Why Church?

Luke 23:13-35

 

Why church? Why go to church? Why are you here this morning and every other morning? What gets you out of bed and instead of having a lazy breakfast, a potter in the garden or a trip to the footy, why do you come to church?

 

What is it about this place that is important to you?  Some of you have been coming here to this particular church for several decades, most of you have been going to church since you were a small child, why? What is it about church that matters?

 

We live in a world where truth is questioned, metanarratives like the Christian faith story are not trusted or believed; instead it seems to be a mechanical world in which only scientific or productive narratives hold sway. Every action, thought or idea must have a practical and financial outcome. We are looking for product, return on investment and ownership. We need progress; the key indicator for a successful society is one that is growing by an agreeable percentage point each year. Our businesses must be more successful and earn more, we must produce at the cheapest level possible and sell at the highest level possible. We ignore local communities and exploit foreign workforces to do so. Local, small and connected to a narrative that gives life to community simply has no place in the modern economic kingdoms of large corporations and the governments they control.

 

Even the church, the institutional church, is on about growth, numbers, systems, programs, key performance indicators and outcomes. No longer are we allowed the time to simply cogitate on life and bring forth wisdom to feed and nurture our local communities.

 

The success of indigenous communities over the ages, where ever they have been found, has been their connection to place, people and time. They know the place they live in deeply, they understand their interdependence upon each other and they also know that the greatest asset they have is time. 50,000 years is what it took for indigenous communities to learn to live in harmony with place and people. It has taken the mechanistic world a little over 200 years to have a serious impact upon it.

 

Why church? Why the seemingly use-less-ness of church? Why is it important? And why should it have our full attention and support?

 

On the road to Emmaus two men are deeply engrossed in the politics of the day. They were personally involved in this story and it has apparently collapsed without producing the outcome they sought – revolution and a new world. They are despondent and closed in on themselves, having lost the narrative giving meaning to their existence. They are joined by another whom they hardly acknowledge, just as we would as we bump into people on the train, the tram on in the corridors of Chadstone shopping centre – aware that they are there but not taking notice of particulars.

 

Their eyes are closed. Their concern for their own worries prevent them from seeing who is right their in front of them. It is so easy to walk around with eyes closed. Even when we come to church, we can come with eyes closed. We bring with us all the concerns of our daily grind and go through the motions. We are comforted by the presence of familiar faces, familiar music and the familiar liturgy, but are our eyes open? Do we see who is standing next to us and who we owe our very existence to? Do we understand that this not about our concerns and our issues, but about the amazing hesed – unfailing companionship and compassion – of the Christ and that we owe everything to the Godhead who keeps and empowers us – even in the midst of our ordinary lives?

 

In this story, Jesus becomes the interpreter of the political events, of the events of society and explains what has been playing out in the world around them. And their eyes are still closed. Knowledge and information do not open closed eyes. Recent scientific evidence suggests that people are so impacted by preconceived ideas and prejudices that facts do not change their minds. Here is a case in point. Despite hearing everything about what had happened from the one who was there in a way no one else could, their eyes remain closed.

 

This is often the case for us, we are so committed to our opinions on, our knowledge about God and faith,  and our expectations about life and church that we fail to see what is happening and what is needed; we fail to see why we actually come to church. These men almost get this.  They are moved, challenged, enlightened by what Jesus says, but their eyes remain closed. The intellectual and evidential truth of Jesus’ words fail to move them out of their own self-interest – out of their concern for themselves.

 

Jesus stays with them for dinner and something happens, we are not sure exactly what it is but in the breaking of the bread a light goes on in the head and their eyes are open. In this moment of deep personal encounter with the symbolism of faith they see, as for the very first time, who is at the centre of their lives. Not just their faith but their lives. 

Here is a deep recognition of the centrality of the Christ to our identity, existence and being. Their world is refocussed and instead of going on with their ordinary lives centred solely on themselves, they return to Jerusalem, driven by the realisation that their life is no longer their own. 

Even though their hearts burned with in them on the road, nothing changed for them. We can be made warm and fuzzy by our attendance at church without being revolutionised by the Christ. It is the deep sacramental realisation that there is no thing else but the church and that our lives are to be completely oriented toward the church, the body of Christ, and its advancement counter-culturally into the world.

 

They get up immediately, abandon whatever their plans were and go back to Jerusalem and take up the mission of the church. There is no hesitation, no second guessing, no concern for their needs or desires; they return empty handed but open eyed into the church.

 

Why church?

 

·      Because there is no other response to the love of God and the indwelling presence of the Christ;

• Because there is no other response to the faithfulness of God to us;
• Because there is no other response to the beauty and mystery of creation;
• Because there is nothing more important than the maintenance and advancement of Christ’s body in the community in which we live.

 Why church?

• This is why we give of ourselves sacrificially in service and financial support. 
• This is why we give to the church before we give to ourselves.
• This is why we give up our comfortable beds to be here, because there is no other choice for us.

Why church? 

Because all the other experiences in the world do not open our eyes to the truth about the Christ we encounter like the moment we meet Jesus in the Church, his mystical body alive in the world. 

Speaking from Exile

He was in his early teens. A fine looking young man struggling to find his way in a white world, often accused of crimes he had not committed, we worked together to overcome the injustices that came his way. When he was 10 he filled a bathtub with water, poured in a bottle of White King bleach, and climbed in. He wanted to be white like all the rest of the kids in his class. He was a young man in exile.

 

Sometime later I was working in the funeral industry and visited the mortuary at Mt Isa hospital. A man had been placed on the slab for forensic examination by the GMO; a blood stained white sheet covered his body.  Freezer doors weeping on one wall, a pile of torn decrepit clothes absent-mindedly flung on the untidy bench as a brief reminder of a life once occupied, and the half closed screen door, all spoke volumes about the place in which we stood. The man was an aboriginal person who had been sleeping on the highway, run over by an eighteen-wheel road train. While it might seem trivial to say his body was badly damaged, it is impossible to know just how much unless you had witnessed the results. Remarkably his face was unmarked.

 

Standing there, I  experienced being in the tomb with the dead Christ, standing on the edge watching as people performed the necessary routines. I knew I was witnessing a scene that would change my life forever. And it did.

 

I struggle to understand why people sleep rough on the road in the path of the ubiquitous semi-trailer. What sense of hope do these people have, or indeed, is hopelessness the only gift our society gives them?  Here was a human being who did not deserve to die in such a violent manner.  Here was someone who had at some time in his life dreamed dreams, held hopes, loved another and possibly fathered and raised children. Where had all that gone, and what part did the dominant culture of our society, including the church I am apart of, have in his decline? Here was the image of Christ crushed into death, not simply by the truck, but by the failure of society to engage and include him. He remained in exile.

 

Talking with the GMO I heard about indigenous teenage suicides. The method chosen spoke eloquently of the hopelessness experienced.  They simply tied something around their neck and on to a fence, sat-down and waited. What is our response or do we rationalize what happened as the life style choice of the individual? Exiled and disempowered.

 

I grew up in a town renown for its violence against local tribes. Visiting the library, reading newspaper cuttings and letters from the mid 1880’s to the early 1920’s, I realised the steps taken by my family to hide my grandmothers’ heritage was a strategy deemed necessary for survival.

 

My grandfather made my Uncle promise to keep my grandmothers indigenous heritage hidden. No one in my family speaks of it; her background is shrouded in mystery. There is only a mother who registered the birth some time later in a different town. No father is mentioned. She had the name of the family she was left with when the small aboriginal community from which Jimmy and Joey Governor, part-aboriginal men who killed 9 people during a fourteen week rampage in 1900, the year of federation, and who inspired the book and movie “The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith” came, were forcibly moved out west at the request of the white community. 

 

While it was our family secret, it wasn’t a secret to the locals. I grew up known as ‘Young Darkie’ or ‘Young Blackfella’; my friend, when angry, called me the son of a drunken bush black; another friends’ father told a group of classmates they could be friends with me but to remember where I came from. Bullying at school was never-ending.

 

My father lived in exile, caught between a world he knew and a world he never knew, growing more bitter and angry as the years went on. He acted out his violence through alcohol, directing it at anyone nearby, particularly his family and I as his eldest son. He was never able to reconcile within himself these two worlds even when he stopped drinking. It was bigger than him and his family. It was the internalised oppression of a people and country from which he was exiled.

These incidents are metaphors for the destruction of the primal spiritual essence of our people and symbolise the battle for the soul of our nation. Our people are suffering from the cumulative effect of internalised oppression giving rise to the situation we see in front of us. It will take imagination, humility and a drastic rethinking of our own lives and the way we find value and meaning in and for ourselves, and others before we will be able to reach out to those we continue to oppress. They, we, are living in exile.

 

Perhaps exile holds the key for the future. ‘Only when you are out of rhythm with the familiar do you begin to investigate and explore the possibilities. Exile is the place in which such an investigation not only can begin, but becomes necessary for both survival and renewal. It is the place where one is forced, as an individual and a community, to reflect on who or what is at the centre of one’s being.’ Both cultures are disconnected from their centre due to the violent history of our country, and in a very real sense, both black and white, are exiled from belonging. Homeless and exiled, the violence continues and can only find peace when we own such disconnection together.

Standing at the edges of the abyss, a place our country has teetered on for sometime, reveals both the emptiness and the fullness of our situation. Emptiness and fullness of place, time and country, language and symbolism, and myth and meaning in a land overflowing with mythic and creative possibilities as yet untapped. Both cultures have been reduced to a literal reading of the situation and are concentrating on solving practical and in your face problems – work, housing, education (all good things) but not that which will change the situation in the long term.

What will change our situation is the conversation from the edge, from exile. This is not a conversation for insiders on both sides, but for the outsiders, those whose voice isn’t heard in conventions, parliaments or peak body discussions. It is not about the pronouncements by high profile leaders or designated spokesmen and women. This is dialogue, the conversation between ordinary individuals, telling stories and sharing both knowledge and ignorance, informing pathways and possibilities. This conversation begins here with you and I, exploring experiences, questioning stereotypes, forming relationships and breaking down walls.

Thomas Merton suggests “The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept.” It is sometimes called Dadirri by indigenous people.  Inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It is a 'tuning in' experience with the specific aim to come to a deeper understanding of the beauty of the other. 

It is listening and hearing, not just to what is said but what is not said, what is felt, what is hidden. This takes great imagination and risk. It takes time, and is not linear. It involves learning in depth, far removed from the head and the rational desire to solve problems.

It requires respect, the capacity to allow others to make the journey at their own pace and in ways we find uncomfortable and counter intuitive. It recognises others as our teachers and removes us from the responsibility of knowing everything. It recognises the reign of God as the companionship of empowerment and looks not for measurable results but fulfilled lives.

 

Merton, in writing to race activist Jim Forrest in the US in the 1960’s said; “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Whatever we do in terms of reconciliation and engagement with indigenous people must keep this in mind. It is not about ideas or solutions, but people. Individuals of goodwill like you and I who are seeking a better world for all, can only do so in relationship with each other and those we share the future with. John Baxter, speaking at a NRW gathering said that reconciliation is relational – it happens between individual people, not cultures. For people driven by easy answers and quick solutions this maybe seen as doing nothing, wasting time and avoiding the problem.

It is the good news Jesus performed. He did little, he wasted time and, as far as the Zealots and others were concerned, he avoided the elephant in the room - the system. Yet he changed the world. We can do the same.  It can only happen through dadirri and communion, and it must begin tonight.

 

 

 

  

Pentecost - Being Christ in the World.

John 15:26 - 16:15

 

 

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day of the breaking in and breaking out of the Spirit in the lives of all who live a life of love and compassion in Christ. To be en christos is to be empowered to live and love in a manner which challenges the accepted ways of the world. To, in fact, be Christ in the world. You. Yourself. No-one-else.

 

No longer is there a Jesus to turn to for direction, teaching, hope, advice and spiritual comfort. You are on your own. You are to speak as if you are Jesus and to act as if you are Jesus because, for John, you are. And you will experience life just as Jesus did. For you are mystically one with Christ.

 

John writes about the coming of the Spirit at a time when we associate Pentecost with miracles, speaking in tongues and other super-natural events, and yet that seems far from what John has in mind. No where in this farewell discourse does he mention the doing of miracles or speaking in tongues or ecstatic experiences s being the lot of the those he was writing, his community which was beginning to feel the wrath of persecution and the struggles of remaining faithful even within the synagogue.

 

One would have thought if these were to be the tools of a disciple’s life, John would have spoken strongly and clearly about the power available. He doesn’t. Instead he links the disciples lives and experience of life directly to that of Jesus and stresses that the Christ is now in them as God was in him and that is all they need.

 

Jesus is saying that even if I go away, the meaning I came to bring will not disappear. What I have done is to open to you a new understanding of what it means to be human. Trust it. Now that it has been opened, it cannot be closed again. Spong writes that Jesus continues with; ‘The spirit of truth, which proceeds from the father, will come to stand where I have stood.’

 

David Ewart suggests "Whatever else we may want to say on this day of Pentecost about the Spirit, it is important to notice that Jesus always refers to the Spirit as the Spirit of truth. And in John truth is always the way, the life, the light, the joy, the friendship."

 

Here we discover a mystical and mutual indwelling bringing into existence a new being in relationship. It is no longer one of authority but of indwelling friendship. It is a new way of engaging with the divine. The divine is no longer up there, beyond the clouds, but has entered life, your life, my life in the form of the very spirit of truth. This was the spirit we saw in Christ and now will be visibly evident in the lives of those who form the ‘body of Christ’. Us.

 

William Loader, of Murdoch University says, "Jesus is not left behind that we might soar into spiritual fantasy and relish the prospects of more magic and more religion. John promises no such flights and is silent about future miracles. The task of the disciples and disciples after them is to bear fruit, to let the seed sown in death rise to new life. Transitional events are minimised. What matters is life and love."

 

Our life and lives are transformed by the indwelling Christ. It is our actions, thoughts, experiences which become the visible presence of God in the world. Pentecost is not about the supernatural crashing into the world in the form of special effects and magic tricks, it is the empowering of ordinary people to do ordinary things so that extraordinary changes take place in people, places and things.

 

In the Anglican Church there has been a process for young people to take communion after confirmation. When I was a school chaplain I used to alternate the services with 2 out 3 services for the High School students being a Eucharist. Almost all of the young people had neither church background nor any religious education in relation to the sacraments. Yet when the invitation was given many would come forward to take communion. Fortnightly 25% of the 600 students did.

 

Some teachers and other clergy questioned to authenticity them taking communion. Yet these young people made a conscious decision to come forward as did those who decided to stay in their seats. For both groups this was not simply following the crowd but a deliberate act of the will.

 

And it was a truly Pentecost experience every time. They would look directly into you eyes as you distributed the sacrament, moving from bread to wine respectfully and deliberately. While they may not have been regular church attendees outside school, their reverential actions spoke loudly about a deep sacramental and mystical experience of God. They were experiencing being in Christ. They trusted what was within them and stepped forward in faith to receive.

 

John’s Jesus speaks to the ordinary person, saying I know what it is like to be a human who is different to those around me, to march to a different spirit. Jesus says I also know the spirit is sufficient for all your needs, not only your physical needs, but your need to make decisions, to live in a certain manner, to endure hardships and persecutions.

 

It is perplexing when we see the Spirit at work, and adults even Christian adults, respond with questions and doubts, unable to accept that God is at work in ways and in people outside of what we perceive as the normal spiritual way. We simply shut down Pentecost.

 

Here we sit amongst a community of people who are open to possibility. That is why they bring their children to ballet, make school lunches, run exercise classes. It is all about what is now and will be in the future. It is about awakening the spirit with in, going beyond the mind that is. It is the mystical ordinariness of the incarnated spirit of God alive in the daily activities of human beings.

 

In an experience known as the Louisville Epiphany, Thomas Merton expresses what this Pentecost event is, and it is no different to the first event in Acts.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

 

We are challenged on this Pentecost Sunday to see the supernatural possibility in the natural, to see God’s spirit already at work in those around us and to find ways to engage and to be en christos with them. We are not to demand that they change or convert to our thinking but to find ways to befriend and to compassionately be one with them. In doing so we open up the miracle of Pentecost and bring about a new world for all. Amen’