Amateurs - The Love of the Two Mary's

"As so often happens, the great discovery in the drama that is Easter was the work of amateurs.” An amateur is, in the primary sense of the term, a "lover." Our favourite amateur sleuths on TV are lovers – lovers of people, of intrigue and of little hints, the nods and winks that break what seems to be unbreakable alibis and stories. They stumble almost by accident onto the truth and discover the truth.  Our history is full of amateurs who have discovered new stars, new formulas and new ways of doing things the experts would be, and are, jealous of.

 

“…the Mary's went to the tomb out of love”, love for Jesus, love for the truth, love for hope... “. If we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there.” Not inquisitiveness, not fear, not a need to confirm that their worst nightmare had happened. They went out of love, a passionate heart called them forward to stand near and with the one who had held all their hopes and dreams.

 

You see, “Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning.[1]” Love, a word we use much but understand little. Love is a term that has been emasculated of it’s power and it’s beauty in a world were words have only an utilitarian use. 

The Mary’s get up early, and get to the tomb before everyone else. Maybe they wanted to see if they could further care for the body, maybe they hoped they could see him for one last time, maybe…… maybe… they just had to be near him. They had loved him, he them, and love and the memory of that love was all they had left.

 

“And their love was rewarded: “⁹Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”

 

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski relates a discussion with a young boy who has a plate of fish in front of him. The young boy says, “I love fish.” The Rabbi asks, “You love fish?”. “Yes”, the boy replies, “I love fish.” The Rabbi replies, “ Is it love for the fish that makes you catch it, kill it and boil it?”. He continues, “It is not the fish you love, but you love yourself. You love how the fish makes you feel. You do not love the fish. You love yourself.” He finishes with, "So much of what is called love, is fish love."

 

So much of what passes for love of Jesus the Christ is indeed fish love. We can love Jesus for what we believe Jesus can do for us, from fire insurance to a superman rescue, from rags to rishes, for healing and redemption. There is much of ourselves in this love. We love Jesus as long we are not made uncomfortable, challenged with ideas and opinions that turn our world upside.

 

We love Jesus if we can still  have our overseas holidays, our big houses and our fancy cars. We love Jesus if everything goes our way. We watch politicians invoke God to support ideas God would never entertain. We have sport men and women who thank God for winning a medal or trophy. We love Jesus if our privileged lifestyle continues and suggest others need to love Jesus like us if they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Our love for Jesus can be little more than self love, love of self, and the church is not exempt from such love. Love of liturgy, music,  existence and fancy clobber all smack of self love.

 

What the world and the church need is the love of the Mary’s, that simple love that goes to the one they love despite a broken heart, tear filled eyes and tired bodies, people who are finding the silence of God to be like a black hole into which they may very well disappear. Yet they go to the one they love.

Here in this parish I watch this love happen week in week out. People come with broken hearts, broken bodies and carrying great burdens but they come and they participate in the liturgy or they carry out their small and seemingly insignificant acts of love and they see Jesus. They do the flowers, polish the pews, tidy the candles, prepare the elements for the Eucharist, play the organ, prepare the choir, sing in the choir, make palm crosses, do the pew sheets, count the money, balance the books, run the book sales, manage the website, mentor a student, tidy the church for events such as this, and more, much, much more, and they see Jesus.

 

Being at the tomb and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not the task of the professionals, the clergy, the studied alone; it is the gift of love. Love that makes the journey to the place where mysteries are revealed, and the love that responds with the beauty of grace. And this love is the domain of the amateur, the ordinary person who sees beyond the mechanical actions of the tasks they carry out into the wonders hidden from those who are more learned and studied.

In the midst of a dark world where we name weapons of destruction with sexy names like Mother or Father of All Bombs, what is the response of love? The response is the love of beauty, mystery and wholeness of the ordinary. Someone said to me when asked this question, I just try to do beautiful things in the ordinary everyday acts of my life and hope that will help. It is the only thing that helps.

 

The two Mary’s remind us this Easter by their act of beauty and love, that such acts will never be denied no matter how dark the morning maybe, that beauty and love are their own own reward and only rewards those who let them loose in the world, making no claims of ownership. While I am sure the two Mary’s loved fish, their love for Jesus was no fish love. Amen

---

[1] John C. Purdy. Chapter 12 of God With a Human Face (1993), republished at Religion Online.Fish Love

The Sensual Jesus

Brooklyn_Museum - The Ointment of the Magdalene (Le Parfum de Madeleine) - James Tissot

John 12:1-11

 

If we ever had any doubts about Jesus and his humanity, here is a scene which challenges all our perceptions.

 

The easy place to go is the confrontation between Judas and Jesus over the wasteful use of money. Money that Judas deemed should be used to assist those in need and he makes his very valid point forcefully.

 

Jesus responds with what sounds like a callous response, you will have the poor with you always but me you won’t. Is that a valid and rational point? Is that an excuse for ignoring the waste happening in front of him or is there something else happening here?

 

This scene is a very emotionally charged scene, almost erotic in its telling. Let us listen again to these few verses:

 

“There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” 

 

Wow. This was not rational, formal, respectable dinner party. Deep emotions bubble to the surface in a room charged with deep feelings for each other. A woman not only enters the rooms but bends low over Jesus and pours a large amount of  very strong and sensual perfume over Jesus’ feet an begins to wipe it with her hair. This is a moment that would have taken the breath away from who were sitting in the room. It had the essence of deep love, deep intimate love, deep emotional love.

 

It was a deeply human connection between two deeply human people and Jesus could not have ignored the emotions and feelings that came with this moment. It was seductive, as seductive as any of the temptations he had experienced previously, and he recognised it for what it was – deep feelings not to be ignored but to be recognised.

 

Judas does what we seem to do with these human and juicy bits, he turns away and changes the subject. He goes for the old the money should be used for the poor strategy, but Jesus keeps him in the emotionally perfumed room. This is about deep love and a love that is to be expressed and experienced in the moment.

 

This moment reminds us that this is not just a story we can spiritualise and give the meaning that makes us most comfortable. It is a story of individual people complete with deep emotions and ordinary reactions. If we lose sight of this in this story then we will likely lose sight of it our understanding of Easter and of the people we see around us. People will become objectified – for Judas they become the poor – for us they become widgets in the consumerist puzzle – for Jesus they are people who feel deeply and need places where they can express those feelings without judgement and criticism. And yes, they sometimes may seem erotic as this one does.

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. 

You Are Enough

Luke 10:38-42Colossians 1:15-23 

Researcher Rene Brown writes, “Life-paralysis refers to all the opportunities we miss because we’re too afraid to put anything out in the world that could be imperfect. It’s also all of the dreams that we don’t follow because of our deep fear of failing, making mistakes and disappointing others.”

 

One of the characteristics of modern humanity is the expectation to be perfect, perfect in how we look, in our work, even in our hobbies and our worship. To exercise we buy the best fit wear, have our fitness tracker attached to our arms and ears and our water bottle, colour coordinated with our outfit, all visible for others to see.

 

Students at school fail to try because they are afraid their best is not good enough, that they might get it wrong and therefore fail. They fall back to what they know and stay stuck, not achieving their full potential because they are fearful that they are not enough.

 

Churches remain stuck in the past in a very similar way. The corporate secular world has embraced new ideas of corporate governance, of marketing and promotion, of technology and media, but the church remains attached to a governance system best suited to small collections of people in the sunny English countryside. We are afraid to change because we are afraid that our enough will not be enough, that we simply can’t possibly apply such ideas to the work of the church.

 

The result? We keep polishing the brass, putting the flowers in the same place and singing the same songs. We continue to focus on detail, on the minutiae, in parish councils, synods and parish meetings. We have forgotten the big picture or are, in fact, scared of the big picture because we do not believe our enough is enough to make the steps into the real world.

 

The writer to the Colossians reminds us bluntly whom we belong to.  In the hymn we read in verses 15-20 make it very clear.

“¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;¹⁶ for in^[a] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in^[b] him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

 

It would take many sermons to unpack the power and might of this Christological hymn, suffice to say, this is the Jesus we have given our allegiance to- the image of the invisible God, the first of all creation and the source of all that is and will be created, the power which holds all things, including you and the church together. He creates, animates and redeems all of creation.

 

He is indeed awe-some, the indescribable abyss which blinds us and our focus on the minutiae and opens us up to the immense possibility of creation at its essential beginning. Jesus the Creator holds within and is held within the source of all being, God. By his very act of obedience and redemption we are gathered within and hold within ourselves the power of all being. We are not powerless. We are not imperfect. We are one with all things and with the initial source of all things.

 

We have within us the potential to bring the power and presence of God into our world. We are able to rise above the detail which so occupies us and to move mountains, change paradigms, shift cultures without fear of failure.

 

In the Gospel Jesus reminds Martha of this very truth. Get out of the kitchen Martha, you are enough, you have done enough. What you have done is enough. Fussing about in search of perfection gets in the way of the good things available to you.  See Mary, she is sitting here soaking in the goodness that comes a relationship with me. Your relationship is no less real than hers, except you are preoccupied with the little stuff and that prevents you from getting the big stuff.

 

A training principal of mine once said, “If it’s worth doing it is worth doing badly’, implying tat if you wait until you can do it well you may never in fact do it. In the words of Voltaire, (In his writings, a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of good.) "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without." (Confucius)

 

The writer of the letter Colossians pens a powerful antidote for our fear about the future of our church and of ourselves. Maturity for the church and us is to hold fast to the truth of who Jesus is who has redeemed, given birth to the church and lives within you and I. Maturity is the ability to translate this hymn, this Christological mission statement, into our lives and our practice.

 

We are not to become a church of occupation, fighting grimly to hold our ground in a rapidly changing world, but are to be a church of invasion, ever moving out from where we are into the world confident in the Christ who knows us and lives within us, the church. The church has become a place of hibernation, of drawing in, in the hope that somehow we will survive.

  

The best defence is always attack, not violently but in a gentle moving out into the world in full confidence. St Oswald’s will not survive if we try to hang onto what we had or have. We will only survive if we begin to look out, then move out and engage, finding new ways to make the word (the life of Christ) fully known in the world. This is the living out of the grand portrait Paul pens for us, experience the reality of Christ alive in ways that are different to those we have experienced and want to remain with.

 

Martha is challenged to get out from behind the familiar and become open to the vulnerability a relationship with Christ brings.  We are to step out from behind the safe walls of the church and our Sunday practice and become open to the vulnerability of relationship with the world in the reality of Christ.

 

What a difference we would experience if we were able to live out of Pauls hymn to Christ! Our enough will be enough in his awesome presence and we will indeed go into the entire world and make disciples of all we meet. 

The Elephant in the Room......

John 12:1-11

An elephant is lying the psychiatrist’s couch. It was a strong couch. He turns, slowly to the psychiatrist and says, “Even when I am in a room full of people, it is like know when notices me.”

 

The elephant in the room. The taboos we don’t talk about. Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, “Don’t mention the war”. It seems in life each one of us experiences an ‘elephant in the room moment’. Or maybe it is more than a moment. The elephant is a permanent resident in the room and people walk around it with out daring to mention that it is there.

 This week a 10 year old girl committed suicide in an aboriginal community in WA, a year or so after her brother had. I spoke to a Maori elder who told me of a 15 year old boy who committed suicide in the same place his Dad did some years before. The Guardian website reported: 'Suicide was the second leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 14 and under in 2014, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. Indigenous children in that age group were 8.8 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to take their own life.' An elephant in the room mainstream media have ignored.

Churches and institutions, countries and governments, families and friends, also have large grey object that is never far from the centre of attention in their space but is never actually mentioned. T

 

Our Gospel today we encounter several such moments. Mary and the expensive perfume. Judas and his consternation at waste. Jesus and the poor will always be with you. All raises large grey shaped images. What are they about? Why would someone waste so much money by pouring expensive perfume on someone’s feet? What is the point? Jesus is not dead. It seems a wasteful actJesus not only condones but applauds.

Judas knows the need in society and does not get it. Why such extravagance while people starve, are homeless and unemployed? I could have used that money to make a difference. The elephant of social justice is loose in the room.

 

Jesus’ reply suggest that this is a systemic problem unlikely to solved by the price of a bottle of perfume and, in actual fact, will be with us permanently until the kingdom of God is firmly in place. The number of elephants in the room are growing.

 

And then there is Lazarus. What is he doing here? Is he here or is it just a rumour? He’s dead isn’t he? We went to his funeral. I know I did. How come he is alive? Or is he? How did (could) that happen?

 

And the questions grow and multiply.

 

What was it like to be dead and now alive? It must have been dark in the tomb. What’s like being dead for 4 days and walking out into the sun again? What did that feel like? What was he thinking about while he was in there? Was he able to think? What did he think when the rock was rolled away and he heard Jesus call him out?

 

And I am sure there were many furtive looks his way, trying to make sense of the situation and not blurting out the obvious questions. The elephants in the room were crowding out the guests. The Gospel writer acknowledges the prominence Lazarus takes by noting that “⁹When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, ¹¹since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”

 

And it’s the same problem they face after Jesus rises from the dead. Having put Jesus in the tomb they thought their problems were solved. Somehow he reappears and the impact, over time, rattles the security of the authorised religion.

 

Yet it is not what happens on Easter morning that intrigues me as much as what happens in the darkness of the tomb. Modern day Christians leap straight from Good Friday into a romanticised Sunday morning without giving Saturday, Easter Eve much attention. It is just that moment from which Jesus returns and that is the only moment it plays in the Easter story.

 

Yet what happens in the tomb is the springboard for the future. Without the deep dark abyss of Jesus confrontation with death, there can be no life giving resurrection, in whatever form you may believe that came. In the darkness Jesus confronts the complete loss of the normality of life he had enjoyed as an incarnated man. Like Lazarus, the normal social intercourse was no longer available and he was left in the darkness of no living thing. Lazarus and Jesus were completely disconnected and free at the very same time, free to become the newly created person that was now available to them.

 

Often it seems to me, moderns want to make the leap from their own particular death experience and arrive at their resurrection without doing time in the tomb. When tragedy, errors, failures, loss of relationships or partners, loss of job and career and more occur we are urged to seek closure and to move on as quickly as possible. Death may have arrived but resurrection is demanded almost immediately. Funerals for example occur as quickly as possible so people can get back to normal. All seems to be solved over a quick cuppa after the funeral and it’s onto the next thing on out agenda.

 

Easter Eve is the solemnest day of the Easter festival. It is the day we sit outside the tomb with Mary and the others trying to come to grips with our loss. Like Mary and Martha outside Lazarus’s tomb we try and find a reason for hope. Sometime before midnight on the evening of Easter eve we, as Christians, participate in the Easter Vigil service, in preparation for what is about to occur and that we celebrate on Easter day, the resurrection of Jesus.

 

It is in the darkness we see the light beginning to flicker into life, hesitantly and fragile at first and then growing stronger and more illuminating as we light up the church. That may be what it was like for both Lazarus and Jesus at the moment the stone was rolled away.

 

For Jesus the stone remained rolled away. Unfortunately for Lazarus, if he was in fact alive, that was not to be the case, but they both shared the life empowering experience of darkness and despair, and stepped forward into our world as evidence of a great spiritual possibility. Transformation. Transformation begins in those moments when all seems lost. Easter is the story of transformation, not just of Jesus the Christ, but of each of us who encounter him in the tomb.

 

For Jesus and the disciples this was not an instant event, but a growing realisation of kinship and freedom, experienced together and forever. For us, it is important we do not slip past the tomb without taking the time to sit in the darkness and experience the more that is to come. For us, it is important we do not seek to move to quickly out of the darkness that invades our lives, jumping from Good Friday to Easter Day without taking in what the darkness brings.

 

Lazarus is one of the elephants in the room when Jesus comes to his home, and the darkness of the tomb can be the elephant in the room in the Easter story. Let’s use this time to experience the transformation the whole story of Easter contains and begin to acknowledge the elephants we walk around in our own lives, communities and society. 

Singing Mary's Song

Luke 1:39-56

 

 

In today’s Gospel story, we hear Mary & Elizabeth sing from their hearts the call and response of hope in a troubled world. Mary has just realised who the child she was carrying was and was filled with wonder and fear. Wonder that she was to be his mother, and fear as to the consequences for both of them and their family in a world waiting for a warrior king to depose the occupying forces.

 

As a result she withdraw from her daily village life and sought solace and solitude with Elizabeth in the hill country. Elizabeth was also pregnant ad about to give birth to John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus and the one who would mentor and teach Jesus. The future would have looked troublesome and precarious to both women and they spent much time together reflecting on where God was and what God was doing.

 

The kinship and relationship these two women feel is signified by Elizabeth’s exclamation Luke places at their first meeting, ‘as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.’ Luke connects both as bearers of ‘Good News’ and also connects John & Jesus as co-creators of this ‘Good News’. Right from the very beginning they are one in what they are here to do.

Luke’s Gospel presentation of the ‘Virgin birth’, Andrew Prior suggests, “is not intending to present us with a miracle which contradicts biological truth and necessity. We make a category mistake if we believe he is even thinking about biology. He is presenting to us the intervention of God in our world; the filling of people with Holy Spirit. It is all to set the stage for Jesus' birth and subsequent ministry."

Mary's song is a song of revolution, and like all revolutionary songs it calls for the reformation of faith and story and a whole new way of living that story.

The birth of Jesus is the writing of a new story on a blank slate. Mary epitomises a humanity free enough to let go of expectation and past baggage and to allow itself to be written anew. While her song sings the story of Israel and the future of humanity as found in the freedom coming from the innocence to believe in the possibility of hope.

How we need Mary’s innocence to day. Without such innocence we will continue to live in fear of the other; to look askance at those who believe, dress and worship differently; to demonise those whose understanding of relationships, ways of life and engagement world is different to ours. More men, women and children will die in refugee camps, bombed hospitals and schools, as a result of domestic violence and gun crimes unless we begin to sing Mary’s song.

 

Stan Grant, in his excellent article, “The politics of identity: We are trapped in the imaginations of white Australians” dealing with search for identity within in the indigenous community, points out:

 

“Our struggle is too conveniently positioned as peculiar to this country. But the politics of identity are an international phenomenon – confusing and contradictory – heightened by the rush of post cold-war globalisation, the advance of new technology and the changing currents of geo-politics.

 

Patriotism, xenophobia, ethnic nationalism, sectarianism are among the many reactions to an increasingly homogenised and globalised world.

 

Look around us.

 

Islamic State has surpassed al-Qaida’s deadly ambitions, appealing to a brutal, radicalised, and selectively distorted Sunni Muslim identity.

 

In every corner of the planet people are questioning who they are. Is allegiance to state? Religion? Tribe? Politics?

 

Vladimir Putin has ridden new waves of popularity in Russia by crafting a comforting narrative of Soviet nostalgia coupled with military adventurism and intervention.

 

This has spilled over into the civil war in Ukraine, where the country is split between those who identify with greater Europe and others with allegiance to Moscow.

 

North Koreans are still defined by an unfinished half-century old war with the United States. As they construct a nuclear arsenal, and march in goose-step, they look dismissively at their cousins in the south and proclaim themselves as the true Koreans.

The Chinese speak of a 100 years of humiliation, the nation’s resurgence countering a history of foreign domination and exploitation.

 

The European Union – designed as a reaction to the continent’s bloody 20th century – is mired in mistrust and suspicion fuelling the rise of identity-infused extreme politics of the left and right.”

 

The situation expounded by Grant and experienced by each of us as we search for ourselves in this world finds hope in Mary's  song, the writing on a clean slate. Interestingly Mary’s song is not sung as a plea for something better. It is the pronouncement of the Good News which has always been present. Her song is sung in the past tense; she sings that this has already happened and now we are entering the place where each of us, in the power of self-sacrifice and the indwelling Spirit, can live out in the present what has always been here.

 

Mary sings:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

 

Here is our faith’s song line, Mary picks it up and sings into being justice, freedom, hope and peace. In call and response she is joins with Elizabeth and their babies within, and they now call to us across the ages to join them to sing in the Hope of the World this Advent.

 

The challenge Mary gives us is; are we innocent enough to sing her song in our relationships with other, in the way we shop and travel, in who we support and favour and in hospitality and welcome to those different in age, gender, race or creed? Are we able to connect to the forever story so as to sing the story into the present and teach others to sing it into the future, long after we are gone?

 

Our only hope is to sing heartily! Amen 

An Encounter with the Living Lord!

I remember taking a group of students to Sydney on an art excursion. We visited many places including the NSW Art Gallery where we saw the best art has to offer. But the place, which took their breath away, was St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral. These were non-churched students who had barely stepped inside a church of its type before. Something truly remarkable happened. As they entered through the open door, the beauty, the silence and the sense of the holy transformed them. Students crossed themselves with holy water, went to pews and sat down in silent ‘prayer’, others knelt, others just respected these acts of piety and sat quietly soaking up the scene in front of them

I have witnessed similar in other places, for example after students have walked the Sandakan to Ranau Death March where almost 2 and a half thousand Australians died, only 6 survived. The visit to the war cemetery on Labuan Island takes on the aura of an encounter with something beyond the normal.

Easter day, today, was that kind of event for Mary, Peter and the other disciple who ventured out to the tomb. She had watched as they processed into Jerusalem in direct competition to the annual military parade of power and might. She watched as Jesus took himself out of the city, and often during that week, off into a place of solitude to pray, contemplate and reflect on where he had come from and what he had to do.

She was close enough to Jesus to understand that he accepted that his actions, words and presence tormented the political and religious powers and could only end in one way – death on a cross.

She stood on the hill outside the city and watched them nail him to the cross and she felt every nail, every jeer, and every tear. She stayed until they took him down and away to the tomb. She had died with him. Now she was back, resigned that it was over, but hoping she can see him one more time.

What happens next is more than she can hope for and, almost, more than she can believe. She is confronted by the risen Jesus, the Jesus that came again into her life and enlivened her faith, hope and purpose. Whatever happened outside that tomb, Mary was resurrected. She was alive again and so was Jesus. He was alive in her life and in the imagination of the world.

In Mary’s case the encounter with Jesus was mystical, transforming and loving, an encounter based on a devotion that could not be shaken by the events of the last few days.

Mystical experiences cross the thresh hold between the real and the mysterious. They are full of wonder, seem real and, at the same time, one questions if they actually occurred. Ronald Goetz suggests that "Maybe the various Gospel accounts are best read as innocent attempts -- decades after the first Easter -- to provide some historical hook on which first-century believers could hang their experiential faith." Mary had an experience that was outside what seemed possible. Yet he encounter seemed real, concrete, visible. Had she not hugged Jesus? Had he not looked like the Rabbi she loved?

Experience is often a questionable quantity in this scientific age. Unless it can be weighed, measured, hypothesised and fits in with all proven theories (is that an oxymoron?) it is deemed to not have happened. Yet experience is the only thing a person has to judge the world by. What happens to me; how it makes feel, know and see, and how it changes me for the future is essential to our development as a person. We are not a package of theories, formulas and research papers wrapped up in human flesh. We experience, and what we experience determines who we are.

Mary and the disciples experience a risen Jesus, how they had that experience and how the ‘saw’ Jesus is not as important as what that experienced did to them.

It transformed them. It transformed Mary, the disciples and the world. Mary was longing for Jesus to return and to be and do just as he had been and done before. Craig Barnes writes "What we long for, what we miss and beg God to give back, is dead. Easter doesn't change that. So we cannot cling to the hope that Jesus will take us back to the way it was. The way out of the darkness is only by moving ahead." Transformation takes what was there before and infuses it with new meaning, a new sense and a new sensibility. Transformation rarely occurs on a bright sunny day – when life is rolling along and all is well. Transformation occurs when we disappear down the rabbits hole, to quote Alice in Wonderland or disappear into James Cameron’s Abyss. When we are in the deepest black place is when we have the greatest possibility of transformation.

Mary and the disciples were indeed in such a place. Their world had collapsed, there was nothing left of the previous superstructure to patch together and begin again. Something completely new had to occur. And it did. Some of us know that story personally. Life is rolling along fine and then along comes relationship breakup, a major illness, financial ruin, tragedy or an unexpected death. Everything we had is no more, or seems to no meaning any more. We wander in the wilderness, we feel like we have fell down the rabbit hole or into the abyss, and we can see no way forward. Then something happens. A word, a thought, an encounter with someone, prayer or something and we begin to build a new life for ourselves and move forward. That is transformation. Mary experienced such an experience. Where does it come from?

Love. In our case our love for self, for others or for life itself kicks in and we begin to live again. Without love life is a drudge, with love it wriggles it’s back to vitality. Mary’s transformation was based on love. It was love that introduced her to Jesus in the first place, that kept her going during what we now know as holy week, it was love that helped her stand while Jesus was crucified and it was love that brought her back to the tomb.

And it was love that allowed her to transform herself through her mystical encounter with Jesus. She didn’t understand what had happened. She didn’t have to. She loved Jesus and that was all that mattered. She grasped the idea that love and transformation, mystical love and transformation, have no need to be understood. They are as real as the experiences they embody and are to embraced as such.

Love is the key rational ingredient in the Good News that found its ultimate expression in three days in the life of Jesus. For Mary and those of us who have encountered Jesus mystically and been transformed, love is all we need. Barbara Brown Taylor ."What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the gardener said, "Mary!" and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening -- not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.”

My prayer this Easter is that each of us gathered here and in churches throughout the world continue to live out of and to give witness to the power of an encounter with the living Lord. It will change your life and the lives of those you meet. Amen