On The Mountain Top

Matthew 17:1-9

When I was growing up on the farm I learnt early that various farmers had daily practices that they did regardless of what was happening around them. I also understood that while these practices were not the practice of every farmer they each did something similar.

 

When I was with my Uncle Wally I learnt that after lunch was siesta time. We would lay down on the ground or the back verandah of the house and put our feet up higher than our head and go to sleep. It must have been a funny site with a man 6 foot tall surrounded by boys under 10 stretched out with their feet up on the log, hats over the eyes, arms crossed on the chest asleep, or at least pretending to be.

 

My uncles Alec and Alex didn't rest, they boiled the billy and had a cuppa and you just sat, didn’t talk and sipped your tea with your hat cutting the sun out of your eyes. This happened at least 3 times a day and, if there were machine or stock problems, you did it more often as you worked out the problem.

 

Peoples meditative practices are different but they are their own and they speak to the circumstances and experiences of life they shared with others. Jesus had a a spiritual practice that had little to do with the temple worship or liturgy, yet it was the vital rhythm of his life and he shared it with his disciples, his students.  They were used to this practice which is mentioned and alluded to again and again in the Gospels – Jesus went aside to pray and he sent his disciples away to do the same.  In these moments Jesus clarified his identity, his purpose and his intentions.

 

These weren’t moments of lightness and happiness, a mindfulness deigned for the 21^st century cult of the individual, but moments of great and disturbing challenge. His time in the desert after his baptism was not a time of beer and skittles, he was forced to confront his basic nature and find ways to seek wholeness through obedience to his inner urge for justice, compassion and respect for all, his commitment to the evolution of all creation to fullness.

 

Here on the mountain with his three chosen students it happens again. They go away at a critical time in his self-awareness and the developing trajectory of his life’s journey into confrontation with the power elites in his world. Together they share a deep spiritual experience. While the transformation, or as Thomas More a student of Merton's calls it, metamorphosis, is experienced physically by Jesus, it is shared with the disciples who were there.

 

This is important. We often decry the disciples for their seeming inability to get what is happening, yet the truth is they were deeply spiritual men whose spirituality aligns in moments like these with that of Jesus. It is also important because we are capable of and do experience such events for ourselves. The story of Merton shared in the pew bulletin is but one of a thousand such experiences ordinary people share with those on the mountain.

 

In the story of Jesus this experience is the turning point in his challenge to the political and spiritual systems ruling the lives of everyday people. Jesus has become aware that if he continues to challenge those in power he will face a confrontation he cannot win. He will die. Commentators suggest this is where Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem fully aware of what the consequences will be but he has decided he will not have his life taken from him, but that he will proactively take charge of his destiny.

 

We may read this passage and the story of Jesus as the programmed death of God’s son for the redemption of sin, an inevitable train wreck we already know about before the opening credits of the movie roll. Yet I suspect Jesus would have come and died even if there had been no apparent fall in the Garden of Eden. Why? Because Jesus is the complete expression of the Creator being called God and if creation is to reach its fullness it must do so through the actions of Christ, and by a surging towards wholeness in Christ.

 

The Transfiguration is that moment when Jesus realises he has, if he is to succeed and bring about redemption for the world, to go to Jerusalem and run the risk of dying a harrowing death. If he is to live a life of integrity he now must come down from the mountain and move into the most critical stage of his life. It is one thing to decry the violence in the world, it is another thing to challenge violence through making it your own.

 

It is easy in our world to go on social media, turn up at street rallies and sign petitions and believe we are in fact challenging the system and its codified violence. Are we really doing anything at all to stop the violence around us? Have we actually felt what it is like to experience the violence of the system and to have no choice but to die, little by little, because of it? Often our words and our presence is safe, heard and seen only by people who share our passions but not by those who experience the implications of the issues we say we stand against.

 

Jesus could have been just like that. He could have travelled the country all his life shouting at the system and been able to justify such an action. Yet he chose not to. His integrity ensured that he was prepared to die for those affected by the system, by the evil which rules by dint of the rampant ego self in the corridors of power.

 

He did what he said. He showed us what integrity looked like and said here is your means of redemption. Come down from that moment of high spiritual awareness and engage at the depth of humanities pain, it is here you will find yourself and find that you are capable of living and dying with integrity.

 

Coming down from the mountain Jesus reminds the disciples of the rule of the road, what happens on the mountain stays on the mountain. Those who have had similar experiences often find it counterproductive to tell others. They simply don’t get it. They weren’t there. Secondly, experiences as deep as this can be misunderstood and cause problems. They’re mad, they’re dangerous, and they’re deluded. Jesus could afford none of these responses by others, even the other disciples.

 

Some one once said, if you have to tell people you are a Christian, you’re doing it wrong. Jesus doesn’t talk about his moment of truth, he acts and brings about redemption through integrity.

 

For us, the task is the same. We are responsible for our actions and to ensure our words and actions bring about redemption for ourselves and others.  Living with integrity will transform us and the world. When we take our relationships, our commercial practices and our engagement of society seriously they become a means of redeeming the world in which we live.

 

That’s what Jesus did and it seems good enough for me.

  

Reconciliation Sunday - Words That Heal

Luke 7:1-10 

Today is reconciliation Sunday, a day set aside to contemplate the history of our country, in particular, the history of the relationship between the sovereign owners of this land and those who came here by sea.

This is a contested history, one of much rhetoric, deceit, dishonesty and denial on all sides yet it is imperative we deal with it and deal with it without delay. Some think, ‘It happened 200 years ago, move on’; others think, ‘This land was uninhabited and no one was here’ the doctrine of Terra Nullius; others still think ‘to the victors the spoils’. 

To the indigenous nations inhabiting the land then and now, this was and still remains theirs and those who came here are invaders who have yet to recognise their rights and, more importantly their existence. The English clash with the indigenous people was rife with massacres, annihilation and ongoing policies to rid the land of black people. The issue then and now was about colour and the supremacy of white over black in terms of anthropology.

A couple of months ago I went back to Mudgee and took the funeral of my mother’s best friend. After the service, outside, a man came up to me and asked, ‘Your Blackfella’s young bloke, aren’t you? Your Young Blackfella!” Now this man had known me since I was born and nowhere in the conversation that followed was I referred to by name. Here I am, dressed in Anglican priests robes undertaking English ritual, and I was still Young Blackfella with no name.

The issue of reconciliation, no matter how we dress it up, is far from being resolved. The issue of colour remains central to our discussion. Growing up I understood white was equal to good, and black to bad. My father, part indigenous himself, referred to a good bloke as a “White man”. “He’s the whitest bloke I know”.

In today's gospel are two statements that may be helpful to us. I have grouped them together as one to help understand the importance of acknowledging the situation and bringing about healing and hope for all:

7“But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

“10When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.”

What is the word or words we must speak so God’s servant, the people of this country may be healed?

They include:

• The word of identity. Recognising, finally, that Australia was not an empty country and accepting that people existed here before the English came. The doctrine of Terra Nullius, the empty land, by definition denies the existence of the original people and therefore denies them identity as human beings. They have no name and will always remain Blackfella. 

• The word of equality. Once we accept there are and were people here who had and have sovereignty over the land with sophisticated government and land ownership structures, then they must be treated as equals, giving them the respect of being able to govern themselves and setting about coming to a treaty with them on equal terms.

• The word of reparation. Once we have recognised them and granted them respect of equality, we then must set about providing reparation, not welfare, to the original owners. Reparation means providing adequate compensation for another’s loss, loss of land, country, identity, culture and ritual. Money is but a part of this process, an important part and if a small percentage of all land taxes and rates collected were made available to the traditional owners, much of the so called aboriginal issues could be resolved.

The result of these three little words? 

Three more:

• Health. People who are recognised, respected, treated as equals and compensated find a path to physical, psychological and material well-being. We know that to be the case for all those affected by the child abuse scandal. It is no different in this case.

• Wholeness. When you live in a foreign land under another’s customs and without the possibility of returning you are a fragmented, pulled apart, shattered. The Israelites knew that experience in Babylon and Egypt, as do the Palestinians do today. Wholeness is about returning to what gives you meaning and identity and the three words begin the process to such a state.

• Reconciliation. Reconciling the split within is the outcome of these words. The split within the individual, the original owners and within those who have come here and feel the disconnect with the Australian story. Reconciliation is not about black or white. It is about you and I coming home to, and being comfortable with the truth, and being able to live out of such truth in a life giving way for all.

These are the words of hard work, dialogue and deep communion with another this country has avoided and continues to do so. The referendum of 1967, the Rudd apology and now the constitutional recognition are western solutions to an issue to which there are no IKEA DIY solutions. A culture 50,000 years old is not yet ready to resolve the difficulties on another's terms.

Vincent Lingari said, during the Wave Hill walk off, 'we know how to wait.’ They waited 8 years. It is a lesson western culture needs to learn. 

There will indeed be a moment in time when aboriginal people will welcome the newcomers into their country and they will do so without the need of voting rights, apologies or constitutional recognition. 

It will happen when we take the time to hear the words we need to say and say them. 

It will happen when we sit down and learn to wait with each other to hear these words together.

It will happen when, like the centurion and Jesus, we connect at the deepest place of respect, trust and openness, what Merton calls communion.

May we begin this waiting together today. 

Bob Dylan sings ‘It doesn’t mater who you are, you have to serve some body

 Bob Dylan sings ‘It doesn’t mater who you are, you have to serve some body’.

Lately I have been musing on why people go on so-called reality television – what would so possess you that you would be willing to be berated by Gordon Ramsay, or the judges on ‘Master Chef’ or on any one of the abysmal talent shows that abound? No amount of money, fame or fortune would be sufficient for me to spend anytime on these shows or with the so-called stars who personally attack contestants without impunity, all for the sake of entertainment.  Is this desire in its most naked form, the desire to be some body in the eyes of this world, which motivates people to do so?

What troubles me more is people who would never dare subject themselves to the brutality masquerading as entertainment watch these shows, waiting for someone to be humiliated and devalued right there in front of them on national, and sometimes international television. 

The recent publicity about a middle aged lady who was discovered on the show ‘Britain’s got talent’ highlights this.  In watching the clip, which has been circulated on the Internet, I have taken specific notice of the audience when she walks on stage.  They, like the judges, and I suspect most of those watching on the night, waited with great anticipation for her to fail.  Their faces gave them away.  When she began to sing the shock exhibited by the audience was palpable, for a moment there was this sense of how dare she be so good.  It wasn’t what they expected or wanted.

In my musings I wonder if both those who participate and those who watch are seeking the same thing, confirmation of who they are, that they do in fact fit somewhere in this world either by braving all the nastiness the world has to offer to be noticed or, by observing others who do so, they make a statement that says I am ok because I am not like those desperate people.  I am in control of my life and do not need affirmation from others like these people do.  Yet they may not seek it by participating but they participate in it by gathering around the office coffee pot or wherever they socialise with others in post-mortems of the shows they watched the night before, thus gaining the affirmation of belonging they so desperately need.

Bob Dylan was right, you have to serve somebody, and John in his letter as read this morning lays out the options we have.  For John it is all tied up with what we love. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, John asserts ‘you have to love some thing, somebody, some idea; and it is what you love which will define who you are’.  For John there are two kinds of love – love of the world and love of the Father.

·      Love of the world is not about loving the created world to the detriment of our spiritual life.  We are to love the created world, for it was this world God sent his son to save.  Often we interpret this passage as saying this world is evil and any contact with it needs to be avoided. But it’s not about the world as such, but our relationship with it. It is what we do with it not what it is intrinsically. It is about placing ourselves at the centre of the world and expecting the world to fulfill what we desire for ourselves: desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, pride of riches. What we seek comes from within ourselves because we are disconnected from the Fathers love. Worldly love is exclusive. It is about finding and defining identity, individuality, independence; it is knowable, definable, right doctrine and separation. It’s a love of self that sees the world as the means to fulfill me, which entraps.

 

Love of the world is the love of knowing, love of control. The love of knowing is such that the more we know the more we know we don’t know.  The more we control the less control we have.   This is not about knowledge but about knowing – about the desire to know all things for our own purposes – it is the type of knowing described in Genesis temptation story and the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, knowing with promised positive outcomes for the individual involved. It is the labeling of experiences, the naming of expectations, the knowing which describes God and his attributes – because knowing and naming gives control and through it we can domesticate God and our world.  Through it we gain certainty and control; it is our theology, our well-articulated beliefs and arguments, it is why we are always seeking to know God’s will for ourselves and to be able to name what we are doing as such.

·      The alternative love for John is the love of the Father Unlike the love the world which is exclusive, love of the father is inclusive by nature, so much so that John notes we are called his children.  This love is free, and freely gives to us without any effort required on our behalf, identity, corporate belonging and inter-dependence; it is unknowable and indefinable in terms of worldly knowing, it is only known through faith.  It is a love, which lets go of the things we become attached to and if we embrace it for ourselves, lets go, releases, negates the desires of an individual identity for the corporate (family-children) identity of the kingdom. We discover it by not discovering it, by not possessing it, by not defining it but by accepting that it is.

 

It is the love of unknowing, of having the worldly knowing reduced to nothing because God is in himself unknowable, it is living in the knowledge we have no knowledge of God. We give up traditional labels, ideas and philosophies and accept what we thought we knew of God as, in fact, not God at all. It is living in the unknown – where our names, our labels, our theology, our ideas and philosophies are reduced to nothing – it is where we live in faith because that is the only certainty we have. It is the acceptance only love saves.  It cannot be defined nor given a shape within the normal structures of our living.  It is the irrational love of Jesus Christ who died and rose again for our salvation.  It is the irrational love found not out there in the world but within as we give up the worldly way of knowing. (v16). It takes us within to that still point where all we have is faith.

Which brings us back to where we started when we questioned the infatuation with reality television.

·      Love is our identity.

Our identity is in our adoption, not of our creation, but of Gods action – love –it’s his gift.  While we are still in the world and struggling with our humanity we are in God’s kingdom in the image of the unknowable God.  We are not to look at our failures and flaws but to hope in the foretaste of heaven, which is God’s redemption now. It is whom we are at the very centre of our existence – being human, breathing and being is the foretaste of heaven.

Thomas Merton expresses it this way:

‘To say I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character. Love is my name.

·      Love is our response in obedience

It is interesting John takes this position in the midst of a letter of Living the obedient life – we equate being able to do the right thing with having the knowledge to do so – but John says we don’t know what it looks like, we don’t who we are,

It is how we live out our familial responsibilities as the children of God. Love of self and of others. A love that finds the fathers love sufficient to sustain us through the unknowing which is faith.  Faith is knowing without seeing and for this we do not need worldly knowing to confirm who we are, to fulfill our desires for we have but one desire to see Jesus as he really is and to see ourselves in him.

We will leave the final word this morning to Thomas Merton:

We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness.  But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.

But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!