tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72034907873554575672024-03-06T08:44:01.627+11:00RedShoes, RedNose, Redemption - RedShoesWalkingSpirituality | Art | Contemplation | Ideas |
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A blog for people to walk the spiritual path together.
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BYO RedShoes.Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.comBlogger324125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-32291915377456761902017-07-23T06:56:00.002+10:002017-07-23T06:56:57.549+10:00Confronting Violence<div>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Matthew 13:24-43</span></div>
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All gardeners know weeds grow no matter how diligent you are. If you are a gardener like me, the weeds always seem to grow better than the plants I planted! A gardener’s main task it seems is to keep the garden clean of weeds.</div>
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In todays reading from Matthew we have a landowner who seems to have more than the normal outbreak of weeds amongst his wheat. And the weeds he is dealing with look like the real deal. Called darnel it is a wild wheat like weed that replicates the real wheat. Weeding it out as it grows is a risky task. What is and what isn’t the real wheat? We won’t know until we go to harvest and then we wil sort it out.</div>
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Really? Isn’t it too late then? Does this sound like a Jesus who understood rural life or is it a parable from a later edition with a different purpose?</div>
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The Jesus Seminar scholars suggest the following: “The parable reflects the concern of a young Christian community attempting to define itself over against an evil world, a concern not characteristic of Jesus. Letting the wheat and weeds grow up together suggests the final judgment rather than agricultural practice.” [<span style="font-style: italic;">Five Gospels</span>, 194]</div>
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And the parable itself seems to point in that direction:</div>
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<span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">40</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.</span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">41</span><span style="font-style: italic;">The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">42</span><span style="font-style: italic;">and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">43</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!</span></div>
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What we have here is another of a number of difficult passages pointing towards a violent end for those who are not of the true faith, the church. It is not our responsibility to judge others; God will do that and will condemn them to a furnace of fire. But don’t worry; we who are righteous will shine like the sun and escape the punishment of those who sit amongst us in this and other communities.</div>
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Are we comfortable with this image and language? How does this sit with us in a world where our understanding of people’s behaviour has been influenced by science, psychology and personal experience? Are we able to accept an image of another burning in a fiery furnace and not be challenged by the image of the God it portrays?</div>
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Perhaps we are today more comfortable with this concept of punishment than ever before. We live in a surveillance society where one of the fastest growing industries is the prison system; a society in which prison and detainment camps are accepted as part of our response to the plight of others (refugees etc) and where we are quick to condemn others by means of media and hearsay. Perhaps today we are more comfortable with the idea of a last judgement that will separate the wheat from the weeds as long as we are included in the wheat, than ever before.</div>
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There is also the fact that we may have become desensitised to the violence in our faith and our liturgy, a violence which reflected a different world view and a different cosmology. On the ABCs the Drum the archbishop addressed the issue of domestic violence and a research paper which stated that Christians from certain styles of Churches are more likely to commit violence on their partners. It was primarily a discussion on the doctrine of headship - males as heads of the household and women as being obedient to that headship. His response is that there will be an apology on this at General Synod if it passes a vote.</div>
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At the same time It is important we address the violence in our liturgy and the language of sacrifice and redemption we repeat each time we gather for worship. We need to ask how have we embedded and normalised violence as a symbol of Gods' (understood as male) action in the world and find ways to address this. Domestic and other types of violence are expressions of our acceptance of violence as a way of being in the world and, for the church, violence as an accepted part of Gods action in the world.</div>
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It is much bigger than headship.</div>
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Are we comfortable with images of eating the body and blood of Jesus, of God sending his son to die on the cross to make us better, of Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of God to be sacrificed because of our failure in order to bring about redemption and peace?</div>
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In discussion with many older people I hear things like; “Well, I cringe at some of the things I hear in church”, “I can’t believe any more in some of the stuff we say in our liturgy”, “I have moved on in how I understand what happens but I still like the form of our service” and more.</div>
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Or are we disturbed by such language because it does not depict the God of our experience or the one discovered by rational and critical reflection? Are we ready to explore new ways of taking the ideas expressed in the scriptures and our liturgy and begin to craft a new way of doing church that is relevant to a modern worldview?</div>
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Matthew was writing for a community in the midst of a battle to control the synagogue, a battle between traditional religion and the embryonic group who followed Jesus. Matthew was employing language which basically said, let us not try and identify who is a true follower of Jesus, let’s leave that up to God. In doing so he employed an image understand by those reading his words.</div>
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We are living in a very different time and with a very different understanding of how the world, and God, works. Is the language of such as the Agnus Dei (which you may have noticed is not part of the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">10am</a> service book) relevant or does it take us back to an understanding of human sacrifice Abraham left behind when he decided to sacrifice the sheep instead of Isaac? Are these words and the story they tell the story of God that is your story?</div>
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Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us.</div>
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Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us.</div>
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Jesus, redeemer of the world, grant us peace.</div>
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I spend much time with people who are wracked with guilt and shame, much if it seemingly imputed by words they have listened to over and over again in their church liturgy. Is it not time for a careful look at what we say simply because it is our tradition to say these words? Is it time to consider new images and options in order that what we know in our head is no longer in conflict with what we are asked to believe?</div>
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Now I know that this may be difficult for some, but the word acts and what we say influences how we see and accept what is happening in the world. Is our acceptance of the violence we see around us influenced by our acceptance of the apparent violence in our faith we attest to each week?</div>
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Perhaps it is time for us to begin the discussion on just what we need to be saying and how that reflects our informed understanding of God, faith and scripture. This is a subject our worship committee, like the wider Anglican Church here and overseas, is thinking about and we would be happy to hear your ideas and suggestions in writing.</div>
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Matthew’s Jesus poses us a modern challenge, to bring the message of the kingdom of God into sync with the time in which we live, just as he attempted to do to those he was representing at the beginning of the church. Amen.</div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-48220445909474582582017-07-03T11:36:00.000+10:002017-07-03T11:36:37.138+10:00In The Thicket<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There is much said and written about the found violence in the Quran and some interpretations of its voice. Media and politicians and some church leaders are quick to point the finger at the text as the reason for the violence of terrorism, war, treatment of women and children and its own form of law.
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I am no expert on Islam but I do read the Christian scriptures and am constantly challenged by the violence there in, the violence accredited to heroes of faith, and the violence that emanates from or is sheeted home to God. And I am always challenged by the violence of the cross as the central focus of our faith. It doesn’t matter how I read the texts, last weeks or this weeks, I am left with a sense of unnecessary violence as an integral part of my faith.
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This violence is in full view in the Genesis reading of the binding of Isaac – the akedah – and the intervention of God at the very last moment to rescue the boy. It is often this intervention that is spoken of as the compassion of God but the reality is that Isaac was facing death at the hands of his father because of a command apparently given by God. Human sacrifice was prevalent in Abraham’s time. even though it had been banned by his people it still had a deep hold over the people and their understanding of God. Otherwise there could be no story. Abraham would have dismissed this idea as a madness and left it behind. He didn’t’. He went along with it.
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“Not only do the prophets condemn such sacrifices in honour of Molech, but the Hebrew Bible even notes the power of such sacrifices when deployed against Israel in battle:
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When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. [2Kings 3:26-27]
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The story of Isaac—horrific as it is—must also be read alongside the even worse story in Judges 11 where Jephthah offers his daughter as a human sacrifice in fulfilment of a vow.” (Jenks) It is a confronting story to read. There is no intervention by God; no last minute testimony to their faith, as the story of Abraham and Isaac is often interpreted; it ends as it was intended to, with the father killing his daughter to maintain a vow.
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In the story of Isaac we get the straying sheep stuck in a thicket and all ends well. But does it? Has the damage been done? Have we ended up with a tainted God, a God who is not afraid of using violence and who is not impartial – he saves Isaac but not the daughter of Jephthah? Has this image of God continued to haunt the church, not the least through the interpretation of the cross as the inevitable means to solve God’s relationship problems with his creation?
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Modern day atheists such as Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins and others cite this seemingly in built desire for violence as the reason to dismiss any discussion of a god or God’s existence. You and I have our own stories and questions regarding the seeming disparity in justice, fairness and compassion shown by the world to those we love and care for. Where was God? Why did God allow such and such to happen? Why did God do no thing about this tragedy or disaster? Many who no longer profess faith can point to a moment when the perceived disparity between a God of love and a God of violence changed their heart and mind.
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We cannot simply pass this off as an Old Testament anomaly. There is much in the birth of Christianity that raises the same questions. The history of the church in all its forms is replete with violence ranging from inquisitions, crusades, persecution of witches and women, the abuse of children and more seem to make a lie of the image of God as all consuming love.
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What are we to do with these stories and experiences and how are we to frame or reframe the image of God? How are we to read the scriptures and the history of the church containing many such stories in such a way that we too do not find it all too incongruous and slip away ourselves?
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We could:
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· Simply ignore that they are there and go merrily on our way oblivious to the impact they have on others – the ostrich approach;
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· Embrace them and spruik a wrathful God who will do what ever he please to whomever he pleases, but never to us - the bring it on God approach;
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· Spend copious amount of time to study the research and academia and develop an appropriate intellectual understanding of why this would be so in this particular time for this particular people - the there is always a rational reason for stuff we don’t like approach;
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· Simply accept the incongruous nature of evolution of thought and understanding and get on with living out our understanding as truthfully and respectfully as possible – the living with the questions approach.
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Living with the questions and the questionable seems to be the way faith and understanding has developed or evolved. It does not come pre-packaged fully comprehended ready to roll. It has to be grappled with, argued about and lived to become real. There is a sense that the stories which disturb us are a part of that process. Abraham’s almost murder of Isaac was stopped when Abraham had an insight and recognised the foolishness of his ways. Jephthah fails to stop his crime because his vow was more important than the outcome and he didn’t recognise the very same insight. The accrediting of the process in both cases to God forgets the cultural impulse to child sacrifice and the incredible growth in understanding required for Abraham to change his mind. No wonder the story is told with God at the centre, Abraham had to frame his experience this way to explain how he could do such a tremendous about turn.
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If we are seeking a squeaky clean narrative of the evolution of the understanding of humans interaction with the Divine then we won’t find that in the scriptures. If we are seeking a nice neat interpretation of stories such as today’s Old testament story then we are fooling ourselves. The path to spiritual understanding and experience is a prickly one, as prickly as the thicket that caught the lamb. Not to learn to live with incongruous stories of an evolving relationship, and to learn to live with all our questions will find us running the risk of abandoning our faith. Embrace the questions and the messy stuff, it is the only way. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-60566747027510442902017-06-26T13:45:00.000+10:002017-06-26T13:45:02.172+10:00Divisions & Unity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There is an ad on tv for a bank called ME. The ad comprises a lot of little yellow circles with the word ME in it bouncing around our screen singing me, me, me! The voice over cements the image by saying we are a bank that understands you. Welcome to the narcissistic 21st century.
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Today’s readings are not for the faint hearted nor for those seeking consolation and comfort or for the narcissistic 21 st century. All three readings take us deep into the darkness of sacrifice and division, a long way from the blessings we see in such passages as the Sermon on the Mount. If we are reading the scriptures honestly we will note that this is not an isolated case, the Bible is often a disturbing, violent and challenging read, but read it we must.
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The reading from Matthew 10 hardly relieves the doom and gloom ...:
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<li>Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.</li>
<li>….whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.</li>
<li>Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth ...</li>
<li>Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me...</li>
<li> ... and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.</li>
<li>Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.</li>
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Comfort and safety are the watchwords of our generation. “I am entitled to be comfortable and to feel safe at all times” seems to be the mantra. Governments and political parties try to out do each other with more and more unlikely promises to deliver a world in which all danger and threat is eliminated. Churches and faiths of various sorts promise us wealth and happiness in return for obedience and faith, quick solutions to issues and problems that have taken years to come into being.
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Our world is an uncomfortable and dangerous place most of the time and the major division is between those who see and accept this and those who refuse to accept that is so. And it has always been so. Matthews Jesus is railing against those who want to be in control and who want to be able to lord it over others, including God.
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Matthews Jesus poses an interesting conundrum –when we allow the need to feel safe and comfortable to rule us we instantaneously divide and separate ourselves from others, God and creation. Jesus is conscious his very incarnation brings about such conflict and sets up the possibility of conflict at all levels of our existence. The intention is, it seems, to unify but the effect is to divide. Why? Because we always choose the prominent place for ourselves in opposition to others. We are unable to see that unity can only come about when we let go of the need to be safe and comfortable; that unity can only come when we let go of the desire to possess Jesus for ourselves. That is idolatry.
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We increase security, identify others as the enemy by race or faith, marginalise people because of their ethnicity or history and by their past acts, big or small. We do it on a world scale and we do it with in communities and families. The lie we are told is that by so doing we are unifying our world, nation, community and family by definition of values, world-view, faith and family ties. The result? The world becomes a more divided, less safe and a more uncomfortable place.
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Perhaps Jesus is challenging us to understand that if the world is to be safer and more comfortable for all, then we have to let go of our sense of being entitled to our own personal safety at the cost of others value and existence. Jesus knows his message is an uncomfortable one; compassion and mission through sacrifice; the going out into the world to engage with it as it is, not as we believe it should be; the letting go of our own particular prejudices and personal wants in favour of a shared understanding of wholeness and belonging.
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Jesus is challenging us to look at a much larger world view than the one we generally focus on. Do not be preoccupied by the trivial – there are much bigger issues to be addressed. Do not live in fear of others but live mindful of the greatest threat within us, those desires and needs which can kill our soul, deaden our compassion and divide us off from the unity of creation. And this is the hardest to do. Jesus is not saying families, peace and unity are not important, they are. But what is more important is the sacrifice required to secure such for all.
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God’s kingdom is not personal. Stepping up to the task requires us to take a realistic look at what is important and making decisions that will cost us materially, emotionally and relationally. It will separate us from friends, family and others because the kingdom of God is about inclusion and it will not include those who exclude based on friendships, families, relationships or material greed.
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The challenge for us is to let go of the sense of privilege we have as Christians in a first world nation and begin to grapple with the divisions allowing us to enjoy such privileges. Jesus makes it clear to do so will put us out of sync with the dominate culture both within and without the church and place us at risk of danger and threat. But that is the price of discipleship. Is it a price worth paying? Yes if we wish to change from me to us.</div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-4790545309716256962017-06-19T08:41:00.001+10:002017-06-19T08:41:55.314+10:00Compassion, Mission & Sacrifice.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On this our stewardship Sunday my text for this sermon comes from the last verses of Matthew chapter 9:
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<i><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">35</span>Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">36</span>When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">37</span>Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">38</span>therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”
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One of the dangers for us is that we place Scripture in the spiritual realm and remove it from the practical material world. We can read the most difficult of scriptures and domesticate them by placing them within the spiritual, not at all directly related to the ordinary life of human beings such as ourselves. By doing this we render them powerless to change our lives or to bring in the kingdom of God.
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Today’s text is not a text about giving, it’s not even a text about duty and faithfulness. It does not allude to church growth or financial security. It is not a text about being grateful in a way that empowers our response to God through the church by giving more.
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This is a text about sacrifice. No, not sacrifice in terms of giving until it hurts. Money isn’t even mentioned. What is mentioned is even more confronting than any discussion of money can be. It is about giving up everything out of compassion for those who are lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
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Jesus makes a direct connection between compassion, mission and sacrifice. Now we struggle with the word sacrifice in a world of instant gratification, me first and entitlement. We are comfortable with it when we use it theologically to refer to the death of Jesus to all things material but we stumble when are asked to apply it to ourselves and how we are to define our membership of the church – our discipleship. We struggle to give up our personal opinions, biases and self-defensive attitudes, we struggle to sacrifice our comfort and leisure, we struggle to give up our comfortable buildings and practices to make room for those outside our walls.
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Yet sacrifice is essential if we are to respond with compassion to those outside the borders, those Barbara Creed refers to as strays, the people and creatures who do not exhibit the same attitudes as us toward material things or who challenge our way of life. For Creed that includes stray animals, refugees, indigenous peoples, homeless and anyone who does not subscribe to the goals of a consumer society. For Jesus these were the people he met on is wanderings and those who, although Jews, were beyond the borders of the religious world of the times.
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Jesus calls for such sacrifice, not because we should be grateful for our place in the world but because of compassion for others. Jesus encountered people who had no centre, no place to call home and no-one to care for them. These were not people who were different but people like them. Jesus does not give the reasons we might for compassion – hungry, lonely, homeless, unemployed etc – and there fore see what we are doing as helping, as reaching down and bringing people up. No Jesus uses the word compassion – that deep sense of belonging and connection which rises up from within, an emotional not a rational response, from the heart and not from the head.
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It is difficult for us to have compassion. We live in a world of hardening borders, of economic rationalism, of media portrayals of others as enemies, or if not enemies , at least someone to be afraid of. We have clearly defined categories of those who are lifters and those who are leaners, we have categories for those who have Australian values and those who don’t and any number of ways of referring to who is in and who is out.
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Yet Jesus sets the example and calls his disciples and us to have compassion and to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others. This is the call for the church and therefore it is the call each of us must answer in some way. This place is not here for our personal gratification. It does provide us a place in which we can worship and gather but it is not the full expression of who we are. What emanates from this place is what counts. If this place becomes all we do then it is a millstone around our necks. If all we are doing is maintaining the edifice then we are not fulfilling the call of Jesus.
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We have witnessed this in all wings of the church over many years as a result of the clergy abuse scandal. The church sought to protect what it had for itself and failed to have compassion and therefore make the necessary sacrifices to deal with the issues. In the end the church has been forced to make those sacrifices, not willingly through such as royal c,missions.
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The questions we need to answer here at St Oswald’s is: do we have compassion on those outside our walls who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Your neighbours, friends and those you share this community with. Those who are shut in, forgotten and denied access to all you and I take for granted. I am not talking about our service or our giving to other charities or organisations, it is not their job. Jesus calls his disciples to do this work in their place and to make the necessary sacrifices to do so.
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While organisations such as Anglicare and others have their place, they should not take the place of the work of the local church. As Ian Cutmore says, “If it is not happening where you are, it is not happening.” We cannot offload our responsibility for others to others. Our sacrifice, our giving must be sufficient to meet the needs of the local community.
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Like many churches this is not the case. We, as a congregation, do not give enough to meet the running costs of this parish without significant help from hall hirers and fundraising. As a result we are unable to make a considered financial contribution to compassion for our community - the mission of God.
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We have no budget for mission empowered by compassion. And a church without mission or engagement is a church of stagnation. We cease to exist for others and only maintain what has been important to us - liturgy that makes us feel we have been to church, a choir that suits our purposes as its members and groups that keep us comfortable.
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Jesus calls us to compassion and mission through sacrifice. This is not just about getting more people and resources in from the outside, but more people and resources out from the inside. He goes on to say: <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">7</span>As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">8</span>Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">9</span>Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, <span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">10</span>no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.”
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Jesus does not call us to the comfortable life, individually or as a church, we are to be partners in the abundance of his kingdom. We are called to give up our expectations for ourselves and to ensure others have enough by virtue of our compassion.
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As we take the time to make our commitment to our church for another year let us to do so with compassion and sacrifice and with an eye on the kingdom of God.Compassion, Mission and Sacrifice </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-55715333293624025242017-06-07T12:57:00.000+10:002017-06-07T12:57:11.626+10:00Pentecost 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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7:37-39</div>
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Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the giving of the Spirit as a result of the Ascension of the Risen Christ. This is a day of great celebration and unnerving responsibility. It is both a blessing and a challenge, a day in which we move out of the shadow of the incarnate Christ in the shape of Jesus and are left alone with the Spirit to usher in the kingdom of God.
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It is easy to get caught up in the glorious scenes depicted in the book of Acts. It sounds almost like a scene from any major Hollywood blockbuster – big, bold and life changing. And it is, or at least can be. Here there are dramatic symbols of tongues of fire and a universal language of love and hope. All are able to hear the same voice at the same time. In the moments of revelation they stand together imbued with the power of the Ascended Christ and speak and hear as one.
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John, as he is wont to do, editorises Jesus’s proclamation with the words “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive..” Jesus is offering himself as the source of the water of continuing life and John clarifies that this will only happen when the Spirit comes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and John always has great hindsight. In this case John’s hindsight brings with it the insight of cause and effect.
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John’s Jesus says, “‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” He rightly notes that this is not a natural response of human beings to an encounter with the Mystery we call God, that this will not happen without the input of grace, of a gift we are unable to see or consciously receive but that comes to those who stand with the Cosmic Christ unconditionally, without having to seek it.
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And the effect of such a gift is an outflowing of that same Spirit in the form of love, respect and wholeness by those who claim Christ as their own. Jesus says this flow will be life giving, life-enhancing, life-watering. It will be as water is to the human body and to all creation, the vital and necessary source of the ongoing existence. We can not live without water and we can not live into Christ without the Spirit.
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Let us take a little time to imagine a world in which such a spirit was freely flowing from all who believed. Let us image a country or even a community where such a spirit was freely flowing from all who believed. Let us imagine a church in which such a spirit was freely flowing from all who believed.
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Then let us take the same time to look around us and see what is really the case. A world in which violence and selfish takes pride of place, communities and countries in which people are marginalised and excluded and churches in which bullying and violence is done daily.
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In the last week or so I have spent time with clergy who have left their places of ministry this year because of bullying by parishioners. These are good and experienced clergy in parishes here in our city. They have been criticised without reason, bullied by those who resist change or simply want their own way and people within their parish have threatened some with violence. Another priest recounted a conversation with parish councillor who asked who we were reconciling with during National Reconciliation Week. When she said the aboriginals the person responded with, ‘That’s ok, we don’t have any of those here.” The fact that the priest is obviously indigenous in appearance and had been open about their background during the two years tenure seemed to have been completely missed by the person in question.
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As we talked I saw broken people who have been victims of others fear and anxiety, who have been made scapegoats for others personal insecurities and who have ceased to be persons but simply priests. I have had these experiences throughout my ministry, some of these have occurred here. As I said in my paper at the Carmelite symposium on Thursday,, “In our interactions with others there is often a crucifixion, and it is not Jesus who is crucified.”
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We know that Pentecost did not result in a problem free church. The book of Acts is full of conflict and the history of the institutional church is replete with scapegoating, inquisition and violence; innocent people have been destroyed over and over again by those who claim the Spirit of Christ. We excuse it as politics, human nature and well, that’s the way it is.
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Jesus is definite, that is not the way it is to be. He says clearly, “‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Shall flow not may flow, on a good day will flow, when they have had a good night’s sleep or any other rider. It is “shall flow” Now we know that is not always the case for ourselves and for others and we need to ask ourselves why?
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Are we awake to our own frailties and foibles, and our biases to stymie the flow from ourselves to others? Are we able to take our selves out onto the front veranda and have a full and open conversation with ourselves about how we speak to others, how we demand our own way, how we hold onto what we have and have come to value?
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Self-reflection is vital to both human and, in our context, faith growth. Without the capacity to look closely at our motivations and the impact of our words and actions on others and change pour behaviour, we will continue to wreck havoc on others in our churches, communities and the world.
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The coming of the Spirit is a gift but it is not a gift to be corralled for ourselves or recognised in major events. It is a gift that we can only receive if we allow it to flow freely through us and to do that we have to get out of the way. We are to take ourselves to task and be prepared to step away from long held prejudices, understandings, practices and opinions and make room for compassion, inclusion, welcome, mystery and not knowing if we are to be source of living water. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-75848073810484914492017-06-05T12:52:00.000+10:002017-06-05T12:52:25.571+10:00National Reconciliation Week - A Call For Action<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last Wednesday night I had a dream. I dreamt I and many others were in a compound ruled over by a powerful white bureaucrat. There were so many people there they could not all be accommodated. Some 200 were killed to make room and those left behind were made take the bodies into the hills and leave them. As we watched a black cloud began spiralling into the sky. It took the shape of wedge tailed eagles and black crows. The female and male totems of my clan hovered as the spirits of those who died rose into the sky.
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Some began a protest and were taken to a police station accused of crimes we had not committed and, believe it or not, of the crime those in power had committed. All the while the spiral of spirits connected the heavens and the earth, both devastatingly sad and infinitely hopeful.
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This is a hard dream as it highlights the destruction of indigenous peoples by people who worshipped in our churches. It raises modern issues as income management, the Northern Territory Intervention, The Closing the Gap policies, the campaign to assimilate indigenous people into the constitution along with the return to countries such as India of long serving citizens who came here on 457 visas and our treatment of refugees, Muslims, the LGBTI community and others.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">And it explains why I paint.</span> I paint for the recognition of all people and cultures and for the reclamation of the place of country, languages and culture in this place. Coming from a place where the aborigines were marked for extermination, I have no language and no culture. William Cox, landowner and Anglican at a Public Meeting in 1824 stated the following, “The best thing that can be done is to shoot all blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses. That is all they are fit for! It is also recommended that all the women and children be shot. That is the most certain way of getting rid of this pestilent race." By 1876 the last tribal aborigine, Tom Penney had died, and in 1900 those who were left in a camp at Wollar were forcibly moved to a mission at Brewarrina, never to return.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Why do I paint?</span> Thomas Merton wrote, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Art is where I find myself. I have been lost to my story and myself and have needed a process in which I can reclaim my identity. The paradox is that once I begin to paint I lose myself again, but this time with a sense of becoming something mysteriously new. I have no country to walk but my canvas. My father would use the indigenous idea of walking country and listening deeply (dadirri) as the means of discernment. I have no such land but I do have a canvas and as I sit or stand before it I begin to hear and respond to the stories hidden within it and those deep within my hidden and ancient self.
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Thomas Berry, encapsulates the experience of aboriginal people in particular when he says, “We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’” My art is an attempt to hear the voice of rivers, mountains and sea, and the voice of those who went before us. My art is an attempt to honour that voice and to amplify it into the world that has forgotten them. My art is an attempt to transform creation and people from an “it” to a “thou”.
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Jesus says in our gospel reading; ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.’ My art is an attempt to make this a reality in a world created to surge towards wholeness though compassion and respect. It is a project with no beginning and no end but is embodied in Jesus the Christ as the Alpha, the still point of creative power in all things, and the Omega, a point far in the ever-evolving future we are yet to see.
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It is important tonight to refer to the Uluru statement and the hope it appears to offer. While it is hopeful, the reality is our political leaders are not committed to it and have already begun the process of watering it down as witnessed in their initial responses. Many non-indigenous Australians are ignorant of the issues Indigenous Australians face and of which we who identify as indigenous can attest to on a daily basis, in the world and in the church.
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We must understand this statement doesn’t fully express the will of the First Nation’s people, having been crafted with an eye to securing a future referendum. It is disappointing there is not a stronger call for treaty and for a body with legislative recognition to act on behalf of indigenous people. This maybe a start and we will work and wait until we get what is just. As Vincent Lingari of the Wave Hill walk-off said, “We know how to wait."
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While we are waiting let’s consider what this Diocese can do to further this cause.
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I would call upon the Diocese of Melbourne and the Anglican Church of Australia to:
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• Publicly affirm the Uluru statement and it’s faint call for treaty, self-determination and sovereignty, and commit itself to translating these objectives into the life of this Diocese and the Anglican Church of Australia and not to settle for a minimalist position of recognition only.
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• To work to ensure the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders Anglican Commission is fully funded and empowered in the spirit of the Uluru document as the fully representative body with authority to speak into Anglican policy.
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• To work to fund a First Nations person to educate parishes in this Diocese.
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• To appoint a First Nations person as a Bishop or Archdeacon with oversight of First Nation people and clergy, and to speak on behalf of the diocese and across the province on indigenous issues.
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These are moderate but necessary steps if we are to take seriously our task of putting right the wrongs we as a church have been party to in the history of our country. These are moderate but necessary steps if we are to release the souls of our ancestors to soar in the sky with the wedgetail eagle and the black crow. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-35086330096285945552017-05-29T10:36:00.000+10:002017-05-29T10:36:15.615+10:00Art and Identity - Canvas As Country<div>
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<b>A Portrait of Australia - With Important Bits Missing - Glenn Loughrey, 2017</b></div>
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Matthew 28:16-20</div>
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Today is the Sunday closest to Ascension Day and also National Reconciliation Sunday. An interesting juxtaposition maybe, but one I would suggest, poses some interesting questions for us individually, as a church and as a society.
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Colonisation of Australia, as it did through out the world, brought with it the evangelical fervour to convert those who lived in the colonised countries to the state religion. In the case of Australia this was, initially at least, Christianity as promoted by the Church of England. And this was essentially predicated on the verses we read in today’s Gospel.
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The impact of such fervour continues to reverberate down through the ages in the experience of indigenous people. In conversation indigenous people often ask me why they should trust the church? Desmond Tutu writes, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” This was the experience indigenous peoples on all continents shared.
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Matthew’s Gospel is a powerful passage, a passage that brings power, and promises power through the giving of the Holy Spirit. Like all power, it is a double-edged sword. It all depends on how it is used. Way too often it has been used to damage people, places and creatures in the urge for control. Having everyone believe what you do ensures that you bring him or her in under your control. Belief systems are powerful moderators of peoples behaviour and the inappropriate or literal interpretation of these words from Matthew’s Gospel have been responsible for the justification of poor behaviour by the church.
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Not only by the church, but by those whose sensibilities have been influenced and informed by the church. Present policies of paternalistic politics in this country continue the conversion of indigenous people, not to a specific faith, but to a specific religion – that of secular capitalism and consumerism. Much of the policies governments and others follow are designed to assimilate indigenous people into the world of individual work, consumption and home ownership. Policies such as the Northern Territory Intervention, the subsequent Closing the Gap policy and individual items such as the indue debit card quarantining income and limiting individual responsibility and the drive to include indigenous people in the constitution have continued the idea of conversion. This time the conversion is to consumerism and making disciples for the corporations to continue to rack up profits.
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Now these are harsh words for a passage of scripture empowering the disciples to go into the world and engage with those whose worldview is different to theirs. They are harsh words as we consider the significance of the Ascension of Jesus as the releasing of the power of the Holy Spirit into the world. And we must remember that the damage done by literal and colonial interpretations of these words have nothing to do with the Holy Spirit.
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These words challenge us to receive the Holy Spirit and to listen to her activity in the world. It is about walking abroad in the world and listening to creation in all its various forms and responding out of compassion and respect to bring about wholeness in our lives, the lives of others and in creation.
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The baptism we read about is not a branding as in the branding of cattle, of ownership and control, but a baptism into the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the wholeness of the Godhead. It is a baptism of unity with all that exists for all that exists finds it beginning and end in the Source of all being – God. This baptism we are asked to conduct is the shared inclusion in the forward whole-ing of all that is, was and ever will be.
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Baptism is a partnership with the Spirit of the Christ set loose in the world, whole-d up in places, peoples and events we do not expect or cannot imagine as her dwelling place. In the lives and practices of indigenous people whose understanding of the spirit have been honed and experienced over many centuries before we in the western world encountered the incarnated Christ.
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Too often we have demanded that people who have been baptised turn their backs on their own traditions and spiritual experiences without consideration of the impact of such an action. Other times we have attempted to appropriate ideas from ancient spiritualties and redefine them within our own faith traditions and understanding. Neither is appropriate and neither is the call of Mathew’s Jesus. He is calling for a deep and respectful dialogue which brings about people who are disciples committed to the core tenets of his teachings – unconditional love and respect for all that is, was, and ever will be – the love which respects others and joins in the process of whole-ing for all.
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<span style="font-style: italic;">“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">19</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">20</span><span style="font-style: italic;">and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”</span></div>
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This passage is one of the most difficult statements Jesus is given to say. It is all open to interpretation and is often reduced to a legal and theoretical framework designed to ensure people remain faithful to a particular world view depending upon which tradition of faith you belong. It is why we struggle with equality of gender and marriage, of poverty and riches, of race and culture, of faith and religion. Our interpretations of Jesus teachings defines what we believe this should all look like and results in a simple tick sheet of who is in and who is out.
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Yet this is one of the most inclusive statements in the Gospels. Go into the world, listen to the Spirit and join with others in the journey into wholeness for all through mutual love and respect. This is the sense of the aboriginal concept of deep listening to country which Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr calls dadirri (and other mobs have different names for) – the deep mutuality of dialogue with all that exists.
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This passage challenges us to stop our incessant urge to convert people to our world view and begin the difficult but necessary task of listening deeply to others, people, places and creatures, so that all as the off spring of the Godhead can live in harmonious wholeness.
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How do we do that here, in this place? Is it our expectation that all who enter into this place must share our own particular view of faith, liturgy, music and worship? Is it our view that all who enter here must fit the model that we have been comfortable with? Are we indeed listening to hear what the spirit is saying to the church or have already decided what is being said and we do not need to listen anymore? Do we actually go out into the world surrounding our beloved church and actually engage with those who are in such a way that we begin the journey wholeness with them or are we just happy to meet here once a week for our own personal benefit?
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I suspect there was some of this in Jesus’s statement to the disciples. I also suggest that the coming of the spirit is not just for our sake, but for the whole world. You know, God so loved the world, and all that stuff. Amen </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-37186381098538363112017-05-28T10:25:00.000+10:002017-05-28T10:25:02.017+10:00Treaty, Sovereignty and Self-Determination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Road To Treaty - Glenn Loughrey - 2017</b></div>
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There
is much discussion in the media about the proposal to recognise first nation
peoples in the Australian Constitution. This was a project commenced in 2011 by
a government headed by Prime Minister John Howard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The proposal was to add a suitable clause in
the preamble and at other points within the constitution with the stated
outcome of removing race from the constitution. Once suitable statements are
agreed upon, the suggestions will be put to a referendum and if successful will
see the appropriate clauses being changed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So is recognition in the constitution an appropriate option? Only if it
is meaningful and provides not just a nod and a wink but a true devolution of the
power of self determination to those recognised. In the suggestions we have at
present this seems unlikely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
proposed is basically adding recognition to a colonial document with no
mechanisms for the proper empowerment of those who have never been included in
the colonial project., <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In
response to this project there is a groundswell of, primarily, First Nations
People calling not for recognition in the constitution but for a treaty or
treaties recognising sovereignty and enabling full self-determination. For many
FNP recognition continues the colonial project of assimilation and fails to
address the question of invasions, land wars and the subsequent trauma and
racism that continue today. For these people, these questions must be addressed
on equal terms by people who possess sovereignty in their particular areas of
governance; the Federal government for the well being of Australia as a while
and the various clans and tribes for the governance of their specific country
and peoples.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It is correct, to a point, to say State
governments cannot by reason of their existence enact and enforce a treaty with
anyone, only agreements or contracts. The only seat of power capable of
enacting a treaty is the Federal government and only then after it is agreed to
by the Queens representative. Once again, as we have seen in the recent
American experience, this can and will change depending upon the focus of the
government in power. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Yet as Michael Anderson states: <i>"State
Governments can negotiate treaties with their First Nations, but can only
negotiate on matters that are within their powers to do under their respective
State constitutions. On matters that are shared between them, like water, and
natural resources the Commonwealth would have to enjoin with the Treaty
negotiations to agree on these matters which overlap." He goes on:
"As a Peoples, First nations Peoples who negotiate agreements of any kind
can under international law have that agreement/Treaty registered with the UN
under International law. Moreover, any Treaty that may be negotiated will have
to be guided by all the Human Rights and the terms of the Decolonalisation
Committee process under the UN.”</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In terms of concerns regarding the
enforceability of treaty (ies), retired judge of the Family Court,
Alastair Nicholson suggests <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"it is
true that the only way that any treaty can be made binding upon a future
Parliament is that it is supported by some Constitutional guarantee and even
then there are provisions to amend a Constitution, albeit with difficulty in
the Australian context.” </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">He goes on to suggest several
possible ways in which a constitutional guarantee could be achieved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">"One could be that the
negotiation of a treaty, enforced by legislation, could be a precursor to an
acceptance of the need for constitutional change. This could be strengthened by
the inclusion of a fixed time provided in the legislation for the holding of a
referendum to introduce such constitutional change.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Another would be if the Constitution
was to be amended to authorise the Federal Government to enter into such a
treaty, which would be binding on all parties and the States and Territories
and could not be changed by legislation without the agreement of all parties
and/or by a referendum in accordance with the Constitution. The proposal is not
new. It appears to have been first made in the early 1980s, and in 1983 the
Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs recommended the
insertion of such a provision in the Constitution.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It is based upon a model that is
already in s105A of the Constitution in relation to State Government debt. This
model could constitutionally bind Federal and State and Territory Parliaments
to act consistently in accordance with the terms of the treaty."</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So what is it that we need to do? It has been suggested cultural respect
is the place to meet, a place where people from both camps can applaud the
others achievements, in other words, pat each other on the back, grab a stubby
and a sausage and watch the footy together? If this is the way forward then I
suggest we have trivialised the situation into absurdity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The answer is indeed hard work but it is the hard work of sovereign
respect, the respect due to equals in a process honouring of the history and
story of both and their respected places in the fabric of our society. The idea
of any form of permanent agreement is impossible while ever one side holds all
the aces in the pack and continues to treat the others as losers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It will involve the hard work of acknowledgement -the acknowledgement of
country and the ancestors and the fact that one party stole it and has no
intention of returning it any time soon. It is the hard work of sitting in deep
silence with one another and discovering what we share and how we share it with
equity and justice. The hard work of recognising our own complicity, black and
white, in the ongoing injustice indigenous people experience and finding
pathways forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It is the hard work of a long time as there is no easy or quick fix to
the hurt and tragedy, the mistakes and missteps and the communal failure to
face the truth about our shared past. It will take a level of honesty and
openness hitherto unseen in this struggle but it must occur if we are to find a
lasting solution, be it recognition, treaty or a third way no one has thought
of yet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As one who comes from an area where tribal people where all but
exterminated by mid 1800's the remainder moved out in 1900, I understand
this issue is emotive, painful and embedded in the indigenous psyche and can
not be resolved according to a western timetable or legal framework. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It can only be resolved by time, deep listening and a willingness to
stay with the process for as long as it needs. Then and only then can a treaty
be possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-74263367442072898712017-05-27T10:12:00.000+10:002017-05-27T10:12:45.653+10:00The way of the heart - one with the heavens and the earth<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Paper given at the Carmelite Symposium, May 2017</b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Acknowledgement
of Country.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I would
like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the
Werrundjuri people of the Kulin nation, and the elders past, present and
future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I would
also like to acknowledge that this land was stolen and those who stole it have
no intention of giving it back anytime soon.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNCHuCZMWkknlZWQChpxUYJ8aIHBBXrsezTc1VeuFUSjI0M48Drqtwp4lP5DJJ9jR98URabgyBG63QW7kUyqsQDFTIEP5fukPFCIsxb3rj3maSo2fj3oYNrBySjBEXpKoD-jqDQtcY9Y/s1600/Sleeping+Gemma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1478" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNCHuCZMWkknlZWQChpxUYJ8aIHBBXrsezTc1VeuFUSjI0M48Drqtwp4lP5DJJ9jR98URabgyBG63QW7kUyqsQDFTIEP5fukPFCIsxb3rj3maSo2fj3oYNrBySjBEXpKoD-jqDQtcY9Y/s320/Sleeping+Gemma.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">TALK<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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When I was asked to prepare a paper for this conference, I
made great plans to develop a deep theological paper that would have something
significant to say about the future of the church. I had plans to invite my
friends Thomas Merton <span style="background: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Czesław</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>Milosz to join me with me to
provide a deep and meaningful insight to where the future for the church lies in
this seemingly anti-church environment.<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Then
I met Jemma and my focus changed. Jemma is a rescue English Springer Spaniel
with PTSD. She is classically beautiful, gorgeously gentle and overly obedient
until the madness sets in, then she is carnage on four legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After one particular episode when she was on
her own in the house for 3 hours and we returned to canine destruction of the
maximum sort, we visited the vet, got the diagnosis and some anti-anxiety
pills. Now we have moments of normality in its various forms and life goes as
normal as possible with a nine -month old pup.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Prior
to the medication she was living at a heightened degree of perception. She saw,
heard and imagined the very worst at all times. Whatever had been her early
life experience dominated her worldview and she was unable to respond sensibly
and rationally to any kind of stimulus and input that came her way. After the
medication, her irrationality has been tempered and she is beginning to see the
world differently, not as a place of many threats, something to be feared and
the humans around as those who hurt her but as a place of safety, enjoyment and
love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world itself hasn’t changed.
Her mindset has and that has changed the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Now
Jemma shares this experience with me. A childhood of family violence, bullying
because of my race, being shot at and held hostage for several hours in the mid
‘70’s drug culture that was Wollongong, the loss of children due to doctors
errors, workplace bullying as well as the intergenerational trauma that visits
many indigenous people has left me with PTSD. This is especially the case for
me because of my connections to Jimmy and Joey Governor the protagonists in The
Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and the subsequent denial of true identity in order
to simply survive in a whites only society of the 40’s,50’s and 60’s in
Australia. This is an example of the generational trauma affecting many
indigenous Australians as they battle to find a place for themselves in this
country and which has lodged in me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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What
has this got to do with our topic – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">'The way of the heart - one with the
heavens and the earth'</span></i></b>? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The
church in the 21<sup>st</sup> century is reeling from the attack of new
atheists, the hangover of evolutionary science, the destruction of its previous
clearly defined cosmology and the many scandals that have left its reputation
in tatters. To say it has PTSD may sound trivial but it is not. With the many
stressors compounded in its recent experience it seems to me it would be better
to say it is suffering from Compound PTSD and that is something both Jemma and
I know something about.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It
is a diagnosis we both share and, like Jemma, I need medication to deal with
the anxiety events such as standing up in front of an eminent group of people
such as yourselves or a visit to Chadstone or the dentist brings up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The church shares a super vigilant, highly
tuned sense of being in a world which is sceptical at least of meta-narratives
and hostile due to the misdemeanours committed in it’s name. The ills that have
assailed it in the past and, particularly in the recent past, leave it anxious
and self-destructive. We tend to over react to the criticisms of others, to the
failings of our own people and the seemingly glaring embarrassments in
tradition, liturgy and scripture.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Where
we are now is not unlike the world Thomas Merton was commenting on from his
viewpoint in the monastery. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peace in
the Post-Christian Era "</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He writes, ‘We …live in an
irreligious post-Christian world in which the Christian message has been
repeated over and over until it has come to seem empty of all intelligible
content to those whose ears close to the word of God even before it is uttered.
In their minds Christian is no longer identified with newness and change, but
only with the static preservation of outworn structures."</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Merton
recognised and stated clearly that we were and are living in a post-Christian
era, if in fact we ever had lived in a Christian era. He spent much time
commenting on the failure of the church to catch up with society and to stand
with it and at the same time separate from it. He wrote passionately about
challenging the politics of the time and those who advocated violence and
destruction of the ordinary people. He wrote against the hierarchy of the
church and those who said they were believers and who supported the destructive
policies of nuclear war, the denial of race equality and more.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
His discussions
with Milosz in terms of those who are living in exile are of value. Read these
letters. Both men felt the pressure of exile, both had very different
experiences. But both recognised the importance of exile as an impetus to
change and revolution. Both argued that only those who find themselves exiled
from the centre of controlling power have the right to speak into the future,
to act as prophets. And it is in exile we, the church find ourselves today and
it is indeed a place of prophetic power.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Indigenous
Australians know this place. We have lived there for 200+ years. And the church
has been responsible for some of this, as it has used it connection to the
dominant powers in society to maintain a certain white European hegemony. We
will be there for many more but now we find ourselves sharing this place with
the very people who helped to put and keep us there – the church. Thomas Berry
comments that this is the way of those whose life are committed to power and
control. Sooner or later those who took the land will have the land taken from
them by those more powerful than them, and this will go on and on and on.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Part
of the issue for the church, and part of the solution, is found in how we read
the Jesus story and in particular how we read the Easter story. It is important
to consider what Easter story we engage with and what is consistent with a
progressive and modern reading of the Gospel stories and the context of the world
we now inhabit This is important for one of the solutions to our future
involves a move away from a popular reading of the cross as Jesus being the
sacrifice to atone for original sin and whose death was planned by God to
occur. Accompanying this is the need to have all people converted to this world
view regardless of how inappropriate such a demand may be. Such a reading
(penal substitution) often sits underneath our presentation and interpretation
the cross and the subsequent resurrection despite our many protestations to the
contrary. Our liturgies and our interpretations of scripture reinforce this
worldview. Our approaches to the failings of each other often involve a
crucifixion, generally not of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Is
there an alternative reading? I suggest there is and we will return to it in
just a moment.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Now
many modern or post-modern progressive Christians would say that this no longer
the case. Scholars such as Greg Jenks have clearly shown that scripture has
many different readings and a literal interpretation is not one of them. The
Christian myth touches on meaning making and speaks into the psyche or the
mystical imagination of human beings, not the intellect alone. As Elizabeth
Johnson comments, “The word acts.” And how we interpret and speak the word
influences how we see ourselves as and how we see the others we share this
world with. As Jemma shows, the word can create a monster on any given day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
This
reminds us that the church is not just about the institutional body nor is it
just concerned with human beings. The church is about all creation – every created
thing in its own place and with its own sense of being. It is the millennia of
life in progress before human beings began to walk upon the earth and it is the
millions of species living and going extinct around us now and in the
future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our worldview has to be broader
and deeper and higher than the average human being. This world is not designed
only for us and we were not designed to be the primary reason for its
existence. As Haught, Johnson, Berry and others suggest all that has gone
before us, all the varieties of creatures who began to exist at the beginning
of creation, have culminated in who we are today and we are to look forward to
what is yet to come for we are part of its interconnected birthing, however
mysterious the outcome maybe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
From
my point of view a reading of the Jesus story as simply a solution to original
sin leaves out the long history of creatures (flora and fauna for example) and
restricts the actions of Jesus to human beings who are only recent additions to
God’s creation. It also fails to address the evidence of science as to the
violence and brutal survival of the fittest that sits underneath the concept of
evolution and an ever-expanding universe. It also fails to understand that
there was no paradise to lose only a paradise to gain somewhere in the future
and that Jesus, as the ultimate example of creation’s consciousness leads us
forward, not backward.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
question is: if God’s creation is unfinished is the cross a response to a
paradise lost or a paradise yet to come into fulfilment? If the latter, as I
believe it to be, is Jesus death on the cross a sacrifice for sins or the
complete and fulfilling response to a forward moving feast of possibility we
are to embrace and to live in in conjunction with the Holy Spirit? In other
words Jesus wasn’t sent to die to put right something that was and has been
lost through original sin, but to model the possibilities to be found in the
future glory of a creation in continual becoming. What we perceive as original
sin is the by-product of creations surge for wholeness and its fulfilment in
Christ. Merton and Milosz had an interesting exchange on this very point.
Milosz suggested that Merton was able to speak philosophically about the
violence in nature such as when a hawk takes down small prey bird but that he
speaks less philosophically and without any excuse about human violence. Merton
struggles to answer this to Milosz’ satisfaction but appeals to the
consciousness of human beings as requiring a more appropriate solution to
issues than reverting to unnecessary violence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
God
has not finished and neither have we. The work of Christ’s redemptive
consciousness calls us forward into a wonder we have no possibility of seeing or
understanding from where we stand. It challenges us to reinvent or reimagine
language, liturgy, posture and presence and to engage as if this is just the
beginning. We are to stand where the characters in the Resurrection myth stood,
on the cusp of great possibility in the midst of terrible chaos. All that they
knew and trusted in had collapsed. Jesus was dead. They were scattered. Their
story had all but been demolished. Yet, Jesus came and pointed, not back but
forward, and called Mary with the caution not to hang on to what she had known but
to go tell others of the hope she now had oh so briefly glimpsed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Like
Mary, the church stands on the cusp of an ever expanding-universe God is
continuing to create in the midst of the rubble of our collective failings and is
called to go and tell of the hope we have seen. Karl Rahner suggested that
unless we become mystics or contemplatives as Christians, we would cease to be
both Christian and present in the world. Unless we step out of the dubious
comfort of past traditions, rituals and language and engage in the deep unknown
then we are doomed to report the mistakes of the past. The sins of the fathers
(pardon the pun) will be visited on the sons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background: white; color: #777777; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In </span><span style="background: white; color: #010000; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Matthew we read “Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!”
And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. </span><sup><span style="background: white; color: #777777; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></sup><span style="background: white; color: #010000; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my
brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
strikes me about this little dialogue is the direction Jesus gives to the
disciples to return to where it all began - in Galilee. It does seem a little
odd that the resurrected Jesus would want to go back to the beginning and <span style="background: white; color: #010000; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">not to move forward into new places and new
territories. A worldly leader would have used this amazing return as the
opportunity for an assault on power and control. No politician worth their salt
would take a step backward when he or she held the element of surprise.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They
are to go to Galilee and begin again without a leader to grab the limelight and
give them the upper hand. The campaign begins again, this time it is not about
an incarnate Christ but a Christ incarnate in the disciples. The emphasis
shifts from the Son of God to those empowered by the Cosmic Christ, the spirit
of the Son of God. The disciples are to be themselves by being empowered by the
spirit of God and to live out Christ in their own lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
is a powerful message. This is no longer about the physical presence of God
changing lives and challenging authority, this will be about the ordinary men
and women from Galilee standing up and taking responsibility. They return to
Galilee for the transition of authority and responsibility, for Jesus to hand
over the reins of the kingdom to ordinary men wand women now empowered by the
resurrection Spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
all have to return to the beginning at some point in our lives, be it our faith
lives or ordinary lives, to go back to where we first commenced our journey and
take the time to recalibrate our compass to ensure we are in touch with the
Source of all being. Galilee was the place where they first encountered the
Source of Life and it is where Jesus takes them as they begin the second half
of their journey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
this is exactly where the church is – reclaiming the future through a return to
its beginnings in the form of a human shaped God walking boldly and
courageously into a problematic future. Like the disciples who have to go back
to the place where they first made that connection, the church is being
challenged to leave aside the accretions of the centuries, undo the violence of
law and guilt, to let go have of well worn doctrines and decrees and pulled
down the fences of exclusion. It is time for the church to return to the
uncertainty of an incarnated life and to reclaim the future as a humble,
fallible and vulnerable presence, not unlike that of the Christ of Galilee.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A
future reclaiming church will:</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
</div>
<ul>
<li>Will be
smaller numerically as the uncertainty of the unknown will leave people who are
seeking certainty behind.</li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Will take seriously the task of making amends
for its past failings and fully embrace the process of embracing all it has
destroyed, and excluded as away to begin again.</span></li>
<li><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Will be looking to see a Creator at work in all
of history, not just that of human beings.</span></li>
<li><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Will be engaged in the evolutionary project of the
urge for wholeness in and for all of life and, therefore, will see it committed
to all people and creatures, not just those within its sacred walls.</span></li>
<li><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Will not be chained by traditions stifling its
capacity to move intellectually, technologically or spiritually. For example,
it will be challenged to include such as Artificial Intelligence within its
moral and spiritual brief as it becomes technology becomes more communicative
and conscious.</span></li>
<li><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Will let go of tribalism and embrace the full
gamut of spiritual form and philosophy, looking not for what excludes but what
includes.</span></li>
<li><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">A forward-looking church will not be about
itself but about a universe driven by the dynamism of a creator who is the
master of unfinished business. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Returning
to Jemma and we find we have a decision to make. Do we continue to defend our
place in the world; the place we feel is under threat and in some cases already
gone? Or do we recalibrate our worldview and return from Galilee to take a
vital role in the surge for wholeness driven by the Spirit of God within the
ever-becoming world? It’s up to us. Today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-71386106759655486462017-05-22T10:44:00.001+10:002017-05-22T10:44:29.051+10:00On Being Receivers Not Takers<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSydBo36PCpXie52-9du-hVLG72yTD_iD1YJZEgddfFW0ICbAnP5kdlHGwyKFGJ2fQ46gjcEwf1GFBV2DILlOoLg5Kvg6ikBy54NNjjRhb3vpnSLOFa9f5LdMb24msG7lcGYInA0wdY4/s1600/download.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSydBo36PCpXie52-9du-hVLG72yTD_iD1YJZEgddfFW0ICbAnP5kdlHGwyKFGJ2fQ46gjcEwf1GFBV2DILlOoLg5Kvg6ikBy54NNjjRhb3vpnSLOFa9f5LdMb24msG7lcGYInA0wdY4/s1600/download.jpeg" /></a></div>
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John 14:15-21
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Receiving, what a strange idea.
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We live in a world where receiving has been replaced by taking. We take time, energy, space, opportunities. We take resources from the world we live in, we take life from those who oppose us or just from creatures who get in the way of our being here. We take because we are entitled to. We are the predominant predator in the universe as we know it.
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We have little or no input into the production of the very things that sustain our lives – food, energy, wisdom. We take from experts without having the capacity to judge the opinions they impose on us. We take without knowing where our food, our news, our ideas come from. We are passive aggressive takers in a world that has transformed us from people to consumers.
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As a society, we are takers, not always conscious takers, but people programmed to consume what we are told we need or that we have become conditioned to receive. It is subtle and often couched in terms allowing us to rationalise it as rational and responsible. We build large fences around our houses for privacy and protection; we ration our resources to ensure that we will always have enough or more for our future. We concentrate only on what fulfils us and have little regard for the consequences of our consuming of resources.
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Some of this is because we are disconnected from the production of the necessities of life. We do not live next to open cut coalmines, cattle feedlots or the mono-culture farms that use chemically induced agriculture. We do not see the awful gashes in our land or the smell of a feedlot or been evicted from our lands to make al this possible.
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Some of this is because of the fear of scarcity – there will never be enough to go around, and I won’t have the resources when I need them. Much of this is created by the media, experts and specialists who are committed, not to our wellbeing but to the economy of taking, of making profits to continue the dominance of corporations.
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How different is God’s economy, the economy of the Spirit. This is an economy of receiving, of being connected to the source of your life and of waiting for the consolation of Christ to provide us all we need to be fully human, fully live. Taking partitions life, it separates and divides. Receiving unifies and brings what was disconnected and disparate together as one.
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Our Gospel is clear – unity is the essence of the spiritual life – and is fully dependent upon receiving, of waiting and becoming enfolded into the life of the Trinity.
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John reminds us clearly:
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<span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">18</span><span style="font-style: italic;">”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">19</span><span style="font-style: italic;">In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">20</span><span style="font-style: italic;">On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. </span><span style="font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super;">21</span><span style="font-style: italic;">They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”</span></div>
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There will always be enough for all your needs if you are open to receive. We will never be left with less than we need. We will never find ourselves unaccompanied in whatever stage of life we find ourselves. We are always connected to the Source through the Spirit of Christ, if we who have the commandments keep them.
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What are the commandments we are to keep? That of an open welcoming love for all reflecting our open and welcoming love of ourselves as one with the Triune God, a love that holds no-thing just for ourselves but shares all we have and are in communion with others – in a community modelled on the community of the Trinity where giving and receiving flows seamlessly and without any sense of taking, entitlement or grasping found in a modern consumer society.
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Our model is the Trinity, our practice is the Trinity. This is not a theological concept as much as a supportive community to which we belong – we are in fact in relationship with the Trinity and united as one with the Godhead there in. This is not a model of scarcity but of enough, nor is it a model were one diminishes the other in the act of taking but a relationship where the deficiency in one is filled up by the others in a dialogue of giving and receiving.
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Taken seriously this model allows us to hold lightly to life and all life brings us, and in an understanding of the self fulfilling cycle of openness and receptiveness we find ourselves always with what we need – enough. We will not be left orphaned, as John writes. We will not find ourselves destitute, homeless, friendless or penniless; for we are one with the very essence of being human – the Triune God.
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This may be true, you might agree, in terms of spiritual things and it sounds good from a pulpit but I need, you may think, to hold onto as much as I can to ensure I care responsibly for my family. Yet the truth of God’s economy is only found in letting go of what you have and being open to receive what you need.
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This is an economy based on community, of relying on one another for the betterment of all. It is localised and sufficient, not universal and more. The Christian church came into being as one which pooled resources and shared those out to one another on a needs basis. This model is the model rural and, even, urban communities flourished on until we moved from providing for ourselves to relying on others to do so through the consumer society.
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This has deeply affected church life and the sharing of resources necessary to maintain church communities. We give what we have left over after ensuring our own needs and fears are met. This is not the command we receive – we are to give out of the abundance we receive first then look after our needs.
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Receiving is hard to do because it shifts the emphasis from the responsibility of getting what we want to the responsibility of gratefulness for what we receive. It shifts the emphasis from fear to hope, from wants to needs, from excess to enough.
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John’s Jesus reminds us that there will always be enough, that we will not be orphaned, but this experience relies on us living out the commandments found in the humility of receiving. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-42949012341724314872017-05-01T11:59:00.000+10:002017-05-01T11:59:04.561+10:00Why Church?<div>
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<span style="color: black;">Luke</span> <span style="color: black;">23:13-35</span>
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Why church? Why go to church? Why are you here this morning and every other morning? What gets you out of bed and instead of having a lazy breakfast, a potter in the garden or a trip to the footy, why do you come to church?
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What is it about this place that is important to you? Some of you have been coming here to this particular church for several decades, most of you have been going to church since you were a small child, why? What is it about church that matters?
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We live in a world where truth is questioned, metanarratives like the Christian faith story are not trusted or believed; instead it seems to be a mechanical world in which only scientific or productive narratives hold sway. Every action, thought or idea must have a practical and financial outcome. We are looking for product, return on investment and ownership. We need progress; the key indicator for a successful society is one that is growing by an agreeable percentage point each year. Our businesses must be more successful and earn more, we must produce at the cheapest level possible and sell at the highest level possible. We ignore local communities and exploit foreign workforces to do so. Local, small and connected to a narrative that gives life to community simply has no place in the modern economic kingdoms of large corporations and the governments they control.
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Even the church, the institutional church, is on about growth, numbers, systems, programs, key performance indicators and outcomes. No longer are we allowed the time to simply cogitate on life and bring forth wisdom to feed and nurture our local communities.
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The success of indigenous communities over the ages, where ever they have been found, has been their connection to place, people and time. They know the place they live in deeply, they understand their interdependence upon each other and they also know that the greatest asset they have is time. 50,000 years is what it took for indigenous communities to learn to live in harmony with place and people. It has taken the mechanistic world a little over 200 years to have a serious impact upon it.
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Why church? Why the seemingly use-less-ness of church? Why is it important? And why should it have our full attention and support?
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On the road to Emmaus two men are deeply engrossed in the politics of the day. They were personally involved in this story and it has apparently collapsed without producing the outcome they sought – revolution and a new world. They are despondent and closed in on themselves, having lost the narrative giving meaning to their existence. They are joined by another whom they hardly acknowledge, just as we would as we bump into people on the train, the tram on in the corridors of Chadstone shopping centre – aware that they are there but not taking notice of particulars.
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Their eyes are closed. Their concern for their own worries prevent them from seeing who is right their in front of them. It is so easy to walk around with eyes closed. Even when we come to church, we can come with eyes closed. We bring with us all the concerns of our daily grind and go through the motions. We are comforted by the presence of familiar faces, familiar music and the familiar liturgy, but are our eyes open? Do we see who is standing next to us and who we owe our very existence to? Do we understand that this not about our concerns and our issues, but about the amazing hesed – unfailing companionship and compassion – of the Christ and that we owe everything to the Godhead who keeps and empowers us – even in the midst of our ordinary lives?
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In this story, Jesus becomes the interpreter of the political events, of the events of society and explains what has been playing out in the world around them. And their eyes are still closed. Knowledge and information do not open closed eyes. Recent scientific evidence suggests that people are so impacted by preconceived ideas and prejudices that facts do not change their minds. Here is a case in point. Despite hearing everything about what had happened from the one who was there in a way no one else could, their eyes remain closed.
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This is often the case for us, we are so committed to our opinions on, our knowledge about God and faith, and our expectations about life and church that we fail to see what is happening and what is needed; we fail to see why we actually come to church. These men almost get this. They are moved, challenged, enlightened by what Jesus says, but their eyes remain closed. The intellectual and evidential truth of Jesus’ words fail to move them out of their own self-interest – out of their concern for themselves.
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Jesus stays with them for dinner and something happens, we are not sure exactly what it is but in the breaking of the bread a light goes on in the head and their eyes are open. In this moment of deep personal encounter with the symbolism of faith they see, as for the very first time, who is at the centre of their lives. Not just their faith but their lives.
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Here is a deep recognition of the centrality of the Christ to our identity, existence and being. Their world is refocussed and instead of going on with their ordinary lives centred solely on themselves, they return to Jerusalem, driven by the realisation that their life is no longer their own.
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Even though their hearts burned with in them on the road, nothing changed for them. We can be made warm and fuzzy by our attendance at church without being revolutionised by the Christ. It is the deep sacramental realisation that there is no thing else but the church and that our lives are to be completely oriented toward the church, the body of Christ, and its advancement counter-culturally into the world.
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They get up immediately, abandon whatever their plans were and go back to Jerusalem and take up the mission of the church. There is no hesitation, no second guessing, no concern for their needs or desires; they return empty handed but open eyed into the church.
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Why church?
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<span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "symbol";"> </span> Because there is no other response to the love of God and the indwelling presence of the Christ;
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Because there is no other response to the faithfulness of God to us;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Because there is no other response to the beauty and mystery of creation;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Because there is nothing more important than the maintenance and advancement of Christ’s body in the community in which we live.</li>
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Why church?</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">This is why we give of ourselves sacrificially in service and financial support. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">This is why we give to the church before we give to ourselves.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">This is why we give up our comfortable beds to be here, because there is no other choice for us.</li>
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Why church? </div>
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Because all the other experiences in the world do not open our eyes to the truth about the Christ we encounter like the moment we meet Jesus in the Church, his mystical body alive in the world. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-32349065808785154932017-04-24T09:00:00.000+10:002017-04-27T14:58:13.926+10:00Do We Need A Physical Resurrection?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="color: black; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">John 20:19-31</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today we come to the story of Thomas whose critical mind puts him at odds with the other disciples. He needs more that the words of others to confirm the presence of the Christ in the world. He needs to see it for himself. To be there and engage with the physicality of Jesus the Christ in such a way it proves the words of others.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He needs a personal experience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We live in a world where we need evidence, proof, the truth. We are always seeking to know, see or experience something before we will attest to its truth, its beauty, its existence. Often we say that you had to be there, you won't know until you experience it, you have to se it for yourself. We live in a world which channels Thomas into our everyday life and existence. It is the reason we who value rational thought struggle with myth and the primal experience of those who are yet to be seduced by rational thinking. Wisdom eludes us because it cannot be embodied or experienced in the way provable facts and visible evidence can.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And this poses a problem for us all. Was Jesus the product of a miracle, a virgin birth defying all the physical implications of such an event? Did Jesus who was dead on the cross, placed in a tomb and treated with 100 pounds of nard, walk out of the tomb for all intents and purposes as alive as he was before the crucifixion?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Pastor and author Tim Keller, “The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection.” NT Wright, the Anglican author, argues that without a physical resurrection than can be no viable explanation for the birth of the Christian church.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both men are examples of our need for evidence, for a physical presence which is, at the same time, beyond the rules and laws of the physical world. Do we need the physical and the miraculous to experience the Cosmic Christ? We may need such if we are only concerned about the man Jesus, if Jesus from Nazareth is the focus of our faith, or if we need an interventionist God to do big things, then perhaps we need the miraculous and the material to maintain our faith. If we only focus on Jesus then I understand where both Keller and Wright are coming from.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But you see it is not about Jesus, it is about the Christ, the Cosmic or universal one who was there at the beginning of all creatures, was present in the life and death of Jesus, and remains with us into the future after this cataclysmic event in the form of the Spirit, the pointe vierge (virgin point) within.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After Jesus, the Christ continues.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is the crux of our faith, not a belief in the improbable just because, perhaps as some say, God could do the improbable if God wanted to, but a personal experiential faith in the Christ who imbues all with life and gives birth to a life that continues long after the cross. My question is always why does God need to break all the laws to prove God-ness? Why do we always look for these demonstrations of greatness to bolster our faith? Is it more about creating a God that fits into our image instead of finding a God who simply is? If our faith rests only on miracles, virgin births and a physical resurrection is that enough?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">David Ewart writes</span>, <span style="color: black;">"John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is –(the Christ). That is why he has written these signs for us. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus (the Christ, not Jesus the human figure)." This is the purpose of Thomas’s critical eye. This is the purpose of the encounter. Thomas doesn’t even touch the physical body. In the end he doesn’t need the physical. He simply needs presence, awareness, the awakening of his inner eye to the truth about Jesus the Christ.</span><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn1" style="color: black;" title="">[1]</a>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">"John is not anti-miracle, but he is critical of the focus on the materiality of miracles and Thomas surely approaches that stance. Blessed are those who believe who did not need the proofs (<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.blogger.com/null">20:29</a>)."</span><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn2" style="color: black;" title="">[2]</a> <span style="color: black;">The need for miracles to prove God is God is not what John is about. There is no need for an improbable virgin birth or a risen dead man, what is needed is the capacity to see the invisible – the essence of all being – love – at work in the experience of the Christ.</span>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thomas arrives and in the presence of his friends experiences the presence, the empowerment, the reality of Christ without the need to verify it by putting his hands in the scars.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I, like John, am not anti-miracle, just don't need miracles to affirm my faith and in a world committed to the physical and the material we need a counter-cultural faith, a faith that is empowered solely by presence and awareness, by stillness and silence, by the unspectacular and the ordinary, by the authentic and the foundational thread tying us all together. In a world of the spectacular we need the value of the hardly noticeable, almost invisible unspectacular presence of the Christ in our ordinariness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, Thomas had an experience but it was more than a physical experience, it was an experience that opened his eyes to the truth about the identity of Jesus. It was an awareness of the Christ as the centre of all being, the Alpha and the Omega of all existence. It was not of resurrected human being but of the continuing existence of the powerful presence of God in all life. The resurrection, however it occurred, brought to the disciples and those who experienced it an incredible sense of the enduring and unceasing creative power of the Source of all life and it was sufficient to take them out into the world to face whatever the future held for them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don’t need my Jesus to be the result of a rule breaking God, I can not do the intellectual gymnastics to embrace the physical resurrection as a necessary part of my faith experience. And I suspect, in the modern world, many mature believers and thinkers are unable to do so. We do not have to because neither did Thomas in the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christ the source of all life who Thomas saw via his inner eye is sufficient in all Christ’s mystical beauty and cosmic presence for a vibrant faith in this world. We need no thing else. Amen</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftnref1" title="">[1]</a> Parentheses mine.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftnref2" title="">[2]</a> William Loader</span></div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-46922076964852851862017-04-20T11:16:00.000+10:002017-04-20T11:16:04.919+10:00Back To The Beginning<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<i><span style="color: #777777; font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">9</span><span style="color: #010000;">Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. </span><span style="color: #777777; font-size: smaller; font-size: smaller; vertical-align: super;">10</span><span style="color: #010000;">Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”</span></i></div>
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What strikes me about this little dialogue is the direction Jesus gives to the disciples to return to where it all began. Jesus asks the two Mary’s to go and tell the disciples that they will see him Galilee. The angel had already said that this was the plan that Jesus was going ahead of them to Galilee.
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It does seem a little odd that the resurrected Jesus would want to go back to the beginning and <span style="color: #010000;">not to move forward into new places and new territories. A worldly leader would have used this amazing return as the opportunity for an assault on power and control. No politician worth their salt would take a step backward when he or she held the element of surprise.</span>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Surely Jesus would want himself and his team to capitalise of the element of surprise his return would bring, surely a resurrected Jesus would attract the crowds and see a massive upward movement in the popularity polls? Surely Jerusalem would have been a better place to go and be seen? Surely there the kingdom of God project would get some traction and bring out about justice, freedom and healing</span> that was so desperately needed?
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No, they are to go to Galilee and begin again without a leader to grab the limelight and give them the upper hand. The campaign begins again, this time it is not about an incarnate Christ but a Christ incarnate in the disciples. The emphasis shifts from the Son of God to those empowered by the Cosmic Christ, the spirit of the Son of God. The disciples are to be themselves by being empowered by the spirit of God and to live out Christ in their own lives.
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This is a powerful message. This is no longer about the physical presence of God changing lives and challenging authority, this will be about the ordinary men and women from Galilee standing up and taking responsibility. They return to Galilee for the transition of authority and responsibility, for Jesus to hand over the reins of the kingdom to ordinary men wand women now empowered by the resurrection Spirit.
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We all have to return to the beginning at some point in our lives be it our faith lives or ordinary lives, to go back to where we first commenced our journey and take the time to recalibrate our compass to ensure we are in touch with the Source of all being. Galilee was the place where they first encountered the Source of Life and it is where Jesus takes them as they begin the second half of their journey.
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There is an ad on TV which says, If I only knew then what I know now. Returning to the place where we started our journey allows us space for a new perspective on our life, our achievements and our troubles. It allows us to put down our roots once again and to step forward with a sense of confidence and hope.
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After the time spent in hidden spaces fearful of the response of the authorities after Jesus death, the disciples have returned to the familiar, in place, in faces and the in activity. They regrouped and rediscovered what drove them to go with Jesus in the first place.
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They rediscovered their first love and Jesus allows them the grace to do so, the opportunity to grieve his physical loss and to gain the fervour of their first love reborn. It is this love that takes them on through Pentecost to plant the church in a world that had crucified the Christ. The scenes we see at Galilee reflect the scenes they experienced of Jesus when he first called him – fishing, sharing a fish barbecue and stepping forward to follow Jesus by leaving their boats behind. This time they do it out of an experiential love of the truth he shared with them, the truth he became to them and the truth he implanted in them through the Spirit. This time they go not blindly and without knowing, but open eyed and knowing what is possible.
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When we first discover faith when we are young we want it all. We want to change the world, to tell everyone what we have found and to grab it all for ourselves. As we grow older and stuff happens we may become jaded and disillusioned by others and by our expectations of God – our fish love begins to take over. At some point in our lives we begin to discover wisdom not knowledge, stillness not activity and we begin to return to first love, albeit very differently than the first time.
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It is in these mature and often later years of our lives that we begin to live lives of faith, hope and love based on experience and grace, not energy and enthusiasm of which there was plenty of the first time around for the disciples. Now they and we begin to relax into the presence of the Christ through the Spirit
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And trust that all indeed will be well no matter how dark it may seem.
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On this Easter Day we, you and I, may be being called back to Galilee, back to those first experiences of faith, hope and love in the being of Jesus the Christ and being asked to begin again, but this time with greater mindfulness and focus on the presence of the Source, the Spirit in our personal life and the life of the whole creation. Maybe this glorious, day is the day we begin again without the angst of unknowing and of the expectation of success, only to rest in the knowledge that we are not alone and all things are possible. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-92214488324800555392017-04-19T11:11:00.000+10:002017-04-19T11:11:00.548+10:00In The Absence of God.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Three of the Survivors of The Sandakan-Ranau Death March.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Writing a Good Friday sermon is difficult. The violence, injustice and incredible cruelty of the incident is overpowering. The machinations of those involved to maintain power and control, to manipulate those in charge to do their bidding and the fear-full failure of those who followed Jesus is almost impossible to accept. We struggle with the pain of this event and, perhaps most of all, the sense of abandonment experienced by Jesus – by both God and those whom he had lived amongst.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John presents Jesus as assured and confident throughout both his Gospel and this event. He is the symbol of one who has unbreakable faith in God. Jesus is depicted by John as an icon to be grasped as the standard of faith for all within the Johnannine community in their battle with tradition and society. On the cross there is none of the brokenness of Gethsemane and the cry of despair we find in Mark.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">Even the words ‘It is finished’ (<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.blogger.com/null">19:30</a>) signify Jesus has confidently completed the task given to him, to make the Father known</span><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn1" style="color: black;" title="">[1]</a><span style="color: black;">. While it is often linked to the atoning for sins as if Jesus is saying: I have made the sacrifice of my body which I came to make on behalf of creation, this is not John’s point. This would certainly be the way the author of Hebrews would read it</span><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn2" style="color: black;" title="">[2]</a><span style="color: black;">, but it is not John’s emphasis, nor is it mine. Instead the focus is Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s commission revealed even in the face of suffering which despite the confidence is real</span><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn3" style="color: black;" title="">[3]</a><span style="color: black;">. The effect is to reveal love and expose hate and so offer a new beginning.</span> <a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn4" style="color: black;" title="">[4]</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">What a challenging mission this was and is. It cost Jesus his life. It cost the one who was there at the beginning of creation his being in this world, and revealed that being as the Christ of the Cosmos.</span><span style="color: black;"> </span> <span style="color: black;">It cost beyond measure, the cruelty was beyond pain and was achieved in great silence and deep stillness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was the silence of being laid bare without the comfort of the felt presence of God or those who were close to him. Even if people were there, there is a deep silence in suffering separating the one suffering from all who attempt to be present. It is deep, private, harrowing and uncommunicable. There is no way anyone else can understand the depth of our personal suffering, what ever it is and how ever it manifests itself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The danger is we may try and emulate the response of John’s Jesus and find ourselves unable to be as iconic, stoic or faithful as John portrays it. I doubt that that was the reality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2010 I walked the Ranau to Sandakan death march for the first time. This was the march at the very end of the Second World War the Japanese army forced 2,434 prisoners of war to undertake. Only 6 survived and they men who escaped. When we walked the track we did so for a soldier who died. Mine was Padre Harold Wardle-Greenwood. He was a brave and compassionate man who cared for the dying in his group of 50 on the March. Yet, Lynette Silver writes “Harold Wardle-Greenwood had comforted the dying and disconsolate for so long that he was now broken physically and spiritually. He had lost his faith in a God who, he believed had forsaken them. Indeed,” Silver continues, “it would have taken a man of superhuman faith to have believed such death and suffering was God’s will”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2012 I walked for Padre Thompson. As I sat on the top of the hill where Thompson died, I had little doubt that if it had been me that I too would have felt completely abandoned by God. The hill, even for a well fed well rested reasonably fit person was a challenge, coming after several days of walking through the intense heat, the suffocating humidity, the rain and the unceasing red gluggy mud sticking to your boots. For men who had had no nourishment, were sick with a range of debilitating illnesses and lugging twice their body weight in equipment, it must have been hell only punctuated by the sounds of shots as the guards shot another soldier and rolled them over the edge.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This was suffering that could have been avoided if appropriate action had been taken when it was planned. It was suffering that was covered up and forgotten about for over 40 years. This was suffering that was real and needless. This was suffering of the deep silence only Jesus could share for only the suffering of Jesus on the cross is able to replicate the abandonment these men felt. Keith Botterill, a survivor, comments they kept going in the hope that someone would survive to tell their story. 6 men fulfilled that hope.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John portrays Jesus as confident in God to glorify him for his faithfulness unto death, yet I wonder if that is exactly how Jesus felt? Would Jesus have been disappointed if the situation had been resolved and he had continued to live and be in the world? Would it have been a failure if the Jews and the Romans had recognised the mission of Jesus and changed their way of being?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For us who may find ourselves in the midst of the silence of an absent God, are we expected to be as iconic as Jesus and plough on with unbruised hope? Is this a realistic ask of people facing a diagnosis of cancer for themselves or someone they love; for someone who has lost their livelihood and home; for someone who despite all their efforts are unable to work or get work; for those who are burying families due to the insanity of war; or those unable to be with their family because of incarceration?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes, John, you can hold Jesus up as a model but remember Jesus was human as well as divine and felt every abandonment by his friends, every lash of tongue and whip, and every hammer blow, just like those others who were crucified at the same time. He too would have felt submerged in the abyss of a silent God. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Where does that leave us? Do we join with John and see Jesus the icon of suffering we are to emulate or do we to look beneath the story and see the struggle of a human being deeply broken by a death he would rather have avoided? How do we make sense of his and our suffering? How do we hang on when we are dying, in whatever form that particular death takes, and hope in hope itself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We can appeal to the resurrection as the evidence of hope but is that always possible, or do we lose sight of Sunday while we are alone in Friday?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are no quick answers. Yes, John’s Jesus shows how to grasp the hope but be not disappointed if you find yourself incapable of doing so. Jesus has already done it on your behalf for he is the only one who knows the depth of God’s silence you feel. Hang onto him.</span></div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-77831401277467900282017-04-18T11:03:00.001+10:002017-04-18T11:03:50.296+10:00Amateurs - The Love of the Two Mary's<div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"As so often happens, the great discovery in the drama that is Easter was the work of amateurs.” An amateur is, in the primary sense of the term, a "lover." Our favourite amateur sleuths on TV are lovers – lovers of people, of intrigue and of little hints, the nods and winks that break what seems to be unbreakable alibis and stories. They stumble almost by accident onto the truth and discover the truth. Our history is full of amateurs who have discovered new stars, new formulas and new ways of doing things the experts would be, and are, jealous of.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“…the Mary's went to the tomb out of love”, love for Jesus, love for the truth, love for hope... “. If we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there.” Not inquisitiveness, not fear, not a need to confirm that their worst nightmare had happened. They went out of love, a passionate heart called them forward to stand near and with the one who had held all their hopes and dreams.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You see, “Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning.<a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span style="color: black;">[1]</span></span></a>” Love, a word we use much but understand little. Love is a term that has been emasculated of it’s power and it’s beauty in a world were words have only an utilitarian use. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Mary’s get up early, and get to the tomb before everyone else. Maybe they wanted to see if they could further care for the body, maybe they hoped they could see him for one last time, maybe…… maybe… they just had to be near him. They had loved him, he them, and love and the memory of that love was all they had left.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">“A</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">nd their love was rewarded: “</span><sup><span style="background: white; color: #777777; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">9</span></sup><span style="background: white; color: #010000; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski relates a discussion with a young boy who has a plate of fish in front of him. The young boy says, “I love fish.” The Rabbi asks, “You love fish?”. “Yes”, the boy replies, “I love fish.” The Rabbi replies, “ Is it love for the fish that makes you catch it, kill it and boil it?”. He continues, “It is not the fish you love, but you love yourself. You love how the fish makes you feel. You do not love the fish. You love yourself.” He finishes with, "So much of what is called love, is fish love."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So much of what passes for love of Jesus the Christ is indeed fish love. We can love Jesus for what we believe Jesus can do for us, from fire insurance to a superman rescue, from rags to rishes, for healing and redemption. There is much of ourselves in this love. We love Jesus as long we are not made uncomfortable, challenged with ideas and opinions that turn our world upside.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We love Jesus if we can still<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> have our overseas holidays, our big houses and our fancy cars. We love Jesus if everything goes our way. We watch politicians invoke God to support ideas God would never entertain. We have sport men and women who thank God for winning a medal or trophy. We love Jesus if our privileged lifestyle continues and suggest others need to love Jesus like us if they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Our love for Jesus can be little more than self love, love of self, and the church is not exempt from such love. Love of liturgy, music, existence and fancy clobber all smack of self love.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What the world and the church need is the love of the Mary’s, that simple love that goes to the one they love despite a broken heart, tear filled eyes and tired bodies, people who are finding the silence of God to be like a black hole into which they may very well disappear. Yet they go to the one they love.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here in this parish I watch this love happen week in week out. People come with broken hearts, broken bodies and carrying great burdens but they come and they participate in the liturgy or they carry out their small and seemingly insignificant acts of love and they see Jesus. They do the flowers, polish the pews, tidy the candles, prepare the elements for the Eucharist, play the organ, prepare the choir, sing in the choir, make palm crosses, do the pew sheets, count the money, balance the books, run the book sales, manage the website, mentor a student, tidy the church for events such as this, and more, much, much more, and they see Jesus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being at the tomb and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not the task of the professionals, the clergy, the studied alone; it is the gift of love. Love that makes the journey to the place where mysteries are revealed, and the love that responds with the beauty of grace. And this love is the domain of the amateur, the ordinary person who sees beyond the mechanical actions of the tasks they carry out into the wonders hidden from those who are more learned and studied.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt;">In the midst of a dark world where we name </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2666666805744171px;">weapons</span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"> of destruction with sexy names like Mother or Father of All Bombs, what is the </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2666666805744171px;">response</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"> of love? The response is the love of beauty, mystery and wholeness of the ordinary. Someone said to me when asked this question, I just try to do </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2666666805744171px;">beautiful</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"> things in the ordinary everyday acts of my life and hope that will help. It is the only thing that helps.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; letter-spacing: -0.2pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The two Mary’s remind us this Easter by their act of beauty and love, that such acts will never be denied no matter how dark the morning maybe, that beauty and love are their own own reward and only rewards those who let them loose in the world, making no claims of ownership. While I am sure the two Mary’s loved fish, their love for Jesus was no fish love. Amen</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><a href="evernote-html-snippet://#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span style="font-family: Cambria;">[1]</span></a> <span style="font-family: Verdana;">John C. Purdy. Chapter 12 of <i>God With a Human Face</i> (1993), republished at <i><a href="http://www.religion-online.org/"><span style="color: #666699;">Religion Online</span></a></i>.Fish Love</span></span></div>
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Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-56840392532637590702017-04-12T14:50:00.001+10:002017-04-12T14:50:23.841+10:00Bearing Fruit<div>
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John 12:20-36
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<span style="color: #010000;">John the Gospel writer annoys me and the more I read him the more he does. He always has to explain the very thing he just wrote as if those reading it are too thick to get his meaning. And when I am feeling like this I get to thinking he may be right.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">We are too thick to get what he is writing.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">The Fathers of the church and scholars through the ages have taken much of what has been written and interpreted it in such a way that the life of Jesus is seen primarily as God’s response to original sin. Apparently we are all inherently bad and need a sacrificial lamb without spot to cast our sins upon for redemption. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">This is how this verse is often interpreted. Jesus dies so we can live. But we add bits that aren’t there. We add sin and the need for an angry God to be propitiated for our humanity. We add the ghastly event of Good Friday to this, not as a testimony to the commitment of Jesus as the fully conscious human being who stays with the demands of the Kingdom of God right until the end, but as a bloody sacrifice for sin.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">John, perhaps, captures the natural process of evolution and reminds us that when something individual dies it is reborn somewhere within the species, it leaves behind something to empower, embolden and to add to others. This is the process God chose for creation and it is the process John refers to here.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Jesus is just like the significantly insignificant grain of wheat, on its own it contains the essence of daily living, but when it dies it gives birth to much more than it could ever achieve individually. The death of Jesus, as the fully alive sentient being, the culmination of all evolutionary creation to this point is the catalyst for change, for another way of being in the world and for wholeness.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">This is what is born in the idea of much fruit. Jesus is not specific about what the fruit looks like – is it spiritual, is it social justice, is it found in mystics, activists, lay people or monks, is it found in one strain of religious thought and practice, is it confined to one particular set of dogma, orthodoxy or practice over against another? Jesus simply says it will bear much fruit and just like the grain of wheat cannot give fruit from a pineapple, the essence of the one who dies will be the signifying essence of the fruit. In other words it will be found in the form of other fully alive sentient beings who live for wholeness, justice and respect at the gentle and not so gentle prodding of eternal love.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Like gives birth to like . Not like in particular but like in essence and Jesus is bearing fruit throughout this world in all lives in tune with urge for wholeness embedded within all creation by the Source of all love.</span></div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-70760519780683345922017-04-10T15:00:00.000+10:002017-04-10T15:00:22.868+10:00The Sensual Jesus<div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>B</b></span><b style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">rooklyn_Museum - The Ointment of the Magdalene (Le Parfum de Madeleine) - James Tissot</b></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">John 12:1-11</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">If we ever had any doubts about Jesus and his humanity, here is a scene which challenges all our perceptions.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">The easy place to go is the confrontation between Judas and Jesus over the wasteful use of money. Money that Judas deemed should be used to assist those in need and he makes his very valid point forcefully.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Jesus responds with what sounds like a callous response, you will have the poor with you always but me you won’t. Is that a valid and rational point? Is that an excuse for ignoring the waste happening in front of him or is there something else happening here?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">This scene is a very emotionally charged scene, almost erotic in its telling. Let us listen again to these few verses:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">“There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Wow. This was not rational, formal, respectable dinner party. Deep emotions bubble to the surface in a room charged with deep feelings for each other. A woman not only enters the rooms but bends low over Jesus and pours a large amount of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> very strong and sensual perfume over Jesus’ feet an begins to wipe it with her hair. This is a moment that would have taken the breath away from who were sitting in the room. It had the essence of deep love, deep intimate love, deep emotional love.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">It was a deeply human connection between two deeply human people and Jesus could not have ignored the emotions and feelings that came with this moment. It was seductive, as seductive as any of the temptations he had experienced previously, and he recognised it for what it was – deep feelings not to be ignored but to be recognised.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">Judas does what we seem to do with these human and juicy bits, he turns away and changes the subject. He goes for the old the money should be used for the poor strategy, but Jesus keeps him in the emotionally perfumed room. This is about deep love and a love that is to be expressed and experienced in the moment.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #010000;">This moment reminds us that this is not just a story we can spiritualise and give the meaning that makes us most comfortable. It is a story of individual people complete with deep emotions and ordinary reactions. If we lose sight of this in this story then we will likely lose sight of it our understanding of Easter and of the people we see around us. People will become objectified – for Judas they become the poor – for us they become widgets in the consumerist puzzle – for Jesus they are people who feel deeply and need places where they can express those feelings without judgement and criticism. And yes, they sometimes may seem erotic as this one does.</span></div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-18738261482554198292017-04-10T10:20:00.000+10:002017-04-10T10:20:04.276+10:00Why Did Jesus Die?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew 21:1-11</span></div>
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The sign on our noticeboard asks the question, “Why did Jesus die?” and answers it with “Because of his politics.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> This may seem to be a 21<sup>st</sup> century response to a deep question that is often answered very differently.
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For many people the answer to why Jesus died has to do with the crash known as original sin resulting in broken relationships and a paradise abandoned, the story of two people who made a decision resulting in the suffering of generations following. This story turns the death of the man Jesus into one of sacrifice and scapegoating as a response to the frailty of humanity, seemingly out of proportion to the supposed sin and out of character for a God who was, we told, the one who created us in the first place.
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The story John provides us with today, the wandering rabble entering Jerusalem, is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> a story of confrontation with tradition, power and the political system. Jesus has known for some time that his pronouncements about his relationship with God whom he intimately describes as father, his identification with key theological themes via the I Am statements in John's Gospel and his general denouncement of both Rome and the Temple elite is not going to end well.
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">His entry into Jerusalem is an acclamation mark on his political protest. David Ewart reminds us that</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: black;">"Jerusalem is not a large city. And what the authors of the Bible take for granted and fail to mention is that while Jesus is parading in on a donkey through one of the back gates, on the other side of the city Pilate is parading in on a war horse accompanied by a squadron or two of battle-hardened Roman soldiers.” He adds, “ Do you think anyone at Pilate's parade heard about Jesus' parade? Heard what the crowd had shouted? Let's see what unfolds in the week ahead."</span></span>
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Now its important to understand that while Jesus death is because of a response to his politics, his politics is not the politics the people of his day, or we of our day are used to. It is not a politic of power and control, of power and control for power and control's sake alone. Much of what passes for politics can be reduced to self-interest, the self-interest of maintaining control over others for your own benefit. Policies are made and implemented that are designed to maintain those in power to remain in power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> Policies, no matter how necessary they may be that would threaten a party’s control on government are quickly jettisoned for those which will ensure power remains in the hands of those who have it now.
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The politics of Jesus is the politics of the kingdom of God. The ramble into Jerusalem is symbolic of the politic of non-violence, community, wholeness and inclusion that is the kingdom of God and runs contrary to the politics of power, exclusion, individualism and oppression. Jesus is joined in this final confrontation with those on the margins of society; women, rural folk, those who have been healed physically and redeemed from impossible lives due to the rules enforced by those in religious and political power.
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Jesus uses a young donkey, people hail him as King and he enters in defiance of a show of power occurring simultaneously. Jesus is holding up a mirror to society and challenging it to choose the way it wishes to go. Does it continue to live by violence (the Romans), wish to regain independence by violence (the religious leaders) or to offer something new – a vision of the world in which relationships, justice and hope are freely shared with all? Is it ready for a completely new way of doing life ?
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">Sarah Breuer</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">suggests <span style="color: black;">"Jesus didn't come to take over Pilate's system; he came to replace it. When we confess that Jesus is Lord and Christ, the God’s anointed, we are leaving no room for the Pilates of this world." John makes this very clear when he writes “<sup><span style="background: white;">4</span></sup><span style="background: white;">This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, <sup>5</sup>“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”</span></span></span>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">Interestingly this wasn’t what the crowds watching on saw. “<sup>11</sup>The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”” This is the danger in every protest, march or alignment with the kingdom of God, those involved will be seen as prophets or protesters, do-gooders who are interesting, perhaps have something to say, but they and what they have to say are quickly marginalised and sidelined as an oddity. Jesus was abandoned by many who followed him or stood by the road in a very short time because the politics of the kingdom of God not only challenged those in power but also those under their power.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">The difficulty we find with Jesus and his politics of the kingdom is it is not remote, it is not about them, it is not out there – it is personal, intimate and revealing, it is about how we live and act in the everyday. We are implicated in the violence of the prevailing politically system every time we pay our taxes, cast our vote or support one or other of the possible contenders. Somewhere in the week after Palm Sunday people may have begun to understand the implications of following Jesus and realised the cost and decided it was more than they could pay. They had families, businesses and responsibilities and while this kingdom of God looks good on paper it is risky and it was a risk they did not wish to take.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">After the procession Jesus makes a full frontal attack on the money lenders and the traders in the temple, a blatant protest against the way the politics of both church and state exploited the anawin or little ones, the ones with out power. While this was an annoyance to those in power it was frightening to those who feared the fallout, the very people Jesus kingdom stood for. And over a period of a week the politicians regained the upper-hand and crucified Jesus. Self interest seems always to triumph even if it is the self interest of better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">If we just look at this story as a story about Jesus the man<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> who died on the cross we miss the power of Jesus the Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was there at the very beginning of creation and the one we leads us forward as the Omega – our destination as a creation in him somewhere in the future. We miss the truth that this is not about personal frailty, personal sin or even the sinful nature of humanity (original sin) but about the communitarian journey into wholeness – the journey of all of creation to a place where we enter the Garden for the very first time.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">The politics of the kingdom are the politics of whole –ing – of making whole, of breaking down all that separates existence into parts. It is a process that began at the beginning of creation and will continue beyond the foreseeable future. It will indeed replace all Pilates, political or religious and take us into places beyond our imagination.</span></div>
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As we walk the dusty road with Jesus do we have what it takes to live out the politics of the kingdom or do we value our own self interest beyond our commitment to the Source of that kingdom? Tough question to answer.</div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-55485412742023117352017-04-04T12:45:00.000+10:002017-04-04T12:45:39.833+10:00Fourth Day Living - The Day Beyond Hope<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;">
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">"LOST: male dog, has one eye, mangled left ear, missing left hind leg and most of his teeth, crooked tail. Answers to the name, ‘Lucky'.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In our modern day world I suspect many of us feel a little like Lucky. We are bombarded by bad news – bad news on a world scale, bad news on a local scale and bad news on a personal level. It never seems to stop. You turn on the tv to watch a little news and relax, and all you get is one bad story after another, even the shows which are supposed to entertain are full of anger, bully and violence. Watch an episode or two of Married at First Sight, My Kitchen Rules or The Block to see what I mean.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Talk a stroll through the local bookshop or record store (are there any of these any more?) and take a look at the covers, the story briefs or the lyrics and you will be surprised by the words used, the storylines or violence and horror which seems to permeate almost everything out there.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1a1a1a;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, wrote in 1956; <i>“We have a literacy above 90 per cent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. But instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of men with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in a while. But while the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no “immorality” occurs on the screen."</i></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Little seems to have changed in the 60 years since he wrote that. There seems to be no end to bad news and we may find ourselves overwhelmed and feeling we are living in the worst of times not the best of times. Despite the capacity for human beings to grow and develop knowledge, skills and quality of life we seem not to have mastered the art of living well together.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">No wonder we feel a little like Lucky the dog, broken down, dragged out and not all there. We may indeed feel as if we are living in the hopeless days. And it is when we are living in the hopeless days that we are the closest to the sense of another long Gospel reading from John. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">This is the story of loss and grief, of facing up to the inevitable death that faces us all in some way every day. We receive bad news about our own health, about the health or death of a friend, about the health of our beloved pet, we lose a job, we face divorce, we face financial ruin, we risk everything for a better life only to be told no and more. For whatever reason we find ourselves living in the hopeless day.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Martha, Mary and Jesus find themselves in this very place. Their brother, his friend has died. He gets the news on the day it happens. He is sad but does not rush back but waits 2 days before travelling to their home. Perhaps he was worried about the reception he would get. The disciples were because they intimated it was beyond risky for Jesus to show his face there. Perhaps he was so overcome with the thought of going back and facing it immediately, it was just too much. So it wasn’t until the third day that he began the trip and he arrived on the fourth day, a day when it was going to be too late for heroics such as a healing, the body had already started to decompose.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Martha and Mary were both upset at his tardiness intimating he had known about Lazarus’s health prior to his death and hadn’t come back. They were well aware of his ability to heal and couldn’t come to grips with his failure to heal the one he loved. Their confrontation with him may have been a little more forceful than John relates and his defence that this was all for God’s glory probably was not an appropriate answer. And it isn’t ever.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Yet here they were in what was to them a hopeless situation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US">Peter Woods writes that</span><span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US">"Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead. He tells his disciples this brutal truth. Only then does he decide to go to nearby Bethany. He arrives on the fourth day. The day that is beyond all hope. All through Scripture the third day is the day that God acts. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day, the fourth."</span><span lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This is worth keeping in mind as it is the only time it is recorded. The day that is beyond hope is a place where people live and where God is not absent. Yes God acts on the third day, timely and appropriately, before everything decomposes and falls apart and we live and have been taught to live with the expectation that this will happen. But God is not absent from the hopeless day, the day beyond hope. What actually happens in this story we do not know but we do know something happens and Lazarus is somewhat restored, at least in the story if not in real life. God in someway restores equilibrium and balance in s</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13pt;">o dramatically that in a few verses on from this reading, Jesus future is doomed by those in power who will see to it he dies.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">We always want God to act within the 3 days, within a timely framework that works for us. We also want God to restore it to the way it was. But it has changed no it is different and uncomfortable. We find the day that is beyond all hope too painful, to dislodging, to traumatic, and it often leaves us with scars we can never erase. Yet if we look closely to that day or days we find God is not absent, stuff is happening to us and others, the ground is shifting and life continues, different, changed but it is still life.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Fourth day living is where the church has been since the promised or expected immediate return of Jesus has yet to occur. Fourth day living is the ordinary experience of each of us and has produced wonderful spiritual practitioners, writers and saints. Fourth day living is the norm for the majority of people throughout the world, not the exception in places where God does not appear on the third day to prevent children dying of starvation, people being bombed out of their homes or others feeling the wrath of racism and oppression.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It is in fourth day living that we begin to experience the necessity of faith, hope and love; the value of community and belonging; and the expansiveness of God’s presence, even when God seems to have gone missing. Fourth day living pushes our boundaries, reshapes our values and expectations and beckons us forward into an ever-expanding universe open to surprise, beauty and possibility.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;" xml:lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The truth for Jesus friends is that they have not avoided the inevitable encounter with fourth day living, only postponed it; but they may have lived the days after Jesus’ visit, the day after they experienced for the first time the day beyond all hope, very differently, intentionally, focused and with an awareness they didn’t have before.</span></span></div>
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Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-24504049361579603512017-03-27T13:28:00.001+11:002017-03-27T13:28:50.346+11:00None So Blind<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;">
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I was watching a video recently of amazing young people who were doing amazing things with very little. Missing a limb or two they skied the wild slopes, rap danced with a precision many with all their limbs could not, played competition basketball and scored goals or produced tricks on a skateboard at the skateboard park. The last young man was born bind and started skate boarding at 7 and skates everyday. I can’t even stand up on a skateboard yet this young man does stunning tricks and manoeuvres with out the ability to see. When he falls off he spends time feeling the floor of the skate park and familiarising himself with the space. He then goes and attempts the trick again.
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On a recent episode of the Landscape Painter of the Year a finalist painted stunning landscapes with his feet. Born without hands he has develop a particular practice which allows him to create art many of us who have all our limbs would be jealous of.
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On another level I am amazed at the number of pets born with legs or sight go on to live amazing lives. We may say they are not aware of their situation but a long look will tell you they are, but they have learnt to run, jump, play and love with out the need for their full complement of limbs and faculties and bring joy and love into the world.
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Today we meet a man born bind who has been begging all his life. He encounters Jesus and Jesus responds and heals him, giving him something he has never had at any point in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> This raises many questions and we could spend time unpacking the impact on the young man now he can see. What does he do? How does he live? All he has ever done is beg. He has no work skills, no ability to earn a living yet he has lost the only capacity he had to earn a living, his blindness.
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We could spend time unpacking the impact of forcing people off disability pensions and into the work force with out them ever being given the necessary skills to actually engage. We could explore the impact of forcing a western materialist consumer culture on people who have for many thousands of years lived a completely different life in tune and in touch with the world they occupy, taking only what they need when they needed it. Instead we force our way of being blind on others with the certainty that we see everything.
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The little ditty, t<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">here are None so Blind as they who do not see,</b> is the point of Jesus and the young man’s reaction from his neighbours, his family and the religious elites. These are people who know, who see and are certain that how they see is the only way to see. They have a body of knowledge, of learning that is proven, factual and definable. The have a body of knowledge for which there are proof texts, case studies, evidence and they are not to be deterred by an actual event which defies any of these.
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They are certain of their truth and try and convince the young man he is deluded, or that he has been faking it all these years, or that he is just making it up. According to the tomes on their shelves and the traditions they have inherited what he says simply couldn’t have happened.
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Thic Nat Hanh, the Budhist teacher refers to this as the mind of discrimination. We discriminate on what we think and we make others experiences, lives or faith less than ours because that is simply not how we see it. It is this mind of discrimination, of this not that, of this over that, that causes the pain we experience in this world because we are unable to hold ourselves open to the incredible range of possibilities yet unexperienced by us or others.
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In this story, Jesus reminds us bluntly that those who are certain they see do not. You can not see if you do not hold with in you at the same time the possibility that there is more, that what you see isn’t all there is and that you can and will be surprised by happenings and events you never imagined. Those who are certain have constructed, not a temple of wisdom and knowledge, but a stone tomb in which they are trapped and where they will suffocate for the lack of seeing.
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An encounter with Jesus only comes to those who are willing to see, to be surprised enough to catch a glimpse of God scurrying between the trees of knowledge, information and certainty; of God slipping in out of chaos, violence and tragedy; of God plugging away in the ordinary tasks of being human. It is the seeing of God striding across the desert, floating on the breeze or plunging into the deeps of the oceans. We limit God if we only look for God in what others or we say we know, no matter how enlightened or wise they or we may be. We miss God at work in the smile of the broken hearted, the cheeky eyes of the children in refugee camps or in the playfulness of adults who are fighting addiction. We miss God when we have already decided how God works. That is the mind of discrimination and it is the mind John’s Jesus confronts in this story.
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The blind man suffers the type of stereotyping any one who suffers from any kind of debilitating illness experiences. If you have a longterm chronic physical or mental illness you are discarded to begging on the side of the road of life. You are overlooked for jobs and promotions, excluded from social activities and events even by friends and family, you are presumed to be malingering or at least playing the victim. We see that in the policies of successive governments toward welfare in this country. It is seen not as a means to improve the life of those who are unable to do so for themselves but as something of begrudging necessity we shouldn’t have to do. This is the mind of discrimination. </div>
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Jesus seeks out the young man and asks him clearly what does he now see – what is his world view? Does he see within the restricted worldview of all who seek to discriminate against him or others, or has he seen the darkness piercing light of God in the midst of the world’s blindness. He answers in the affirmative – he has seen God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
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It is time for the church and for us to stand with all those who do not fit into the body of knowledge possessed by those who believe they see but are blind. It is time to look to catch a glimpse of God in the midst of the issues we face individually and as an institution. It is time to let go of certainty, the mind of discrimination and face the damage from the past by such as the treatment of indigenous peoples, of child abuse by members of the church, of the treatment of women, the exclusion of the LGBTI community and more, and begin to see the beauty of uncertainty and surprise, of God loitering with intent in our midst.</div>
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Unless we do we will continue to exclude just as the elite did in this story. </div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-83597275571135341612017-03-20T11:58:00.000+11:002017-03-20T11:58:39.988+11:00Open Space At The Well<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Today we have another long Gospel reading. And it is a reading chock full of theological, Christological and Trinitarian themes. It also tackles many of the social ills of both Jesus and modern-times – gender politics, relationships, racism, nationalism – these are just some of the ideas tossed around in this encounter at the well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">It is also integral to John’s project of connecting Jesus directly to God and to the key historical and theological themes of Jewish history and religion. Jesus is the living water intricately inter-related with God and the entire revelation of this historical drama – past, present and future are all to be found in him. Like God, Jesus is the centre point of the story, its beginning and end, and John goes to great lengths to get this mystical truth across.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">What I would like to concentrate on is the space in which this story unfolds – at a well in the middle of the village where the woman is an outcast because she has a history of living with men and not being married to them. She is not a prostitute but a woman captured by the religious laws of the time and as a result living in a perceived sinful relationship. It is no surprise that John portrays her as feisty and astute, to be compelled to live such a lifestyle requires or ensures one develops a level of survival skills most ordinary people never do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> She has had to argue for her life on more than one occasion and she will again. No man dominates her. She is in charge of her life and will make the decisions and the arguments to ensure she continues to not only survive but thrive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jesus meets her in an open space.</b> This is not a meeting that takes place behind closed doors or in a place that would give power to one or the other. It is not in her house or in a synagogue. It is in the square in the middle of the village near a well. It is a non-threatening environment one level in which both can speak freely. Perhaps its like a coffee shop or the old front bar in a pub. In both places people share far more openly than they do in the office, in the home of a stranger or on a bus. These are the open spaces where all feel safe to talk, discuss and occasionally argue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">The choice of space is important for us. How do we create a safe open space where we and others can communicate at the level of honesty and acceptance these two did? This is an important question if the church, you and I, are going to engage with those who are outside our building this morning. What could that open space look like – a garden, a café, a choir practice, a concert ? What does it require of us to engage in such an open space way? Are we sufficiently comfortable with ourselves and our understanding of ourselves that we can talk, be challenged and change our ideas just as Jesus and the woman did? Are we prepared to go into the centre of our village and have conversations like this one? And how do we do it with intention and not by accident? Jesus places himself in this space intentionally, he was loitering with intent, and when the opportunity for a full and frank discussion cam about he took it. Are we ready to do the same and go into the world with the intent to do so?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jesus meets her out in the open.</b> Jesus didn’t invite her to a special place to have this discussion, it happened when they both needed refreshments, he because<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> he was travelling, she because this was the safest time of the day for her to get water. They met at a spot where all could see what was going on and both risked the gossip and scuttlebutt of those who peered out from behind half closed doors, discretely pulled back curtains and those who accidentally had to go outside to get a better look. This was a controversial meeting between two controversial people in full view of the local media and, was no doubt, on the social media network almost instantly. But they had nothing to hide and were comfortable with the fact that their meeting would have an impact on others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">This sense of out in the open challenges us in the church who always want people to come inside – our building, our choice of space, our particular world view </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 18px;">or theological position and away from the prying eyes and ears of others. Are we confident enough to have these controversial conversations in full view of others? To be able to sit down in places that are not our own and work through the possibilities of faith with others? Or do we always want to do it</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 18px;"> </span> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 18px;">in our safe space, on our terms, surrounding by people who believe as we do? It is a challenge the church has only intermittently taken up but must begin to consider if we are to remain as the living water in this world.</span>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Recently I was asked to write a response to a prominent Australian’s viewpoint on indigenous recognition and treaty. When the draft was finished it was sent off to an aboriginal QC in Sydney for comment. He was blunt. We do not have to engage with people such as this was the answer. But I suspect we do for the sake of the cause and for the sake of the other person. And we need to do it out in the open, not in selected forums and meetings where the primary audience is people like ourselves. Jesus sets the example.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;"><b>The chosen space is a prominent, critical community landmark – the well.</b> Everybody has to go to the well at some time everyday. Water is the most important element after oxygen in our lives. You can last up to 3 weeks without food but only 3 days without water. Water is essential to our very existence. They meet at the well because the need for water does not discriminate –village elders and the outcast and marginalised and rabbis and the incarnate Son of God all have the same need and use the same well to fulfil that need.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Jesus is not subtle when he says whomever drinks from here will get thirsty again and again and again. You will never be satisfied. The inference is that no matter what your past is or what you need is it cannot be satisfied by material necessities, no mater how important they are. Jesus is pointing to a deeper need which can only be satisfied by a mystical and graced gift coming from the heart of God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">The well speaks of depth, of going deep within to discover the truth about self and about the mystery we call God. The well speaks of the never-failing supply of life lived openly around the mystical source of life. The well reminds us that we all have the possibility of engaging at this depth if we are but ready to let our bucket down and engage honestly, openly and critically with God and ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;"> <b>Finally</b> this story is not about the past, hers or the dispute between the chosen people of God and those excluded; it is not even a story about the present, hers or the history they were living; it is a story about the future, the unfinished possibilities for creation; for Jesus, the unnamed woman and all the creatures yet to be. This is a story of expanding space, the surge for more that drives the Jewish, Christian and creations story. It is about the </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 18px;">mystical future place in which is hidden the kingdom of God we can not imagine. The Jesus story leads us into the unknown, a future of fulfilment and wonder we can not imagine but only grasp a glimpse of in the chaos around us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Yes this is an ordinary story about relationships, space and human need but one full of deep truth, power and mystery, just as is the stories of each of our lives and of how we live them in the centre of our village. It is time for the church and for those of use who find our vitality within the church to step out into the open, create the space for others to be safe and to begin the conversations that will fill us and them with the water of life in a future kingdom we only hear rumours about now. Amen</span></div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-30976977315439656852017-03-14T12:24:00.004+11:002017-03-14T12:24:28.472+11:00Nicodemus and Progress In Faith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fritz von Uhde - Christus und Nikodemus (ca.1886)</span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">John 3.1-17 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">The Gospel today has many themes in it, but I want to concentrate on both
Nicodemus’ questions to Jesus and his growth in faith. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Initially Nicodemus is simply on another wavelength to Jesus and he is
asking the wrong questions – indeed he could have dispensed with the questions
altogether and just listened to Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he, like many of us, has questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">We are often looking for something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Something fresh, something true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In our faith, we search for meaning, for a sense of purpose. And sometimes
we don’t find it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we find are our empty
phrases heaped up in a pile for us to sift through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Questions without answers that satisfy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or answers from Jesus that confuse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">God calls us over and over and we are often deaf to God’s cries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pleas of Jesus to know and understand him,
go unanswered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our egos remove us from
knowing Jesus because we often ask too many questions and even then, we ask the
wrong questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Often we are caught in a
rational and cerebral pursuit of faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Nicodemus’ search is certainly confused by him asking questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">He comes with several questions and Jesus has answers, but they are cryptic
to Nicodemus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are not answers for
the feeble mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps this is
sometimes our pattern:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we come with questions,
intellectualising – but we are so intent on getting our questions out, that we are
not hearing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Nicodemus is certainly left floundering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">But his search is not in vain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
appears again twice, later in John’s Gospel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria;">In chapter 7, he offers a hesitant defense of Jesus – he says of Jesus
when the Temple police want to arrest him that: ‘Our law does not judge people
without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing…’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, gladly the faith of Nicodemus is growing
and he is prepared to take a risk and defend Jesus against his accusers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria;">And importantly,
very late in the Gospel - Chapter 19 - Nicodemus accompanies Joseph of
Arimathea, bringing a hundred pounds of spices for Jesus' burial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">A hundred pounds is an enormous amount – but perhaps
there is a symbol here - Nicodemus bringing so much spice shows his deep devotion
to Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, only after Jesus’
death, he has deepened his faith from his early questioning in today’s Gospel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">But this development of faith over time does not take away from the fact
that initially Nicodemus just doesn’t get it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His mind is not so much shut as it is clouded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is looking for rational answers to the
most complex of problems – who is Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nicodemus is confused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">He interprets what Jesus says literally and Jesus keeps trying to get
him to see his words as symbols pointing towards something heavenly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Maybe we can identify with Nicodemus – perhaps we sometimes wonder if
our faith is lacking and it may be because either we are asking the wrong
questions or indeed that we are asking questions at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, from the Gospel today, we too might
want to know, like Nicodemus, how it is that we can ACTUALLY be born from above,
or as some translations have it ‘born again’, when really Jesus is talking of
the spiritual realm and how our faith comes from somewhere other than from
earthly things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Jesus says that no-one can enter the Kingdom without being born again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nicodemus dimly wants to know how anyone can be
born after having grown old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he asks:
‘Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus is not getting through to Nicodemus’
fragile sense of faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re like
ships in the night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">And this being born into life in Christ is at the heart of our Christian
faith in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you asked an
Evangelical Christian what it means to be born again they might well say that
it is to accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you asked a Pentecostal Christian they
might say that it is being baptised into the Spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">So, when trying to understand Nicodemus and his role in the Gospel, it is
not the words ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’ that are so important, but
rather that here is a man who SEEKS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
has a fledging quest for understanding and faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in seeking, his life changes forever –
from misguided questions, to defender of Jesus, to finally being the man who
anoints Jesus after his death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">In a way, it is not even Nicodemus’ questions that are the problem, it
is that he is caught up in them – he is stuck on another plain to Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suspended in his own sense of logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps we too come to faith with our logic
to the fore – waiting for faith to emerge through the many trials of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect that we don’t get Jesus up front
and that we simply can’t find deep faith by being ‘in our head’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is human to come with many questions, only
to find there are few answers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">As we grow older perhaps our questions are not helpful anymore and when
we finally come to see Jesus for who he is, by quietly worshipping, we come
with our hundred pounds of spices to lavish on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not with our helpless questions, but with our
devotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our faith CAN develop beyond
our questioning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">One theory about the development of faith has it that it comes to us in
three stages: the first stage is childish faith – one that believes everything
without question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be seen as a
magical stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A stage when faith is
built on the literal truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Then comes the second stage - a period of questioning – that is also a
stage Nicodemus is at in today’s Gospel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Then if you are lucky enough, you come to the third and final stage –
the faith of the child-like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the
childish, the child-like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is at this
stage that there is a synthesis - mature faith questions AND believes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can open itself fully to Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To me, it is not enough to intellectualise
faith as Nicodemus does initially.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
intellect can sometimes tear us apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps even our constant questioning wreaks havoc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Child likeness probably has quiet worship at
its core.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people that reach this
stage are probably not asking questions of intellect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seem to be beyond that and somehow
accept their faith as a given and deepen their awareness of God by BEING.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Nicodemus the prayerful embalming of
Jesus – simply BEING with Jesus - must have been a deeply profound experience for
him, in the presence of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Perhaps the child likeness stage of faith is exemplified by an uneducated
peasant who simply worships and praises God from deep within - without any University
developed intellectual ability to question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Further, it is like a person who sits and gazes on God and God gazes on
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a childlike way, they are happy
just with that exchange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">If nothing else the picture presented in John’s Gospel of Nicodemus can
help us see that for all our questioning, we CAN go through a transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From questioner to worshipper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Because I don’t think we can reduce the Son of God to a few questions
and hope to get a clear and concise answer, or develop our faith instantly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Again, Nicodemus’ problem, probably like many of us, is that he is stuck
in his head and this prevents a deepening of faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great theologian Schleiermacher once said
– we all have a feeling for God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
feeling he speaks of is not an intellectual thing, it is something in our
gut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is devoid of logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe we need to revisit Jesus with more of
our emotion and less of our questions – to take us away from being ‘in our
heads’ and rather take us into creative orbit with Jesus where we sit at his
feet and worship – not ask questions, but just be with him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">We live in a world where everything is explained, understood, dissected,
probed, questioned, rationalised, intellectualised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our lives are about ‘doing’, achieving, about
goal setting, meeting key performance indicators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We seek meaning through reading, writing, enquiring
- and I admit, that has its place too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
it is a question of degree and priority.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Still some want answers that can be added and subtracted till the result
is a prime number, or something else that fits neatly in their ordered minds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we can see, Nicodemus initially wanted
answers - and he may be more like us than we know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">When our questions are all done and when our intellectualising does not
satisfy us, I believe THAT is the time, when through our deep emotional response
to Jesus, he becomes plain and obvious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is essentially a response from our gut, from the core of our
emotional selves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A kind of ‘being’,
rather than doing – suspending our search for God by our frenzied pursuits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe we can reach a quiet state of unquestioning
bliss without questions, without complex intellectual rigour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A state, a place, where we can let go and let
God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</style>Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-6767332840852941342017-03-08T17:16:00.000+11:002017-03-08T17:16:36.179+11:00God Values Creation<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In todays readings we connect the story of the reluctant prophet Jonah with that of the obedient Son Jesus. The bridge connecting them is the need for repentance and how much more powerful is the call of Jesus than Jonah. Sitting between these two readings is the Psalm calling for purification from sin.
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For those of us aware of our personal fault-lines and that of the world in which we live this maybe sufficient for faith. Jonah’s reluctant call to the people of Nineveh resulted in salvation for them in the face of the imminent wrath of God.
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Yet a wrathful God about to wipe out even one whole city because of human nature is not an understanding of God I find easy to live with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> This is not about God being a God of love who simply wouldn’t do this but about a God who values human nature so much he came amongst us to be the archetype human being, living a life of obedience unto death.
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Even the story of Jonah points to the value God places on humanity. A wrathful God would not have rescued Jonah. Someone who was so much bother, so sinful in terms of obedience to the will of God was, it seems to me, already set for the same destruction as the people of Nineveh. God goes to so much trouble to bring Jonah to repentance, again reluctantly, if we go on and read Jonah’s reaction to the redemption of Nineveh, it speaks of the value just one person has in the sight of God.
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Jonah’s personal return gave hope for those in Nineveh – he was a sign of the value God places on the created world. The people of Nineveh become aware through the life and words of Jonah of just how much they were valued by God and respond, perhaps not so much to God’s wrath, but God’s hesed – unfailing compassion and generosity.
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The life, death and resurrection of Jesus promises the same hope for us, and it is up to us recognise who values us and what that value means for our day-to-day life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> Jonah wasn’t valued because he was perfect he was valued because he was human. God did not focus on his sin but on his capacity for obedience, stuttering as it was, resulting in the redemption of both him and others.
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This is a powerful truth. God values us not because we are sinners in need for a blood sacrifice but because we are conscious creatures capable of great blessing. The obedience of Jonah is celebrated in the obedience of others his goodness brings about. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is celebrated in the lives, deaths and resurrections of ordinary human beings who embrace his life of obedience and justice.
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Our journey this lent is to be one away from the wrathful God who punishes human beings for being human – for sin, and towards a God who values human beings as creatures of immense possibility, compassion and hope and who have the example of Jesus and the companionship of the Holy Spirit for the journey into wholeness, love and justice.</div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-48326682902806025392017-03-06T11:51:00.000+11:002017-03-06T11:51:51.371+11:00It Is Written<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
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As we begin the Lenten journey we will discover texts and stories we know well. We may have already decided what these texts tell us, what they are about and what they reveal about the Easter story we will soon hear. They fit a narrative we have breathed in over many years and a narrative that has informed our daily living and our worship/faith story. It is now so familiar we have forgotten it’s nuances and finer points, and may have difficulty in identifying how it influences our live.
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Yet there are many, if not the majority of our present day society, to whom these familiar stories are foreign and unknown. A student at the school where I was chaplain said that if she hadn’t gone to the school she would not have known about Jesus let alone the Easter story. There was no family history of church, Sunday School or religion. Easter was just another embedded public holiday with no particular significance for her and her family. This was true of most of the students and when we began to read and unpack these stories it was a revelation for them.
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While it was a revelation for them, the ideas within these stories were not immediately or readily understood. Living in a society where success, recognition and power were the valued goals and most were working for through good exam results, successful businesses or being discovered as a musical or sporting protégé, they found the ideas in todays story unimaginable.
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Who, in their right mind, would say no to immediate gratification, adoration by the masses or the power to do just as you pleased? Who in their right mind would put themselves in a place to have to even confront such ideas? Who would decide for a way of life that put you at odds with all that you were being taught by an education system committed to a consumerist world?
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The danger for those who hear or read this story is that we place it firmly in the Jesus tradition and see it as a story relevant only to his experience and the fact he was God incarnate and therefore responded to the challenges by conforming to type. It was inevitable he would reject these seemingly external temptations by a personalised evil.
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The idea this was a battle between ultimate good and ultimate evil lets us off the hook. We may presume we do not have to face such questions for we are but ordinary human beings without the power or the options of Jesus. If we read Jesus with a high Christology, in other words as one whose divinity reigns above his humanity, then we find little in which to relate to in this story.
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If we read Jesus with a lower Christology, where his humanity is as important as his divinity, we begin to understand this story as not only relevant to us, but as our own personal story. The decisions and developing self-awareness Jesus experiences are akin to the decisions and developing self awareness we experience as we move through the various seasons of our own human life.
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Jesus goes into the desert to make sense of the events of his baptism – John, the call to repentance and the voice from above. This deep spiritual experience unnerves him and he needs time and space, a lot of time and space as indicated by the words 40 days and nights (a long time), to make sense of it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> He has to wrestle with his human needs and desires and find a way to reconcile his awareness of God’s call on his life.
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The temptations mentioned are a summation of the many different and difficult questions he faced, some minute in impact, others of great consequence. They are not just boxes to tick in Matthew’s attempt to define Jesus as the one expected, but are representative of the battles human beings face if they are serious about living lives committed to wholeness in relationships and experience.
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At some point in our lives we have to make decisions about the importance of objects such as money and possessions, of objects such as success in work and life, of objects such as power and control over others; the failure to address these issues results in these questions returning unresolved in violence, anger, frustration and more.
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Domestic violence, child abuse, racial vilification, persecution and more are examples of a failure to answer these questions effectively or not to answer them at all. Ignorance does not excuse us for our behaviour. At some point these are questions that come up in wedding vows, adulthood, communal living and more and if we fail to confront them they will not just go away. Our subsequent life will be in some punctuated by their breaking in on our lives.
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Jesus understood this and confronted these questions with the experience of the saints and the scriptures. He resorted to tradition, both lived by others and experienced in the natural world – “it is written” – not just words on a page but words in lives and the created environment. Tradition in this context is the lived experience of those who translated their experience to oral and ultimately written record. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">He was not standing against these inner urges based on his own limited life experience, but reaching back to the community of saints who had found proven ways to deal with human nature. </span>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">In this way the desert confrontation is one of human experience versus the base desires within each human being. This is the universal challenge commenced at the beginning of creation and continuing today. It is the evolutionary urge for wholeness and the conflict of random chance, order and adaptation.</span></div>
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Imagine for a moment how different the Jesus story, our meta-narrative would be, if Jesus had responded differently to the questions being human asks? Image for a moment how different our lives would be if Jesus had agreed to follow his basic interests and left each person to find their own way?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> Now some will say this could never have happened for Jesus was God’s Son, God incarnate; but may well have happened because Jesus was also human, every bit as human as you and I.
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“It is written”, the tradition of the communion of saints sits at the core of Jesus response to being human, it also sits at the centre of our own. Reading the Biblical stories or spiritual biographies and reflections, retaining the values and parameters of faith and experience, and spending time in reflection with a spiritual guide or mentor all help us to make our responses to the temptations of being human. We cannot do it alone and neither did Jesus. He was surrounded by nature, the image of God in creation, by angels and by the Holy Spirit, he was surrounded by the saints. “It is written” everywhere for us and our guidance. The temptation is to rely on our own experience and feelings and to ignore those who have made this journey before and with us – people, places and creatures.
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Jesus embodies spiritual practices necessary for our wise handling of life. Let’s begin this Lenten period to read what is written all around us and to find what is necessary to live a Christlike response to being human.</div>
Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7203490787355457567.post-2831549079590924342017-02-27T14:52:00.001+11:002017-02-27T14:52:53.761+11:00On The Mountain Top<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;">
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> 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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> In these moments Jesus clarified his identity, his purpose and his intentions.
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These weren’t moments of lightness and happiness, a mindfulness deigned for the 21<sup>st</sup> 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.
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That’s what Jesus did and it seems good enough for me.
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Glenn Loughreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11806481975198236275noreply@blogger.com0