On The Mountain Top

Matthew 17:1-9

When I was growing up on the farm I learnt early that various farmers had daily practices that they did regardless of what was happening around them. I also understood that while these practices were not the practice of every farmer they each did something similar.

 

When I was with my Uncle Wally I learnt that after lunch was siesta time. We would lay down on the ground or the back verandah of the house and put our feet up higher than our head and go to sleep. It must have been a funny site with a man 6 foot tall surrounded by boys under 10 stretched out with their feet up on the log, hats over the eyes, arms crossed on the chest asleep, or at least pretending to be.

 

My uncles Alec and Alex didn't rest, they boiled the billy and had a cuppa and you just sat, didn’t talk and sipped your tea with your hat cutting the sun out of your eyes. This happened at least 3 times a day and, if there were machine or stock problems, you did it more often as you worked out the problem.

 

Peoples meditative practices are different but they are their own and they speak to the circumstances and experiences of life they shared with others. Jesus had a a spiritual practice that had little to do with the temple worship or liturgy, yet it was the vital rhythm of his life and he shared it with his disciples, his students.  They were used to this practice which is mentioned and alluded to again and again in the Gospels – Jesus went aside to pray and he sent his disciples away to do the same.  In these moments Jesus clarified his identity, his purpose and his intentions.

 

These weren’t moments of lightness and happiness, a mindfulness deigned for the 21^st century cult of the individual, but moments of great and disturbing challenge. His time in the desert after his baptism was not a time of beer and skittles, he was forced to confront his basic nature and find ways to seek wholeness through obedience to his inner urge for justice, compassion and respect for all, his commitment to the evolution of all creation to fullness.

 

Here on the mountain with his three chosen students it happens again. They go away at a critical time in his self-awareness and the developing trajectory of his life’s journey into confrontation with the power elites in his world. Together they share a deep spiritual experience. While the transformation, or as Thomas More a student of Merton's calls it, metamorphosis, is experienced physically by Jesus, it is shared with the disciples who were there.

 

This is important. We often decry the disciples for their seeming inability to get what is happening, yet the truth is they were deeply spiritual men whose spirituality aligns in moments like these with that of Jesus. It is also important because we are capable of and do experience such events for ourselves. The story of Merton shared in the pew bulletin is but one of a thousand such experiences ordinary people share with those on the mountain.

 

In the story of Jesus this experience is the turning point in his challenge to the political and spiritual systems ruling the lives of everyday people. Jesus has become aware that if he continues to challenge those in power he will face a confrontation he cannot win. He will die. Commentators suggest this is where Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem fully aware of what the consequences will be but he has decided he will not have his life taken from him, but that he will proactively take charge of his destiny.

 

We may read this passage and the story of Jesus as the programmed death of God’s son for the redemption of sin, an inevitable train wreck we already know about before the opening credits of the movie roll. Yet I suspect Jesus would have come and died even if there had been no apparent fall in the Garden of Eden. Why? Because Jesus is the complete expression of the Creator being called God and if creation is to reach its fullness it must do so through the actions of Christ, and by a surging towards wholeness in Christ.

 

The Transfiguration is that moment when Jesus realises he has, if he is to succeed and bring about redemption for the world, to go to Jerusalem and run the risk of dying a harrowing death. If he is to live a life of integrity he now must come down from the mountain and move into the most critical stage of his life. It is one thing to decry the violence in the world, it is another thing to challenge violence through making it your own.

 

It is easy in our world to go on social media, turn up at street rallies and sign petitions and believe we are in fact challenging the system and its codified violence. Are we really doing anything at all to stop the violence around us? Have we actually felt what it is like to experience the violence of the system and to have no choice but to die, little by little, because of it? Often our words and our presence is safe, heard and seen only by people who share our passions but not by those who experience the implications of the issues we say we stand against.

 

Jesus could have been just like that. He could have travelled the country all his life shouting at the system and been able to justify such an action. Yet he chose not to. His integrity ensured that he was prepared to die for those affected by the system, by the evil which rules by dint of the rampant ego self in the corridors of power.

 

He did what he said. He showed us what integrity looked like and said here is your means of redemption. Come down from that moment of high spiritual awareness and engage at the depth of humanities pain, it is here you will find yourself and find that you are capable of living and dying with integrity.

 

Coming down from the mountain Jesus reminds the disciples of the rule of the road, what happens on the mountain stays on the mountain. Those who have had similar experiences often find it counterproductive to tell others. They simply don’t get it. They weren’t there. Secondly, experiences as deep as this can be misunderstood and cause problems. They’re mad, they’re dangerous, and they’re deluded. Jesus could afford none of these responses by others, even the other disciples.

 

Some one once said, if you have to tell people you are a Christian, you’re doing it wrong. Jesus doesn’t talk about his moment of truth, he acts and brings about redemption through integrity.

 

For us, the task is the same. We are responsible for our actions and to ensure our words and actions bring about redemption for ourselves and others.  Living with integrity will transform us and the world. When we take our relationships, our commercial practices and our engagement of society seriously they become a means of redeeming the world in which we live.

 

That’s what Jesus did and it seems good enough for me.

  

In My Name

Mark 9: 38-40

"John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us."

Tribalism is a fact of life in the church. Like politics we have our factions. Left, centre left, centre, centre right, right and so on. Evangelicals, fundamentals, liberals, progressives and more populate the church geography and we are never sure where we fit or whether we fit at all.

Here’s a hint, Jesus doesn’t care. He is not good with labels or with the finer points of doctrine and theology. He doesn’t seem to care, in this passage any way, whether people have a personal relationship with him, have been born again, baptised, confirmed or whatever particular high jump we, as gatekeepers, put in front of people.

He recognises people who do things in his name. Now that doesn’t mean sticking the word Jesus into every sentence or even ask WWJD or WWJND – the latest fad.

In his name means doing things that are of the nature of things he would do.

Names carried a significance greater than something to use when we are talking to someone other than repeating ‘hey, you’. Names signified something of the character and being of the person. It was and is important to have a good name, a name attached to honourable, compassionate and just actions. A name can be trusted. A name that when you say it brings to mind the character of the person in question.

Doing things in Jesus name means doing things that would be comfortable uttered in the same sentence as the name of Jesus and that Jesus could be confused as the one who did it. Healing people, standing up for the oppressed, caring for the sick and homeless, fighting for refugees or simply being a good neighbour to friends and foe alike are all things done in his name.

This passage has something to say to intra-church relationships and the factions that belittle churches such as the Anglican Church. This passage has something to say to inter-church relationships so that all are welcomed and included in the body of Christ. It has something to say to inter-faith relationships when we look for what brings us together and not hat separates us. It has something to say to relationships with all those who have no faith and are antagonistic to those who do so that we again find causes and actions that brings us together and not tear us apart.

Interestingly enough, Jesus recognises the impact of doing as he does. People are changed, transformed by the good they do. So transformed that they will do things against the name or character of Jesus. Doing good is transformative, we could say addictive – we want more and we become jealous and ensure that it is all we do.  How many people do you know who seem to be addicted to doing good deeds for others? They are always leading the way and acting in the name of Jesus.

Let us find ways to do good deed in the name of Jesus. 

Integrity - Some Thoughts

Matthew 5: 48 

 

The sermon on the Mount continues in todays Gospel reading and all I can say is that Jesus was definitely not an Anglican. No one in the Anglican church would have sat through this sermon. It seems to have went for hours if not days and wasn’t arranged according to the appropriate style taught in theological colleges. There was no witty introduction, way more than the mandatory 3 points and no encouraging call to action.

 

It was troublesome, awkward, disconnected and, for want of a better description, a hotch-potch of ideas -  a stream of consciousness collection of fragments of thoughts and ideas loosely combined into a long and very challenging lecture. You wouldn’t get away with it today either at church or in the university lecture room!

 

Each section seems to have a point and does hold together but what is the core essence of this, the signature policy statement of the new political and religious paradigm ushered in by Jesus? How are we to piece together the fragments and make a whole or is it sufficient to reflect on each section and apply that to our own lives and circumstances?

 

In this section Jesus reworks the ten commandments once more and raises the bar for living connected lives in a broken world. The idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was to ensure that the punishment to be endured by an evildoer was commensurate with the crime committed. It was designed to avoid zealous law enforcement resulting in punishment way worse than the crime.

 

Jesus relocates this saying, not in the cultic relationships of the chosen people, but in to the fraught relationships they had with those in power – the Romans. He states unequivocally that this law applies to those who are our enemies, who are unlike us, and that the implementation of this law is not only about correct relationships but a method of non-violent action in a violent world.

 

Verses 39-41 pushes the boundaries of societal standards and puts the onus on those with the power to think about what they would do. Turning the other check after you were hit with an open hand challenges the other to hit you with the back of the hand, a no no. Soldiers were lawfully allowed to ask you to carry their pack for 1 mile, to carry it further was breaking the law. In a legal stoush you were entitled to be left with the basics for human decency, to give that over to the one who was suing you was shameful for them, not you.

 

Then we have the biggie, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. At this stage, I would think even the faithful disciples were starting to wonder about Jesus and his sanity. Here they were living in the midst of a violent and oppressive system over seen by the conquering Romans and the pedantic Pharisees and Sadducees, the temple elite, and he is saying love your enemies. Has he lost his mind? If this stuff get out he would be seen as one without integrity, his cause for a new kingdom would have no substance.

Yet it is all about integrity, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount is all about integrity. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Alan Behm writes: "Integrity is what happens when our lives are integrated; when who we are and what we do match. Integrity is what happens when what we believe translates into how we live. That's how we live out God's generous and unrestricted grace and mercy and love in our relationships with those around us”.

 

The perfection we are called to is the perfection of God – the complete oneness that distinguishes God from all other creatures and creations. God is one is not divided by a public or private self, by a public or a private persona. God holds no thing back. God is God at all times and is perfect because of it. Unlike a mountain there is no other side we can not see, nothing is hidden from us and  that is the point of the love your enemies command – God can not not love God’s enemies. God is love by nature and will love regardless of whom is being loved.

 

Love is the integrity of God. Love is God’s perfection, experienced by all regardless of who they are or what they have done. We are called to be perfect by and in love, by the love we receive for this unconditional love of God’s set us free to love others in just the same way.

 

Our integrity is bringing together within ourselves all the dysfunction in the world and loving it as much as we love the loveable. We can have no favourites, no inner circle amd none who are excluded. Our integrity in love is the capacity to love others as they are, not as we want them to be for to do that, to love them as we want them to be, is to simply love the reflection of ourselves we see in them.

 

And our reflection may be smeared with the fingerprints of our own shortcomings.

 

Integrity has its beginning in how we love ourselves and how we live our lives in unity with the truth about ourselves. No one is complete at this very moment. None is without regrets or skeletons rattling deep within. We are frail and feeble humans who have found our way in this world, largely by trial and error. Loving ourselves is the capacity to bring into unity the many aspects of ourselves and to be able to live with the truth that we have been loved into perfection by perfection itself – God.

 

Integrity is the capacity to let go of those things we have constructed to protect ourselves from ourselves and to pull down the false wall lived between the world and ourselves. Living with integrity is difficult and rare – difficult to do and rare to witness. Yet it is what we are called to do. It is confronting to face the secrets and failures we have papered over by success, professionalism and fancy clothes. It is confronting to sit down in the dark and realise your life is like a discordant symphony – full of sharp edges and hidden corners – and that you are called to do something about it.

 

The Sermon on the Mount is that call from Jesus to the people of his time to live with integrity, to stop fooling themselves that they were faithfully living the commandments when they were unable to love their enemies. It is Jesus call to us to face the same in our own lives, in the life of the church and in the life of our nation. It is not easy but it is necessary otherwise life will always be bits and pieces cobbled together in a magicians illusion, not perfection.

 

Living with integrity as God lives is our designated vocation, let’s make it real. Amen

Relationships, forgiveness, reconciliation

Guest Post - Rev. Andrew Tasker

Matthew 5.21-37

As we have just heard, the Gospel is long, quite harsh and includes some of the hardest lessons from Jesus about really complex issues - adultery, divorce, swearing falsely and finally, conflict with another – I can’t think of a more challenging passage!!

So I have decided to be cowardly and pick what I consider to be the easiest topic of a really hard bunch – believe it or not, it’s conflict – that is, difficulty with our neighbour, friend or family member, about relationship and reconciliation. 

To me, reconciliation is at the heart of the Gospel, it doesn’t come easily to most of us and it constantly challenges us to be better people. 

So, firstly then – I think it is to acknowledge that striving for healthy connection with one another is absolutely central to our existence.  

Jesus wants us to use the perfect, non-judgmental and loving friendship he offers us, to mirror our own relationships.  We become as one with God when our relationships flourish.  I am convinced that we are called to create nothing more and nothing less than loving relationships.  Perhaps nothing else matters.

But - we can’t do it on our own.

Much as all the Gospels call us to individual relationship with Jesus, Jesus knows that we cannot live life without the other.  You.  You are the other, for others.  St Paul in his letters is at pains to explain to communities of which he has charge, that ‘getting on’ in the name of Christ is pivotal.

We can’t ignore that we are born into community, not into some vacuum in which we are alone and can be wholly selfish.

So with these things in mind, interestingly, Jesus doesn’t immediately start by addressing the actual topic of relationship, of reconciliation, but rather he starts with a strange command - that we must leave our gifts at the altar before reconciling with our neighbour.  For it seems that gifts at the altar are of little value to God unless they come with our clean conscience and our resolve to seek reconciliation with our neighbour.  

By leaving gifts at the altar, we are acknowledging that God knows us inside and out.  He knows our secrets and the dark brooding ways of our all too human nature.  For when we leave gifts at the altar, or at the altar of our minds, we leave a part of ourselves there - and right then, God can work on us and heal us.  And give us courage for the process of forgiving – and indeed of being forgiven.

And when we try to take Jesus at his word and actually leave gifts at the altar, this altar need not, of course, be a church altar – the kitchen table, a side table at home will do – why not actually leave something there – as a reminder that you need to…call your cousin whom you dislike, to send that email or text to a friend that you lost contact with because they said something you didn’t like.

The psychological impact of conflict cannot be underestimated.  It makes us ill with worry.  Jesus knows this and accordingly he craves that people are free from conflict - as soon as possible.  Surely he wants us whole and healthy.

Jesus always teaches us with a view to challenge, of course – the Gospel is not easy and today’s Gospel is particularly hard to stomach.  Indeed, this issue of resolving our differences with others is just plain hard work – it frightens me to face those with whom I am have issue, that I don’t fully trust, that I would rather not engage with.  For it is all too easy to love my friend and dine with them, offer them compliments and help them solve their problems and comfort them.  Jesus doesn’t preach on the things that we do easily - the love we lavish on those with whom we are friends.  No, we are called to be radical in our relationships and seek out the complex and divided relationships of our lives. 

We are challenged to make that hard phone call, or to accept that we were wrong too and even if we are sure that we were not wrong, to compromise and sometimes even take the blame. 

In this way, the cross looms large – maybe some days bearing another’s anger, for example, might best be borne by absorbing that anger ourselves.  In this way we willingly suffer the pain of those we have difficulty with.

And reconciliation might need to happen quickly.  That gift you left with God is waiting to be picked up and time is short.  The Gospel is clear on this too – we never know when the hour will come and that broken relationship calls us to both rectify it quickly - and to love the other at almost any cost.

Further, in our day of psychological intervention, the issue can go even deeper.  This whole matter of reconciliation is also about our relationship with ourselves – the disquiet we have in our hearts for ourselves at the things of which we are not proud – what of our lack of forgiveness of ourselves, when all the while we are often happy to forgive others?  That gift we left at the altar might just be ourselves and in the meantime whilst we mend our relationships with another person, God is busy mending our broken hearts.

No one is an island.  We live in a variety of communities and they focus our need to be compromising and forgiving...to me, nothing is more important.  If nothing else, it is just unhealthy for us to be in conflict.

But ironically I would add this – don’t think that you are called to forgive at any cost – only God can keep forgiving and forgiving – we have human limits – despite the fact that Jesus’ command to reconcile seems absolute. 

To think that we have to be as God in our relationships is not useful and may even be destructive.  You might find that despite your best efforts you simply cannot resolve a situation – and that’s alright too.  Yet ensure that when you come to pick up your gift from the altar – wherever that altar is – that you focus on God and say ‘God, I have done my best – I have tried everything to reconcile with my neighbour and it has not worked out’. 

Then don’t forget to do one more thing – take up that gift you left at the altar and with a clean conscience, offer it to God in humility. 

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before you judge them – enquire as to their pain and suffering. 

And be at peace.  Peace is an ultimate goal of reconciliation.  Be at peace. 

Reconcile at any cost, until you simply cannot reconcile any further.

After all, we live only to try and do as Jesus does.  To get it right with others.   

Salt & Light

Matthew 5:13-20

What an ordinary image Jesus gives us in this passage from Matthew! How very different to the way we describe others and hand out accolades to sportsman, movie stars, politicians and icons. they are rarely described in such ordinary, material terms.

Salt and light. Everyday stuff we take for granted. Salt is in almost everything we eat, it is in the sea, it is in our sweat, it is so passé and  everyday. Light makes it possible for us to move around without knocking into things, separates the night from the day, gives vision in the dark and is just there. We dont think about it. We don't make a big thing about it. We walk into a room and flick the switch or pull back the curtains and there it is. 

In the times we find ourselves in,  many questions are raised as to how we are to live and whether our living does make a difference. In a world of noise, bravado, bigness and exaggerated success we may find ourselves being belittled for our smallness, our littleness, our seeming powerlessness. People are playing loose with the truth, with facts and with the lives of others in order to protect their own positions or to build or bolster their own egos. People are denying their values and their cultural history for short term gains and accolades. Governments throughout the world, as well as business people of all types, are selling their soul to maintain power, markets and investors. Yes, the obvious example is the President of the United States, but ours and other governments are watching what they say and how they respond so that they too do not become the object of the bully.

Bullying takes many forms and not simply reserved for the one on one relationship. Nations bully nations, politicians bully other world leaders and the use of power in such a way not only fractures unity but demeans those who are the perpetrators of such bullying. Any acquiescence or failure to call out such acts makes us partners in the crime. It is in these moments that we are called on to be the salt and light, even at the risk of our own wellbeing and lives. The greatest evil is not that evil is done but that people stand on the sidelines watching without moving to intervene. Spectators who could change the situation by getting involved but don't. Again in the world of the smart phone where every person is a video camera operator, people make conscious decisions to video atrocities rather than stepping in to stop the injustice. A quick look at the tv news reminds us of this. A picture may speak a thousand words but an intervention saves lives.

Light and salt are ordinary images, couldn't Jesus come up with something sexier and more exciting? Why light and salt?

Because being for the mystical transcendent in this life is indeed ordinary and as essential as salt and light. We no longer need to strive to live sin free lives or to be saints of perfection and immaculate conception. We are called simply to live seamlessly in such a way no-one notices but everyone sees the way you live. Being a fully alive human being requires we inculcate the essence of Christ in our ordinary being engaged in the ordinary act of living.

This sounds simple and it is, but it is not easy. Just as we do not think about the role of salt and light , we do not think about how our living is seen, recognised and indeed, impacts the world. We take our lives for granted. We also take our understanding of ourselves and the world for granted, often not being conscious of just how our actions and words impact on others. What is normal  and acceptable for us may not be so for others and an innocent comment may in fact not be so innocent when heard through the ears of another. Our harm may be unintentional but it is, nevertheless, harm.

Living intentionally is the essence of the images of salt and light. Living each and every moment with intent and being aware of our intent is vital.  It is why many wise people suggest we speak less, listen more; that we use less words and more thought. It is the letting go of the need to be visible and heard above the noise of all the others who have the same need. It is the capacity to fade into the background but remain authentic and real in a world that has ceased to be such. There comes a time in our lives when we begin to understand that all we built is built on sand and all  that it is is a monument to being noticed by people who have already forgotten. We are left with a few grains of salt and shafts of light and recognise that this is all that matters.

This is exciting because it allows us to celebrate our incarnation for what it is, our reflection in the transcendence of being. It values our every action and places it within the evolution to wholeness God our creator has set in motion. We do not have to wait to do a big thing, to make a difference or to be recognised. We do make a difference and we are recognised for our enlivened selves. 

As I would say to our students, you have everything within in you that you need for your life to make a difference. Just be who God has created you to be, reach within and unlock the transcendent and live your ordinary life to its full with full and focused intention. Minimise your life to maximise your impact, diminish your visibility to increase your presence, become one with all in order to be yourself.

In other words, let your light shine, be the salt that brings to life the wonder of life and the light shining into the darkness all around. There is no magic to this. Just intentionally allow the transcendent empower your being, and as ordinary as you may seem to be, you will add to the extraordinary beauty in the world.