On Being Receivers Not Takers

John 14:15-21

Receiving, what a strange idea.

 

We live in a world where receiving has been replaced by taking. We take time, energy, space, opportunities. We take resources from the world we live in, we take life from those who oppose us or just from creatures who get in the way of our being here. We take because we are entitled to. We are the predominant predator in the universe as we know it.

 

We have little or no input into the production of the very things that sustain our lives – food, energy, wisdom. We take from experts without having the capacity to judge the opinions they impose on us. We take without knowing where our food, our news, our ideas come from. We are passive aggressive takers in a world that has transformed us from people to consumers.

 

As a society, we are takers, not always conscious takers, but people programmed to consume what we are told we need or that we have become conditioned to receive.  It is subtle and often couched in terms allowing us to rationalise it as rational and responsible. We build large fences around our houses for privacy and protection; we ration our resources to ensure that we will always have enough or more for our future. We concentrate only on what fulfils us and have little regard for the consequences of our consuming of resources. 

 

Some of this is because we are disconnected from the production of the necessities of life. We do not live next to open cut coalmines, cattle feedlots or the mono-culture farms that use chemically induced agriculture. We do not see the awful gashes in our land or the smell of a feedlot or been evicted from our lands to make al this possible.

 

Some of this is because of the fear of scarcity – there will never be enough to go around, and I won’t have the resources when I need them. Much of this is created by the media, experts and specialists who are committed, not to our wellbeing but to the economy of taking, of making profits to continue the dominance of corporations.

 

How different is God’s economy, the economy of the Spirit. This is an economy of receiving, of being connected to the source of your life and of waiting for the consolation of Christ to provide us all we need to be fully human, fully live. Taking partitions life, it separates and divides. Receiving unifies and brings what was disconnected and disparate together as one.

 

Our Gospel is clear – unity is the essence of the spiritual life – and is fully dependent upon receiving, of waiting and becoming enfolded into the life of the Trinity.

 

John reminds us clearly:

18”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

 

There will always be enough for all your needs if you are open to receive. We will never be left with less than we need. We will never find ourselves unaccompanied in whatever stage of life we find ourselves. We are always connected to the Source through the Spirit of Christ, if we who have the commandments keep them.

 

What are the commandments we are to keep? That of an open welcoming love for all reflecting our open and welcoming love of ourselves as one with the Triune God, a love that holds no-thing just for ourselves but shares all we have and are in communion with others – in a community modelled on the community of the Trinity where giving and receiving flows seamlessly and without any sense of taking, entitlement or grasping found in a modern consumer society.

 

Our model is the Trinity, our practice is the Trinity. This is not a theological concept as much as a supportive community to which we belong – we are in fact in relationship with the Trinity and united as one with the Godhead there in. This is not a model of scarcity but of enough, nor is it a model were one diminishes the other in the act of taking but a relationship where the deficiency in one is filled up by the others in a dialogue of giving and receiving.

 

Taken seriously this model allows us to hold lightly to life and all life brings us, and in an understanding of the self fulfilling cycle of openness and receptiveness we find ourselves always with what we need – enough. We will not be left orphaned, as John writes. We will not find ourselves destitute, homeless, friendless or penniless; for we are one with the very essence of being human – the Triune God.

 

This may be true, you might agree, in terms of spiritual things and it sounds good from a pulpit but I need, you may think, to hold onto as much as I can to ensure I care responsibly for my family. Yet the truth of God’s economy is only found in letting go of what you have and being open to receive what you need.

 

This is an economy based on community, of relying on one another for the betterment of all. It is localised and sufficient, not universal and more. The Christian church came into being as one which pooled resources and shared those out to one another on a needs basis. This model is the model rural and, even, urban communities flourished on until we moved from providing for ourselves to relying on others to do so through the consumer society.

 

This has deeply affected church life and the sharing of resources necessary to maintain church communities. We give what we have left over after ensuring our own needs and fears are met. This is not the command we receive – we are to give out of the abundance we receive first then look after our needs.

 

Receiving is hard to do because it shifts the emphasis from the responsibility of getting what we want to the responsibility of gratefulness for what we receive. It shifts the emphasis from fear to hope, from wants to needs, from excess to enough.

 

John’s Jesus reminds us that there will always be enough, that we will not be orphaned, but this experience relies on us living out the commandments found in the humility of receiving. 

Who is The Villain?

Luke 18:9-14

 

One of the criticisms the teenagers in my chapel would make is that all Christians are hypocrites; that is they say one thing and do another; that they make demands on others they are unable to keep themselves. They got a shock when I agreed with them and stated very clearly that I too was a hypocrite.

 

At my peak I am very ordinary, and I am not at my peak at the moment. This is something I remind myself of daily. I am a work in progress and like all works in progress I am not complete and I am working toward that day when I will be as close as possible to average as I can be.

 

In todays Gospel we are given another insight into prayer which is too easily trivialised as the distinction between the righteous and the sinner here represented by the Pharisee and the tax collector. We always seem to come down on the side of the tax collector and disparage the Pharisee as the villain of the story.

 

The Pharisees are always the villains, not necessarily in the parables as Jesus tells them but in the retelling of the parables by Christians after the birth of the church. We always need villains, some one to blame and in our modern society this has become an art form. We have replaced Pharisees with “them” who ever we wish them to be. They are always the reason everything is going to custard. It is never our fault.

 

John Meier suggests an interesting insight:  “Jesus would have interacted more with them than with any other Jewish movement or party (because) both Jesus and the Pharisees shared a consuming desire to bring all Israel, not just an esoteric sect or a privileged elite, to the complete doing of God's will as laid out in the Law and the prophets. Jesus and the Pharisees agreed on many basic points: God's free election of Israel, his gift of the Law, the need to respond wholeheartedly to the Law's demands in one's everyday life, God's faithful guidance of Israel through history to a future consummation involving the restoration of Israel, a final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and perhaps some sort of eschatological or messianic figure as God's agent in the end time. At the same time, disagreements were inevitable”. They were not the villains but became so because of how the stereotype of the Pharisee (and the adjective, "Pharisaic") has played out in Christian history. This can be seen in the way that Jewish faith has been represented by Christians as legalistic and hypocritical, in contrast to the heartfelt and authentic faith of Christians."

 

 

What is the Pharisees sin as portrayed in this story? William Loader suggests "The message of Jesus is quite sharp: bolstering one’s sense of identity by disparaging others (even when they are terrible sinners) so easily leads to illusions of grandeur and a failure to see ourselves as we really are." Are the Pharisees alone in this or is there a sense that the story, as retold by the Gospel writer or editors joins in such a sin? Are they not disparaging the Pharisees to make a point? That point being that one should see oneself for who one is – a sinner, a hypocrite as my students would say, for we are all in the same leaky boat.

 

The difference here is that the real villain in the story is the tax collector. According to Kathleen Corley, “ tax collectors are connected in Greco-Roman literature with those who trafficked in prostitution and slavery, particularly to brothel keepers and pimps, those responsible for supplying women and slaves for banquets”. This particular tax collector is self aware and honest, at this point any way, about his situation. The challenge for him and his cohort is what happens next. Do they remain part of the problem or become part of the solution to the systemic injustice they are a key part of? Our eagerness to condemn the Pharisees gets in the way of a realistic response to the entrenched behaviour of the tax collector and his acquaintances.

 

Neither of the protagonists get off easy. Both have some work to do. Both have to have a realistic look at their behaviour towards others and neither can claim the moral or spiritual high ground.  

 

Yes, the Pharisees and those of us who see ourselves as privileged and entitled need to get it into perspective – at our peak we are very ordinary and we are rarely at our peak and therefore can not claim to be better than others. The tax collector reminds us that we have indeed behaved badly, more than we often wish to see, in ways that have diminished others and need to admit such before both God and others.

 

• Prayer is about honesty – about being honest with ourselves and with God – but with ourselves first. Then and only then can we take the steps to put right what we put wrong and continue to strive for the best.

• Prayer is about enough – in this case about the fact that our ordinary efforts to live out the way of Christ is enough. We do not have to disparage others to bolster our own standing. We are enough, even with all our faults we have many positive moments where we do get it right.

• Prayer is about being ok – I’m  O.K – You’re O.K. despite the fact we are conflicted with passions and wounds, loss and  grief and a history that speaks into our life today. The Pharisee was O.K. and didn’t need to disparage another; the tax collector was O.K. but he had some more work to do.

• Prayer is about humility, but it must be an honest humility. The Pharisee and those like him are challenged to be humble and the tax collector is challenged to prove his humility is real. It is not enough to say I am a sinner, one must take steps to conversion, the complete change in behaviour required as part of such humility. 

• Prayer is about God’s grace – God knows and understands us, and although God seeks us to be the best we can be, is able to work with our humanity. That is the great truth of the incarnation. God so trusted the human form that God became one with it in the form of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

This parable is another difficult story and is as relevant to the church today as it was to the religious of Jesus time. The church, you and I, is being asked to stand where the tax collector stood, moving away from the position of the privileged and the powerful as we were in the past, and to admit that our arrogance has been responsible for great sin.

 

Like the tax collector we are to recognise this and be transformed into the body of Christ, the disciples of the way. Amen.

You Are Enough

Luke 10:38-42Colossians 1:15-23 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

 

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

 

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

White Australia and the Fear of Protectionism - Election 2016

Luke 10:1-20

On our holiday in Port Fairy I stumbled across some interesting finds in an antique store in town. I picked up this official publication, “Australia – Official Handbook’, 1947. The preface  reads as follows:

 

“This book, telling the story of Australia in all of its aspects, is published by the Australian National Publicity Association, a non-profit organisation, controlled by an Honorary Board representing the Australian Railways, Overseas Shipping Lines, General Australian Business interests and the Commonwealth Government.

 

The aim of the Association is to promote knowledge of Australia in overseas countries, to which end this and other publications are issued.

 

The Australian Handbook is commended to people of other lands who might be interested, and to Australians themselves, who will find it a suitable publication to mail to their friends and business associates abroad.”

 

It provides a wide range of details and interesting data on Australia in 1947. One interesting paragraph is entitled: “White Australia”.  It states: “To the principle of “White Australia” all political parties in the Commonwealth subscribe, for the economic reason that the white man’s standard of living would be endangered by the introduction of coloured labourers who would be prepared to accept wages and live under conditions that are not acceptable to a white workman. Were coloured labour unrestricted, the ultimate result would be that the white workman in Australia would be forced out of employment by the cheap labour, with a consequent dislocation of the national life. Thus the immigration laws are so designed as to exclude coloured people from permanent residence in Australia.’

 

Not a lot has changed, except now it is refugees who are kept out of our country and our jobs are exported to those we made laws to keep out of ours. Protectionism, the desire to hold onto something by denying others the opportunity to share our good fortune has a habit of biting back. The thing we so desperately desire to keep for ourselves has a way of dying or escaping, leaving us without what we coveted for ourselves.

 

The recent referendum in England could be described as an attempt to hold on to or regain something the country never had, not of itself anyway. Much of its remembered wealth and power came from resource rich countries it conquered, controlled and pillaged. For many who voted to leave it could be seen as an attempt to maintain a fast receding quality of life and deny the possibilities of a life to others. How much of the voting in this country reflects similar desperation and fear? Stop the boats, keep our jobs and maintain our personal lifestyle of entitlement, travel and comfort that is all we seem to desire. Even people who belong to the kingdom not of this world, Christians, seem to adhere to such ideology.

 

Jesus sends out the 70. Two by two they go. They appear to be going out on a short term mission into the world, they are not going to stay, they are going to model a lifestyle and faith completely at odds with the worlds expectations. They are to take very little and accept very little in return for their efforts. Although Jesus says the labourer is worth the hire; a bed, bath and a meal seems to be the wages they were to receive. They aren’t to be choosy, moving to get a better bed, meet a better cook or have a spa bath! They go simply and are expected to be comfortable with enough.

 

Mark Davis suggests that "The response to the scarcity (and danger) of workers is for the seventy-two to go out with their own scarcity and vulnerability – in total dependence on others for food, shelter, drink and protection."

 

Jesus is given the words: “Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Lambs have no means of repulsing the wolves. They are helpless and vulnerable. All they have is the mob they belong to and an ewe who will do everything to protect them. Yet for neither the lamb or the disciples there is no comfort or comfortableness, no assurance all will be well, no promise of an abundance of the good things of life. Jesus suggests they will be provided with what they need, and no more.

How far have we moved from this ideal of Jesus! The politics of nationalism has placed the protection of what we have now at the centre of all debate. The idea of the redistribution of wealth so that all may live seems to have escaped us or disturbed us so much that we cling desperately to what we perceive to be ours. This applies not just to money our resources, but to our time, talents and community. It belongs to me and I will decide who, what or when I engage. God is lucky to have me on his/her side and therefore he better get used to the fact I will only give, do, share what I decide. Thats why we decide who comes to our country, who is welcome and what I do for God.

The 70 are modelling a radically different understanding of life:

The mission of the church is to be their/our life. In this story we see the integration of mission and life. Our personal life is not a separate entity in which we make time for God’s mission in the world. Sunday worship, a bit of social justice here, a meditation there; God’s mission in the world is to be our life. All that we do, our work our investments, our leisure time, our money and our talents are to be employed in the fulfilment of God’s mission in the world through the church. We do not have the luxury of making choices that do not have as their first priority: how will this further God’s kingdom in the world? It is not easy and Jesus is aware of this but reminds us it is not about us and our comfort and security, it is bigger than that: “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The mission of inclusion is the central point of their being sent out, to bring others in and to share out of their poverty what others need. If people welcome you, include them; hospitality and openness is all that is needed to fulfil the mission. They spend no time planning, getting the logistics in place, setting up places to care for, educate or counsel people. They simply go as they are and find that in the doing and living the needs of both themselves and others are meant. This is not about scarcity of welcoming other, the fear that there will not be enough, but about the abundance that occurs when people open out, become expansive and believe in the possibility of enough.

The sufficiency of enough is to be experienced to be trusted. Jesus reminds them they do not need the things of the world in the way others do, building up security through power and wealth. This is a mission aimed at breaking the power of commercialism and tyranny that was and is rampant across theirs and our world. The modelling of sufficiency or enough is counter-cultural and a stark reminder that those who die with the most still die.  There will always be enough if you do not go looking for more. Stay in the first place that welcomes and don’t move if a better offer comes up. Respect the possibilities you find and live out your mission from a place of enough.

Friday I enjoyed the best Vietnamese street food at the restaurant at the Melbourne Botanical Gardens and purchased some exquisite indigenous merchandise. I was reminded of the gifts those who came by boat (the Vietnamese refugees) and those who were here since time began have given us and celebrated the wonder of diversity and inclusion. The same arguments were heard in relation to the boat people escaping Vietnam as we are hearing today, yet 40 years on our society is enriched by their culture, food and even by a State Governor who came by boat. There is always enough and more.

God is bigger than our needs.  The challenge for the parish, the church and this country following yesterday’s election is to become open hearted, open-minded and open-handed and welcoming of all. Until we are able to do that we are not fulfilling the mission of God witnessed in Christ.