Monday 30 January 2017

On Being Australian

Mathew 5:1-12
 
This week we celebrated Australia Day. For some of us this is not an easy task, we come from many places, backgrounds and experiences and find it difficult to connect to the major narrative about our nationhood. That is not a bad thing. In fact, it is healthy for us to discuss and debate what defines us as a nation and as a people.
 
We are not all Anglo Saxons with a long held desire to remain wedded to a story that only speaks for some of us. We come from countries, faiths and ethnicities encompassing the wide expanse of diversity that colours our world. Is the story of colonialisation the only story worth telling and holding on to? Is there not much more which defines and enlivens us and is it not time we began to let go of out-dated myths as the basis of our identity? Is it not time we included the sovereign inhabitants of this land and reconsider date and name of this celebration so that it fully recognises the violence done to, not only them, but the convicts cruelly transported to these shores in appalling conditions by contracted former slave runners, another part of the story we rarely hear?
 
As we have been saying over the last few weeks, as a church we are being called to relinquish out of date world views, myths and stories which have previously underwritten our faith for those which reflect the science and reality of an ever expanding and evolving universe. Is it not time for such to occur for us as Australians?
 
Jesus certainly thought this way when he spoke in the sermon on the Mount as given to us today. In this passage Jesus rewrites the narrative of faith for the Jewish people. What they had accepted as the story of faithfulness was turned upside down to include those who had previously been excluded.  The poor, the widows, the ordinary gentle folk, peacemakers and warriors for justice and more took the place of the rich, the powerful, the hardened, the warmongers and the ruthless.
 
God was seen to be interested in those who did not fit the stereotype of those who had God’s blessing. Rulers and the powerful were replaced by those who were ruled and weak. It wasn’t a physical coup, but a transforming mindset for all. You matter and you have a role. You are not excluded from this story by virtue of race, gender, wealth or lack there of or the seeming lack of power.
 
Jesus congratulates the ordinary person. Not as we heard in the speech of the new US President, a gratuitous throw away line, but as valued participants in the evolution of wholeness in the world. Like the ordinary incarnate Jesus engaging with ordinary fishermen in an ordinary village, the individual has value and is to be congratulated for what they in their circumstances add to creation.
 
Jesus is saying:

Congratulations to the poor in spirit!
Heaven's domain belongs to them.
Congratulations to those who grieve!
They will be consoled.
Congratulations to the gentle!
They will inherit the earth.
Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice!
They will have a feast.
Congratulations to the merciful!
They will receive mercy.
Congratulations to those with undefiled hearts!
They will see God.
Congratulations to those who work for peace!
They will be known as God's children.
Congratulations to those who have suffered
persecution for the sake of justice!
Heaven's domain belongs to them.
Congratulations to you when they denounce you and persecute you and spread malicious gossip about you because of me. Rejoice and be glad! In heaven   prophets who preceded you.
[Scholars Version]
 
So what makes us Australian or what is being Australian like? Is it being good at sports, such as cricket, tennis and bocce, being great at business aka the billionaires, being successful in “Australians Got Talent” or “Married At First Site?” or being the BBQ wiz with lamb chops at family gatherings’?
 
I think not. I think
  •     Being Australian is the smell of summer, the feel of sand whether red or white between your toes, the rush of fire, the surge of water and the capacity to come together as one to further the well being of all.

  •      Being Australian asks all who reside here to engage in deep dialogue and listening so we break down stereotypes, fears, ill informed prejudices and racism we hold about each other.

  •     Being Australian is celebrating the success of all regardless of the culture, faith or language; celebrating the amazing success of indigenous Australians across this country in sport, education, medicine, law, self-government and more.

  •    Being Australian is opening our borders and welcoming others and giving them the same opportunities our colonial forebears had. And it is extending such opportunities to the first residents of this country.
  •      Being Australian is being honest about the treatment of the most vulnerable in our society, children and women in particular and to begin to tackle the domestic, gender and sexual violence that has occurred and continues to occur.

  •       Being Australian is being brave enough to recognise indigenous sovereignty and beginning the deliberate process toward reconciliation and treaty without getting side-tracked by government and pressure groups particular agendas’.

  •       Being Australian is recognising the damage we are doing to the environment and restrict the destruction caused by mining in all its forms, particularly coal mining. 
Congratulations are due for a nation who begins to embrace these ideals, not just as stated goals but as lived realities. Congratulations go to each and every Australian of all races and backgrounds who work to make this a reality in our daily living.
 
Like the Sermon on the Mount, this is no easy task, no list of ‘nice’ goals we can ignore when they become to hard to implement. Jesus commitment to the Sermon on the Mount and the values embraced by it took him all the way to an agonising death on the cross. In such a way, our commitment to what being Australian means we will look at how we celebrate our nation, whether how we do it now is inclusive of all and be prepared to let go of, give up, crucify old myths on the cross of congratulations – you are being Australian.
 
GK Chesterton famously wrote: ““The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” 
 
My suggestion is that being an Australian is difficult and instead of trying to so be we find excuses to exclude and build walls around our fearful denial of all that is at odds with the myth we believe about ourselves.
 
Jesus bluntly lays open the truth about being fully included in the surge for wholeness as an ordinary individual, it looks completely different to that which we have been told.
 

Perhaps it is time to take seriously being an Australian and embrace a new and different narrative. Amen.

Thursday 26 January 2017

Australia Day 2017

How do I approach Australia Day as an indigenous Australian, a day having particular meaning and ramifications for my people? Bill Haywood is indeed a brave Australian asking me here, for this could go to custard quickly. I could denounce Australia Day and all it stands for and do so with a sense of legitimacy and right. Or I could take the position of reconciliation and reach out a hand in friendship, crossing the barriers of violence, ignorance and racism.
 
The first is the easy option. Railing against injustice is loud, aggressive and belligerent and gains the recognition of others who appear to feel as deeply about the issue as you. This option is the one we find on the front page of our newspapers and to which those who wish to continue the racism use as proof of a divided nation.
 
It would be the easiest for me to take and justifiably so.
 
I grew up in a town known for its violence against local tribes. Visiting the library, reading newspaper cuttings and letters from the mid 1880’s to the early 1920’s, I realised the steps taken by my family to hide my grandmothers’ heritage was a strategy deemed necessary for survival.
 
My grandfather made my Uncle promise to keep my grandmothers indigenous heritage hidden. No one in my family speaks of it; her background is shrouded in mystery. There is only a mother who registered the birth some time later in a different town. No father is mentioned. She had the name of the family she was left with when the small aboriginal community from which Jimmy and Joey Governor, part-aboriginal men who killed 9 people during a fourteen week rampage in 1900, the year prior to Federation, and who inspired the book and movie “The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith” came, were forcibly moved out west at the request of the white community. 
 
While it was our family secret, it wasn’t a secret to the locals. I grew up known as ‘Young Darkie’ or ‘Young Blackfella’; my friend, when angry, called me the son of a drunken bush black; another friends’ father told a group of classmates they could be friends with me but to remember where I came from. Bullying at school was never-ending.
 
My father lived in exile, caught between a world he knew and a world he never knew, growing more bitter and angry as the years went on. He acted out his violence through alcohol, directing it at anyone nearby, particularly his family and I as his eldest son. He was never able to reconcile within himself these two worlds even when he stopped drinking. It was bigger than him and his family. It was the internalised oppression of a people and country from which he was exiled.
 
A few months ago, I returned home as a 61 year old man to conduct a funeral for my mother’s best friend. After the funeral I was standing outside dressed in my Anglican clerical garb and a man who had known me since I was a child came over and looked at me and said; “You’re blackfellas young fella, you’re young blackfella.” In the next 10 minutes he never referred to me by name. A teacher I had respected also came over and the conversation went the same way. Nowhere in this conversation was my first name used. I was still the anonymous blackfella.
 
These and many other experiences have challenged my identity and my place in the Great Australian Dream. For many years I was unaware of why I was angry and self-destructive and it has only been in recent years as I have explored my indigenous story that I began to find a way to accept my place as indigenous and Australian. They are not mutually exclusive but they are also not one and the same. One comes from your ancestral connections to country, language and culture, and the other from where you reside. The difficult task one has, is to find a way to live as both in a society still grappling with what both means.
 
An important moment for me was in recognising why I sought to become an Anglican priest. Now one would normally say this because such a calling is seen to come from God. In one sense this is true, but for me there is more to it and I am now grappling with what it means. You see, growing up I understood early on that to be white was to not only to be acceptable to society but also inherently good. My father would refer to someone he respected as a white man. “That Bill Haywood, he’s a white man. He’s a good bloke.” Being black was not good or being good.
 
Somewhere this stuck in my mind and I suspect I became an Anglican priest because it is the whitest thing I can do. Being a priest in the Church of England connects me not only to the ‘old country’ but also directly to the Queen. You cannot get any whiter than that.
 
But has this made me an Australian? Am I an Australian because of the colour of my skin or my connection to the faith foundation of our country? I am I not an Australian because I am indigenous and therefore have claim to both a physical and spiritual presence older than anything else I know? What does being an Australian mean for me? May I suggest the following:
 
·      Being Australian is the smell of summer, the feel of sand whether red or white between your toes, the rush of fire, the surge of water and the capacity to come together as one to further the well being of all.
 
·      Being Australian asks all who reside here to engage in deep dialogue and listening so we break down stereotypes, fears, ill informed prejudices and racism we hold about each other.
 
·      Being Australian is celebrating the success of all regardless of the culture, faith or language; celebrating the amazing success of indigenous Australians across this country in sport, education, medicine, law, self-government and more.
 
·      Being Australian is opening our borders and welcoming others and giving them the same opportunities our colonial forebears had. And it is extending such opportunities to the first residents of this country.
 
·      Being Australian is being honest about the treatment of the most vulnerable in our society, children and women in particular and to begin to tackle the domestic, gender and sexual violence that has occurred and continues to occur.
 
·      Being Australian is being brave enough to recognise indigenous sovereignty and beginning the deliberate process toward reconciliation and treaty without getting side-tracked by government and pressure groups particular agendas’.
 
·      Being Australian is recognising the damage we are doing to the environment and restrict the destruction caused by mining in all its forms, particularly coal mining.
 
These are the values I hope describe an Australian and I hope, describe me.  I have come to this place through a torturous journey and know there are many such journeys ahead for those who are serious about being an Australian.
 
Coming home to myself as both an indigenous person and an Australian was made possible by my art. In the booklets on your table (which are for sale) you will see my self-portrait. Not having grown up with an explicit culture, language or a personal connection to country it was important for me to make that connection if I was going to move on. Unfortunately the country I grew up on is now populated by three large open cut coal mines and all but three sacred sites have been destroyed along with my grandmothers home, the home my father grew up in and the church that served as the centre of our community life. As country is your identity I sat and painted the country from memory, only later getting an aerial photograph of the mines and realising just how accurate my memory was of a place I left in 1972.
 
In doing so I discovered a solid foundation for my identity, one which allows me to journey across the barriers my family had constructed and had been constructed by white and black society alike. I on record as saying indigenous identity is very different in the 21st century than the preconceived understanding of most Australians. There are more people like me, aboriginal but not traditional (ABNT’s), and we are finding ways to cross over and back through education, success and sheer commitment to a better society. These are people who have had successful national and international roles and are now beginning to talk about the unspeakable, that they are indigenous and are seeking a way to affirm both this and their Australian identities as compatible and real.
 
Australia needs us and we need Australia.
 


So in conclusion, where does that leave us on this Australia Day? On the cusp of great possibilities as we take seriously what it means being an Australian.  The danger is that we get side-tracked by prejudices and fear and fail to see the possibilities for our country and our cultures if we fail to take the time to listen to one another. THANKYOU

Monday 23 January 2017

An Ordinary Life


Matthew 4:12-23
 
Do you remember singing the Sunday school song “I will make you fishers of men if you follow me”? Anyone prepared to sing a verse? No?  That’s ok. Has anyone really thought about the song and its relationship to the passage it refers to?
 
Today’s gospel verse takes us into a key moment in the life of Jesus and those who first served with him. Jesus has relocated his life to Capernaum. We are not sure when he went there, just that it was after John the Baptist was arrested. We do not know how long he had been there, just that he had been there long enough to make a home there.
 
Understanding this is not an impulse action on the top of the baptism, the period in the desert or John’s arrest putting this story into the realm of an ordinary every day activity is valuable. He simply didn’t turn the page of his “This Is Your Life’ script and read, “John’s arrested, go to Capernaum and recruit some disciples.” It happened in the midst of an ordinary life in a small village of around 1000 people on 25 acres. It happened to people known to each other, recognised as part of the ongoing life of a small fishing village.
 
It happened as Jesus did what seems to have been a regular activity for him – “As he walked by the Sea of Galilee”. It seems walking by the Sea of Galilee was not an unusual activity for Jesus. It probably was something he did as a daily routine, whether for exercise, as a spiritual practice or just to get some quiet while he took in the scenery and the people he lived amongst. It does appear he was fully present to the natural and human environment, observing people and nature to inform his practice, memory and understanding of others and people.
 
It is not hard to imagine Peter and Andrew were known to him or he had, at least, made a careful study of these two men as they went about their fishing business. In a village of 1000, there would have been few strangers and as he made his home there we can assume they visited the same space for prayer and teaching, passed each other in the centre of town and had mutual friends.
 
It seems that their contact had been sufficient for mutual respect and positive relationships. The encounter on the side of the lake is not one of negotiation or a dialogue in which one had to put their case to the other nor was it unexpected and therefore an instantaneous response. It was a simple ask receiving an eager yes. One can’t help thinking this conversation had a backstory and the invite was not unexpected. And neither was the response. Jesus, Peter and Andrews’ reputation and knowledge of each other ensured both the ask and the answer were positive.
 
Jesus gives the invitation to people who were going about their life. None of the four disciples in this story sought Jesus out or asked to go with him. They did not approach Jesus openly or seek to be his disciples. He broke into their ordinary lives and they responded. While they did not seek the call they responded based on their relationship with Jesus forged in the everyday life of the village.

There is an insight here for us. We can be so keen to have a spiritual experience, to experience a mystical event or to be a spiritual person that we miss the value of simply getting on with life open to the possibility of encountering God. God breaks into our lives when we are deemed ready, and not before. God comes to us and opens up our lives when we are working quietly on being human, ignoring our pretensions and ambitions to be something else. God sets us for his work when we are already fully occupied with being present as ourselves with others. It is the faithfulness to our humanity God enhances through an encounter with Jesus.
 
It is interesting only two of the four who are called are actually identified as ones who will be made fishers of people. Andrew and Peter, not James and John, receive that call. It is not a universal call for all. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” is personal and directed, it is contextual and prophetic, and it is their call and their call only.
 
We can so often appropriate for ourselves the lives of others and forget the truth that their life is their life and our life is our life and that is the way it is. We look at others success, others wealth, others experiences and become jealous, desiring to share in a life like theirs. For Peter and Andrew they receive a specific call and promise and would be held accountable for that throughout their lives. It was specific to them. It is not for James and John, and it is not necessarily for us.
 
Now this may sound counter to what we have been taught yet it is important. We are all tasked with being open to the breaking in of God as we journey to wholeness, we are not all tasked to fish for people. Interestingly this is the only positive use of this idea in the Old and New Testaments. Elsewhere it refers to capturing others who oppose you or are your enemies.
 
This returns us to a consistent thought throughout humanity’s engagement with God: our relationship with God is not static but ever evolving and renewing just as Gods relationship with all creation is ever evolving and ever new. In this way it is mystical or based on a real experience of the Christ both specific (it is our experience personally) and universal (it is the experience of and for all people).
 
Jesus’ call to Peter and Andrew differs in specifics but remains in its essence same as that of Jesus’ call to James and John and to us: to follow the way into wholeness and justice for the whole world. The specifics are relevant to the individuals involved and will go on to structure and influence the direction ones life takes.
 
We are not all called to be fishers of people, and if we are, not in the same way as others. We live out our life in this world according to the circumstances, opportunities and understanding specifically ours. Jesus calls us to follow his way: life giving, life affirming and life releasing all the way to the cross in willing self-sacrifice.
 
Jesus call to these four men affirms the material world and our experience of it. A man on his daily walk offers an invitation to men going about their daily business in a small insignificant village where they shared community life and had made their home. This affirmation of the created world by one incarnate and ordinary should give us pause to contemplate the incredible nature and potentiality of our engagement with the everyday.
 
It is pregnant, full of life and hope. Let us be open to the voices we hear and respond to the call to be alive with wholeness and love in the midst of each noisy moment.
 
 
 
 
 

  

Monday 16 January 2017

Christified



John 1:29-42

29”The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
 
*******************

Have you ever had the experience when something you have said comes back to you completely misunderstood and is interpreted, so impossibly disconnected from its original context and intention, it seems it took place in a completely different universe? The tragedy is such an event can ultimately come to define you, what you believe and how you live, taking on a life of its own.
 
Working in a school, I saw many bad decisions made by young people fittingly described as permanently defining moments if they were allowed to take on such an aura. Peer pressure, the need to belong, the first burst of passion or an encounter with alcohol or drugs suddenly took on a life of its own, becoming permanently attached to the young person involved. Yet life moves, times change and people mature, becoming somebody completely different to the one you remember. They are no longer the same or living in the same context or environment. Their world has changed and so have they. They have out grown the experience once synonymous with them and find new ways to be defined and understood.
 
Merton suggests the only person who is inconsistent is the one who is always the same, who remains connected to ideas, thoughts, philosophies and practices which worked once upon a time and have now taken on the rigour of known truth never to be challenged or changed.
 
David Bohm, the physicist and philosopher, speaks of creativity as being the passion to find the new in the experiences of life and to exalt those above the known and the accepted. He and others affirm this as the practice of all creatives - artists, musicians, mystics, scientists and theologians.
 
For theologians and mystics - you and I – we risk becoming solidified believers. Maybe a better term is petrified believers. We remain connected to a way of seeing our faith and our Christ, locking us in the past, not allowing us to expand with the evolving universe. Running the risk of being at odds with orthodox understanding of our faith, I would suggest we need to let go of images which worked when they were written and begin to explore new ideas appropriate to our 21st century understanding of the universe and the laws of creation as seen in the urge for wholeness and creation.
 
John and the other New Testament writers were writing in a very different world to the one we live in. The understanding of the universe as a static creation in which the earth was the centre of all that existed, where God was above the sky in a place called heaven and our existence on this planet was temporary and transitory until we made the transfer to heaven or hell. Such a world view no longer exists or can be supported and neither does a world in which the understanding of the need of a sacrificial lamb dying a violent death so we can live free of sin can be.
 
John, the Jewish mystic, uses an image from the Old Testament, a ritual of symbolically addressing and confronting ones’ alienation from God and of making amends for simply being an ordinary human being. It was a ritualistic act all participated in and allowed reconciliation between God and the community. It was not a personal act but one done in and on behalf of the community. If we read "‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” literally, it seems to infer that God sent Jesus for just one purpose; to die to become the basis for substitutionary atonement or the idea Jesus was sent to die to set us personally free from sin.
 
If we consider ourselves Trinitarian, this idea raises a number of questions in terms of the relationships within that iconic symbol of unity and diversity. If we consider God as pro-life and essentially committed to the ongoing creation of the universe, does it not seem a rather brutal approach to take to deal with a relationship issue? Is there not something amiss if the only reason we celebrate the incarnation as understood in Jesus is that Jesus is our get out of jail card and we never have to face the music for our own falling short of the mark because of the violent death God prepared for him?  Or is there something else at work here in John’s comment and in the thinking of John the gospel writer?
 
If we take the hymn to Christ at the beginning of his Gospel seriously then there is surely something else alluded to here. Jesus is present at the beginning of all things and is the empowering present in the ongoing journey of creation as seen in the evolutionary process. Jesus is the ultimate in created consciousness and therefore the ultimate image of the creator. The incarnation is testament to the relationship God has with creation in that he becomes fully participant in the process to wholeness.
 
As one commentator suggests: The Jewish disciples of Jesus understood the identification of Jesus, the symbolic Yom Kippur sacrifice, as a symbol of the human yearning to be at one with God. It was their way of saying that the death of Jesus was not a tragedy, but was a free and complete act of human self-giving. In offering his life without the need to protect, defend or preserve his selfhood, they were saying that in the death of Jesus they had caught a glimpse of who and what God is. They had experienced in Jesus life fully lived, loving extravagantly, as having given them the courage to be fully themselves, fully human.

The death of Jesus was therefore originally interpreted as an act of ultimate self-giving that greatly enhanced life.

A God of sacrificial atonement seems out of sync with 21st century cosmology and scientific knowledge. Now it is appropriate to  understand the death of Jesus as the fulfilment of an individuals commitment to the process of evolution – one dies so another or a species may flourish and become something completely knew. Jesus embodies the creative intent toward an ever burgeoning, ever blossoming world – he lives the ultimate example of created consciousness so that others may do likewise through love in action – the Spirit. The Spirit is released to empower you and I through a mystical experience of Christ for ourselves.
 
As Jesus grows and becomes the Christ, leaving behind his ego self and his personal individual identity, it is so we may experience the possibility of doing the same. He is the Lamb of God in the sense he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of becoming. He deals with sin, the dislocation from oneness via the ego self, in that anyone who has a real experience of the Christ will become Christified and do likewise.
 
And perhaps here is the reason we wish only to see Jesus as the means to our personal redemption. To accept the task to become Christified – like Christ – will entail us moving away from our personal egos and taking the journey to complete kenosis or self emptying as Christ did, so others and humanity may evolve into Christ.
 
It is a costly act. It will cost materially, physically, psychological, emotionally and spiritually. You will see things differently and from a new place and find yourself marginalised and locked out of normal society. You will not be accepted now, nor will your words and actions be seen to be appropriate. They may, as they did for Jesus, be deemed so after the tragedy and they may then empower others to do the same.
 

The challenge for the church, you and I, is to leave behind a set of symbols appropriate for another age and begin to search for the Lamb of God in a strangely different world than the one John was writing in, and the one in which much of the definitive theology was done in, such as the middle ages. We now understand the world differently on a day-to-day basis and must risk disconnecting our theology from a world view that is no more, rediscovering the Lamb of God in an expanding universe. To not do so, spells the end for faith. 

Monday 9 January 2017

Baptism of The Christ


Baptism of Christ. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John. Davezelenka


Matthew 3:13-17
 
Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, the iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, often reduced to the role of a theological statement about the identity of Jesus. We pay little to the relationships between Jesus and John, Jesus and the created world, and Jesus and spiritual experience by using it to prove Jesus is divine and already righteous without the need of John’s baptism.
 
Yet this is an incredible story, told in all 3 synoptic gospels, each with their own twist but consistent in the central truths portrayed. John is baptising on the banks of the Jordan. It is a baptism for transformation and change, a baptism not of ritual but of experience. He is challenging those who come to be transformed by the experience and to go away and transform the world in which they live. Yes the word sin appears, but it is not the trivial definition we use of personal sin today, but an understanding of the disconnection from our one-ness in creation and our need to rediscover our co-independence in our movement in relational wholeness empowered by love. His is a baptism of community for an evolving creation destined to find its beginning and completion in Christ.
 
John is correct, Jesus has no personal need for such baptism, but he does have a representational need to do so. He comes to John, his cousin and mentor, as a student comes to a teacher. This is about participating in the experience and become a participant in the journey to wholeness which is a journey to himself. The great Christian mystics such as Merton, Bede Griffiths, Teilhard de Chardin and others, along with the seminal mystics from other faiths and spiritual practices, all speak of the journey to wholeness as the journey to self. They all, in their various understandings, equate the inner journey of discovering your true self as the experiencing of the Christ at the most intimate and personal level. Merton write that the only journey a human takes is the inner journey.
 
Karl Rahner, a modern Catholic mystic, writes: “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.”  Jesus and John both agree with Rahner, without a deep and undeniable experience of God there is no way of being for Christ in the world.  This is not necessarily an emotionally charged moment of bells and whistles, it is often the breaking open of ones self perception in such a way one becomes a completely new being, unrecognisable from the one who existed before, especially and most importantly, by ones self.
 
In the baptism of Jesus this is exactly what happens. Here we have a young man recognising his need of John’s tutelage and baptism and coming in obedience to John’s call. For many this may fly in the face of what we think about this story. Jesus is not just following a divine script. He is a created being, a thinking man, making a considered decision to be baptised by John.
 
It is an act rooted in a personal relationship with John and completed in the created world. Both points are very important. Jesus is an ordinary person, engaging with others and the created environment who experiences a mystical awareness of his true self in the midst of both. Jesus does not have his mystical experience, his awakening to his true self, in isolation from others or the world. It occurs in the midst of an act of obedience, surrounded by others engaged in the same, on the banks of a shallow and narrow river on the edge of the desert.
 
What happens next is, apparently, witnessed by others, but most specifically experienced and reflected on by Jesus, not just in the desert where he went after this occurs, but in his discussions and teachings with those who followed him. This event dislodged Jesus from his ego self and set him on a deep spiritual path he invites all of us to participate in – through journey through him to him.
 
Jesus is the fulfilment of creation and brings with him into our world both the way and the end. In his baptism he understands this truth. He participates in an act representative of the evolving understanding of the spirituality John brings and is connected to the source of all creation (God) by the power to bring us to evolved fulfilment (the Spirit). God speaks, the Spirit hovers of the waters, just as in the first creation myth. God speaks similar words to those attributed to him then, ‘and God saw it was good’. Here he says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
 
An interesting comment in itself as Jesus has yet to do anything, his ministry has not begun, there have been no acts of power, words of wonder or miracles of healing. It seems the ordinary human being Jesus is deemed to be sufficient by God and the simple act of responding to John’s call has opened the gates of heaven and placed Jesus in a new relationship with God.
 
Is this just an experience only Jesus can have? Do we read this story and listen to this sermon and go, ‘Nah, couldn’t happen to me. I’m not good enough. Only Jesus who was God’s son could have this experience.” We have been fooled by the idea that because we understand Jesus was both divine and human and somehow that excludes us from emulating such experiences. The truth is that this should be the normative experience for those on the spiritual journey. It is not the experience only of Buddha, Dalai Lama or Jesus or Mother Teresa or Rumi or any of the other spiritual pilgrims, it is the experience we all are destined for if we participate in the acts of being human and open to the possibility of such experiences.
 
I suspect Jesus was unaware of what was about to happen to him when he came to John, despite the prophetic words of John and Jesus's response. I suspect Jesus was still coming to grips with the guidance John had been giving him and simply wanted to do what was necessary. His baptism dislocated him from his self-understanding in such a way that he heads into the desert to make sense of it all. What happens there is the continuation of his evolution into the Christ and the path that would take him to complete self-denial and love on the Cross.
 

Yes, this an iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, but not one reserved for Jesus and out of reach for you and I. It is available for us if we participate in the journey to relational wholeness in the created world out of love for God and others. This experience will set us on the Way to the Way, it will bring us, through the experience of Jesus to ultimate fulfilment in Christ. It will occur when we become open to the possibility, diligent in our worship and practice, inside and outside liturgy, and when we come just as we are, just as Jesus did. Amen 

Tuesday 3 January 2017

Exile and Return

Matthew 2:13-23

This Christmas I have been contemplating the world in which we live, a world in which most of us live somewhere other than where we were born. It is a world my parents found hard to understand. They never lived more than 50 miles from where they were born. With few exceptions, neither had any of their family. When their youngest son moved to England and then their granddaughter moved to Japan, they were at a loss to make sense of it. Bravely they visited both places, England several times, but only as visitors and always returning to familiar surroundings.

  
How different it is today. We live in a world of constant movement. Not only is the world around us changing at an incredible pace, people we know and love are on the move. Some move permanently and make a home in another land far, far away. Others seem to be always on the move, never putting their roots down and always in search of a new adventure and experience.
 
We are surrounded by people who have fled wars, violence and persecutions, some at the end of the Second World War, others after the Vietnam War and still others after conflicts in the Middle East going back to the end of the Second World War. Today we have people taking great risks to save their families, getting on unsafe boats at great cost and travelling in search of a welcoming land, often in vain.
 
Yet this movement of people is not new. The Bible tells the myths of the Patriarchs who were called out of their land in search of a promised place, of people being forcibly moved into exile and then finding their way out to continue the journey of hope and freedom. For the people of Israel sitting between great powers it was something most generations had, at some time, experienced; people coming and going in search of a better life.
 
It is no surprise that Jesus’ family also became refugees. Matthew tells this story to connect the coming of Jesus to the exile and exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. In the type of Moses Jesus comes both as the prophet and Saviour of the people to bring them out of the exile they find themselves in at the hand of Herod and those who supported his regime. It is of importance in his story that the one who comes as the Messiah, the Anointed, is recognised as such through the familiar motif of exile and return.
 
Once again we have discernment coming in the moment of deep stillness via a dream. Joseph, not Mary, takes responsibility and recognises in his dreams the warnings and escapes to Egypt, a journey full of danger and threat. He discerns when it is time to return but also recognises it is not safe in his hometown and goes to Galilee. Joseph, the man on the move, saves and protects his family, and for Matthew, fulfils the prophecies about the Anointed One.
 
Once upon a time, it seemed we lived in a static world. We understood that the world and all in it had been created once and that was the way it would be. We understood we grew up in a particular place and would settle down and raise our family very near that place. We understood we would die and be buried in the same graveyard as our parents and siblings. We understood that creation as an event was finished and this world was  a finite entity with an end somewhere in the future. We understood we were Australians because that is where we lived and died, along with everyone else who looked like us.
 
Thanks to science and the theory of evolution, how this has changed. We now know we live in an ever expanding universe where creatures are becoming extinct and new ones being discovered; where our universe is just one among many and our planet, earth is no longer the centre of all that is. Change is not something we fear, but something organically central to our very existence. Most people here have a smart phone, an i-pad, a smart tv, a smart car, swipe on and off a smart transport system and talk to the families on the other side of the world for free using Skype. I can use my watch just the way Dick Tracy used to in the  ‘60’s comic strip. None of this existed 12 years ago.
 
In such a world we are being asked to make the journey with Jesus into exile and to discover the power it and the subsequent return brings to us. Instead of seeing those fleeing unsafe homelands as intruders into our world, we are being challenged to see them as the beacons of hope and freedom. Instead of seeing those who are living in exile in our countries as foreigners to be feared, we are being asked to welcome them, their faiths and cultures as they bring about renewal, diversity and vitality to our country and our religion. Instead of labelling others and consigning them to the margins we are being asked to open our heats and homes so that we all may continue to expand our vision of the world.
 
The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a study in 2015 showing that, far from being a burden on the country, humanitarian migrants (refugees) are amongst our most successful:
 
...While almost two-thirds of migrant taxpayers were migrants with a Skilled visa - reporting $26 billion in Employee income - Humanitarian migrants displayed greater entrepreneurial qualities and reported a higher proportion of income from their own unincorporated businesses and this income increased sharply after five years of residency. (Emphasis added.)
 
This is not what we hear and see and it is not what we want to hear and see. Yet those who come into our country as refugees bring great benefits to those of us already here. In a world of movement of people seeking safety and hope we all benefit.
 
Joseph takes is family into exile to wait out the despotic regime of Herod. While there he cared for his family and undoubtedly provided value to the community in which he lived. On return to his home country he goes to another region and sets up home and business and becomes involved in the community life of that place. He raises a family, all of whom we can assume played a role similar to his.
 
Jesus is the exception. He becomes both spiritual and political, something I suspect he modelled on his father too. Dreams and deep prayer became significant to his self-development and discernment of the will of God in his life. He lived out his life in a world he made his own while maintaining his deep connection with the world he left behind as God’s self expression.  Many failed to see him in such a way and ultimately he was killed for being the outsider they perceived him to be.
 
Yet his exile is the means of our exodus, our return to the home, the heart of God, we have never left. In this time of great movement, this is the challenge for us, to open our hearts to all in exile so they can find their return in our heart. As William Ricketts, the sculptor wrote, “All of life is one”, even those we fear.