Baptism of The Christ

Baptism of Christ. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John. Davezelenka

Matthew 3:13-17

 

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, the iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, often reduced to the role of a theological statement about the identity of Jesus. We pay little to the relationships between Jesus and John, Jesus and the created world, and Jesus and spiritual experience by using it to prove Jesus is divine and already righteous without the need of John’s baptism.

 

Yet this is an incredible story, told in all 3 synoptic gospels, each with their own twist but consistent in the central truths portrayed. John is baptising on the banks of the Jordan. It is a baptism for transformation and change, a baptism not of ritual but of experience. He is challenging those who come to be transformed by the experience and to go away and transform the world in which they live. Yes the word sin appears, but it is not the trivial definition we use of personal sin today, but an understanding of the disconnection from our one-ness in creation and our need to rediscover our co-independence in our movement in relational wholeness empowered by love. His is a baptism of community for an evolving creation destined to find its beginning and completion in Christ.

 

John is correct, Jesus has no personal need for such baptism, but he does have a representational need to do so. He comes to John, his cousin and mentor, as a student comes to a teacher. This is about participating in the experience and become a participant in the journey to wholeness which is a journey to himself. The great Christian mystics such as Merton, Bede Griffiths, Teilhard de Chardin and others, along with the seminal mystics from other faiths and spiritual practices, all speak of the journey to wholeness as the journey to self. They all, in their various understandings, equate the inner journey of discovering your true self as the experiencing of the Christ at the most intimate and personal level. Merton write that the only journey a human takes is the inner journey.

 

Karl Rahner, a modern Catholic mystic, writes: “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.”  Jesus and John both agree with Rahner, without a deep and undeniable experience of God there is no way of being for Christ in the world.  This is not necessarily an emotionally charged moment of bells and whistles, it is often the breaking open of ones self perception in such a way one becomes a completely new being, unrecognisable from the one who existed before, especially and most importantly, by ones self.

 

In the baptism of Jesus this is exactly what happens. Here we have a young man recognising his need of John’s tutelage and baptism and coming in obedience to John’s call. For many this may fly in the face of what we think about this story. Jesus is not just following a divine script. He is a created being, a thinking man, making a considered decision to be baptised by John.

 

It is an act rooted in a personal relationship with John and completed in the created world. Both points are very important. Jesus is an ordinary person, engaging with others and the created environment who experiences a mystical awareness of his true self in the midst of both. Jesus does not have his mystical experience, his awakening to his true self, in isolation from others or the world. It occurs in the midst of an act of obedience, surrounded by others engaged in the same, on the banks of a shallow and narrow river on the edge of the desert.

 

What happens next is, apparently, witnessed by others, but most specifically experienced and reflected on by Jesus, not just in the desert where he went after this occurs, but in his discussions and teachings with those who followed him. This event dislodged Jesus from his ego self and set him on a deep spiritual path he invites all of us to participate in – through journey through him to him.

 

Jesus is the fulfilment of creation and brings with him into our world both the way and the end. In his baptism he understands this truth. He participates in an act representative of the evolving understanding of the spirituality John brings and is connected to the source of all creation (God) by the power to bring us to evolved fulfilment (the Spirit). God speaks, the Spirit hovers of the waters, just as in the first creation myth. God speaks similar words to those attributed to him then, ‘and God saw it was good’. Here he says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

 

An interesting comment in itself as Jesus has yet to do anything, his ministry has not begun, there have been no acts of power, words of wonder or miracles of healing. It seems the ordinary human being Jesus is deemed to be sufficient by God and the simple act of responding to John’s call has opened the gates of heaven and placed Jesus in a new relationship with God.

 

Is this just an experience only Jesus can have? Do we read this story and listen to this sermon and go, ‘Nah, couldn’t happen to me. I’m not good enough. Only Jesus who was God’s son could have this experience.” We have been fooled by the idea that because we understand Jesus was both divine and human and somehow that excludes us from emulating such experiences. The truth is that this should be the normative experience for those on the spiritual journey. It is not the experience only of Buddha, Dalai Lama or Jesus or Mother Teresa or Rumi or any of the other spiritual pilgrims, it is the experience we all are destined for if we participate in the acts of being human and open to the possibility of such experiences.

 

I suspect Jesus was unaware of what was about to happen to him when he came to John, despite the prophetic words of John and Jesus's response. I suspect Jesus was still coming to grips with the guidance John had been giving him and simply wanted to do what was necessary. His baptism dislocated him from his self-understanding in such a way that he heads into the desert to make sense of it all. What happens there is the continuation of his evolution into the Christ and the path that would take him to complete self-denial and love on the Cross.

 

Yes, this an iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, but not one reserved for Jesus and out of reach for you and I. It is available for us if we participate in the journey to relational wholeness in the created world out of love for God and others. This experience will set us on the Way to the Way, it will bring us, through the experience of Jesus to ultimate fulfilment in Christ. It will occur when we become open to the possibility, diligent in our worship and practice, inside and outside liturgy, and when we come just as we are, just as Jesus did. Amen 

Witchetty Grubs, Gumtrees and All The Saints

Luke 6:20-31

 

 

Today we are celebrating All Saints Day. The tradition of celebrating the saints and martyrs has been marked by Christians ever since the 4th century the Feast of All Holy Martyrs.

 

In 837AD Pope Gregory IV extended the festival to include saints, renaming the festival the Feast of All Saints, all who were martyred or who lived an exemplary life.

 

In recent times this has been widened to include everyone who is a Christian. We are all saints, in a biblical sense.

 

All Saints Day is a time to be thankful for all those Christians who have lived before us, whether they are officially saints or not. Some are the great teachers and prophets from history. Some are those who’ve taught and inspired us personally.

 

Some are our friends and family. We can thank God for their witness, and for the way they have transmitted the faith down the generations. We can learn from their lives. We can take time to be grateful for what we’ve received, and to recommit ourselves to follow in their footsteps.*

 

Interestingly, the reading from Luke’s Gospel takes us into a radical new place and challenges the narrow understanding of this day. In this passage Jesus moves from the narrow understanding of who was included in God’s economy and how that was to be defined.  He continues, as he has done repeatedly in Luke, to prefer the poor and to diminish those who would have seen themselves as belonging to the inner circle, the blessed, the rich, those with names and with power.

 

He instructs his followers to be inclusive even at the risk of personal recrimination and harm. He tells people to defy the accepted rules of engagement with others and to take it to and beyond the limits in place to make the intolerable tolerable. Soldiers, legally, could only make you carry their bags a certain distance so defy them and carry it twice as far and see what happens. Force the person to hit you with the back of the hand which was against law and practice. This is not about doing good, but about challenging the injustice inherent in the system.

 

Jesus takes it further and says we are to do unto others what we would want them to do unto us. This is an incredibly challenging statement. It is not a golden rule, it is a deep dark gold mine we are challenged to explore and to live. It is not about our relationships with those like us. It doesn’t even stop at simply celebrating saints who fit into our perception of life, faith and religion. It is not about our closed and isolated community but about the ever-expanding community of life on and beyond this planet.

 

Saints are not just humans, and especially not just humans who share our ethnicity, our values or our lifestyle. Saints are present in communities unlike ours, in peoples we fear and in the created world we continue to exploit.

 

Throughout history peoples of all backgrounds have sought to recognise God at work in their world. These cultures have discerned wisdom and insights both individual and universal, providing us with a web of spiritual and religious wisdom informing and expanding our own. To ignore such for an exclusive us only variety diminishes all of us. Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen, Rowan Williams, Elizabeth Johnson, Sallie McFague, Pope Francis and many many others  have initiated and maintained communion with the saints of other faiths and practices in order to add to and affirm what they already know or suspect. So should we.

 

In the book of Job we read, “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;” Other versions use the word beasts, a deeply primal and free expression of God’s creativity, full of the capacity to teach, mentor and lead us. They too fit the definition of saints and deserve to be treated in the way we wish to be treated.

Wendell Berry speaks eloquently of this communion of saints when reflecting on the cycle of life in forests and plains, swamps and deserts, and everywhere in the natural world we inhabit; “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…and this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures”.

 

In this century science and our expanding universe asks us to let go of the simple anthropomorphic (human centred) understanding of creation and Gods economy (kingdom) and to come into a relationship of respect, compassion and justice – the way of kindness - with all whom we share this world with. We are to recognise the wisdom inherent in others of all ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds and to sit in the desert and hear the wisdom of the beasts and all that maintains our planet and our lifestyle.

 

Failing to do so will continue the process of destruction of peoples through senseless wars, embargoes, bans and bombs. Saints are dying in places like Yemen, West Papua, Aleppo,  Philippines, the Sudan, Burma, remote communities of Australia and Manus Island. Saints are being banned from bringing their wisdom here for the crime of wanting a better life. Saints, such as these, must be welcomed in our country or we fail the test of doing unto others.

 

Failure will diminish the incredible success of the theory of evolution by natural selection in giving us the immense diversity of thousands of years of refining creation. Within that process there are many saints, past and present, responsible for giving us sustenance, oxygen, and sustainability – trees, birds, fish, oceans, mountains and rivers not to mention bugs, mosquitos, flies, microbes and more. We rarely include them in our list of saints or in our prayers on all saints day, but they are there by default, central to the on going creation of our world.

 

On this all Saints Day we are asked to expand our worldview to include difference and diversity, to find a place in our religion for all who have been created in the image of God; meaning those with the capacity to create and continue to create the unbelievable, and for many of us, the unfathomable complexity of our habitat.

 

By doing so we will be challenged about our relationships with others including the creatures we share this world with. We will begin to see such as deserving to be treated, in the words of Jesus, as we wish to be treated. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We are to write this across all our transactions, relationships and interactions with those we share this world with, and this world itself.

 

It is recognising the sainthood of all things, not just selected humans of specific gifts and talents. It is recognising that we entertain angels, saints, in each and every transaction we participate in. Detainees, victims of war, dislocated refugees and first nations peoples around the world, practitioners of other faiths, old growth forests, witchetty grubs and more carry the wisdom we need to maintain and care for ourselves, others and this world.

 

On this All Saints Day let us take just a few moments to quietly remember all saints of all kinds now. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Unity in Being, Diversity in Doing

John 3:1-17/ Romans 8:12-17

Today is indeed Trinity Sunday for us here at St Oswald’s. This Sunday we explore the liturgical festival of the trinity while reflecting on the task of reconciliation, still a work under construction for our country, and finally, we are thinking about our parish stewardship responsibilities. How do these come together or are they in fact three very different ideas we actually need more time to investigate? Are they an improbable puzzle not unlike the one Nicodemus was faced with when he came to Jesus under the cover of the darkness? I suspect so.

 

You see Nicodemus nearly got the profound insight Jesus had to offer yet he was unable to leave his rational mind out of the conversation. His rational mind, schooled in the ‘theological’ superstructure of the synagogue found no place for the mystical experience Jesus was introducing him to. Being born again, being born of the spirit and not of the flesh, the coming and goings from heaven to earth and back again, simply over-rode the rational understanding Nicodemus was equipped with. And he went away, still in the dark.

 

In Romans 8 Paul speaks eloquently about the Godhead, interspersing the three personalities without actually trying to explain how it actually goes together. In this passage he speaks of God as father, of Christ in relationship to both God and us, and the Spirit as the enlivening source of relationship which ties it all together. Yet Paul does not explain the Trinity -- how God is three-in-one and one-in-three -- and no systematic explanation is to be found in the other biblical writers, either.

 

Perhaps it can be understood as ‘unity in being, diversity in way of being’. The oneness is the Who and the diversity is the role or the what. Rublev’s famous icon shows the three personalities together at a table, in hospitable fellowship with one another surrounded by the symbols which identify, all are together but noticeably separate in their body language; a turning out here, a looking a way there and the use of space to signify that separation.

 

They are united in their divine being, but very diverse in their roles and their actions. Although all maybe present at the one time, they are busy about different things, tasks and operations. The creation, salvation and imbuing of the world are done together but separately. A wonderful image of this unity and diversity is found in the description of the baptism of Jesus in Mark 1:9-11:

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

 

An interesting observation to make about Rublev’s icon is that there is no competition for space or for recognition amongst those he depicts. In fact the generosity of the Trinity is such that it always leaves room for more. If you look closely at the icon, space is made at the front of the table for another, or others. It has been suggested that we are being made room for, invited into that intimate relationship, not as observers, spectators or as lesser beings. but as co-equals.

 

Jesus says that God so loved the world that he sent the second person of the trinity so that he could save it from itself, from it’s ego violence and gratification. We are saved to share in eternal life which is a now and future realm, to be experienced in relationship with the three personalities active in the divine.

 

Paul says ‘you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.’ We have been adopted into that intimate relationship which is unity of being but diversity and how, the way, of being.

 

In the last few days we have witnessed the recognition of gay marriage in Ireland, an almost unthinkable outcome if the referendum had occurred a decade ago. What is primarily a Catholic country has embraced change and the church faces some interesting time redefining it’s place in what was essentially it’s country. It is a challenge for the  Church of Ireland which, within a day or so, had produced a press release saying that there would be no marriages for same sex couples carried out by it’s clergy as they are still reviewing their position through Synod. Yet over the road in Scotland, the Church of Scotland has voted to accept gay clergy in same sex civil partnerships, although note civil not church sanctioned marriage. The world is a rapidly changing place, full of diversity and, seemingly, collapsing unity. 

 

On this Trinity Sunday we are also asked to think about reconciliation between the first occupiers of this country and those of us who came later. Reconciliation as a task has had a rocky road and, I would suggest, has almost stalled. Governments, institutions and landowners have been hesitant to take the steps to apologize and set about a clear path of repentance for invasions, massacres, land grabs, stolen children, child abuse, and more. We remain silent about the 140-year civil war which took place in this country, only coming to an end, possibly, in 1928. We do not recognise the casualties of that war, on both sides, and fail to accept that the injustices committed then set the groundwork for the injustices which continue, such as the closing down of remote communities today.

 

The table of hospitality we sit around is similar but different to that of Rublev’s icon. Yes there is a space at the table but those who are different are not free to join those who maintain the social geography of our country. Not only have we not given free access to the first people, we continue to prevent those seeking a new start in life access either, even when we know the alternative option is likely death, we continue to say ‘Nope, Nope, Nope.’

 

The way forward will be chaotic and marred by many sidesteps and back-downs but we are being challenged to engage with the diversity of being from the point of view of what holds us together at the core. The trinity speaks of unity in relationship, of being essentially connected at the centre of our being although we are acting out our being, our lives, in very different and diverse ways.

 

We have a choice, to hold onto what divides us, to our diversity, not as something to be celebrated but something to be destroyed, or at best, ignored. To harken back to a day when we did not have to deal with these things because we agreed not to recognise them will consign us the way of the dodo. We no longer have that option.

 

Or we can choose to find ways to engage, dialogue and discover our place, with others, at the table of fellowship alongside the three distinct personalities of the Trinity. It asks of us deep self-reflection on why we believe as we do, why we find it difficult to even dialogue on these things, let alone find a place of unity, and why we are uncomfortable about difference and diversity?

 

On this thanksgiving or stewardship Sunday we are also being asked what can we do, what can we give, to expand God’s presence in this community? What do we bring with us and make available to this parish under God to engage, dialogue and discover ours and others place at the table with the Trinity? In the 80 or so years since St Oswald’s was founded, the world has changed in remarkable ways and this church has always been willing to engage, belong, support, guide, represent and feed this community. Why? Because there have been people willing to sit at the table with the Divine and co-create a representational Holy presence here.

 

Nicodemus was asked what did he bring and what could he give? He found that he could not give up his rational and conditioned mind. He could not step out of the darkness of difference into the glory of diversity. He was unable to remain engaged in dialogue and fellowship long enough for the truth to appear. He was lost in the darkness.

 

As we close let us reflect on the wisdom of Paul who writes:

 

^“22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Amen