In The Absence of God.

Three of the Survivors of The Sandakan-Ranau Death March.

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.

 

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.

Even the words ‘It is finished’ (19:30) signify Jesus has confidently completed the task given to him, to make the Father known[1]. 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[2], 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[3]. The effect is to reveal love and expose hate and so offer a new beginning. [4]

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.  It cost beyond measure, the cruelty was beyond pain and was achieved in great silence and deep stillness.

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.

 

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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. 

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.

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?

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.

God Values Creation

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.

 

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.

 

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.  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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.  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.

 

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.

 

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.

Honour is No Little Thing

Luke 16:1-13

Sometimes Jesus doesn’t make it easy for us. Today’s parable is often described as one of the more difficult of Jesus’ little stories. It is obtuse and confusing, asking us to accept Jesus as endorsing fraudulent and deceitful practice. If we interpret the master as God then we have a major issue, does God endorse such behaviour and how do we make sense of such. If we interpret this story from the worldview of capitalism we will be sympathetic to punishing the crooked manager?

Over the years we have witnessed many situations where people have acted in appropriately with other peoples money. The Global Financial Crisis is one alongside the collapse of a number of investment and banking institutions where one or more of the staff have acted to deceive others and to benefit from their actions. If you have had money as when you suffer great losses due to the actions of another.

So we may have sympathy with the Master and little for the manager. He deserves to be fired and get what is coming to him for his laziness, ineptitude and his decision to discount people’s debts just so he could gain favour when he finally loses his job. We have sympathy with a person who has been shamed by the actions of one he trusted for, as John Pettypoints out, “In the first century world, a person's wealth was connected to 'honour.' In fact, wealth was not necessarily an end in itself, but rather a means to get honour. Money could buy respect, or so it was thought. A person could be 'dishonoured' for any number of things, but two of them included having an unscrupulous servant, and taking back a gift."

Yet what was the manager to do? To lose his job meant facing the indignation of two dishonourable options - becoming a slave and digging roads or sitting on the side of the road and begging. His life was at an end. He had no more options, and unless he acted quickly and decisively he would be left homeless, penniless and without friends and family. So he gets creative, he demonstrates his business and strategic acumen by calling in his master’s debtors and giving them a gift – a discount on their debts.

Now as Petty points out, this was a very shrewd move by a very shrewd business man. He had won himself some very powerful friends, had placed his Master in the situation where he either accepted his manager’s decision or took back the gift given in his name. The latter would result in him losing face, customers, suppliers and more. He would become a man who could not be trusted and, possibly, join his manager on the scrap heap. So doing the only thing he can, he accepts his mangers decision.

Yet there is more to this story. Bernard Scott suggests that word “diaballein in 16:2 has the sense "accuse" in the sense of "falsely accuse, slander, lie about." So the manager has been innocent all along, but sees no way to prove his innocence other than by demonstrating what a shrewd operator he really is (and always has been).” (Jenks)

Gregory Jenks writes, “The master had originally dismissed the manager because he had [allegedly] squandered the master's property. Now he commends him for acting shrewdly -- the way a manager is supposed to act. If the master cannot repudiate the reductions in debt instituted by the manager without loss of face, do we have to imagine that the master let his dismissal stand or could he have taken the manager back?

In the social world of Palestine, where debt burdens reduced people to poverty and consigned many to slavery as a consequence, the master would not have been the object of public sympathy as Jesus' listeners first heard this tale.

In this parable the manager gets even with the master by appropriating the master's profit, which itself is morally suspect - for as we have seen no characters in this parable are innocent. Wrong has been done, lots of wrong on all sides.”

False accusations impact on the lives of all involved. How we speak about others, our initial reactions to a situation, our capacity to believe gossip and car park chatter have consequences. Speaking without knowing the full story can result in statements, which stain a persons life forever. In this case they not only threaten the future of the manager, but lead him into acting wrongly and inappropriately just to save his job and his lifestyle. They also have a habit of ensnaring those who believe such accusations. The Master finds himself trapped by the subsequent behaviour of a man who was at least initially, innocent.

State and church politics, run the risk of dredging up accusations which become a millstone around the neck of all involved. Self-interest drives such accusations yet we often find the people who start the process having to defend themselves from the same accusations. Our present debate about political campaign donations is a case in point.

Jesus makes the point, there is no such thing as a little dishonesty. You cannot be just a little pregnant, a white lie is a lie, dishonesty no matter how well intentioned is still dishonest and will have consequences.

It is also true that being trustworthy in small things translate into trustworthiness with bigger things, being trustworthy with others possessions means you may also be able to be trusted with things of your own.

How do we make sense of this parable in a time when the ego self dominates all decision making processes; where if it is right for me then it is right with out question; in a time where transparency in business, relationships and politics is in question. How do we survive spiritually and morally when we are asked to accept, participate in and turn a blind eye to false accusations, false practices and false premises at the foundations of our community life?

Jesus drops the bombshell - you can not serve money and God. If money was, in Jesus time, more than simply what it could buy and was the symbol of honour and respectability, the basis on which one built ones value and worth as a person then there is no room for the value and worth that comes from a covenantal relationship with God. Why? Because God seeks a compassion that includes not excludes, a compassion that is inclusive of all, a generosity using what one has to change the present and the future for others.

We are asked to give up our selves as the centre of the world and place our selves in the midst of others as an equal, living in harmony with God and others. As we found in last weeks Gospel honour in God’s economy is found in the opposite corner to where it is found in the economy of a shamed based society and in a self centred consumerist society such as ours.

We are called to be faithful to our experience of a compassionate God, a God who deals honestly and respectfully with us and whom we do not have to manipulate to retain our freedom. We are to live so others to can be free to become whom they already are with out manipulating God and man We are enough, there is enough and will find honour in enough. Amen

Living The Way To The Cross

Luke 14:25-33 

I have always wondered what it would be like to be a celebrity and be pursued 24/7, to have an entourage of devoted followers at your heels waiting to catch a drop of wisdom, a look or even a touch. I guess when fame and fortune first hits one may think, “Wow, how wonderful it is to be so popular, to have so many people hanging on my every word, watching my every move and checking out my figure for signs of over indulgence!” 

By about day three I think the novelty would wear off. Get these people out of here! Can’t I have one moment alone? 

Today’s Gospel opens with the recurring words ‘large crowds’ were travelling with him’. Large crowds are a stock feature of the synoptic Gospels, by the lake, at the synagogues, on the mountains and wherever Jesus seemed to be. Even when he is seeking silence and stillness for a little time out they turn up, 5,000 in the sermon on the mount and 4,000 at the sermon on the plain. 

So I am not surprised that this time he turns around and gives them a serve, not a get lost you lot serve but a reality check. Ok folks, the school excursion is over, now down to real business. If you keep following what I say this won’t end well, are you up for it? Families, villages, careers, relationships and ordinary everyday living will be disrupted and turned around if you go where what I say will take you. 

D Mark Davis comments "…… this call to discipleship is radical, implying that those who follow Jesus are not going to be making decisions based on 'what’s best for me,' or even 'what’s best for our marriage/family/children.'" There is no clear indication that there is such a decision for, if one looks at the examples Jesus gives, an outnumbered army or an over committed builder, the decision seems simple, no. In the case of the army, negotiate; the house builder, rent; the other option in both cases most likely won’t end well. 

Jesus then says "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” This is not a reference to the cross of Calvary but is not the act of a later editor putting words into Jesus’s mouth it appears in Mark, Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas as well as here. 

Also Epictetus a Greek speaking scholar is quoted in the Discourses by his pupil Arrian as having said the following: 

If you want to be crucified, just wait.  

The cross will come. 

If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, 

then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained.  

The inference being a certain way of life will lead, inevitably to conflict and if such a life is to have integrity one is to follow that life to its predictable end. Epictetus and Jesus both are saying, if your live outside the accepted norms of society and value what is at odds with such a society you will, in a Roman occupied country and a modern democracy, arrive at the cross. 

Now that may not be what the ‘large crowds’ wanted to hear. They were looking for peace and freedom from the oppressors not more violence and angst, especially from those they know and love. A counter-cultural philosophy of love your enemy, give help to the despised and reprimand to those in power is not the way one goes about making friends and influencing people. Yet the teaching of Jesus stood at odds with society then and still does today. 

Emerson Powery writes, "Today's contemporary Church has to wrestle with the reality of following a radical, counter-cultural prophet." 

Now this is not only a social justice question, it is a spiritual and religious question: what religion do you follow? The religion of the ego self and narcissism where I do everything for myself and those within my immediate purvey? Or is it the religion of capitalism, which says to the rich there will always be more, to the rest the leftovers. Or is it the religion of consumerism where enough is not enough and more is insufficient? Or is it the religion of self preservation, save our own bacon, call the lawyers and hard luck to the rest (a position often taken by the churches in reference to child abuse claims). 

Powery poses the challenge in just the way Jesus did, it is not a foregone conclusion that the large crowd or the contemporary church will indeed take up the religion of Jesus and live a radical, counter-cultural, prophetic role in the modern world. There is too much to lose. Our place in the power structures, our hard fought for exemptions and options, our buildings and our money, not to mention the fancy dress and valuable silver ware. To live a life of sacrificial compassion for others, including the whole of creation of which we as human animals are but one of many will mean a radical rethink for the church and for each of us individually. 

• It will mean preferencing justice in all our actions and our words, not just saying what is right but doing what is right, despite the cost. It will involve speaking prophetically into the public space and challenging long  held views or those opinions we described last week as being like haircuts, everyone has one but not all are worth considering. Integrity in word and action takes great courage but is the task we face. 

• It will mean preferencing the poor and not just the poor in terms of other human beings but the poor meaning the birds of the air, the flowers of the fields, the animals of the forests and fish in the sea. These make up the world along with humanity that God so loved. This will challenge how we consume, how we find ourselves entwined in the economic devaluation of resources and how we hoard up riches for ourselves at the expense of others. It is indeed very challenging and may well be too much on either an individual or a societal level for all of us. 

• It will mean preferencing a life built on enough – our daily bread – our ordinary job – our enough house. Simplicity in being without the urge to always seek more. Science tells us that there is a default point for happiness. Despite the lure of more, once one arrives there and gets over the excitement, science tells us we fall back to our default level of happiness. As happy as your are now is probably how happy you will be regardless of more. 

• It will mean preferencing a different God than the one we learnt about in Sunday School and came popular in response to the Enlightenment.This is a God is beyond all definitions yet knowable, beyond all boundaries yet personal, outside our world yet fully engaged in the experiences of our world, a God with a preference for all of Creation and not just human beings. Here is Mystery sitting in our muddle, our pain and our despair bringing hope to brighten our darkness. 

Jesus is a radical countercultural prophet who calls us and the church to a life which place us outside the accepted social contract. We cannot do it alone. We do it together and we do it together empowered by God’s ever-present Spirit. It is the only way we can take the road to the cross. In the end it was the only way Jesus could too. 

The Father and I Are One

 

John 10:30

Jesus, in John’s gospel, is Jewish, very, very Jewish. Not only is he Jewish he is very devout. John reports him attending synagogues, upholding various laws and attending a range of festivals just as a devout Jewish boy would. Jesus grew up in this environment. His parents were very Jewish and abided by all the appropriate practices and rituals. We can follow them through key incidents in the various Gospel retellings of his story.

 

There is no doubt about his heritage. Both John and Jesus rely heavily on the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, for images, ideas and connections to the story of the Israelites from Exodus to the promised land and more. Jesus lived the Psalms and understood his life and mission in terms of the stories of his peoples past.

 

In modern Christianity there is a move away from the Old Testament (the Christian form of the Jewish scriptures) to sole reliance on the New Testament scriptures. This has happened for a number of reasons:

• The proliferation of violence, often attributed to God or, at least, carried out in God’s name.
• The apparent irrelevance of the laws and moral positions found therein for modern life.
• The expectation that the Old Testament must be historically factual and true, and it fails to meet the modern scientific standard for such.
• The idea that the Old Testament is fulfilled and superseded by the New Testament and is no longer required reading for Christians.
• The idea that the Old Testament was about law exclusively and the New Testament is about love exclusively.

Each of these ideas have developed lives of their own (and I will deal with some of them in posts on my blog over the next few weeks) and a sense of the bleeding obvious for most Christians. Yet it seems to me that that was not the case for Jesus and those who wrote about him. Yes, Paul and others reimagined the story as contained in the Jewish Bible so that it could be understood and embraced by non-Jews, but the truth remains, key ideas and images of the Christian faith continue ideas and rituals at the centre of the Tanakh.

 

Today we come to one of those stories, the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. An appropriate story for the baptism/dedication of Oscar. The Festival of the Dedication of the Temple or Hanukkah, commemorates the Jewish people’s successful rebellion against the Syrians in the Maccabean War in 162 BCE. A ritual cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple occurred after the Jewish people’s victory. It is believed that there was only enough consecrated oil to keep the lamp burning for one day but the small bottle of oil miraculously lasted for eight days. Hanukkah, also known as Chanukah, is referred as the Feast of Lights or Festival of Lights for this reason.

 

Why would John have Jesus walking in the colonnades of Solomon (the wisest of the Jewish fathers and the builder of the great temple) in the temple rebuilt by Herod, the despot? What is the significance of the confrontation with the synagogue scribes about his identity? Why doesn’t he answer them plainly?

 

Jesus is abrupt and brutal. It is very obvious who I am if you just see the connections, follow the bread-crumbs, join the dots. Those who are able to listen, those you are called to shepherd they understand my identity. Oh by the way, since you have separated your self from the sheep, you fail to hear because you think you know. Jesus continues, but here goes, here’s another clue.

 

Earlier in John 8 Jesus, in one of the ‘I am’ sayings says: “I am the light of the world”. Here Jesus turns up at the Festival of Lights, the Dedication of the Temple.  Paul S. Berge writes, "In the setting of the festival of lights, Jesus is the true light of the world; in this festival of the temple, Jesus is the true temple in whom the presence of the Father dwells."

 

The imagery is powerful and very deeply connected to the ritual and imagery of the Old Testament. This story would not work without a deep understanding of the Jewish scriptures. The synagogue people get it and don’t like it. Jesus has appropriated for himself equality with God. In verse 31 ‘The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” Here we find a sense of exasperation the Jews have with Jesus - the word ‘again’ – he constantly provokes them by couching the things he says and does in terms of their scriptures.

 

His finishing statement – “The Father and I are one” is more than they can take. Yet it is the bringing together of the covenantal relationship begun by God and related in their scriptures. It is what they believed in as a people, a oneness with their God, but were unable to see fulfilled in Jesus or anyone else for that matter.

 

And perhaps that is one of the major issues we have with the Old Testament.

• We don’t want to recognise ourselves in its stories, violence, legends and failures because we know we are not like that because we are constantly affirmed by family, friends and consumer society.
• We don’t want to recognise the possibility of a God who does in fact get angry, make judgements about us and leave us to stew in our own juices because it is always somebody else’s fault anyway.
• We don’t want to admit that there are time when we want God to be more like a marauding Messiah than Jesus turns out to be, because we do have a hit list of those we would like God to smite.  

It’s just a little too real and too close to home.

 

In the baptism service we recognise our place in God’s economy and commit ourselves, individually and communally to live in relationship with Jesus who is both the light of the world and the true temple. We dedicate, give back, welcome into the church a young person who will live in relationship with Jesus as a light in this world and a temple indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Baptism symbolises our desire to be one with God in this world and the next.

 

It is the moment we pick up two key ideas of an Old Testament Festival and celebrate them in the life of one individual, in our desire for life to epitomise oneness with God. This connection to traditions of great depth, meaning and longevity give us hope for ourselves, for the one baptised and for the future of our faith. The Old melds into the New as life goes on in the shadow of the past and the light of the present and the future, the light who is Christ, the temple and dwelling place of the everlasting Godhead.

 

Let us join with Oscar and cast ourselves into the baptismal waters to rise shining and in dwelt by the spirit of Christ. Amen. 

The Mystical Love Of God

1 Corinthians 13

I have new glasses. One doesn't know how blind one is until one gets new glasses.  Things are sharper, clearer, fuller in colour and shape. I notice things I had previously missed. It is easy to go through life with limited sight and think that is all there is.

 

Paul is often described as a lawyer, a writer who focuses on the actions involved in being a disciple of Christ, a moral theologian more interested in the law than in the spiritual essence of our faith. Nothing is further from the truth.

 

Paul is a mystical theologian charged with connecting the mystical with the practical, but never by diminishing the mystery or power of love. His encounter with Christ was a mystical disruption so powerful it rendered him blind, a metaphor for his realisation that the truth he had followed and enforced was a truth without sight, without the mystical power of love, of God who is nothing but love. The generosity of God can only be described as unconditional love, and by definition the one who is generous is love.

 

1Cor 13 is used to reinforce the qualities of creaturely love. We read it at weddings, at funerals, baptisms and almost any event when Psalm 23 is also read. We have reduced this passage to the banal, the pedestrian hope for something more than lust, greed, manipulation and violence. Somehow we have taken the truth out of this passage and dumbed it down to mean little more than a recipe for relationships.

 

It is not.

 

In this passage Paul is speaking of God. Love is God, God is love. God generously gives us life, maintains it, remains engaged and never leaves us. Why? because we enter this world having exited the Godhead where silence is love, to live in the noise of the ordinary as words of love. We are birthed in the waters of love as Gods word spoken into the world and an oasis of love remains at our centre, no matter how hard we attempt to obliterate it through our ego driven existence. We return to the Godhead, not simply when we die, but in each step i we take to let go of all we gather to ourselves as our identity.

 

It is right to think of this passage at all the key life moments for we are to become God, to become love incarnate in the physical world in which we live. It is not right to reduce this passage to the lowest common understanding. God was incarnate in Jesus and Jesus was love in relationship to his world, his place, his culture and the people he encountered. God is no less incarnate in us and we are to strive for being as selfless love in our world, our place, our culture, and amongst the people we encounter.

 

Meister Eckhart calls us to an "action without doing", a being that is empty of the need to do, allowing God who is closer to us than we are ourselves, to flow through us into the world. Like Paul, he pleads for us to get ourselves out of the way of the hesed, or unfailing love who is God, and allow love to flow in and out of us freely and without restrictions. Eckhart reminds us that God becoming incarnate does not diminish the Godhead. Jesus is all of God in the world yet the Godhead remains as it was, is and always will be, one and complete.

 

This passage calls for us to lower the barriers of self and to let go of those possessions (psychological, spiritual and physical) that we hold onto as evidence of our existence, giving us the illusion of autonomy. It asks us to detach from everything and attach to no thing, the only thing that matters, to God who is love.

 

A man, maybe a woman, was walking along the edge of a very high cliff admiring the view. Suddenly the edge gave way and they plunged earthward at a great pace. Somewhere in the midst of this they cry out, 'God, save me!' And they were a brought to an abrupt stop by a branch from a withered old tree sticking out from the cliff that catches in their belt. They are left gently bouncing up and down. When they get their breath back, they realise they are only half way down, or is it half way up? Not knowing what to do, they ask God for help again. Back comes a deep heavenly voice, 'let go of the branch!' They look up, they look down and then cry out, 'Is there any body else up there?'

 

Paul asks us to do the same in this passage, to let go, just as he had to of, all that makes sense of our life and to trust in the dark void, the mystery of love. We are to let go of the stuff the world convinces us we need, approval of others, possessions to define us, degrees to make us more worthwhile, emotions and actions we are addicted to. If we are to deconstruct the system which allows 60plus people to have the wealth of 3.7billion we are to let go of our addiction to what they are selling, the illusion of happiness through wealth, power and violence. 

 

If we are to deconstruct the system that diagnoses and labels people with illnesses only curable by big pharma drugs we have to let go of our need to find a reason for our sadness, disappointment and disillusionment with our lives. There is a great video doing the rounds on the web in which people are urged to ask their doctor about the curative qualities of nature as a possible cure for their illnesses. In a similar way Paul is prescribing detachment as the means to discover abundance.

 

He says when we let go and attach ourselves to nothing it won't look the way it is, you won't be able to discern the length, the breadth, the depth, the beauty and the subtleties of God who is love, you will only have a sketchy understanding, a hazy picture with lots of snow and distortion, you will only have a dim understanding but it is enough. It will be a scary place, just as it was for the person caught half way down the cliff, asked to let go of the only thing apparently giving them hope.

 

Paul's promise, God's promise is that as we do, we come home, we return to where we were before we were born. We re-enter the unity of the Godhead and 'then We will know fully, even as We have been fully known.' This is not just a promise for after we leave this mortal coil, but for our life upon it. It is for Eckhart the experience of the virgin where virgin means someone who is detached from images, ideas, worldly illusions.

 

It is the essence of the incarnation where with Paul we can say 'it is no longer I that lives, but Christ, God's spoken word, who lives in me.'

 

You may say this is beyond us and it is, but what is beyond us is in us, for we only have our being in the generous love who is God and therefore there is no beyond. For we can finish with the great affirmation Paul leaves us with, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." Amen

The Myth of Innocence

The innocence of children has become an accepted mantra of modern society, an idea challenged by recent incidents such as the shooting of a man in Sydney by a 15 year old boy. We believe children are incapable of doing or thinking evil in our culture that promotes the idea all children are innocent.

Yet the case of James Bulger showed just how optimistic such an idea is. James was murdered on 12 February 1993, at the age of two. He was abducted from a shopping centre and murdered by two ten-year-old boys. In some ways it woke society out of its slumber but not entirely so. As we often do with gross tragedies society demonises the perpetrators, using words such as monsters, mentally ill, evil, rarely is children, child or other terms used to describe an ordinary person who committed and extraordinary crime.

As a result we see those responsible for such acts as aberrations and continue to highlight the innocence of children as the norm. Anyone who has spent a few weeks in a school playground can assure you this is not so. Bullying, name-calling, interpersonal violence, isolation and other demeaning activities are on show for all to see. And, yes, your children and grandchildren are no more innocent than anybody else’s. They all have the tendency to do evil.

Children are often cute but rarely innocent.

Which brings us to Mark10:14-16 from the Living Bible:

¹⁴ But when Jesus saw what was happening he was very much displeased with his disciples and said to them, “Let the children come to me, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as they. Don’t send them away! ¹⁵ I tell you as seriously as I know how that anyone who refuses to come to God as a little child will never be allowed into his Kingdom.”

¹⁶ Then he took the children into his arms and placed his hands on their heads and he blessed them.

A danger in reading the Bible is to translate the stories directly into our culture. These are stories written to address situations pertinent to a particular place and time. Jesus is not addressing a situation occurring in downtown Ashburton or Glen iris, but in relation to the way young people were treated in his time.

Children were seen neither as innocent or deserving of special treatment. They were not hovered over by mothers and fathers who worked to ensure that their child received the best, became the best and was not discriminated against by others. This story is not about my child being special, more special than anything else.

In Jesus’ time, children were completely dependent upon their relationship with their father for their life and place in the family. The father decided whether the child would even be accepted into the family. Children belonged to their father and remained subject to his authority even as adults. The saying "to receive the kingdom like a child," which most scholars treat as originally independent of the scene about accepting children, must, therefore, refer to the radical dependence of the child on the father for any status, inheritance, or, in families where children might be abandoned, for life itself. It warns the disciples that they are radically dependent upon God's grace -- they cannot set the conditions for entering the kingdom.

Now isn’t that interesting? Jesus takes a practice or a circumstance, common to his age but out of sync with our own, to introduce the concept of grace. Children had no special right to their place in the family. There was nothing they could do to ensure that they received a place or had first place. Birthplace in the family hierarchy, gender or ability did not guarantee them a place. They were simply to be children.

Old Testament stories of the battle for supremacy in families, Cain and Abel, Joseph, Esau and more reinforce graphically the scheming and conniving that went on to gain the father’s favour and to get your hands on the coveted position of power. The Father held the upper hand and unless you were chosen you missed out, and perhaps, were left out of the family all together. You relied completely on the father’s generosity.

Jesus seems to take this patriarchal system and remind us we are dependent on God’s grace for all the good things that come our way, particularly our acceptance into heaven. We cannot connive or scheme our way into heaven. We simply have to be obedient to what we understand is the will of God and to leave the rest up to God. Like the children Jesus referred to who had to trust their father, we are to trust God.

Is this fair or is Jesus out of line by making such a connection? Isn’t this idea disempowering? Why can’t children be whatever they want to be, do what ever they want to do and be entitled to be treated as innocent and precious, someone whose every wish is pampered to?

Is it fair Jesus asks to give up our own wilful decision making processes to rely completely on the grace of God? Shouldn’t we have some say in what we do and how we go about securing our eternal future? Perhaps Jesus response would be: “Well, we did give you free will; so how did that turn out for you?”

Grace is a gift and a decision. It is God’s gift of unconditional empowerment freely given to those who decide to be open to the possibility of unlimited empowerment.

Grace cannot be bestowed if we are looking the other way. If we are committed to doing things our way (thanks Frank), dictating the terms of the relationship (if you do…then I will…), designing what it looks like (God, let me win X Factor or Lotto, or the grand-final), then we block the presence of God’s grace in our lives.

The children Jesus was referring to had to make a decision to trust the Father. The Father was not exempt of responsibility. Jesus was challenging Fathers to give good things to their children. They were not to be tyrants, dictators, and manipulators of the children. This was a relationship of mutual giving and decision-making. The fathers were to be gracious in their treatment of their children. Neither were to abuse the relationship. Both were to respect each other and to allow what would be to be. What happens when they don’t? See the Prodigal son for more details.

What a challenge for us as we reflect on our personal relationships, and particularly our relationship with God; to give ourselves completely to God, open to the unlimited empowerment available to us and deciding to let go of our impulse to control and to manage the outcomes according to our will. This applies to our relationship with partners; children and those we work with as well as the ultimate relationship on which all else is developed.

Are we, as a church able to give up our concerns and our fears, our preferred outcomes and dreams for our parish; and to give ourselves entirely to the grace of God? The children Jesus was referring to trusted the outcome to the generosity of empowerment; are we able to do so here?

It does not mean we are exempt of responsibility of hard work, effort, prayer and obedience. On the contrary that is what is expected of us. We are to work as if everything relies upon our efforts, while at the same time knowing we are completely dependent upon God’s grace.

This is not a story of childish innocence. It is a realistic story of the facts of life. To welcome children and to be welcomed as children is about the gift of mutual respect and responsibility. We are empowered to the doing of great deeds by the fact the outcome doesn’t rely on us. God has got us covered.

What Makes A Person A Person?

John 15:9-17

We were standing on the top of a high dam wall outside Inverell. I was there as part of a large military training exercise, providing welfare support to the contingent of soldiers, engineers and other auxiliary staff.  In front of me, a soldier was being placed in a harness ready to abseil down the dam wall which seemed to fall away into oblivion from where we stood. As the soldier started his descent, the Captain in charge of the exercise turned to me and said, “What about you Sir, are you going over?” I could feel every head turn toward me, waiting for my reply. I was twice her age and right then felt way older than that. Going over the wall was the last thing I suspected I would be doing when I rose that morning. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Sure, I’ll go over.’

 

Have you ever had a moment when you agreed to something and immediately regretted it? Well, I did then. I was put in the harness and I crawled over the edge.  Out there it seemed further down than the started 113 metres (371ft) On command I began the most terrifying few minutes of my life to the bottom of the dam wall. When I finally gained the ground I was possessed with a mix of sheer relief for having survived and a sense of achievement to have overcome my fears and stepped out into what seemed impossible only a few minutes before. Although I was quick to say no to going down upside down when they asked me back up on top!

 

It was a thrilling and scary experience I was glad to have done right there in front of the young soldiers. The young Captain gave me a big high five and a grin as wide as the dam wall and after that we were best of friends with her. As a result I was welcomed as one of them by the soldiers who were there and those who heard the story, and let me tell you, every one heard the story.

 

Last Sunday we suggested that Christianity was a progressive religion. In other words, faith is where our journey in Christ begins, and faith is the engine which propels us to grow and become one with God. We never stand still. Faith takes us into places, experiences and relationships we had previously thought unattainable or highly improbable. Faith propels us out into the open, beyond the protection of our fears and need for control. We are opened up to the possibility of God hidden in the ordinary life.

 

John Spong suggests that this passage is about the transformation of the open, not the redemption of the fallen. In this passage we have begun to move beyond our initial experience of God’s saving grace, from the joy of salvation into the joy of being fully alive. No longer are we enslaved to the power of ego, sin, we are opened up to the transforming journey of life lived in relationship with God.

 

Rene Descartes offered one answer to the question of what it means to be human when he wrote: “I think, therefore I am’. Merton, Eckhart and other modern Christian thinkers such as Desmond Tutu and Pope Francis offers an alternative answer, I am in relationship….therefore I am.’ The Zulus of Africa have a concept called Ubuntu: a person is a person through other people. A person is a relational being means, according to Anthony Howard, ‘implies that you become more fully a person – or all that you can be – in relationship with other people’, with the other. We are hard wired to be in relationship with the other.

 

If we are open we step into the very same relationship with God that Jesus had, a relationship in which we move from strangers to friends, from servants to companions, from one who does not know the mind of God to one who is trusted with the bringing in of the kingdom of God. Life takes on a very different complexion when we are opened up, and open our selves up to an intimacy with God we could never have imagined, in fact we may have feared, was possible.

 

Fear closes us down. Faith opens us up. Fear builds walls where there is no need for walls. Faith finds ways to dismantle the very walls our fear constructs. Faith is found and finds its expression in and through love. The love that we receive from God through the human touch of a Christ who fully lives out his humanity, even unto the cross.  His expression of love for God and humanity was such that he placed no limits on how far it would take him. And he went there because he was willing to obey the commandments of God.

 

These were not laws or rules of spiritual purity and righteousness. They were the commandments that come packaged in God’s dream for the world, a dream for world in which love, justice and peace reigns supreme over and above the law of fear. They were the commandments given to those who had stepped into a transformed relationship with God and were counted as friends, not servants, not people who simply did what they were told to without question or thought. Servants are those who do the bidding of someone they fear. They hide behind statements like, ‘I’m just doing my job’, ‘it is legal therefore it must be ok’, ‘I’m just taking orders’. 

 

The history of the world attests to the horror down to others by servants. The holocaust, prison camps, genocides and killing fields of the world speak eloquently to the violence of the servant.

 

Jesus says our faith takes us to a very different place. It takes us into a relationship where we are accepted as friends, a part of an intimate interaction where we know the mind of God and play an active role in the implementation of God’s dream. We are co-creators of the kingdom of God in a way that brings joy and fulfilment, not only to a divine plan but to ourselves.  We become engaged in a project bigger than our ego self and expand to include others in our life and our dreams. We no longer just do what we are told but use our intelligence, initiative and capacity to build love, peace and justice in our world, both in our immediate world and the world outside and beyond our boundaries.

 

John expresses this idea clearly in this passage as he has Jesus explain our journey on three different levels:

 

·      A journey from servants to friends – from law to love

 

·      A journey into friendship by choice, his choice, the providence of God’s grace

 

·      A journey into love and joy, a complete-ing of our true self and of the kingdom of God.

 

Today we have the opportunity to live into the possibility of faith through gratitude to the unfailing goodness of God. God calls us to step beyond our fears and to take the step into responsible faith, responsible for how we value our friendship with God and how we actively live out that friendship in the world around us. Do we do it as servants who simply follow instructions or do open ourselves up to become co-creators with the Trinity of  a just an peaceful world.  The choice is ours and here, today is a good place to start.

 

Amen