Exile and Return

Matthew 2:13-23

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

  

How different it is today. We live in a world of constant movement. Not only is the world around us changing at an incredible pace, people we know and love are on the move. Some move permanently and make a home in another land far, far away. Others seem to be always on the move, never putting their roots down and always in search of a new adventure and experience.

 

We are surrounded by people who have fled wars, violence and persecutions, some at the end of the Second World War, others after the Vietnam War and still others after conflicts in the Middle East going back to the end of the Second World War. Today we have people taking great risks to save their families, getting on unsafe boats at great cost and travelling in search of a welcoming land, often in vain.

 

Yet this movement of people is not new. The Bible tells the myths of the Patriarchs who were called out of their land in search of a promised place, of people being forcibly moved into exile and then finding their way out to continue the journey of hope and freedom. For the people of Israel sitting between great powers it was something most generations had, at some time, experienced; people coming and going in search of a better life.

 

It is no surprise that Jesus’ family also became refugees. Matthew tells this story to connect the coming of Jesus to the exile and exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. In the type of Moses Jesus comes both as the prophet and Saviour of the people to bring them out of the exile they find themselves in at the hand of Herod and those who supported his regime. It is of importance in his story that the one who comes as the Messiah, the Anointed, is recognised as such through the familiar motif of exile and return.

 

Once again we have discernment coming in the moment of deep stillness via a dream. Joseph, not Mary, takes responsibility and recognises in his dreams the warnings and escapes to Egypt, a journey full of danger and threat. He discerns when it is time to return but also recognises it is not safe in his hometown and goes to Galilee. Joseph, the man on the move, saves and protects his family, and for Matthew, fulfils the prophecies about the Anointed One.

 

Once upon a time, it seemed we lived in a static world. We understood that the world and all in it had been created once and that was the way it would be. We understood we grew up in a particular place and would settle down and raise our family very near that place. We understood we would die and be buried in the same graveyard as our parents and siblings. We understood that creation as an event was finished and this world was  a finite entity with an end somewhere in the future. We understood we were Australians because that is where we lived and died, along with everyone else who looked like us.

 

Thanks to science and the theory of evolution, how this has changed. We now know we live in an ever expanding universe where creatures are becoming extinct and new ones being discovered; where our universe is just one among many and our planet, earth is no longer the centre of all that is. Change is not something we fear, but something organically central to our very existence. Most people here have a smart phone, an i-pad, a smart tv, a smart car, swipe on and off a smart transport system and talk to the families on the other side of the world for free using Skype. I can use my watch just the way Dick Tracy used to in the  ‘60’s comic strip. None of this existed 12 years ago.

 

In such a world we are being asked to make the journey with Jesus into exile and to discover the power it and the subsequent return brings to us. Instead of seeing those fleeing unsafe homelands as intruders into our world, we are being challenged to see them as the beacons of hope and freedom. Instead of seeing those who are living in exile in our countries as foreigners to be feared, we are being asked to welcome them, their faiths and cultures as they bring about renewal, diversity and vitality to our country and our religion. Instead of labelling others and consigning them to the margins we are being asked to open our heats and homes so that we all may continue to expand our vision of the world.

 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a study in 2015 showing that, far from being a burden on the country, humanitarian migrants (refugees) are amongst our most successful:

 

...While almost two-thirds of migrant taxpayers were migrants with a Skilled visa - reporting $26 billion in Employee income - Humanitarian migrants displayed greater entrepreneurial qualities and reported a higher proportion of income from their own unincorporated businesses and this income increased sharply after five years of residency. (Emphasis added.)

 

This is not what we hear and see and it is not what we want to hear and see. Yet those who come into our country as refugees bring great benefits to those of us already here. In a world of movement of people seeking safety and hope we all benefit.

 

Joseph takes is family into exile to wait out the despotic regime of Herod. While there he cared for his family and undoubtedly provided value to the community in which he lived. On return to his home country he goes to another region and sets up home and business and becomes involved in the community life of that place. He raises a family, all of whom we can assume played a role similar to his.

 

Jesus is the exception. He becomes both spiritual and political, something I suspect he modelled on his father too. Dreams and deep prayer became significant to his self-development and discernment of the will of God in his life. He lived out his life in a world he made his own while maintaining his deep connection with the world he left behind as God’s self expression.  Many failed to see him in such a way and ultimately he was killed for being the outsider they perceived him to be.

 

Yet his exile is the means of our exodus, our return to the home, the heart of God, we have never left. In this time of great movement, this is the challenge for us, to open our hearts to all in exile so they can find their return in our heart. As William Ricketts, the sculptor wrote, “All of life is one”, even those we fear. 

Same Story, Different Snaps.

Coolamon Baby - Glenn Loughrey 2016

Luke 2:1-20

 

Have you ever been to an event, concert or a holiday destination that has been a major disappointment only to read somewhere later a report waxing lyrical about what an outstanding event, concert or holiday destination it was?  You find yourself asking, did we go to the same event or destination, was the writer ever actually there; it seems like we attend two different events, or concert or holiday resort?

 

For most of my life that has been my experience of Christmas. Growing up in a household where Christmas celebrations quickly descended in an alcohol fuelled disaster, I came to dread Christmas and disbelieve the story we were supposed to celebrate. I listened to the story in church, watched the decorations in the shop windows and witnessed the joyful festivities of others and wondered if we were actually celebrating the same event? Did I somehow live in another dimension were the joy and peace of Christmas simply was unavailable to such as me? I still find this time of the year difficult.

 

This  split can also be found in the Gospel story we just read. Luke provides us with two polaroid prints of the same events but they could not be more different. One is a black and white print of  two scared and lonely young middle eastern people fulfilling the need to be counted by a tyrannical government and expecting their first child. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory, nowhere to stay and a baby due any moment. They take whatever refuge they are offered and find themselves sharing a space with animals and their food troughs. Their baby is born alone and un-welcomed except by the barn animals standing around and his parents. One can only begin to imagine how scared they were.

 

The other is a coloured photo full of lights, surround sound and a cast of thousands.  Here the angel Gabriel comes with the multitudes to announce to shepherds as representatives of those whom God favours the birth of the Anointed One. Terrifying but majestic, an advertising campaign launch bigger than anything a major ad company could dream up. It’s inclusive promises are writ big and bold and are so effective, the shepherds head into town to find out whether this is fair dinkum or not.

 

The little family would have wondered if they were in the same story, if their poverty and homelessness and the brutality of the birth was some how misplaced in a cosmic trailer to the incarnation event. How did they fit and why? How were they privileged to suffer poverty and violence and why wasn’t their child, the Anointed One welcomed in a way commensurate with his title and genealogy?

 

Jesus was born in a violent world. War and occupation was ever present in his life just as it had been in the lives of his parents. There is nothing beautiful about this manger scene and the heavenly messengers in the field fail to make it so. In fact they make it worse. Herod becomes inflamed when he hears of the goings on in Bethlehem and sets about genocide of his own. The isolation of the birth becomes an isolation of a people and a life until the predictable end.

 

How do we make sense of these two pictures and the crumpling of hope so loudly proclaimed? How do we live in the shadow of the manger and the shepherds’ field in a world that has changed little? Unjust wars destroy the babies born in Aleppo, Yemen, Mosul, the Sudan, West Timor, Myanmar and Central Australian indigenous communities. Violence destroys the hopes of little ones in houses in our cities where domestic violence has not lessened. Young people are being traumatised not for a moment but for a lifetime through the dysfunction of a world still clinging precariously to the promise of  ‘peace among those whom he favours’.

 

How do we embrace the hope of those words and the little boy in a food trough and change the world in which we live? The great intentions of God can only become real if they are embodied in ordinary actions every day by those he favours. It is us who has to take the steps to bring about peace on earth. It is us who has to resist the temptation to fear, the beginning of all violence and war according to Thomas Merton.

 

Our fears and anxieties lead us into savaging others with our words and our actions, our anxieties and fears make us defensive and protective to such an extent we have to eliminate or annihilate the other. No one sets out to hurt but does so when it is the most effective to protect him or herself from what they fear. It can start out innocently but escalates beyond imagination as our fears are magnified and feed by the ego self who cannot afford to fail.

 

We can begin by understanding that the baby born in Bethlehem was not a special baby due special attention. The baby born in Bethlehem is an ordinary baby just like your baby, your child’s baby and the babies being born this moment in places like Aleppo. When we do this we normalise the experiences of all born as a baby while elevating each to the sanctity we attribute to the Christ child.

 

In other words the affection and worship we save for Jesus is required of us for all born into this world. We are all, in some mystical way, the embodiment of God in the world. Our birth is special and unexpected, an expression of poverty and dependence we almost instantly seek to forget. Yet it is this innocence, this infinite trust in the love and nurture of God in others we bring with us which empowers us to be one of the many who make up the angelic choir.

 

If only we could let go of our fears and anxieties and begin to trust as we did at our first breath then we would begin to change our world. There would be need for violence for there would be no thing to defend. All would be valued and worshipped, the child born in Aleppo, Mosul or some remote township in Central Australia or the child born in a home near here, as we worship the boy born in Bethlehem.

 

It is the difference in the two scenes in Luke’s Gospel. It is no good the shepherds responding and going to visit the baby or the Wisemen who bring gifts, something must be transformed by the encounter, something has to be changed by what they witness.

 

Tonight as we come to contemplate this event we must come to be transformed by the birth of the Christ child so that we leave here committed to respect, justice and love and not to fear, violence and tyranny. It is up to us. 

In A Dream

                                                 Josephs Dream -  Gaetano Gandolfi

Matthew 1:18-25

When the unthinkable occurs we may find our selves operating in a daze, a dreamlike state where no thing feels real and everything seems a mirage. How did this happen? What does it mean? What do I do now? How am I going to cope with this and the fallout from this situation? We can lose touch with the world we live in and become bambozzzled by anxiety, frustration and stress.

Joseph is just a man. Mary is just a woman. Two material beings plunged into the unreal world of an unwanted child in a time when for this to occur was an outrage. How do you handle not only the possibility of a child but the tragic consequences which was the normal response to such an event? In Matthews retelling of the story agency is given, not to Mary but to Joseph to steer his little family through the crisis.

Joseph was a good man. Mary was a good woman. According to Matthew they hadn’t lived together, they had followed the rules yet, somehow, there was a child on the way. So what to do?

In spiritual matters angels, sleep and dreams play a significant role in discernment and direction. Mary was informed by an angel about what was to occur and Joseph has an encounter with an angel while asleep and dreaming.

Angels have a history. They are the messengers of God, sometimes even, they are the Godhead itself. The Old Testament are full of such stories. They bring a message, interpret a situation and provide direction for the confused and bewildered followers attempting to live out their faith in a material world.

It is no surprise that these encounters occur when one is asleep. They rarely occur when one’s fully awake and engaged in the busyness of life. When we are distracted by our ego self we can fail to see the messenger standing right in front of us. When we are dealing with a disturbing situation, when someone is confronting us or we have been so unbalanced by an event, it is all we can do to defend ourselves in an attempt to stay upright, let alone see the angel present in the situation.

Being asleep is when we allow our subconscious the opportunity to process the events we are working through and to provide us guidance and direction. Sleep is that time when our brain takes the time to recalibrate itself and to put into order the chaos of our days. We miss things when we are awake and busy. We are so focussed on any number of things at the one time that what can be a key element simply isn’t connected with and miss the obvious. Asleep our brain cleans up and puts things together.

One of the things we need to do with computers is to defrag our system, this simply means defragmenting that part of our computer which stores data. A defrag simply puts things back in the right place so what was possibly lost in another place is restored to where it should be. Sleep is the time our brain defrags its storage system and returns things to its proper place.

No wonder one of the wisest pieces of advice is to sleep on it. It does work miracles. In the morning things look different and what seemed impossible before is now so obvious you can’t believe you were so anxious about it.

Dreaming is one of the tools our brain uses to review the day. Sometimes it is a realistic dream, sometimes it is symbolic and metaphorical and may take a little time to unpack, but this parallel world is seen by the ancient worlds as vital to discernment and wisdom. Again being a sleep and entering into a dreamlike world we are open to the present of others, known and unknown because we are no longer relying on our ego for direction.

My father spoke often of his spirit friend who would visit him at night and sit on the edge of the bed. They seemed to have discussed many things and the visitation was real and valuable to my father. He relied on this visitor for advice and direction. It was no doubt a dream like event but it was real, not imagined, for him.

Joseph’s dream like experience is a way of describing the process he went through to make sense of the impossible situation he found himself in. What he had decided to do and how he decided to do it reflect the importance of the event. He wasn’t making a decision on his own. A supernatural experience require(d) supernatural guidance. Being still and silent, asleep, he was able to hear what was there and what he needed to do.

Here we return to the idea of waiting in stillness we discussed last Sunday. There is no panicked running around trying to solve it. It happens in the stillness of waiting, in this case while he is asleep. When we enter into liturgy and the spiritual life we enter into a place of waiting in stillness. Of letting go of ego and allowing what is to come to come, what is to be to be and what we need to discover to appear. This is not simply a passive stillness or waiting but a waiting to see, to see what is to be and how I am to respond.

Joseph responds very differently to what he would have been expected to respond. He didn’t call off the betrothment, he didn’t abandon Mary, he didn’t go away in shame. He was able to discern that something very special was present and he was to take the uncomfortable journey with Mary. He did so because he acknowledged the inner wisdom present in his inner being. He recognised the fingerprint of God and was prepared to go where logic and local law said not to go. He, the ordinary man and Mary the ordinary woman became extraordinary, making it possible for the intersection of the divine and the human, of the perfect and the imperfect, of the infallible and the fallible.

He and Mary made it possible for God to walk among us in the shape of Jesus of Nazareth and experience the enigma that is being human so that humans can aspire to be like God in their relations with one another.

The challenge for you and I is to find the space to be still and wait for the visitation of wisdom. It can happen anywhere and does, indeed happen in our dreams, while we are asleep. But it can also happen, far less dramatically as we sit in the spaces within our liturgy, in the moments before church and the moments after communion. It simply requires us to be still, to wait and to be open to the possibility. Lets try it now.