Welcoming The Marginalised

Mark 9:30-37

 

Each year the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on 21 September. The theme of this year’s commemoration is “Partnerships for Peace – Dignity for All” which aims to highlight the importance of all segments of society to work together to strive for peace. 

 

Here in Australia we are being challenged on a number of levels, both connected to the UNHCR day and words of Jesus as recorded in todays Gospel -

³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Domestic violence, crimes against children and the plight of refugee families appear to be very different issues and require different strategies and approaches, yet they are essentially the same issue – power and control gained through violence and fear.

Aylan Kurdi, William Tyrell and Luke Batty are united in their suffering and raise the question: how seriously do we take Jesus plea to welcome children?

As with most of Jesus pronouncements this one would have made those standing around choke on what ever they were drinking or eating at the time. Children, like women, were possessions, useful to have around but not necessarily valued for who they were. They had a job to fulfil and could be treated as the male wished.

I was talking to a lady from an Asian background and we were discussing domestic chores and how men were beginning to take a more proactive role. She mentioned that in her culture this still had a long way to go. She had recently shared a meal with members of her family. The husband of one of her friends simply sat in his seat, requesting, no demanding to be served, first, got a glass of water, provided with his every need and he did not move from his seat. His wife was up and down like a yo-yo fulfilling every one of his requests. In Jesus time that was the norm.

Children we not useful as children, they were an investment in the future, but right now they were useless and to be ignored. You simply wouldn’t welcome children like you would an adult. In fact you would ignore them, send them away.

Jesus’ words were revolutionary and shocking. They still are.

Despite our elevation of young people we still struggle to treat them as children who are vulnerable and innocent. We rush them onto national televised talent shows way before they are mature enough to understand what is happening (and 15 is too young); we push them to fulfil one after another of a range of unnecessary activities (music, sport and other recreational clubs); we measure, test and label them with diagnostic tools from both the medical (DSM V) and the educational sectors (NAPLAN etc); we hover over them to protect them from monsters under the bed, bad people and accidents of life, they are objects not subjects, they have ceased to be persons who are on a journey, striving for being.

The stories of Aylan Kurdi, William Tyrell and Luke Batty have become headlines for selling newspapers, supporting political interventions and demonising others. They have become the face of a disturbing trend – the recruitment of victims into campaigns and policy making who should never have been victims in the first place.

This is not a comment on their parents, but a comment on society. It speaks directly to how we value people and how we value ourselves. It speaks to a complacency which ignores the obvious until it can not be ignored and then turns the tragedy which occurred into a focal point for boasting about what we will, have or may do about the problem. And the violence continues.

In listening to the Queensland Premier speaking on domestic violence, she referred to working on strategies and programs which are evidence. ‘Evidence based’ is a catchphrase, narrow, overused and of little use. It means we won’t do what is necessary until we have the research to support it and because there is so little known about these areas, and that the context of each situation will always give rise to events outside the evidence, in the end little occurs. It is narrow because it only accepts the scientific method, ruling out tradition, spiritual and cultural solutions which have been with us for a long time.

Jesus ties it together well.

It is connected to power and control. All domestic violence and crimes against children are about power and control or the loss of power and control, cannot be resolved simply by devolving responsibility for these issues to others who will now have power and control of those involved. The argument about who is first is an argument about who has the power to make decisions, impose their will and control the lives of those involved. Jesus says you have it all wrong, you need to listen to those who you are not listening to now, those you have marginalised until they are useful to you. It is not just about creating welcoming spaces for children but about hearing them and responding, learning and sharing with

them. They have something to say and it needs to be heard, but I fear this will get lost on the surge for evidence based programmes and responses.

It is connected to a universal and transcendent presence. Jesus says if you welcome, listen to, respond to, the children, you welcome me, and you welcome God. Humanity cannot solve any of the issues raised by Aylan, William or Luke as single definable objective events. We are all connected to these issues and we can only solve them through dialogue, not just with ourselves but with all involved; by strengthening relationships, that is the meaning of welcoming through hospitality (not food but open arms and doors); and by limiting our reliance on diagnoses and evidence based responses and remembering that it takes a village to raise a child, and violence any where in the world has its home in each of us.

It is connected to practicing the companionship of empowerment. God empowers Jesus who empowers us to empower others. How do we do that?

• By challenging the structures, systems and traditions which give rise to violence.
• By challenging the sense of entitlement that abounds in relationships and not allowing that sense of entitlement to present in our relationships with others.
• By challenging the language used by governments and corporates to disempower and control others.
• By challenging stereotypes and traditional practices and languages with in religions and within the church.
• By giving permission for those who are disempowered to have a voice, and then listening and learning from what we hear.
• By consciously and mindfully reflecting on, and monitoring, our own language and practice, and making changes that empower others.

After I had spoke on a similar issue on Friday at the ABM Board dinner, several people came up questioning my right to speak because of my colour. I think they wanted evidence-based research to prove who I am. They were subtly exerting power in order to avoid dealing with the issues raised. This is what Jesus is addressing.

 

He is saying even those who do not look like they have something to say, are labelled as victims or deemed able to contribute to providing solutions, can. In fact they are key to solving the problem. Those in exile in fact are the only ones who can because they are the only ones who know what it is like, why it is like that and what may be appropriate action.

 

Jesus would stand squarely with the idea of partnerships for peace – dignity for all. And he would turn to us to do the same. AMEN

The People Who Walk Upside Down (with apologies to Diane Begant CSA and Joan D Chittister)

Isaiah 61:1-11
When Alice fell through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, she was convinced that she had fallen right through the earth and was destined to come out where people would be upside down. She referred to such reversals as Antipathies—though she did wonder whether or not that was the right word.

Alice may not have chosen the correct word, but she was on target when it came to identifying the way we feel when our world is turned upside down. That is, of course, when the reversal that we experience resembles the collapse of the stock market, just as we have experienced over the last few months. We would be overcome by entirely different emotions if we had won the lottery. When she finally landed, Alice discovered that the world was not upside down, but it certainly was out of proportion to her size. She had to change, to get smaller in order to enter that mysterious world.

The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals, a world where the captives are freed, where the hungry are filled and where the rich are sent away empty. It is certainly a world where things are turned upside down. From the point of view of social order, such reversals could be considered Antipathies.

But from God's point of view, they are the signs of transformation. In order to appreciate the strength of today's message from Isaiah, we must remember that he was speaking to people who were dispossessed, people in need of a message of hope, a promise of some kind of economic reversal. Not unlike the message people are looking for today.

It is not that God wants to make us unhappy by turning our world upside down. Rather, God offers us the possibility of a new world. The Wonderland to which we are invited is not some mad tea party attended by an array of strange guests.

It is a world established in justice and peace, a world in which all will hear the glad tidings of salvation. It is a world in which everyone can enjoy the happiness of the bride and bridegroom or relish the fruits of the luxurious garden.

The dramatic metaphors that Isaiah employs are not meant simply to be poetic flights of fancy. They capture the essence of what we are experiencing internally far better than straightforward prose can. A wedding is certainly a sign of new and transformative life, just as a sumptuous garden typifies bountiful sustenance.

In order to enter the mysterious new world that lies before us, like Alice, we might have to undergo some kind of change. Paul in his letter to the Christians at Thessalonica is conscious of our need of transformation, for he prays that the God of peace will make us perfectly holy, blameless at the coming of the Lord.

In line with this thinking, the basis of the preaching of John the Baptist is repentance. His message today is the same as it was last week: Make straight the way of the Lord! Get rid of any obstacle that might deter his arrival. Eliminate from your lives the greed that impoverishes others, the arrogance that tries to set you above the rest, the power that makes you abusive, the selfishness that turns you in on your own concerns alone. Today we are all aware of the destructive evil that such attitudes have spawned. We suffer the consequences of their corrosive power. But our faith reminds us that we do not have to remain victims of these forces.

There is a far better way of living in the world, and on this Third Sunday of Advent we stand at its threshold. The question, however, is: Are we willing to step forward? Or are we afraid to have our world turned upside down? Are we the poor who will hear the good news of reversal, or are we the ones responsible for their poverty? Are we the broken-hearted who will be healed, or have we broken their hearts? Are we the captives who will be freed, or are we the captors who have restrained them? On what side of the reversals do we find ourselves?

Verdan Smailovic was a Bosnian. He had been born right in the heart of Sarajevo, the 4th of 5 in a highly musical family, he became a professional musician. At 37 he was the principal cellist of the prestigious Sarajevo Opera.

But this was the bleak and frightening period of 1992 when Bosnia flared into ethnic violence. The opera Theatre lay destroyed. There was no music.

Then, at 4 p.m. on May 27 1992 a long line of starving, helpless people were shelled as they waited in front of he only bakery in Sarajevo which had enough flour to make bread. Twenty to people died as Verdran Smailovic stood in his apartment building window a hundred yards away and watched it happen.

The next day, as hungry people lined up to beg for bread, certain they would die if they didn't come to the bakery again and well aware they could die if they did, Vedran Smailovic, dressed in the black suit and tie in which he played every night until the Opera Theatre was destroyed, arrived carrying his cello and chair.

Smailovic sat down in the square and, surrounded by debris played Albinoni's mournful "Adagio". And, whatever the continuing danger, he came back to the square every day after that for 21 days to do the same. Over and over again, the "Adagio" sounded the memory that there are some things in the human enterprise that simply cannot be suppressed.

Today in the place where he sat there is a monument of a man in a chair playing a cello. But the monument is not to Smailovic's music. It is to his refusal to surrender the hope that beauty could be reborn in the midst of hell, even in the midst of our own private hell, even in the midst of great reversals..[1]

Verdam Smailovics story doesn't end there. He played the "Adagio" throughout America, even at Bill Clinton's inauguration. He was celebrated in David Wilde's cello piece, 'the Cellist of Sarajevo' which Yo-Yo Ma played at the International Cellist Festival in 1994 with Smailovic in the audience. It seems that once released, no matter how difficult or traumatic the birth, hope does indeed soar.

Advent is a time to search our hearts, to discover where, both individually and as a community, we need to change. It is a time of hope, for we are told that there is one who has the power to heal our personal brokenness, to heal our fractured families, to heal our troubled church, to heal our bleeding world. Paul tells us that he is coming; John tells us that he is already in our midst. His presence among us should make us rejoice; the saving power that he brings should give us confidence. If we open our hearts to this saving power, we can indeed transform our society; we can renew our church, we can work toward peace in the world—we can turn our world upside down.



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[1] P108ff Joan D Chittister, 'Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope', Wm. B. Erdmans

Gerry Harvey Kicks Sacred Cows in the Sirloin

Gerry Harvey puts the cats amongst the pidgeons or, to put it another way, gives some sacred cows a hefty boot in the sirloin.

His comments on charity and the value of charity have elicted much comment .

It is not whether he said it or didn't say it, he has sparked debate about a topic most Australians feel strongly about but are not game to express their points of view on. In looking at the response, it is split between those who agree and those who don't. Some want to see assistance given only to those who make an effort (often undefined) and who see poverty as solely an individual problem. Others see poverty as a product of a faulty system and therefore see both the need for assistance and a restructure of the system (again undefined) as the most appropriate action.

It seems to me there is merits in both ideas but is there not something missng in this discussion? The discussion seems to be about an undefined 'them', an unknown some one who ceases to be real to us. There seems to be an uncrossable distance between us who, by inference are productive, effective and having a go, and those who are by the same inference not pulling their weight and are therefore dispensable.

Any attempt to give a human face to both arguments is at best anecdotal and often isolated personal experiences from people who have not lived the life of poverty they are attempting to describe.

The problem? Failure to see that each person in this story is just that, a person like us, made in the image of God who, at one time in their lives, had dreams, hopes and aspired to great things. Somewhere along the way life intervened and things changed. It is important to note only things changed; they are still the same as they were created, carrying the divine spark.

The challenge for all of us is to remember that we share that same divine spark with them and it is this which must underpin our dealings with them. We must see them as equals and requiring our compassion and support however that may be delivered to ensure that divine spark is nurtured. It may never flame into vibrant life, and ours may not either, but it must still be allowed oxygen to flicker in the winds of adversity and triumph that is life.

It's about hope not productivity, it is about life not success and it's about being so that we are challenged on, not just how we deal with their life but what we do with ours.

Gerry challenges us to think about how we see others and how we live in response to them and our own opportunities to make a difference.

How Jesus Judges Us - By What We See

In 1979 there was a riot in the maximum security wing of Bathurst gaol. On the heels of previous riots in the ‘70’s and in the midst of the Vinson prison reforms, Bathurst gaol erupted when staff went on strike. Prisoners destroyed their cells, threw burning mattresses out the windows and more. The walkway into the main entrance down between two cell blocks was a mass of smouldering mattresses, refuse and furniture. To walk down there was to invite vitriol and abuse every step of the way.

It was a walk I took twice daily for the duration of the lockdown. As a chaplain to the prison I had been visiting the place for almost 12 months. I knew the people in the wings. We had talked, shared coffee, worshipped together and played table tennis. Yet for this period I ceased to exist for them. Somehow I became a non-person, just a part of that system which they believed abused and oppressed them.

I was one of a handful of civilians allowed in and my task was to hand out the food at meal times, escorted by 6 or more riot squad police who opened the cell doors and were there to ensure things went smoothly. They didn’t. Consequently I witnessed violence I wished hadn’t occurred. The prisoners didn’t exist as human beings to these men who were, in their mind, simply doing their job.
There was little I could do to bring some sense of belonging and dignity but I did what I could. Smiled as I entered with the food and as I left, often with it all over me; placed my self strategically when I knew things were going badly so as to obstruct and mitigate the violence, and whisper encouragement and hope as I placed trays of food down.

I wanted them to know that, in the midst of this chaos they did exist for someone, that someone cared what was happening and that they were not alone. Sometimes my whispers were returned with a ‘Sorry, it’s not you’. After it was all over I continued to visit. I received lots of apologies from the inmates for their behaviour and had lots of discussions about what had happened to them. We talked about how easy it is too lose your dignity when others seem not recognise your existence, and how we all too easily slip into this blindness to others.

It is not that we purposefully oppress or mistreat others, sometimes we do, but more often it occurs when we perceive others as not being there at all. It is not that we do not see Jesus in them. We simply fail to not see them.

And this is the sense of Jesus words in this morning’s gospel;
34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

It is not so much that we do or do not do something, but that we recognise something needs to be done. That we see.

The action in this passage follows the recognition of need, that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. The actions are not earth shattering or spectacular. They are simple and small. A glass of water, a meal, a piece of clothing. The actions are not mandated by others but an individual’s response to what he or she sees in front of them. It is not something which people seek out and for which you will receive an award, it is insignificant and often unnoticed.

It is an action that has its roots in the identification with the person in need. It is only when we connect to the humanity of the other are we compelled to act. While ever we can find excuses to not recognise them as human, then they do not exist and we do not need to act.

We watch as others challenge perceptions and injustice and nod our approval. We applaud the people who were instrumental in the big ticket moments and who are celebrated in our world, Wilberforce, Martin Luther king Jr., Ghandi and others

Yet how do we do everyday in the little stuff? We may not have the opportunity to be a part of the big ticket action but we are immersed in the ordinary stuff around us. How do we respond to the needs of others, do recognise the call to action or even accept the part we play in maintaining the injustice in our home, community and the world around us? How are we challenged to recognise all people as equals and as deserving of basic human dignity and our attention?

It is easy to look out and see the failure of others but harder to look at our actions and our presence as part of a system which alienates and ignores.

There is a story told about a poker playing English Lord who after losing a particular tense hand spoke badly to his partner. When his partner objected, he apologised by say, ‘Sorry, I forgot I wasn’t playing with my wife.’

How do we overcome this tendency to blindness, blindness of our implication in the sin of the world and our blindness in failing to see those suffering around us. It could be the neighbour next door who is alone and has no access to transport or support, it could be the disabled boy or girl who is ostracised from the playground; it could be the stereotypical response to the plight of an indigenous person, it could be the way we move away from a homeless person who hasn’t showered recently, it could be….. the many different things we do without seeing, the little things we do we are blind to.

Jesus reminds us in this passage that God doesn’t create second rate people. We are all made in his image and just as Jesus was the face of God in this world, so each individual the face of Jesus in this world. He says: ‘just as you did it (or did not do it) to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

William Loader says: ‘Jesus was not the exception to the life of God, but the rule.’ He is the rule by which will be judged. If we look and do not see what is plainly there then God will not see us. It is a daunting prospect, the challenge to be awake to the other in our lives, to others in our family, our community, our workplace and in our everyday interactions.

In the midst of the chaos that was Bathurst Goal the inmates and I were challenged to maintain our dignity and to recognise the dignity, not only in each other but in those deemed to be the villains in this story. In the years since I have learnt while we can often rise to confront a crisis, it is more difficult to do so in the mundane everyday. Jesus challenges us to see and to act with purpose and love in the now. We can only do so if we are mindful of entertaining Jesus in everyone we meet.