Violence and Sanity

John 18:1 - 19:42

Lopping trees was a daily task my father did to feed his sheep. He didn’t use grain but used the resources of the box, mountain oak or kurrajong to sustain his stock through hard times, or to simply augment their diet. Nature provided all he needed to care for his stock.

 

He would swing the axe into the tree climb up, take the axe and repeat the process until he was where he wanted to be. When he was in the right place, where the best branches were he would begin to cut sufficient only to feed the sheep below.

 

One day he approached a large box tree, two fulsome cuddles round. Strong and powerful in appearance and full of good branches. He swung the axe sideways into the trunk and the tree gave forth a menacing sigh and cam crashing down at his feet. With one blow of the axe, what appeared to be strong and able to live forever, crashed in a heap on the ground.

 

A closer inspection showed it was rotten at the core just waiting for the right incentive to give up the ghost.  Fortunately his faithful dog and horse were not underneath it when it cam down.

 

Good Friday is the day the human project of violence, power and oppression came crashing down. In a few short hours, from dawn till mid afternoon, what had looked invincible fell to the power of obedience and compassion in the life and death of Christ. Death, a synonym for a life violently opposed to a relationship with God, lost it’s battle when Jesus was prepared to live his life to the full, even unto an unjust and cruel death on the cross.

 

Jesus did not avoid the consequences of compassion for all of creation, the consequences for calling out injustice and the machinery of death, be that in the shape of the military economy in power in Jerusalem, or the politically greedy who were manipulating the system for their own wealth and power or the religious leaders who were benefiting from the conflict in the system.

 

Jesus subsumed the violence into his own experience and shared the experience of all those who had been crucified before him for daring to challenge Rome or simply been caught for the crime of survival. Jesus took into himself the violence that was present in those watching and calling for his death.  He understood human beings as having the capacity for great violence and heard it, felt and died from it.

 

For the more, the most challenging part of this story is the crowd, ordinary citizens of the city, mums and dads, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, adults and children, all calling for Jesus to be crucified.  They were loving to their families, caring for their neighbours, observant of religious rules and rituals. They were active community members and would have been seen, in other places, as good people.

 

Yet here they are, calling for the physical destruction of a fellow Jew, a man who had done so much good and had spoken up for them. They wished him a violent death.

 

It is not sufficient to say it was mob think, peer pressure or the manipulation of the crowd by those in power. These were  sane, thinking people, people able to manage their own decisions and emotions, how come they gave it up so easily to resort to violence? These were sane people.

 

Perhaps this is the scary bit. We understand ourselves to be sane and deny our propensity for violence. In fact we deny even the possibility that we too can resort to violence so powerful it crucifies others. Our decisions, words, actions, ideologies are well thought out and sane. There is no way how we think or act is capable of the same violence as the Romans, the crowd, the Nazis or ISIS. Yet..

 

Thomas Merton explored the case of Adolf Eichmann, the leader of the Gestapo who led millions to their death. Merton writes:

 

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.

If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.

 

You may say this was an extreme case. Is it? The recent declaration of imprisonment for those who protest the use of their land for CSG and coal mining by the NSW Government, the treatment of children in detention, the increased spending on weapons of destruction for our military, the destruction of the environment for coal power and more, speaks to our willingness to use violence as and when it is necessary.

 

The increase of bullying, domestic violence, street violence, gun violence, road rage speaks to the  level of violence sitting just below the surface in many of us. AN hour in front of the tv at news time will have us locking every window and door and arming ourselves to protect what is ours! The language of politics, brought into sharp focus by the US elections, but not restricted to that country reminds us the capacity other wise sane people seem to have for violence.

 

 

Merton goes on:

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous……….

The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless. A man can be "sane" in the limited sense that he is not impeded by disordered emotions from acting in a cool, orderly tier, according to the needs and dictates of the social situation in which he finds himself. He can be perfectly "adjusted." God knows, perhaps such people can be perfectly adjusted even in hell itself.

 

The challenge for you and I this Easter is to face the violence within ourselves, to open Pandoras box and take a good long look what is lurking within. It is a dangerous thing to do for we may be forced to realise that the violence in the world also has its home in us, our language, our expectations, our ideologies, our demands.

 

Good Friday is the result of sane people taking sane decisions and enticing good people to follow them. The outcome? The horrific death of the only truly good man. Are we the sane people participating in similar decisions and actions which condemn innocent people to a lifetime in detention centres, to be caught in inhumane living conditions and to be brutalised for our supposed safety?

 

Our does Jesus death save us? It saves us from the illusion of innocence and, if we are willing, wrests the power of violence from us so that we truly can live a non-violent life of obedience and compassion, just as Jesus did. Amen 

After the Body Was Gone!

^{Mathew 28: 8}So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

The noise of Friday was over. The bodies taken down. Only a few close family members and others stayed. They watched as the bodies were taken. Jesus to the borrowed tomb, the others to what ever space was available. 

The majority of the disciples had long since scurried back to a safe place, no doubt lost and bewildered by what had happened in one short, or was it, long day?

After the body was gone, the women and the one remaining disciple trudged off into the night, weary with sorrow and sadness. Grief is an extremely tiring experience, especially grief received under tragic circumstances. They walked home in the dark.

And how dark it was. Not just physically but spiritually and emotionally. You see they did not know about Sunday yet. Unlike us who leave the Good Friday service, they didn’t know Sunday was coming. They were to spend Saturday, and possibly forever, in the dark place of grief and loss of hope and a future.

Saturday would have been a long day. The day after a funeral when all have gone away and you are left on your own is a long, long day. There is no distraction, no action to keep you occupied. You sit and think about what was and what could have been. "If" only becomes something of a mantra. It is a day of no thing doing. The world has stopped and you can’t get off.

Saturday is the space in between the past and the future and as they had no idea what the future would look like, the space became more of an abyss than a short interruption.

It was something they shared with Jesus without knowing it. Jesus, too, was in the space-in-between. In the tomb he was alone, descending into the abyss that is death, without support, wisdom, love, without God, his Father. He was facing the loss of a life he had embraced willingly for a death he faced obediently. Now, what was the future to look like for him? Did he know or was this a journey into a new way of being for him? 

We can’t answer those questions. Nor should we try.

Yet the questions are answered, and as John Purdy suggests, amateurs not theologians, the religious elite or academics, found the answers. Amateurs. Amateurs are those who undertake something out of love for the task at hand. They are not professionals. Amateurs unravel the answer to the riddle of Saturday.

Purdy continues: “Surely the Marys' went to the tomb out of love...if we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there. 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."

Just as love had led them to the cross, love brought them to the tomb. They could stay in the darkness no longer. They had to go and see where he lay and to hold a vigil if they could do nothing else. Their steps to the tomb would have been as heavy as those that lead them away from the cross. Their heart was no lighter, their tears no less urgent. Yet go they did.

Standing outside the tomb they experience the revelation of the empty tomb. Matthew tells the story with all the bells and whistles with the intention to get the reader to understand what a world changing experience it was. It was scary and exciting. Most scary things are exciting. One can hardly begin to understand the emotions they experienced. To say it blew their mind would be an understatement. Earthquakes, a moving boulder, an emptying and an angel!

How long they stood there we do not know but we do know, according to Matthew what they did next. ^“So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” What a mix of emotions – fear and great joy. One could say it scared the hell out of them! Their fear was one of not understanding what had happened, what would happen, what it meant. Their great joy was because the one they loved was back with them, although I would have probably thrown something at him if he, after he had been crucified and buried, met me with “Greetings”! Was that all he could say? Didn’t he know how they felt?

In the midst of our darkness between Friday and Sunday we now get a glimpse of the light re-entering the world. Our darkness at the loss of Jesus is to be illuminated by his presence.

We know this as a personal truth. We know this as a church to be the truth. We are to celebrate this incredible moment with fear and great joy, because once you have encountered the resurrected Jesus everything, and every shade of things is possible. It is something to fear abut it is something to rejoice in.

Melinda Quivik suggests “The sermon on this day should propel the assembly to leave worship with both awe and celebratory power, eager to see where and how the risen one will meet them in their neighbours and friends, their prayer, their advocacy for what is good and just, and in their own gratitude for life and resurrection."

This moment changed our world. If it has changed your world what are you doing to be the change Christ brings into the world and your relationships? How does this event illuminate your darkness and empower you to go and do as Jesus requests, as the Marys do, despite a sense of fear but with great joy?

This evening we move from the space-in-between towards the coming light. Tomorrow we meet Jesus for ourselves, what is that going to be like for us? Amen

Suffering Servant - Position Filled

Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12

We were talking after the Good Friday service. The lady in question had participated in the passion liturgy and was obviously moved by it. The she said something that was unexpected. “Reading that reading I realise that if I had sinned less Jesus would not have had to stay on the cross as long as he did. He would have suffered less!” She had appropriated the suffering Jesus as being her responsibility and began to take on the guilt associated with it.

I thought, how bizarre! Yet it is not bizarre. How many of our Easter liturgies major on the blood and gore of the cross and on Jesus dying for me, me personally, because it is me that put him there. We contemplate nails, we even hammer them into a cross, we carry the cross, and we do all this with a sense of all this being our fault. In the movie, Jesus of Nazareth, a brutal portrayal of Jesus last days, the hand that nailed Jesus to the cross was Mel Gibson’s hand, the point being, we are all responsible for this ugly event.

God’s initiative in redeeming the world and opening up the possibility of a new way of being in it through the politically and religiously conspired death of Jesus, is some how spread across each of us in the form of guilt.

Much of the rest of this sermon is from the pen of John C Holbreck, the Lois Craddock Perkins Professor Emeritus of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX

Holbreck writes:

I do not presume to speak for you, but all of that sounds nothing less than insane to me, or if not insane in itself, then a way to make us insane when we think too hard about it! This kind of atonement, where God trades Jesus for my sin, and then I profess that I have helped to murder Jesus in order to have my sin forgiven by his death, makes my theological head spin. Is there no other way to fathom this event of Good Friday than that?[1]

Perhaps Isaiah 52-53can help. I readily admit that this fourth servant song of the exilic prophet of the mid-6th century B.C.E. has been determinative in developing precisely the warped theology I have described above. After all, here the servant of Isaiah was "marred in his appearance" (Is 52:14), was "despised and rejected by others" (Is 53:3), "was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities" (Is 53:5), and "bore the sin of many" (Is 53:12).

The early Christian community took a look at those words and found in them a purpose for the terrible events of what they later called Holy Week. The monstrous torture and death of their Lord had to have some meaning beyond the horror and the pain, and the meaning they found was that in his death their and our sins were somehow covered over. As they witnessed Jesus' agony on the cross, they were in fact witnessing God's ultimate forgiveness of them. As Jesus died, so their sin died with him, and God's rejection of him led directly to God's desire never to reject them again.

Isaiah focuses like a laser beam on the fact of the death of the servant as a death that was for others. Isaiah says nothing about my or our suffering in relationship to this death. Quite the contrary! Because of this innocent death for others exclusively, we have now a fresh way to view our own lives and that life in relationship to God. Too often we Christians forget that the suffering servant has also done his work; it is not now up to us to suffer with him. We leave that work to him. And so Isaiah thought.

Note how he begins his poem: "Look! My servant shall be successful," using the word that denotes favour with God and humanity. "He shall be exalted, lifted up, shall be very high" (Is 52:13). The actions of the servant, the deeds of his suffering, shall lead to success; his suffering shall be crucial to the way I now can see my own life in a new way. Because he suffers, I need not suffer.

Note, too, how the poem ends: "Out of his trouble, his life will see (clearly?); he shall be filled to the full with his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous by carrying their evils" (Is 53:11). As a result of the death of the servant, God will "give him a portion with the great; he shall divide the spoil with the strong" (Is 53:12). The role of the servant is to make many righteous, because he is righteous in his suffering and death.

It is obvious that the church has focused its liturgical energies too much on the middle of this poem, rather than on its beginning and end. The suffering of the servant has been maximised while the work of that suffering, its efficacious work of righteousness, has been minimised. As a result, we have worshipped in the ways I described, pounding nails in darkened sanctuaries, flagellating ourselves hymnically and psychologically, trying to join Jesus in his death rather than receive from him our new life. For Christians there is only one Suffering Servant. One need not apply for that job, because it has been filled for all time.

So then how should we worship on Good Friday? Suffering and death are sad things, and chastened liturgy and hymn are surely not out of place. But the goal of Good Friday is not to suffer with Jesus, to become like him on his cross. As the servant of Isaiah, who is apparently a portion of the people Israel, now cleansed and purified by exile, has suffered for the whole people, so for Christians Jesus has suffered for them, offering to them new life, opening up for them new hope of joy and peace. And for Christians that offering will take on fresh power and joy in two days' time at Easter.

Like Holbreck, I urge you to think carefully about just what you are doing this Good Friday. Like Holbreck, I shudder to remember those dark Fridays of my liturgical past. Remember this year that "the righteous one will make many righteous," not "the suffering one will make many suffer."

[1] John C. Holbert is the Lois Craddock Perkins Professor Emeritus of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX.

Living Into The Resurrection

Last week an 8 year old boy walked into his classroom in a school in the US prepared for show and tell. When his turn came he produced his fathers coat. He put his hands in the pockets and produced 50 small plastic bags containing drugs. It was a surprise for his teacher but an even bigger surprise for his father when he came to collect his coat!

Show and tell is always a surprise as Thomas found out - yet Thomas's experience came from his questionning of the claims of his fellow disciples.  The claims of Jesus' resurrection were not so much unbelievable for Thomas but required him to have an encounter with Jesus. When this happens he doesn't do what he said he needed to do - touch and feel the wounds on Jesus body - being shown the present Jesus was enough for him to see.

In discussion with a patient re treatment and drugs a doctor recently said,'do not give any drug or doctor the power over your life. See for yourself and decide.' Important words in a world where science has become the most powerful good news and where people give away responsibility to others - primaily through diagnosis - hallelujah, I have an excuse for my behaviour.

Thomas did not give his power to live into the ressurrection story away to others who had seen Jesus.  He retained the right to move into the resurrection experience at his own time and space. Interestingly Jesus honours that and makes it possible for him to do so. One little meeting was all it took to kickstart Thomas' into a new man, but it was accomplished at his pace.

The resurrection is key to our faith. The possibility of hope and light after the dark night of the soul which was Good Friday and the subsequent Saturday transforms the life of those with Jesus, and has the possibility of transforming ours. Yet it is more than the physical resurrection story of Jesus. It is how we see the world, the circumstances of our lives and where we are now.

I fear too many Christians are locked into a world view that is Good Friday - their life is dark, of little hope and they cannot or do not see the green shoots of resurrection rising under their feet. While they know the world has changed, and they need to embrace that change, they are locked into failed mindsets, pointless ideological positions and structures which prevent them doing so. Perhaps they are locked in Saturday, the inbetween space betweeen despair and hope unable to make the move into full blown possibility. They can see clearly what has happened, the world has changed, yet they can't see what is coming, so they stay where they are, waiting for some certainty before they move forward, before they embrace the green shoots of hope that is the resurrection.

Living in the resurrection is a dangerous place. It asks us to leave behind old paradigms and ways of doing things and of being in the world, and to embrace risk, ridicule and failure. It asks us to see for ourselves the possibilities and to seek after them with all our being. It asks to see what is all around us - life, hope and adventure - it asks us not to give away our power to others, to the what if's,  to the looming disaster and the perceived certainty of failure. It says too us all things are possible, it says to us go on, step out and discover the excitement of being alive when you where once dead, trapped in fear, locked in Good Friday or Saturday.

In the movie the best exotic marigold hotel the Indian proprietor of the hotel says, 'Everything will work out in the end; if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.' If you haven't seen the movie, please do so. It is a movie about the resurrection, those who choose to embrace and those who choose not to, who want what they had, not what is there for them now. The characters embrace, slowly the possibility of the future and in doing so discover themselves. Each grows into the idea and experience in their own way and time, some, alas, do not.

And that is the truth about resurrection and being resurrection people - it is something we grow into. We grow into a changed viewpoint, a new perspective on the world. We see it differently and we do life differently.  We take control, we push the boundaries, we explore new posssibilities and take enormous risks, aware that if it doesn't work out this time, it's not the end. The resurrection is our life now and it's our choice whether to live it or not. Choose to be a resurrection adventurer and go for the ride of your life. It will challenge and scare you, but it will always be full of surprises and new experiences. Go on, I dare you!

Good Friday - Crossing the Yellow Lines

A few nights ago on tv, we watched a pavement painter create a 3-d drawing of a waterfall. As he was working people walked back and forward across the emerging artwork, some pushing prams, others on their mobiles, still others on their mobiles and pushing prams.

The next door I walked out of Tweed Centro through the undercover carpark where a worker was painting yellow lines on the edge of the foot path. I asked him if anybody had walked across his painting, he answered no, not yet. I recalled for him the tv show and the painters experience. He said, it will happen, people are in their own world and just don't see. We laughed and I moved to cross the road. As I did I was passed by an older gentleman. As I crossed I turned just in time to see the older gentleman walk right across the freshly painted foot path. I caught the eye of the painter and we chuckled.

In our own world is a fair comment on our lives and the experience of Mary outside the time.
Mary saw the empty tomb and was overcome by her personal grief.

Mary was engrossed in her loss, her beloved Rabbi was not only dead, but now his body was missing.

So much so that Mary failed to see possibility of the new day dawning.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are both a clarion call to widen our worldview, to look wider than ourselves and how we individually and personally feel about what is happening to us, and see others, not as objects, competitors or oppostion, but as ourselves. To recognise that the pain we experience is not special, it is not restricted just to me, it is the pain that every other feels in their own particular way.

Good Friday is the day Jesus joined humanity to share our pain; Easter day is the day when Jesus, calling our names as he did to Mary, calls us to see the new shoots of life, to see that life only ever rises out of pain, and we can only experience life with others if we first share their pain.

The Easter Trading Debate

When I joined the Salvation Army as an officer in training in 1976 the concept of trading on Christmas and Easter was simply not on the radar. It was a concept we could not conceive of in any shape or form. On our Sundays out at the training corps (church) we were not allowed to buy anything including a Sunday paper! On the odd occaision somebody did we were all marshalled for a lecture on the evils of doing business on a Sunday.

How far have we come? Today not only do Christians go to the shops, movies, sporting events on Sunday, they own the shops, they work in them and they are fully involved with Sunday trading. In fact it isn't even raised as an issue any more.

So why are we concerned about trading on Good Friday, Easter Sunday or Christmas Day? Hasn't the horse actually bolted a long time ago? Many areas already have Easter Sunday trading, Star City casino will be open and we have football matches played on Good Friday, attended, often by sell out crowds. At those football matches you can gamble on the outcome by buying tickets in the first scorer etc.

The debate has been sparked by the proposed opening of TAB outlets on Good Friday. As a non-gambler I can see no need for the outlets to be open and to encourage gambling, especially when there are no race meetings allowed (yet) in Australia. But commercially I understand their desire. You can already gamble on Good Friday, on the internet through commercial gambling organisations, so if, as the TAB is, you are in competition with them you would like to operate at the same times as they do. Interestingly, as many of these outlets are now placed in hotels which will not be opening on Good Friday I struggle with how this does give opportunity for people to gamble any way. But....

Gambling is, like alcohol, a major problem in our society and we don't need more opportunities to binge on either. Yet will one more day make a difference or is it just a last ditch stand against the inevitbable?

While as a Christian I do believe Good Friday is important (understatement), Australia has moved from a perceved Christian Country to a multi-cultural/multi-faith one and perhaps it is no longer appropriate or even practical to hold Christian festivals as sacred and to be observed by all.

Perhaps as Christian the importance of this debate is to reflect on how we have been complicit in the watering down of the sacred in our lives. How do we live and do we live in a way that keeps the Sabbath Holy? Can we imagine people today refusing to particiapate in a sporting event because it is held on Sundays, or Good Friday? Can we imagine saying no to our children's sport, movies or shopping specifically becuase it is on a Sunday? What is our faith asking of us and how do we engage in this debate, if we have already accepted as normal that Sunday is just another day.

Interested to read what you think?
(The thoughts expressed here are designed to get you thinking only)