exerting power in Europe alongside the growing influence of China and the continuing power of Russia all seem determined to change how the world has been for most of our lifetime.
 
In the midst of this how do we make sense of the reign of Christ? What does it look like in a world in continuous flux? Who or what is in charge? How do we discern Christ the King in this seemingly unmanageable mess?
 
In our reading Luke has Jesus in conversation with another on the cross which goes like this:
 
“Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
 
There are three things in this exchange in the midst of Luke’s passion story I think is worth remembering, not only for our world but for the church and on this day of our AGM, our parish – wholeness, relational and love.
 
These three words could be used to sum up both the Gospel of Jesus and the thrust of Darwin’s work.  Creation is, through the evolutionary process, working towards relational wholeness empowered by love. It is the reason why we are to always be hopeful about the future, the future of the parish, the church and the world.  The turmoil we see is the result of the process into wholeness, the ultimate end of evolution and faith. It is the result of being in relation with others and the Other as we work to fulfil our calling to abundant flourishing in the natural and spiritual worlds. It is not the end.
 
The conversation between Jesus and his companion is about relationships – you will be with me – the word with describes the reign of Christ. It is about with-ness not separate-ness. Christ is not a king separate from the agony of the process to wholeness. And by association God is not a distant God who arbitrarily chooses when to intervene, on who’s behalf to intervene and for what cause to intervene.
 
Much that was distasteful was said during the recent US election, but the moments which disturbed me most were when both candidates ended their speeches, at various times, with God Bless You or God Bless America. How dare they co-opt God into their ideologically inspired campaigns? How dare they think that God is theirs to invoke in such away? 
 
Christ is with us, right in the very middle of it to such an extent that his desire for wholeness for all takes him into the deepest with-ness or relationship possible – death on a cross – the ultimate in suffering and in sharing the suffering of others. It was the worst of death for those who challenged the way of the powerful and fearful and it is all the evidence we need for the with-ness of Christ, and by definition, the with-ness of God.
 
Wholeness is the process of creation. We are engaged as human beings in the ever-forward process of wholeness and fulfilment. We are deemed to be the pinnacle of created beings, but like all created beings we are not finished yet. There is more to come to create wholeness in capacity, capabilities, knowledge, wisdom and co-operation with all that is. It is the direction of faith taking us toward the reign (kingdom) of God. It will be complete when we live relationally in justice, respect and compassion. It will be that time when all is complete and all live in completeness. It will be the fulfilment of love.
 
Love is the spark of creation and the energy that empowers the process towards fulfilment. All creation, humans included, are imbued with the creative spirit of Christ and it is the spirit, this love, this essence of God, who is responsible for empowering the urge toward relational wholeness – the reign of Christ. Love is not an emotion. Love is not a concept. Love is not just a descriptive word. Love is a verb and it is the a verb or action word at the centre of all that is.  Without love, without the creative spirit who is God and love, there can be no hopefulness, no striving for existence and wholeness.
 
These three words – relational wholeness empowered by love – describe the reign of Christ in the world. It is the ongoing with-ness of Christ at the darkest and most difficult moments and also at those moments of great joy. They are to be our motto for how we live individually, in community and in our church. If we live these three words well we will attract others to see and participate and we will share with others and ourselves the reign of Christ here and now.
 

These three words must be at the centre of all that we do if we are to survive, grow and flourish, not for ourselves, our memories or our hopes, but to usher in the reign of Christ now and forever. Amen.

Saturday 19 November 2016

An Aboriginal Christian's Perspective On Treaty, Sovereignty and Constitutional Recognition.


I find this a difficult discussion to take part in. I cringe when I hear the words “Christian perspectives” as if there is such a thing as a Christian view of kindness, justice and compassion that is necessarily preeminent to others. There is only one ethic in the New Testament and that is the all-consuming unconditional love for the other.

I struggle also when I find myself speaking on first nations issues as an individual who has had a privileged white education, who has been dispossessed of his culture and language, and who runs the risk of acting as colonially as those who now rule this land. Yes, I am a Wiradjuri man, but I have no inherent right to speak on behalf of that nation or any of the other sovereign nations now under colonial occupation.

Yet I do have the right to speak on behalf of my own people – ABMT – Aboriginal but not tribal (traditional). As a dispossessed person without connections to traditional language, culture and community I stand in a different place but not alone. My people are many and we are searching for a way to have a voice, to speak into this place but find ourselves impeded by both white and black culture. I receive letters questioning my aboriginality from white culture and I hear indigenous voices questioning it also. “A shame he’s not black.”

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – love; I find myself unable to support constitutional recognition on the grounds that it continues the colonial project of assimilation and erasure. Indigenous people suffered genocide in my hometown with the last reported as being killed in 1876 according to one of the key exterminators, William Cox.

In Amos Oz’ book Judas, the two protagonists are discussing the relationship between Jews and Arabs and come to the conclusion, “The Arabs live with the disaster of their defeat, and the Jews with the dread of their vengeance.” It is a comment, that if we exchange the words appropriate to our situation holds true for the Australia in which we live, ““First Nations people live with the disaster of their defeat, and White Australia with the dread of their vengeance.”

As I child I learnt that white was good, black was not good. My father referred to anybody he deemed a good person as a white person regardless of whether they were white or not. Recently I officiated at a funeral in my hometown. A person who has known me all my life came up and said, “You’re blackfella’s young bloke, you’re young blackfella!.” 61 years later I still had no name, no place other than that of a nameless black fella.

Constitutional recognition enshrines such in the DNA of this country and gives credence to the stereotypes we read and hear each day. It erases any sense of being a real person with real rights. It erases from the national psyche the history of independent nations who have populated, governed and managed this land for 10’s of thousands of years. It continues to recognise these people only as the ‘previous custodians of this country”, if it recognises them at all, as I recently read on a plaque in a church school ground close to here.

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – I support the process required to institute a treaty or a series of treaties acceptable to the sovereign first nations people. Note I have not said we need a treaty now. I have not and cannot advocate for such a thing until we fully understand and undertake the process required to do so. A treaty requires incarnational dialogue in order to overcome the ideologies, prejudices and deep trauma that stands in the way of constructing a workable relationship.

The model for this is breaking into the world of Jesus through which God became present in this world in order to empathise and dialogue with humanity in its own country. This took time, many centuries before God took such a step. It then took Jesus a lifetime to connect, challenge and dialogue with those around him. It has taken the Spirit of Christ many centuries to bring us to where we are to day. The Triune God has patience and we need to bring such patience to the task we face today.

If non-indigenous people are serious about working towards reconciliation then they must not be in a hurry. Simply saying sorry and popping us in the constitution may make you feel better but it doesn’t change much for us. We are still under occupation by a foreign government. To change that, even by a treaty, will require incarnational patience – sitting in the dirt and listening, not to answer or solve, but to hear, co-operate and get out of the way of the process. It begins with the first nations being given the opportunity to come together and agree on what such a treaty should look like. Not an easy task. It won’t happen quickly but it must precede any dialogue with the non-indigenous society. Then dialogue can begin in kindness, respect and compassion, allowing communication and action to reflect a mutual desire for reconciliation.

What about my people? What is their place in this world of exile, disconnect and generational trauma? What are we to do while we undergo this long process toward treaty and reconciliation?

Jeremiah, writing to those in exile in Babylon, provides a blueprint for action:

29:Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

We are in exile but in exile we are not powerless. We are to remain in charge of our own heritage, traditions and dreaming; we are to build up our mob while living off-country in another’s land. We are to seek wellbeing for those we live amongst, in doing so we ensure the well being of our own mob.

This is not giving in to a foreign culture but becoming proud of who we are and who we can become. We are to excel in another culture so we can lead our own people into excellence for their own sake. Instead of responding to stereotypes of politicians, media shock jocks and naysayers, let us celebrate the extraordinary achievement of communities and individuals as they address our issues and find ways to be world leaders in health, education, arts, sports or whatever they turn their hand to. Let us ignore the temptation to blame, hate or attribute guilt to others. Let us avoid the temptation to play the victim.

Jeremiah reminds the exiles that right will win in the end, even though the end may take a long time (the meaning of the word 70), it will come.

“ 10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

 Our people have a long and proud history, one that is still being made. It has not finished. A treaty will be accomplished but let us not allow the desire for such or the push by others for it and/or constitutional recognition prevent us from flourishing now and remaining sovereign in our own being. Let us get on with the business of building pride, respect and community within our mob so there can be no option but a treaty.


Monday 7 November 2016

Witchetty Grubs, Gumtrees and All The Saints


Luke 6:20-31
 
 
Today we are celebrating All Saints Day. The tradition of celebrating the saints and martyrs has been marked by Christians ever since the 4th century the Feast of All Holy Martyrs.
 
In 837AD Pope Gregory IV extended the festival to include saints, renaming the festival the Feast of All Saints, all who were martyred or who lived an exemplary life.
 
In recent times this has been widened to include everyone who is a Christian. We are all saints, in a biblical sense.
 
All Saints Day is a time to be thankful for all those Christians who have lived before us, whether they are officially saints or not. Some are the great teachers and prophets from history. Some are those who’ve taught and inspired us personally.
 
Some are our friends and family. We can thank God for their witness, and for the way they have transmitted the faith down the generations. We can learn from their lives. We can take time to be grateful for what we’ve received, and to recommit ourselves to follow in their footsteps.*
 
Interestingly, the reading from Luke’s Gospel takes us into a radical new place and challenges the narrow understanding of this day. In this passage Jesus moves from the narrow understanding of who was included in God’s economy and how that was to be defined.  He continues, as he has done repeatedly in Luke, to prefer the poor and to diminish those who would have seen themselves as belonging to the inner circle, the blessed, the rich, those with names and with power.
 
He instructs his followers to be inclusive even at the risk of personal recrimination and harm. He tells people to defy the accepted rules of engagement with others and to take it to and beyond the limits in place to make the intolerable tolerable. Soldiers, legally, could only make you carry their bags a certain distance so defy them and carry it twice as far and see what happens. Force the person to hit you with the back of the hand which was against law and practice. This is not about doing good, but about challenging the injustice inherent in the system.
 
Jesus takes it further and says we are to do unto others what we would want them to do unto us. This is an incredibly challenging statement. It is not a golden rule, it is a deep dark gold mine we are challenged to explore and to live. It is not about our relationships with those like us. It doesn’t even stop at simply celebrating saints who fit into our perception of life, faith and religion. It is not about our closed and isolated community but about the ever-expanding community of life on and beyond this planet.
 
Saints are not just humans, and especially not just humans who share our ethnicity, our values or our lifestyle. Saints are present in communities unlike ours, in peoples we fear and in the created world we continue to exploit.
 
Throughout history peoples of all backgrounds have sought to recognise God at work in their world. These cultures have discerned wisdom and insights both individual and universal, providing us with a web of spiritual and religious wisdom informing and expanding our own. To ignore such for an exclusive us only variety diminishes all of us. Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen, Rowan Williams, Elizabeth Johnson, Sallie McFague, Pope Francis and many many others  have initiated and maintained communion with the saints of other faiths and practices in order to add to and affirm what they already know or suspect. So should we.
 
In the book of Job we read, “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;” Other versions use the word beasts, a deeply primal and free expression of God’s creativity, full of the capacity to teach, mentor and lead us. They too fit the definition of saints and deserve to be treated in the way we wish to be treated.

Wendell Berry speaks eloquently of this communion of saints when reflecting on the cycle of life in forests and plains, swamps and deserts, and everywhere in the natural world we inhabit; “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…and this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures”.
 
In this century science and our expanding universe asks us to let go of the simple anthropomorphic (human centred) understanding of creation and Gods economy (kingdom) and to come into a relationship of respect, compassion and justice – the way of kindness - with all whom we share this world with. We are to recognise the wisdom inherent in others of all ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds and to sit in the desert and hear the wisdom of the beasts and all that maintains our planet and our lifestyle.
 
Failing to do so will continue the process of destruction of peoples through senseless wars, embargoes, bans and bombs. Saints are dying in places like Yemen, West Papua, Aleppo,  Philippines, the Sudan, Burma, remote communities of Australia and Manus Island. Saints are being banned from bringing their wisdom here for the crime of wanting a better life. Saints, such as these, must be welcomed in our country or we fail the test of doing unto others.
 
Failure will diminish the incredible success of the theory of evolution by natural selection in giving us the immense diversity of thousands of years of refining creation. Within that process there are many saints, past and present, responsible for giving us sustenance, oxygen, and sustainability – trees, birds, fish, oceans, mountains and rivers not to mention bugs, mosquitos, flies, microbes and more. We rarely include them in our list of saints or in our prayers on all saints day, but they are there by default, central to the on going creation of our world.
 
On this all Saints Day we are asked to expand our worldview to include difference and diversity, to find a place in our religion for all who have been created in the image of God; meaning those with the capacity to create and continue to create the unbelievable, and for many of us, the unfathomable complexity of our habitat.
 
By doing so we will be challenged about our relationships with others including the creatures we share this world with. We will begin to see such as deserving to be treated, in the words of Jesus, as we wish to be treated. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We are to write this across all our transactions, relationships and interactions with those we share this world with, and this world itself.
 
It is recognising the sainthood of all things, not just selected humans of specific gifts and talents. It is recognising that we entertain angels, saints, in each and every transaction we participate in. Detainees, victims of war, dislocated refugees and first nations peoples around the world, practitioners of other faiths, old growth forests, witchetty grubs and more carry the wisdom we need to maintain and care for ourselves, others and this world.
 
On this All Saints Day let us take just a few moments to quietly remember all saints of all kinds now.