Divisions & Unity

There is an ad on tv for a bank called ME. The ad comprises a lot of little yellow circles with the word ME in it bouncing around our screen singing me, me, me! The voice over cements the image by saying we are a bank that understands you. Welcome to the narcissistic 21st century.

Today’s readings are not for the faint hearted nor for those seeking consolation and comfort or for the narcissistic 21 st century. All three readings take us deep into the darkness of sacrifice and division, a long way from the blessings we see in such passages as the Sermon on the Mount.  If we are reading the scriptures honestly we will note that this is not an isolated case, the Bible is often a disturbing, violent and challenging read, but read it we must.

The reading from Matthew 10 hardly relieves the doom and gloom ...:

• Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
• ….whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
• Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth ...
• Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me...
•  ... and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
• Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Comfort and safety are the watchwords of our generation. “I am entitled to be comfortable and to feel safe at all times” seems to be the mantra. Governments and political parties try to out do each other with more and more unlikely promises to deliver a world in which all danger and threat is eliminated.  Churches and faiths of various sorts promise us wealth and happiness in return for obedience and faith, quick solutions to issues and problems that have taken years to come into being.

Our world is an uncomfortable and dangerous place most of the time and the major division is between those who see and accept this and those who refuse to accept that is so. And it has always been so. Matthews Jesus is railing against those who want to be in control and who want to be able to lord it over others, including God.

Matthews Jesus poses an interesting conundrum –when we allow the need to feel safe and comfortable to rule us we instantaneously divide and separate ourselves from others, God and creation. Jesus is conscious his very incarnation brings about such conflict and sets up the possibility of conflict at all levels of our existence. The intention is, it seems, to unify but the effect is to divide. Why? Because we always choose the prominent place for ourselves in opposition to others. We are unable to see that unity can only come about when we let go of the need to be safe and comfortable; that unity can only come when we let go of the desire to possess Jesus for ourselves. That is idolatry.

We increase security, identify others as the enemy by race or faith, marginalise people because of their ethnicity or history and by their past acts, big or small. We do it on a world scale and we do it with in communities and families. The lie we are told is that by so doing we are unifying our world, nation, community and family by definition of values, world-view, faith and family ties. The result? The world becomes a more divided, less safe and a more uncomfortable place.

Perhaps Jesus is challenging us to understand that if the world is to be safer and more comfortable for all, then we have to let go of our sense of being entitled to our own personal safety at the cost of others value and existence. Jesus knows his message is an uncomfortable one; compassion and mission through sacrifice; the going out into the world to engage with it as it is, not as we believe it should be; the letting go of our own particular prejudices and personal wants in favour of a shared understanding of wholeness and belonging.

Jesus is challenging us to look at a much larger world view than the one we generally focus on. Do not be preoccupied by the trivial – there are much bigger issues to be addressed. Do not live in fear of others but live mindful of the greatest threat within us, those desires and needs which can kill our soul, deaden our compassion and divide us off from the unity of creation. And this is the hardest to do. Jesus is not saying families, peace and unity are not important, they are. But what is more important is the sacrifice required to secure such for all.

God’s kingdom is not personal. Stepping up to the task requires us to take a realistic look at what is important and making decisions that will cost us materially, emotionally and relationally. It will separate us from friends, family and others because the kingdom of God is about inclusion and it will not include those who exclude based on friendships, families, relationships or material greed.

The challenge for us is to let go of the sense of privilege we have as Christians in a first world nation and begin to grapple with the divisions allowing us to enjoy such privileges. Jesus makes it clear to do so will put us out of sync with the dominate culture both within and without the church and place us at risk of danger and threat. But that is the price of discipleship. Is it a price worth paying? Yes if we wish to change from me to us.

Compassion, Mission & Sacrifice.

On this our stewardship Sunday my text for this sermon comes from the last verses of Matthew chapter 9:

35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”

 

One of the dangers for us is that we place Scripture in the spiritual realm and remove it from the practical material world. We can read the most difficult of scriptures and domesticate them by placing them within the spiritual, not at all directly related to the ordinary life of human beings such as ourselves. By doing this we render them powerless to change our lives or to bring in the kingdom of God.

Today’s text is not a text about giving, it’s not even a text about duty and faithfulness. It does not allude to church growth or financial security. It is not a text about being grateful in a way that empowers our response to God through the church by giving more.

 

This is a text about sacrifice. No, not sacrifice in terms of giving until it hurts. Money isn’t even mentioned. What is mentioned is even more confronting than any discussion of money can be. It is about giving up everything out of compassion for those who are lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

 

Jesus makes a direct connection between compassion, mission and sacrifice. Now we struggle with the word sacrifice in a world of instant gratification, me first and entitlement. We are comfortable with it when we use it theologically to refer to the death of Jesus to all things material but we stumble when are asked to apply it to ourselves and how we are to define our membership of the church – our discipleship. We struggle to give up our personal opinions, biases and self-defensive attitudes, we struggle to sacrifice our comfort and leisure, we struggle to give up our comfortable buildings and practices to make room for those outside our walls.

 

Yet sacrifice is essential if we are to respond with compassion to those outside the borders, those Barbara Creed refers to as strays, the people and creatures who do not exhibit the same attitudes as us toward material things or who challenge our way of life. For Creed that includes stray animals, refugees, indigenous peoples, homeless and anyone who does not subscribe to the goals of a consumer society. For Jesus these were the people he met on is wanderings and those who, although Jews, were beyond the borders of the religious world of the times.

 

Jesus calls for such sacrifice, not because we should be grateful for our place in the world but because of compassion for others. Jesus encountered people who had no centre, no place to call home and no-one to care for them. These were not people who were different but people like them. Jesus does not give the reasons we might for compassion – hungry, lonely, homeless, unemployed etc – and there fore see what we are doing as helping, as reaching down and bringing people up. No Jesus uses the word compassion – that deep sense of belonging and connection which rises up from within, an emotional not a rational response, from the heart and not from the head.

 

It is difficult for us to have compassion. We live in a world of hardening borders, of economic rationalism, of media portrayals of others as enemies, or if not enemies , at least someone to be afraid of. We have clearly defined categories of those who are lifters and those who are leaners, we have categories for those who have Australian values and those who don’t and any number of ways of referring to who is in and who is out.

 

Yet Jesus sets the example and calls his disciples and us to have compassion and to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others. This is the call for the church and therefore it is the call each of us must answer in some way. This place is not here for our personal gratification. It does provide us a place in which we can worship and gather but it is not the full expression of who we are. What emanates from this place is what counts. If this place becomes all we do then it is a millstone around our necks. If all we are doing is maintaining the edifice then we are not fulfilling the call of Jesus.

 

We have witnessed this in all wings of the church over many years as a result of the clergy abuse scandal. The church sought to protect what it had for itself and failed to have compassion and therefore make the necessary sacrifices to deal with the issues. In the end the church has been forced to make those sacrifices, not willingly through such as royal c,missions.

 

The questions we need to answer here at St Oswald’s is: do we have compassion on those outside our walls who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Your neighbours, friends and those you share this community with. Those who are shut in, forgotten and denied access to all you and I take for granted. I am not talking about our service or our giving to other charities or organisations, it is not their job. Jesus calls his disciples to do this work in their place and to make the necessary sacrifices to do so.

 

While organisations such as Anglicare and others have their place, they should not take the place of the work of the local church. As Ian Cutmore says, “If it is not happening where you are, it is not happening.” We cannot offload our responsibility for others to others. Our sacrifice, our giving must be sufficient to meet the needs of the local community. 

Like many churches this is not the case. We, as a congregation, do not give  enough to meet the running costs of this parish without significant help from hall hirers and fundraising. As a result we are unable to make a considered financial contribution to compassion for our community - the mission of God. 

We have no budget for mission empowered by compassion. And a church without mission or engagement is a church of stagnation. We cease to exist for others and only maintain what has been important to us - liturgy that makes us feel we have been to church, a choir that suits our purposes as its members and groups that keep us comfortable.

 

Jesus calls us to compassion and mission through sacrifice. This is not just about getting more people and resources in from the outside, but more people and resources out from the inside. He goes on to say: 7As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.”

 

Jesus does not call us to the comfortable life, individually or as a church, we are to be partners in the abundance of his kingdom. We are called to give up our expectations for ourselves and to ensure others have enough  by virtue of our compassion.

 

As we take the time to make our commitment to our church for another year let us to do so with compassion and sacrifice and with an eye on the kingdom of God.Compassion, Mission and Sacrifice 

Be awake, Jesus is back!

Matthew 24:36-44

Today is Advent Sunday beginning the count down to the coming of Christ in to the world. It is the count down to the beginning of the end to the ruthless power of violence, persecution and isolation presently deemed to be in charge of the world. The coming of Christ into the world is to usher in the reign of God and to bring about a change of orientation and the end of the ego self as the reigning image of power and entitlement.

Today is also the beginning of the year of Matthew, a writer with an end-time or apocalyptic orientation. Matthew believes history is divided into two ages -- a present, evil age that God would soon replace with a new age, the reign or kingdom of God. The old age is marked by idolatry, sin, injustice, exploitation, sickness, enmity between nature and humankind, violence, and death. The new age will be characterized by the complete rule of God and by authentic worship, forgiveness, mutual support, health, blessing between nature and humankind, and eternal life.

For Matthew, God is acting through Jesus Christ to effect the change. The birth, life, and resurrection are the first phase of the transformation, with the complete manifestation arriving with the second coming. Meanwhile, Matthew’s community lives in a conflict zone between the ages. God calls the Matthean community to follow the instruction and model of the Matthean Jesus.

Some scholars affirm that many in Matthew’s congregation were losing confidence in the coming of the Realm. The apocalypse was delayed. Their witness was fading. Matthew wrote to encourage them to continue. (Ron Allen)

For a community enthused by the hope of regime change and the possibility of freedom from both the tranny of the Romans and the seeming assault on their values and beliefs, the return of Christ and his Kingdom couldn’t come to soon. It hadn’t, it didn’t or hasn’t.

Or did it?

Many cartoonists have commented on this desire to find Jesus and to find Jesus in his return to the world. It is often a comment on those who knock on our door with the desire to convert us to their vision of faith with the question, ‘Have you found Jesus?

Well, one of my favourite t-shirts is this one – “I have found Jesus-he was behind the sofa the whole time”.

I have been accused of being heretical for wearing it, but I suspect it captures something of the apocalyptic message of this passage. Be awake, Jesus is already here, have you missed him?

If we are always looking west we will never see the sun rise in the east. Until 1697 all swans were believed to be white. No one had seen a black swan until Dutch explorers led by Willem de Vlamingh became the first Europeans to see black swans, in Western Australia. It has become a way to describe events we are unable to predict because there is no precedence, experience and awareness on which to base our judgement. The election of Donald Trump could be a black swan event.

We do know the coming of Jesus was one such event and the second coming of Jesus through the coming of his spirit in the world after his resurrection is another such event. Matthew is often read to speak of that time when his kingdom will come in power and turn on its head the world in which we live, ushering respect, justice and compassion – the with-ness of relational wholeness empowered by love.

Do we still live waiting for that event, for if we do I fear we short change the gift of the spirit and the capacity we have to live in the kingdom which is to come, now.

My t-shirt is a reminder to me to:

·      Be awake to the now, to the spirit of Christ at work in the ordinariness of material being. Jesus may not be physically behind the sofa but he is to be found in all those places where the structures of power and tyranny, capitalism and false democracy are challenged by those who represent equality, compassion, justice and inclusion. What is more apocalyptic than that? The Anglican churches with prayer rooms for their Muslim friends or including LGBTI within the leadership of their church or making space for those who are different and deemed less than us, and more. Those who stand against the systemic violence of war, winners and losers, banned for life and builders of walls and barriers to freedom.

·      Be awake to the opportunities I never expect to have, the black swan experiences which open up possibilities for my voice to be heard, my love as a verb to be experienced or my simple presence next to someone who is being excluded, oppressed or avoided to be felt.

·      Be awake to the truth that Christ has already returned through the power of his spirit and it is my responsibility to be ready to act, speak and be the prophet of the reign of Christ, now. This is not something coming from above or in the future, this is to come from within and now; from within this material existence and from within me and it is now, this very moment I am being called to love – to be the action of love in this world.

I witness this amazing second coming everyday.

·      I see it here in this parish. When someone gets sick, faces  the loss of someone they love or the possibility of their own death, I witness Christs spirit at work in this congregation – the kingdom of God acts. People visit, ring, prayer, cook, wash and are just present. People tell me when I ring offering assistance, ‘Not to worry Vicar, I am being well cared for by my friends here.” I have had others say how much their ‘St Oswald’s family” have done in their time of need.

This is an example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I also see it in the efforts people make to support refugees, homeless, unemployed; to go to rallies and marches; to advocate on those who are excluded.

This is another example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I see it in the capacity of people to continue to live as joy and hope for others when the odds are stacked against them. For example:

o   ARtlifting is a US program using art to engage homeless people. It is not therapy or feel good helping. Homeless people explore their artistic talents and the folk at ArtLifting  run exhibitions, art shows and auctions, selling the art and lifting people from dependency to independence.

o   I see it the work of Slingshot which has launched Australia’s first ever Indigenous start-up accelerator program called Barayamal. The accelerator aims to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs build successful business ideas into worldclass products.

o   I see it in a record for the University of Western Australia where six Aboriginal medical students will graduate this weekend, including Vinka Barunga who wishes to become Derby’s first indigenous doctor.

o   I see it in the many ways, places and people who are embodying the spirit of Christ and revolutionising the world, we just have to be awake.

Matthew does have a focus on the second coming, we do live in the in-between times, not as a place of being in limbo, but as a place where the second coming is ours to institute. Be ready, be awake, and act as if Jesus has already come. Amen

The Way of Kindness

Luke 18:1-8

 

Over the last few months I have noticed the power of  moral outrage to distract humanity from the larger questions facing society. Footy grand finals hype, Pauline Hanson’s outrageous statements, the Buddgy 9’s outrageous behaviour in Malaysia, the theft of Kim Kardashians ring and the outrageous words of Donald Trump, have all been effective in shifting the focus of humanity, you and I, from the big issues needing to be seriously addressed. We are entranced by the stupidity we hear and fail to focus on what really matters – the big issues.

 

The problem may be the size of the big issues. They seem intractable, out of the scope of our responsibility, beyond our personal experience. These are questions we know exist – the genocide of the relentless bombing of Alleppo by all sides including Australia, the limitless killing of citizens in the Phillipines, the continuing imbalance in wealth and opportunity that favours certain classes in society and the unnecessary detaining of children and others in refugees camps and detention centres. And that’s not all. Here at home we have the question of how we engage with the sovereign nations who were here before western occupation, marriage equality, unemployment, homelessness and more.

 

Our reading of the gospel story today often stays firmly in one place. We read it as teaching us about persistence in prayer, how we are to be faithful and continuing to pray for what we need until we are heard by God. 

 

William Loader  observes:

“... it is missing the mark if we treat the passage as a general teaching about intercessory prayer. It is primarily about the yearning for change. It was very appropriate that the story told of a poor widow. She represents a behaviour, but she also represents the poverty and vulnerability which is the point of the parable’s message. The story has been shaped in the cruelty of exploitation and the arbitrary abuse of power. It belongs in the world which Jesus is addressing. Jesus is reading the signs in the wounds of the people. The contours of their devastation shape the structures of his thought, because this is where he belongs and these are the people whose cries he hears.”

 

Reading this as a treatise on prayer ignores the social context in which Jesus sets this story. Here we have a marginalised woman, a widow who has no man to look after her and still needs to find accommodation and sustenance. She knocks on her neighbours door. If she is marginalised she probably has no home and is living rough. It is hardly likely that she has a house and lives next door to a wealthy and titled person such as a judge. In our terms she is a beggar knocking on doors looking for help.

 

Jesus has the judge first ignore the pleas for help and only out of this persons annoying behaviour does he finally throw a loaf or two her way. There was no compassion, no sense of duty, no understanding of the plight of the widow. It was simply throwing crumbs to the dogs to shut them up.

 

This passage of scripture shows how we ignore the real issues and deal only with the presenting problem – annoying woman who needs justice. Much of our responses to the pressing needs in society take this form. Charity hand outs, welfare doled out as if we are being used, unfair restrictions on the provision of employment support or accommodation for refugees or assistance for the disabled or the granting of recognition for the first nations people in our constitution instead of negotiating a treaty with the sovereign nations we live amongst.

 

The judge is confronted by the social ills of society. He is confronted in this story as one who is part of the problem but one who has the capacity to solve the problem. Poverty is not, and still is not, a private issue. It is systemic and finds its source in the ego self who sees entitlement and aloofness as a right. The much vaunted failure of Donald Trump to pay taxes and others assertion that we all should strive to pay as little tax as possible are only possible because we have a system which encourages and allows such actions.

 

Jesus is challenging those listening to address the plight of the poorest of the poor, to do more than the paltry efforts of the judge. The image of the judge brings to the front of mind one who is responsible for dispensing justice, yet the best he can do isa response out desperation to get her off his back. Perhaps this raises the question: can the system actually reform itself or are those within the system so entangled that they are unable to step back and see what is needed?

  

Is the widow the only source of hope in this story? The actions of the poor are needed to wake up those in power. The voice of the poor must be heard and to do so one must never give up proclaiming God’s preference for the poor. We have no choice but join with those on the outside to find a way to reform what is broken. It is the mission Jesus took for himself at the beginning of his ministry from Isaiah and it is the foundation of the great commission -  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28)

 

This is not about personal salvation but about the institution of the Way of Jesus and the way of Jesus is the way of kindness – justice – compassion.  We as disciples of the Way are to join hands and voices with the poor and advocate for change. We are to reflect on how complicit we are in this system and what we can do to live more justly the way of Christ in our daily living. We are challenged to avoid the sensational distractions and return again and again to the issues needing resolution. We are to ask why this is so and to avoid the easy answers of those who want to maintain the status quo. We are to join hands with those of different faiths, ideologies and political allegiances who are working to institute kindness – justice – compassion (or the Way of Christ) in the world. The Spirit of Christ is already at work in places and people, philosophies and ideologies , faiths and practices different from ours yet committed to the way of Christ in word and deed.

 

This is a troublesome parable, no wonder the authorities finally got sick of Jesus and dispensed with him. Drawing people away from the bread and circuses and reorienting them on the real issues is disturbing, to say the least.

 

The Way of Christ remains a troubling practice but one we have no option but to follow. Amen. 

The Covenant of Compassion

Luke 13:10-17

 

The Covenant of Compassion

 

Cruelty of any kind to animals of any kind is almost always universally condemned. The banning of greyhound racing by the NSW government in response to the reported on going mistreatment of live animals for training purposes and the mistreatment of greyhounds themselves is a case in point. In general terms human beings have little tolerance for such cruelty.

 

There is a connection between people and animals which ensure most of us will not leave an animal without water or food and will take steps out of a sense of responsibility for that animal to ensure it is properly cared for. In the same vein we will not tolerate those who perpetrate cruelty to animals in any form.

 

Yet we are often not so quick to step in when other people are suffering as victims of cruelty. Our definitions of who deserves our intervention, the types of cruelty we will or will not tolerate, and the fences we put around both our action and inaction means we often fail to act when we should. Our preferred method of action is to have another Royal Commission, internal investigation or external review, generally resulting in little or nothing changing. Practical steps to solve the problem become bound up in red tape, protocols, separation of powers, questions of who is responsible and bureaucratic buck-passing. And nothing happens.

 

For some Christians, Anglicans included, this translates into the duality of spirituality and faith versus social justice. We avoid becoming involved because we do not see it as a spiritual or religious question. It has little to do with our faith.  It is a question for those interested in social justice and activism, not Sunday worshippers.

 

For still other Christians, Anglican included, our faith is tied up with a personal friendship with Jesus and is private, personal and heaven bound. It does not involve an engagement in the messy stuff of the kingdom of God here and now. That doesn’t matter because we are not citizens of this world, but are only passing through, on our way to glory.

 

For still other Christians, Anglicans included, if it is not specifically decreed in the Word of God, the Bible, then it is not required of those for whom Jesus died. Without a proof text there is no evidence available to suggest we should become involved.

 

Jesus and Jeremiah, confront these and other views directly in today’s readings.

 

100 years after Isaiah for whom it was an article of faith that God would not abandoned the temple, Jeremiah speaks out against such faith. For Jeremiah  “neither city nor temple guaranteed safety to a city that did not act with justice and did not remain loyal to YHWH.” (Jenks)

 

At the same time ‘Jeremiah had parted company with the ….. reformers who had come to power during the reign of Josiah. He seems to have lost confidence in the capacity of a book of the law to bring about holiness.” (Jenks) For him neither the temple or a book of law would be sufficient for people to act with compassion and he set about reimagining the covenant as one that “would be inscribed on the human heart, rather than on tablets of stone. It would need no religious authorities to instruct people on how to observe its requirements.” (Jenks)

 

Jeremiah now becomes the post-modern prophet shifting responsibility for faith and action from an external source to that of an internal project. It is no longer the responsibility of the temple thought police or the literal readers of the text to set down the rules of engagement with the real world. It becomes the task of the individual faithful person to so identify the right and appropriate action in every situation.

 

Way before Augustine wrote ‘love God and do as you will’; Jeremiah had upset those in power in the temple with exactly the same direction. Love of God, the deep sense of compassion sitting at the centre of all, is to be the driver of action. Only an experience of and response to compassion and a sense of the goodness of God enkindled through faith will ensure people live out the covenant relationship with God, and not any amount of rules, regulations or books.

 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus returns to this theme through a healing miracle. Here Jesus heals a crippled woman who had been so for many years. She comes to Jesus on a Sabbath day and is healed. Jesus is rebuked for doing work on the Sabbath by representatives of the temple.

 

 Marcus Borg provides some insights into this event:

He says: “The non-Markan sabbath conflict stories follow a common pattern. Jesus, taking the initiative, healed a person in the presence of opponents and then legitimated his action with a rhetorical question that referred to common human behaviour.

 

Two are peculiar to Luke:

Luke 23:15-16: (Todays reading)

And Luke 14:5: Which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?

Both times, Jesus invites them to consider what they naturally do when they saw an animal in need or suffering on the sabbath.” (Jenks)

 

Jesus does not appeal to precedence from the scriptures, the prophets or the patriarchs. In fact Jesus does not dispute the letter of the law. He makes no effort to counteract the argument of law by finding an argument to makes his case.

 

He simply challenges them to think of what they would do to safeguard the wellbeing of their own personal property, in this case an animal and contrast it with the attitude they express toward this woman. Your animals are treated with more compassion than:

• A woman,
• A sick woman
• A woman who has been sick for a very long time

He continues: Where is your compassion?

 

You are more interested in obeying the temple rules than obeying the law of compassion that lives with in you. The implication is: haven’t you ever been challenged by the disconnect between what you feel for such as this person and what you enforce upon her and those without power?

 

For Jesus and Jeremiah the imperative of compassion overrules religious and legal double-talk requiring us to follow our sense of what is the right thing to do. It is not a question of social justice v’s spirituality v’s faith. It is the love for the Other and others that is to drive our engagement with the world. Compassion changes things and draws together what we have separated - justice, spirituality and faith – as one, giving birth to hope.

 

Asylum seekers, victims of violence and abuse, indigenous Australians and more require us to stand up with compassion as a church, a people of hope, standing against the lawgivers, the temple and anyone who stands in the way of God’s kingdom becoming present in this world. Trust your sense of what is right and live out your faith without fear and trepidation. Today.

 

 

 

  

Holding Up The Mirror

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 7:36 - 8:3) is a well known and oft heard reading. We know it all too well; the nasty Pharisee gets his comeuppance and the poor prostitute is vindicated. Once again Jesus saves the poor and downtrodden and puts the hypocrites in their place! Yay Jesus……. End of sermon and we all nod knowingly.

This scenario plays out in real life everyday, especially when we want to expose others as being worse than us. When someone is caught out in whatever manner, the media exposes it in such a way as to mark them as less tham those of us sitting on the sideline. In actual fact, we often find ourselves sitting on the couch, like the Pharisee, and saying, “I always knew they (she, he) was different to me. ” (Then, to ourselves, I am not like that)

Here we have an outsider, a prostitute whose business was such that she earned enough for expensive perfume (obviously not all the well-to-do Jews present were perfect!), she gatecrashes an invite only party (there would be no way she got an official invite given who she was).

On the couch is the Pharisee, a respectable religious and civic leader, who’s position and well-being was well earned and above reproach. Undoubtedly the other guests at the table were of a similar ilk, and regardless of their opinion of Jesus, he too was seen as a respectable, well-educated Jewish rabbi, otherwise he wouldn’t have been there.

Yet Jesus was a fool, a clown, in truth a Holy Fool – he was what he was but he was also not what he was. He saw the world through different eyes and held up to the world a mirror which said loudly and clearly, “See you self first!” He wasn’t the first nor the last such Holy Fool, the Old Testament and religious writings of other world faiths and philosophies are full of them. As are the histories of all traditions – Anglicanism has modern people such as Desmond Tutu, Catholic tradition has people like Mother Theresa, Buddhism the Dalai Lama and Thicht Nhat Hahn for example. And there are many more like them in Islam, Hinduism and other world faiths.

People who stand still, and without pointing, make their point. Our world needs to hear their stories to counteract the beigeness of thought, ideas and practice we so easily embrace from our popular media and information sources. Our world needs to hear this Gospel story again, remembering it is a foolish story, a mirror held up for all of us to see what we see in the mirror.

The Pharisee and his hospitality
The Pharisees were often found at dinner with Jesus. These dinners were normal social events for the entire community. Jewish society was and still is a communal society; the community shared their life and their table as a normal part of life. This wasn’t necessarily a way to show off, although I am sure that occurred, but it was accepted as normal to open your house to all those in your community. Although only invited guests ate, anyone was welcome to come and listen to the table conversation.

The Jews of the first century did not use tables and chair as the Persians did (cf. Esther 1:6; 7:8) and some Egyptians. Typically they would recline on their left elbow on pillows spread around horseshoe-shaped tables, usually three on a side. Uninvited guests stood around the walls behind the couches and listened to the conversation, gossiped or simply yawned as the conversation became mundane and boring.

We get a glimpse of Simon (a popular name) and his motivation for inviting Jesus when he says to himself: “If this man was a prophet”. His motivation for inviting Jesus may have been more for sport than intellectual stimulation, but he got more than he bargained for. Jesus later hints that he had noted this some time earlier, when the host had failed to provide the normal courtesies of foot washing, kiss of peace or any form of anointing. He knew he was being set up and the form of Simon’s musing shows that he did not believe Jesus was a prophet. This is a unique Greek construction which would be understood as “if this man were a prophet, which he is not, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, but he does not.” This Pharisee totally misunderstood Jesus and His motives, purposes, and actions.

The prostitute and the perfume
Somewhere on the streets the word had come down that a dinner was being held in Simon the Pharisees house and Jesus the Teacher would be present. For what ever reason this lady, described as a sinner by some and as a prostitute by others, got it into her head to be present and to do something, deemed by others to be at the very least eccentric, that would stop the conversation, although to her it seemed a natural thing to do.

She used her earnings, probably almost all of them to purchase an alabaster jar (the jar itself was significant) of perfume. She positioned herself at the back of the couch to the right of Jesus and when he was reclining his feet were right there in front of her. Impulsively perhaps, perhaps calculatingly she bent over, poured the ointment on his feet and wiped it with her hair.

Her motivation, we are not sure. It is more than showing up the Pharisee for his lack of hospitality, but that was part of it. It was more than love for a religious teacher, she saw more than that. She, in her own way, was a holy fool, providing the act which Jesus turned into an object lesson for all who were there, invited or not.

Jesus and his compassion
And then there was Jesus – deep and mystical – a true Holy Fool who grasped the opportunity when the gasping and gossiping had quietened down to tell a story, and to point Simon and his visitors toward the mirror. Did the young lady know of her sinfulness deeply or was it simply the rejection of society she felt? It doesn’t matter, for Jesus intimates that the societal view of sin was the problem and she, in a sacramental way, was showing and receiving love on their behalf.

This foolish woman stood in their place and showed what giving and receiving love was all about. And Jesus in that foolish compassion that was and is his alone, the foolish compassion which stopped the funeral bier in last Sunday’s reading, now rewards this sacramental act with love. He once again stands beside the outsiders and says directly to respectable society, ‘Here’s the mirror, have another look! What do you see now?”

Yes today’s reading is popular and well known, but it in no way a comfortable reading. It is designed, like all Jesus’ pericopes, to disturb. Mirrors usually do.

Time Out to Tune Up!

When Jesus Realised that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, he with drew again to the mountain by himself – John 6:15

Sometime ago somebody said to me, ‘The good things you do can stop you from doing the best thing you should be doing.” At the time I smiled and thought little about it. Over the years though, the truth of that statement has begun to become clearer for me.

The danger in our lives is that we can get so involved in the stuff of life, the stuff we enjoy doing and the stuff we think we have to do that we lose sight of the thing we ought to be doing. We are busy, fully engaged with others, providing solutions, achieving stuff, finishing our studies, getting married, raising kids and so forth, that we forget what we set out to do in life. Like the old adage ‘ we are so busy fighting off the crocodiles we forgot all we went out to do was drain the pool!

The even bigger danger is that we become so engrossed in what’s coming at us from all sides, we have little or no space to reflect on any of this and after a while don’t even bother to bother about making the space to look at our lives from a different angle. We give up and spend the rest of our life distracted from our original purpose and only realise it when it is almost too late.

Jesus faced this dilemma every day. Every where he went people were coming at him, people who needed help, people for healing, people who wanted answers; religious leaders and politicians who were asking the hard questions and those slow learning disciples who had to be taught the basics about the spiritual life. If he went to get a drink at the village well people asked hard questions, if he went to a wedding he was put in charge of the wine, if he went to dinner the more eccentric guests did things like anoint his feet with oil and more. Just going across the lake gathered a large and needy crowd.

And it wasn’t that people came to him, he Jesus the incarnated Christ felt for them. He had compassion – a deep desire to do something for them – and he often acted on that compassion. He healed people, drove out demons, challenged social injustices and simply was available 24/7 to others out of this sense of identification, of being human just like those who came to him. Something had to be done, and often, he did something.

Yet he knew that his humanness, his humanity, was not all there was to his identity. He was the Christ, the Messiah, and there was more to his life than solving people’s material need for healing, belonging and security. He knew that innately to some degree, to what degree we do not know exactly, but we do know he spent much time exploring and defining his place in the world and his Fathers kingdom.

The first part of John 6:15 “When Jesus realised that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king’, speaks of that human pressure to do what is expected of you by others. To be responsible and step up to the mark that those around you deem important. Jesus faces here again the type of temptation he did in the desert after his baptism. The temptation to be seen as the king of the world, the one who is being lauded as the saviour of others, if he goes with them now he will grab his 15 minutes of fame and become a popular icon. But is that the best thing?

Each of us struggles daily with this temptation at some level. We are manipulated by how it feels when we find a sense of belonging in a group or in a family, by the kind words others say about us, the way others come to us to unburden their problems and seek our counsel, or simply by success at work, school or play. We can suddenly find ourselves caught up and off on the wrong track doing the good stuff but not the best.

At the same time we can be rocked off our feet by the negative that comes and takes us away from the best. In the last week we have seen the death of a 14 year old girl, the 4th in one Victorian high school, who has committed suicide because of bullying, the negative input from those around her. This extreme example of how easy and devastating it is to soak in how the world sees us and to allow that to define our identity highlights the importance of maintaining space to reaffirm our place in this world.

Jesus sees the crowd coming or perhaps, not so much sees them coming but discerns the mood, the intention, the desire of the crowd and withdraws. The last 8 words of John 6:15, ‘He withdrew again to the mountains by himself’ provide us with some clues.

He withdrew so he could draw breath, to breathe in the truth about his identity and breathe out the overwhelming temptation to be a superstar, leading the people to victory as their king. Jesus, the man, found space to reflect on Christ the messiah, the Son of God, and redefine for himself his whole reason for being.

And this was not a knee jerk reaction to this situation, it was his discipline, for there are over 16 references in the four Gospels to Jesus taking time out.

It was his delight – he delighted in this time alone for quiet reflection and fought to have it even if, on many occasions as this passage attests to, it was fleeting and interrupted by others.

It was dialogue with himself and with his father and it allowed him to define and redefine who he really was. It was prayer and contemplation which reinforced his fidelity to the mission of God. This includes those moments when we find him wrestling and arguing with God in the last two times his prayer is recorded, in the Garden before his betrayal and on the Cross before his death.

It was this discipline of dialogue with himself, working through what he thought and believed, what he desired and needed and how he saw himself at his centre which allows him to stay the course, even when the option to avoid the messy outcome is available to him, it is his decision, he remains faithful to his and his fathers mission.

It was his discipline of dialoguing with his father, working through the relational dimension with the kingdom in the midst of the world, which allowed him to say no to what may very well have been good things so that he could focus on God’s plan, the best thing.

Jesus discipline gave him the freedom to cut through the good stuff he did, and could have spent the rest of his life in to old age doing, to do the best thing even though that best thing cost him his life.

The challenge for us as his brothers and sisters, God’s Children and co-heirs of the kingdom, is to find that discipline for ourselves and in dialogue with God and ourselves to discern the best from the good and stay with it, regardless of the cost.