Fourth Day Living - The Day Beyond Hope

John 11:1-45 

 

"LOST: male dog, has one eye, mangled left ear, missing left hind leg and most of his teeth, crooked tail. Answers to the name, ‘Lucky'.

 

In our modern day world I suspect many of us feel a little like Lucky. We are bombarded by bad news – bad news on a world scale, bad news on a local scale and bad news on a personal level. It never seems to stop. You turn on the tv to watch a little news and relax, and all you get is one bad story after another, even the shows which are supposed to entertain are full of anger, bully and violence. Watch an episode or two of Married at First Sight, My Kitchen Rules or The Block to see what I mean.

 

Talk a stroll through the local bookshop or record store (are there any of these any more?) and take a look at the covers, the story briefs or the lyrics and you will be surprised by the  words used, the storylines or violence and horror which seems to permeate almost everything out there.

 

Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, wrote in 1956; “We have a literacy above 90 per cent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. But instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of men with the cheapest trash, lacking in any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway cultured person would be embarrassed to entertain even once in a while. But while the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go on blissfully to see to it that no “immorality” occurs on the screen."

 

Little seems to have changed in the 60 years since he wrote that. There seems to be no end to bad news and we may find ourselves overwhelmed and feeling we are living in the worst of times not the best of times. Despite the capacity for human beings to grow and develop knowledge, skills and quality of life we seem not to have mastered the art of living well together.

 

No wonder we feel a little like Lucky the dog, broken down, dragged out and not all there. We may indeed feel as if we are living in the hopeless days. And it is when we are living in the hopeless days that we are the closest to the sense of another long Gospel reading from John. This is the story of loss and grief, of facing up to the inevitable death that faces us all in some way every day. We receive bad news about our own health, about the health or death of a friend, about the health of our beloved pet, we lose a job, we face divorce, we face financial ruin, we risk everything for a better life only to be told no and more.  For whatever reason we find ourselves living in the hopeless day.

 

Martha, Mary and Jesus find themselves in this very place. Their brother, his friend has died. He gets the news on the day it happens. He is sad but does not rush back but waits 2 days before travelling to their home. Perhaps he was worried about the reception he would get. The disciples were because they intimated it was beyond risky for Jesus to show his face there. Perhaps he was so overcome with the thought of going back and facing it immediately, it was just too much. So it wasn’t until the third day that he began the trip and he arrived on the fourth day, a day when it was going to be too late for heroics such as a healing, the body had already started to decompose.

 

Martha and Mary were both upset at his tardiness intimating he had known about Lazarus’s health prior to his death and hadn’t come back. They were well aware of his ability to heal and couldn’t come to grips with his failure to heal the one he loved. Their confrontation with him may have been a little more forceful than John relates and his defence that this was all for God’s glory probably was not an appropriate answer. And it isn’t ever.

 

Yet here they were in what was to them a hopeless situation.

 

Peter Woods writes that "Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead. He tells his disciples this brutal truth. Only then does he decide to go to nearby Bethany. He arrives on the fourth day. The day that is beyond all hope. All through Scripture the third day is the day that God acts. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day, the fourth." 

 

This is worth keeping in mind as it is the only time it is recorded. The day that is beyond hope is a place where people live and where God is not absent. Yes God acts on the third day, timely and appropriately, before everything decomposes and falls apart and we live and have been taught to live with the expectation that this will happen. But God is not absent from the hopeless day, the day beyond hope. What actually happens in this story we do not know but we do know something happens and Lazarus is somewhat restored, at least in the story if not in real life. God in someway restores equilibrium and balance in so dramatically that in a few verses on from this reading, Jesus future is doomed by those in power who will see to it he dies.

 

We always want God to act within the 3 days, within a timely framework that works for us. We also want God to restore it to the way it was. But it has changed no it is different and uncomfortable. We find the day that is beyond all hope too painful, to dislodging, to traumatic, and it often leaves us with scars we can never erase. Yet if we look closely to that day or days we find God is not absent, stuff is happening to us and others, the ground is shifting and life continues, different, changed but it is still life.

 

Fourth day living is where the church has been since the promised or expected immediate return of Jesus has yet to occur. Fourth day living is the ordinary experience of each of us and has produced wonderful spiritual practitioners, writers and saints. Fourth day living is the norm for the majority of people throughout the world, not the exception in places where God does not appear on the third day to prevent children dying of starvation, people being bombed out of their homes or others feeling the wrath of racism and oppression.

 

It is in fourth day living that we begin to experience the necessity of faith, hope and love; the value of community and belonging; and the expansiveness of God’s presence, even when God seems to have gone missing. Fourth day living pushes our boundaries, reshapes our values and expectations and beckons us forward into an ever-expanding universe open to surprise, beauty and possibility.

 

The truth for Jesus friends is that they have not avoided the inevitable encounter with fourth day living, only postponed it; but they may have lived the days after Jesus’ visit, the day after they experienced for the first time the day beyond all hope, very differently, intentionally, focused and with an awareness they didn’t have before.

 

Like Lucky, they panted for more.

 

9 to 1

Luke 17:11-19

 

Standing in the old section of the Burwood Cemetery we were surrounded by the graves of young children, many of whom were under the age of 12. The two teenagers with us were intrigued as to why this was the case. We explained that 3 or more generations ago people died young of diseases we no longer see as fatal – measles, chicken pox, colds, appendicitis and more. Also those who lived didn’t enjoy the same preferred position in families as they do to day. Education above primary school was rare and the idea of a career of their choice simply not on the agenda.

 

For these two young men, this story was both foreign and outside of their experience. What they took for granted simply wasn’t available to those young people whose headstones dotted the immediate surrounds. It was for them, and possibly is for some of us, almost impossible to imagine a world different to theirs/our experience. As a result we can fall into the trap of taking what we have now as always being the way it was.

 

We take life, our life for granted and when something happens contrary we become anxious and angry that our expectations are not met. Our life has become narcissistic to the point that we cannot imagine it being any other way than it is now. If it is out of balance we seek to regain the life we are used to without being grateful when we do.

 

This little pericope of Jesus is not so much about gratitude but about the expectation of entitlement, taking life for granted. 10 people encounter Jesus. All 10 are sick and have an illness described here as leprosy. It may not have been leprosy in the strict definition, but because of a skin ailment their lives were out of balance. The normal life function of relationships, work and religious practice was not available to them. They were outcasts, marginalised by their illnesses and seeking to find a way to become participants, once again, in the normal activities of life.

 

They meet Jesus, and are healed. Jesus sends them on their way, 9 keep going, only one stops, turns around and says thanks. It is here that Jesus pronounces, ““Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Now this raises some interesting questions. We are told that all are healed, but only this one is made well, what does that mean? Is gratitude evidence of something more than healng the physical illness? Is wellness different or deeper than the physical cleansing? Is faith more than simply wanting something good to happen, is it about depth, deep speaking unto deep, where we glean the truth that something more is at work here than physical healing?

 

Many years ago, when I attended AA, I used to notice that there were at least two groups of people at meetings, those for whom the joy of life had returned in soberiety and those who, while sober, still moaned about how difficult it was each day. The latter would stand at every meeting they attended and go on and on about how hard it was to be sober, the temptations, the difficulties and then lapse into a protracted sense of martyrdom for continuing to remain sober. Somehow we were to applaud their stoicism in the face of great strife.

 

An old AA man would say, “Any one can get sober, only a few master sobriety.” A very wise statement reflected in our story today. Any one can get healed, only a few master the art of living well. The Samaritan begins the journey by stopping, turning around and recognising the hope he has received.

 

The other 9 took it all for granted. Life went on with their ego self at the centre of all things; the only difference was they no longer had the skin disease. Had anything really changed for them? Were they convinced that this was their right and finally all had returned to the way it always was before they got sick?

 

The Samaritan’s faith made him well. Jesus distinguishes between the 9 and the 1 by recognising the 1’s faith, a faith that was only activated when he stopped, took stock, turned around and recognised the source of his healing. Faith here refers to a conviction that results in reflection and metanoia, a complete about face or change in direction. The 9 were healed by God’s grace; the 1 was made well by his awareness of the mystery lying at the centre of his experience of Jesus.

 

Wellness is more than healing, and sometimes, is present when there is no healing. People are well when they recognise the joy and hope of life in the midst of illness, tragedy and loss. People are well when they retain their balance and embrace challenges, opportunities and possibilities despite the lack of healing or closure. People are well when they are able to grasp the mystery of creation in all things they encounter.

 

This is a story about great hope hidden in the everyday we take for granted. Like the 9, we are so busy going on, we miss the gems staring us in the face. As my father would say if we couldn’t see or find something; “If it had been a snake it would have bitten you”. In other words we miss the bleeding obvious in search of the more we not ready to receive. The 9 were excited to be normal that they forget to receive fully what they had been given.

 

How easy it is for us to do this in our lives. Materially we live in a world full of extraordinary experiences we take for granted. We have possessions, experiences, opportunities people of past generations could never have imagined, yet we act as if that is the way it has always been. We expect the stuff we have without a thought of gratitude. We take for granted stuff people in 2/3’rds of the world have never had – fresh water, accommodation, regular meals, work and access to health services. We get upset when the Internet is down, winds blow over power poles and the freeway is blocked because we take it for granted we can get our way with life. We become one of the 9 and fail to recognise just how blessed we are.

 

Spiritually human beings have made themselves the centre of the Good News, more so, we as individuals have made ourselves the unique project of the incarnation and the resurrection. Somehow that story is all about us and we take it for granted that we have God on speed dial, that God only has eyes for us. Modern individualism makes us sure of our place in God’s plan that we get upset when things don’t go our way. Why has this happened? Why me? What have I done? We walk away with the 9 unaware that there is more at work here than meets the cursory glance. Spiritually we are challenged to stop, reflect and turn around, embracing the unknown just below the surface.

 

Until we do we will continue to walk in the footsteps of the 9. Amen. 

Pentecost and the Pebble

Acts 2:1-21 & John 14:8-27

Today is Pentecost Sunday the day, Ryusho Jeffus suggests, "Like a pebble dropped into a quiet lake, the Spirit created a ring in the water." Pentecost, like other major festivals, are not just days on a religious calendar or festivals that signify one off events, events that have an historical date and place but are a part of the fabric of faith. They are then, now and future events directly connected to our everyday existence, as real and experiential now as they were by those who witnessed the very first event.

Pentecost is no benign event. Peter’s speech makes it very clear, the coming of the spirit is a powerful interruption to the way things are. It is disturbing, it will disturb us and the world we live in. We will not be the same. It comes not quarantine us from the dangers abounding all around us, but to empower us to remain faithful in the midst of such turmoil.

The truth about Pentecost is very simple, both for the writer of Acts and John, the coming of the spirit of Jesus into the life of the world is not about power for powers sake, knowledge for knowledge sake or presence for comforts sake.

Rick Morley suggests that “At the very least our spiritual lives are meant to be a pilgrimage, where the dangerous place is the place that gets too comfortable: stagnant." For the disciples who are need reassurance all would be well in both stories, there is no such thing if we require it to be experienced in power to have our way, knowledge to control all things or an unending comfort that protects us from the vagaries of life. It simply won’t happen.

Pentecost is the pebble in the world, the reverberating presence of the spirit stirring up life and engaging with the chaos we live amongst. The reverberating presence is a power for unity’s sake, a wisdom for compassion’s sake and a presence for struggle’s sake. The spirit empowers us to life our life to the full, reminding us our lives matter, not for what they give us as individual people but our lives matter to others and for the possibility of life for them. We do not live in isolation and Pentecost empowers us to live for others. Thomas Merton reminds us that “We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”

Pentecost reminds us love, or compassion, the deep care for self and another, is vital if we are to live full and vibrant lives. This is not about me first violence, I grab all for myself at your cost, I win you lose. This is truly about living a life empowering others to win, to achieve a fulfilled life, a life as full as ours.  Thomas Merton writes: “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbours worthy.”

Pentecost is available to us in the midst of the struggles we encounter as we work to help others gain life, as struggle to maintain a liveable world, and as we move forward together in a world that so often feels like it is falling apart. Pentecost is not a fair-weather experience. It is an experience that holds up in the roughest weather. When we feel the most powerless and out of control we are to remember we hold within us the oneness of God n the form of the spirit of Christ. We are not alone and never can be if we are directed toward the love and compassion of God in the world. People often ask me how to be sure they are doing the will of God. The answer is simple, do the loving, compassionate act, especially the costly act, the act that leaves you changed, broken and renewed.

Merton’s signature prayer speaks for us clearly on this Pentecost Sunday:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Today we come for a baptism. What a great day for a baptism.  We will remember the vows we make and the hopes we have.  We will make a confession of faith and confession of the kind of faith we hope this young person will, at some point in their life embrace faith for themselves, live out this their feast day. May the fire of Pentecost illuminate theirs and our lives land the wind of Pentecost blow freely through our living. Amen.

After the Body Was Gone!

^{Mathew 28: 8}So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

The noise of Friday was over. The bodies taken down. Only a few close family members and others stayed. They watched as the bodies were taken. Jesus to the borrowed tomb, the others to what ever space was available. 

The majority of the disciples had long since scurried back to a safe place, no doubt lost and bewildered by what had happened in one short, or was it, long day?

After the body was gone, the women and the one remaining disciple trudged off into the night, weary with sorrow and sadness. Grief is an extremely tiring experience, especially grief received under tragic circumstances. They walked home in the dark.

And how dark it was. Not just physically but spiritually and emotionally. You see they did not know about Sunday yet. Unlike us who leave the Good Friday service, they didn’t know Sunday was coming. They were to spend Saturday, and possibly forever, in the dark place of grief and loss of hope and a future.

Saturday would have been a long day. The day after a funeral when all have gone away and you are left on your own is a long, long day. There is no distraction, no action to keep you occupied. You sit and think about what was and what could have been. "If" only becomes something of a mantra. It is a day of no thing doing. The world has stopped and you can’t get off.

Saturday is the space in between the past and the future and as they had no idea what the future would look like, the space became more of an abyss than a short interruption.

It was something they shared with Jesus without knowing it. Jesus, too, was in the space-in-between. In the tomb he was alone, descending into the abyss that is death, without support, wisdom, love, without God, his Father. He was facing the loss of a life he had embraced willingly for a death he faced obediently. Now, what was the future to look like for him? Did he know or was this a journey into a new way of being for him? 

We can’t answer those questions. Nor should we try.

Yet the questions are answered, and as John Purdy suggests, amateurs not theologians, the religious elite or academics, found the answers. Amateurs. Amateurs are those who undertake something out of love for the task at hand. They are not professionals. Amateurs unravel the answer to the riddle of Saturday.

Purdy continues: “Surely the Marys' went to the tomb out of love...if we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there. Love is a more reliable alarm clock than Faith or Hope - more likely to get you out of bed and get you going early in the morning."

Just as love had led them to the cross, love brought them to the tomb. They could stay in the darkness no longer. They had to go and see where he lay and to hold a vigil if they could do nothing else. Their steps to the tomb would have been as heavy as those that lead them away from the cross. Their heart was no lighter, their tears no less urgent. Yet go they did.

Standing outside the tomb they experience the revelation of the empty tomb. Matthew tells the story with all the bells and whistles with the intention to get the reader to understand what a world changing experience it was. It was scary and exciting. Most scary things are exciting. One can hardly begin to understand the emotions they experienced. To say it blew their mind would be an understatement. Earthquakes, a moving boulder, an emptying and an angel!

How long they stood there we do not know but we do know, according to Matthew what they did next. ^“So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” What a mix of emotions – fear and great joy. One could say it scared the hell out of them! Their fear was one of not understanding what had happened, what would happen, what it meant. Their great joy was because the one they loved was back with them, although I would have probably thrown something at him if he, after he had been crucified and buried, met me with “Greetings”! Was that all he could say? Didn’t he know how they felt?

In the midst of our darkness between Friday and Sunday we now get a glimpse of the light re-entering the world. Our darkness at the loss of Jesus is to be illuminated by his presence.

We know this as a personal truth. We know this as a church to be the truth. We are to celebrate this incredible moment with fear and great joy, because once you have encountered the resurrected Jesus everything, and every shade of things is possible. It is something to fear abut it is something to rejoice in.

Melinda Quivik suggests “The sermon on this day should propel the assembly to leave worship with both awe and celebratory power, eager to see where and how the risen one will meet them in their neighbours and friends, their prayer, their advocacy for what is good and just, and in their own gratitude for life and resurrection."

This moment changed our world. If it has changed your world what are you doing to be the change Christ brings into the world and your relationships? How does this event illuminate your darkness and empower you to go and do as Jesus requests, as the Marys do, despite a sense of fear but with great joy?

This evening we move from the space-in-between towards the coming light. Tomorrow we meet Jesus for ourselves, what is that going to be like for us? Amen

The Elephant In The Room

My first reaction when I began to write this article was to go looking for the scholarly professional papers on the subject of grief and loss. What do the professionals say? What does the research have to contribute? What can I learn off the grief and loss help sites?

Then I stopped. Why is it that we seek out professional help when none is needed? Why do we want to know what 'they' say (whoever they are) and why is their opinion of more value than mine, or the young people I stood beside in this latest experience of death? Why do we not listen to ourselves and those who have experienced death up close and personal without running it through some theoretical paradigm, which we hope, will render death harmless?

For more follow this link, http://bit.ly/13uKkay or go to www.contemplativejournal.com.

Living Into The Resurrection

Last week an 8 year old boy walked into his classroom in a school in the US prepared for show and tell. When his turn came he produced his fathers coat. He put his hands in the pockets and produced 50 small plastic bags containing drugs. It was a surprise for his teacher but an even bigger surprise for his father when he came to collect his coat!

Show and tell is always a surprise as Thomas found out - yet Thomas's experience came from his questionning of the claims of his fellow disciples.  The claims of Jesus' resurrection were not so much unbelievable for Thomas but required him to have an encounter with Jesus. When this happens he doesn't do what he said he needed to do - touch and feel the wounds on Jesus body - being shown the present Jesus was enough for him to see.

In discussion with a patient re treatment and drugs a doctor recently said,'do not give any drug or doctor the power over your life. See for yourself and decide.' Important words in a world where science has become the most powerful good news and where people give away responsibility to others - primaily through diagnosis - hallelujah, I have an excuse for my behaviour.

Thomas did not give his power to live into the ressurrection story away to others who had seen Jesus.  He retained the right to move into the resurrection experience at his own time and space. Interestingly Jesus honours that and makes it possible for him to do so. One little meeting was all it took to kickstart Thomas' into a new man, but it was accomplished at his pace.

The resurrection is key to our faith. The possibility of hope and light after the dark night of the soul which was Good Friday and the subsequent Saturday transforms the life of those with Jesus, and has the possibility of transforming ours. Yet it is more than the physical resurrection story of Jesus. It is how we see the world, the circumstances of our lives and where we are now.

I fear too many Christians are locked into a world view that is Good Friday - their life is dark, of little hope and they cannot or do not see the green shoots of resurrection rising under their feet. While they know the world has changed, and they need to embrace that change, they are locked into failed mindsets, pointless ideological positions and structures which prevent them doing so. Perhaps they are locked in Saturday, the inbetween space betweeen despair and hope unable to make the move into full blown possibility. They can see clearly what has happened, the world has changed, yet they can't see what is coming, so they stay where they are, waiting for some certainty before they move forward, before they embrace the green shoots of hope that is the resurrection.

Living in the resurrection is a dangerous place. It asks us to leave behind old paradigms and ways of doing things and of being in the world, and to embrace risk, ridicule and failure. It asks us to see for ourselves the possibilities and to seek after them with all our being. It asks to see what is all around us - life, hope and adventure - it asks us not to give away our power to others, to the what if's,  to the looming disaster and the perceived certainty of failure. It says too us all things are possible, it says to us go on, step out and discover the excitement of being alive when you where once dead, trapped in fear, locked in Good Friday or Saturday.

In the movie the best exotic marigold hotel the Indian proprietor of the hotel says, 'Everything will work out in the end; if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.' If you haven't seen the movie, please do so. It is a movie about the resurrection, those who choose to embrace and those who choose not to, who want what they had, not what is there for them now. The characters embrace, slowly the possibility of the future and in doing so discover themselves. Each grows into the idea and experience in their own way and time, some, alas, do not.

And that is the truth about resurrection and being resurrection people - it is something we grow into. We grow into a changed viewpoint, a new perspective on the world. We see it differently and we do life differently.  We take control, we push the boundaries, we explore new posssibilities and take enormous risks, aware that if it doesn't work out this time, it's not the end. The resurrection is our life now and it's our choice whether to live it or not. Choose to be a resurrection adventurer and go for the ride of your life. It will challenge and scare you, but it will always be full of surprises and new experiences. Go on, I dare you!

Good Friday - Crossing the Yellow Lines

A few nights ago on tv, we watched a pavement painter create a 3-d drawing of a waterfall. As he was working people walked back and forward across the emerging artwork, some pushing prams, others on their mobiles, still others on their mobiles and pushing prams.

The next door I walked out of Tweed Centro through the undercover carpark where a worker was painting yellow lines on the edge of the foot path. I asked him if anybody had walked across his painting, he answered no, not yet. I recalled for him the tv show and the painters experience. He said, it will happen, people are in their own world and just don't see. We laughed and I moved to cross the road. As I did I was passed by an older gentleman. As I crossed I turned just in time to see the older gentleman walk right across the freshly painted foot path. I caught the eye of the painter and we chuckled.

In our own world is a fair comment on our lives and the experience of Mary outside the time.
Mary saw the empty tomb and was overcome by her personal grief.

Mary was engrossed in her loss, her beloved Rabbi was not only dead, but now his body was missing.

So much so that Mary failed to see possibility of the new day dawning.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are both a clarion call to widen our worldview, to look wider than ourselves and how we individually and personally feel about what is happening to us, and see others, not as objects, competitors or oppostion, but as ourselves. To recognise that the pain we experience is not special, it is not restricted just to me, it is the pain that every other feels in their own particular way.

Good Friday is the day Jesus joined humanity to share our pain; Easter day is the day when Jesus, calling our names as he did to Mary, calls us to see the new shoots of life, to see that life only ever rises out of pain, and we can only experience life with others if we first share their pain.

ANZAC DAY - LEST WE FORGET

On the morning of the 25th April 1915 Australian soldiers stopped ashore at Gallipoli Cove and into the pages of our national history. Over and over again other soldiers, sailors and airmen and women in other wars, on other shores and at great personal cost, have followed them. Their story and stories have been told and retold at occasions like this ever since.

We gather once again to hear those stories retold, some faded and a little rusty now, others as new as last year some, but the stories all have a familiar ring to them. They are the stories of ordinary young men and women who found or find themselves called upon to survive and overcome in extraordinary conditions.

When I read details of the landing at Gallipoli, the mud and stench of the Western front, the barbarity of Kokoda, the survival at Long Tan, I find my self asking: what was it that kept these soldiers going when giving up would have been so easy? Late last year I walked the Sandakan to Ranau Death March trail. A total of 2,434 men died at Sandakan, on the trail or at one of the various camps along the way. Only six survived.

As I trudged through the ankle deep red mud in extreme humidity, up steep jungle infested hills, I thought about what kept them moving forward when it would have been so easy just to walk over the edge or sit down and be shot? On one climb, which took little over an hour t9 men perished in a climb, which took them 5 hours, most completed it crawling on their knees. Why?

The answer is hope. Not hope that they would win or that it would get better. But the hope perhaps one, just one would survive to tell their story. They worked together to make that hope a reality. Pte Richard Murray and 5 others stole some rice from the cookhouse. They shared it around and hid the bag. Unfortunately their crime was discovered and they were taken away. As they stood while the Japanese officer questioned them, Keith Botterill whispered in Murray’s ear, “Don’t move or say anything, they can’t shoot us all.” Murray, sensing that they could and probably would, stepped forward and admitted to stealing the rice but said his mates had nothing to do with it. He was taken away and executed.

We know this story because one survived – Keith Botterill. Hope keeps us going forward when giving up would be so easy. Hope is doing it for your mates, being prepared to place yourself in danger so others will survive. Hope is not a wishy washy dream, a wish for something better, it is a concrete action building the future for others. We only know the story about Sandakan and the Death March, one of if not the greatest single loss of men in war by our country, because Keith Botterill lived to tell it.

Richie Murray was not a religious man, as far as I can tell, but he compares well on that score with another man who gave up his life for others and whom we remember at this time – Jesus of Nazareth.

On Richie Murrays’ grave at Labuan War Cemetery are the words:
He stepped forward to sacrifice his life for his mates.

The challenge of ANZAC Day to each of us is, could we, would we do the same?

Lest we forget.

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