Amateurs - The Love of the Two Mary's

"As so often happens, the great discovery in the drama that is Easter was the work of amateurs.” An amateur is, in the primary sense of the term, a "lover." Our favourite amateur sleuths on TV are lovers – lovers of people, of intrigue and of little hints, the nods and winks that break what seems to be unbreakable alibis and stories. They stumble almost by accident onto the truth and discover the truth.  Our history is full of amateurs who have discovered new stars, new formulas and new ways of doing things the experts would be, and are, jealous of.

 

“…the Mary's went to the tomb out of love”, love for Jesus, love for the truth, love for hope... “. If we know anything of human nature, we know that love was the primary force that drove them there.” Not inquisitiveness, not fear, not a need to confirm that their worst nightmare had happened. They went out of love, a passionate heart called them forward to stand near and with the one who had held all their hopes and dreams.

 

You see, “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.[1]” Love, a word we use much but understand little. Love is a term that has been emasculated of it’s power and it’s beauty in a world were words have only an utilitarian use. 

The Mary’s get up early, and get to the tomb before everyone else. Maybe they wanted to see if they could further care for the body, maybe they hoped they could see him for one last time, maybe…… maybe… they just had to be near him. They had loved him, he them, and love and the memory of that love was all they had left.

 

“And their love was rewarded: “⁹Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”

 

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski relates a discussion with a young boy who has a plate of fish in front of him. The young boy says, “I love fish.” The Rabbi asks, “You love fish?”. “Yes”, the boy replies, “I love fish.” The Rabbi replies, “ Is it love for the fish that makes you catch it, kill it and boil it?”. He continues, “It is not the fish you love, but you love yourself. You love how the fish makes you feel. You do not love the fish. You love yourself.” He finishes with, "So much of what is called love, is fish love."

 

So much of what passes for love of Jesus the Christ is indeed fish love. We can love Jesus for what we believe Jesus can do for us, from fire insurance to a superman rescue, from rags to rishes, for healing and redemption. There is much of ourselves in this love. We love Jesus as long we are not made uncomfortable, challenged with ideas and opinions that turn our world upside.

 

We love Jesus if we can still  have our overseas holidays, our big houses and our fancy cars. We love Jesus if everything goes our way. We watch politicians invoke God to support ideas God would never entertain. We have sport men and women who thank God for winning a medal or trophy. We love Jesus if our privileged lifestyle continues and suggest others need to love Jesus like us if they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Our love for Jesus can be little more than self love, love of self, and the church is not exempt from such love. Love of liturgy, music,  existence and fancy clobber all smack of self love.

 

What the world and the church need is the love of the Mary’s, that simple love that goes to the one they love despite a broken heart, tear filled eyes and tired bodies, people who are finding the silence of God to be like a black hole into which they may very well disappear. Yet they go to the one they love.

Here in this parish I watch this love happen week in week out. People come with broken hearts, broken bodies and carrying great burdens but they come and they participate in the liturgy or they carry out their small and seemingly insignificant acts of love and they see Jesus. They do the flowers, polish the pews, tidy the candles, prepare the elements for the Eucharist, play the organ, prepare the choir, sing in the choir, make palm crosses, do the pew sheets, count the money, balance the books, run the book sales, manage the website, mentor a student, tidy the church for events such as this, and more, much, much more, and they see Jesus.

 

Being at the tomb and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not the task of the professionals, the clergy, the studied alone; it is the gift of love. Love that makes the journey to the place where mysteries are revealed, and the love that responds with the beauty of grace. And this love is the domain of the amateur, the ordinary person who sees beyond the mechanical actions of the tasks they carry out into the wonders hidden from those who are more learned and studied.

In the midst of a dark world where we name weapons of destruction with sexy names like Mother or Father of All Bombs, what is the response of love? The response is the love of beauty, mystery and wholeness of the ordinary. Someone said to me when asked this question, I just try to do beautiful things in the ordinary everyday acts of my life and hope that will help. It is the only thing that helps.

 

The two Mary’s remind us this Easter by their act of beauty and love, that such acts will never be denied no matter how dark the morning maybe, that beauty and love are their own own reward and only rewards those who let them loose in the world, making no claims of ownership. While I am sure the two Mary’s loved fish, their love for Jesus was no fish love. Amen

---

[1] John C. Purdy. Chapter 12 of God With a Human Face (1993), republished at Religion Online.Fish Love

Integrity - Some Thoughts

Matthew 5: 48 

 

The sermon on the Mount continues in todays Gospel reading and all I can say is that Jesus was definitely not an Anglican. No one in the Anglican church would have sat through this sermon. It seems to have went for hours if not days and wasn’t arranged according to the appropriate style taught in theological colleges. There was no witty introduction, way more than the mandatory 3 points and no encouraging call to action.

 

It was troublesome, awkward, disconnected and, for want of a better description, a hotch-potch of ideas -  a stream of consciousness collection of fragments of thoughts and ideas loosely combined into a long and very challenging lecture. You wouldn’t get away with it today either at church or in the university lecture room!

 

Each section seems to have a point and does hold together but what is the core essence of this, the signature policy statement of the new political and religious paradigm ushered in by Jesus? How are we to piece together the fragments and make a whole or is it sufficient to reflect on each section and apply that to our own lives and circumstances?

 

In this section Jesus reworks the ten commandments once more and raises the bar for living connected lives in a broken world. The idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was to ensure that the punishment to be endured by an evildoer was commensurate with the crime committed. It was designed to avoid zealous law enforcement resulting in punishment way worse than the crime.

 

Jesus relocates this saying, not in the cultic relationships of the chosen people, but in to the fraught relationships they had with those in power – the Romans. He states unequivocally that this law applies to those who are our enemies, who are unlike us, and that the implementation of this law is not only about correct relationships but a method of non-violent action in a violent world.

 

Verses 39-41 pushes the boundaries of societal standards and puts the onus on those with the power to think about what they would do. Turning the other check after you were hit with an open hand challenges the other to hit you with the back of the hand, a no no. Soldiers were lawfully allowed to ask you to carry their pack for 1 mile, to carry it further was breaking the law. In a legal stoush you were entitled to be left with the basics for human decency, to give that over to the one who was suing you was shameful for them, not you.

 

Then we have the biggie, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. At this stage, I would think even the faithful disciples were starting to wonder about Jesus and his sanity. Here they were living in the midst of a violent and oppressive system over seen by the conquering Romans and the pedantic Pharisees and Sadducees, the temple elite, and he is saying love your enemies. Has he lost his mind? If this stuff get out he would be seen as one without integrity, his cause for a new kingdom would have no substance.

Yet it is all about integrity, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount is all about integrity. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Alan Behm writes: "Integrity is what happens when our lives are integrated; when who we are and what we do match. Integrity is what happens when what we believe translates into how we live. That's how we live out God's generous and unrestricted grace and mercy and love in our relationships with those around us”.

 

The perfection we are called to is the perfection of God – the complete oneness that distinguishes God from all other creatures and creations. God is one is not divided by a public or private self, by a public or a private persona. God holds no thing back. God is God at all times and is perfect because of it. Unlike a mountain there is no other side we can not see, nothing is hidden from us and  that is the point of the love your enemies command – God can not not love God’s enemies. God is love by nature and will love regardless of whom is being loved.

 

Love is the integrity of God. Love is God’s perfection, experienced by all regardless of who they are or what they have done. We are called to be perfect by and in love, by the love we receive for this unconditional love of God’s set us free to love others in just the same way.

 

Our integrity is bringing together within ourselves all the dysfunction in the world and loving it as much as we love the loveable. We can have no favourites, no inner circle amd none who are excluded. Our integrity in love is the capacity to love others as they are, not as we want them to be for to do that, to love them as we want them to be, is to simply love the reflection of ourselves we see in them.

 

And our reflection may be smeared with the fingerprints of our own shortcomings.

 

Integrity has its beginning in how we love ourselves and how we live our lives in unity with the truth about ourselves. No one is complete at this very moment. None is without regrets or skeletons rattling deep within. We are frail and feeble humans who have found our way in this world, largely by trial and error. Loving ourselves is the capacity to bring into unity the many aspects of ourselves and to be able to live with the truth that we have been loved into perfection by perfection itself – God.

 

Integrity is the capacity to let go of those things we have constructed to protect ourselves from ourselves and to pull down the false wall lived between the world and ourselves. Living with integrity is difficult and rare – difficult to do and rare to witness. Yet it is what we are called to do. It is confronting to face the secrets and failures we have papered over by success, professionalism and fancy clothes. It is confronting to sit down in the dark and realise your life is like a discordant symphony – full of sharp edges and hidden corners – and that you are called to do something about it.

 

The Sermon on the Mount is that call from Jesus to the people of his time to live with integrity, to stop fooling themselves that they were faithfully living the commandments when they were unable to love their enemies. It is Jesus call to us to face the same in our own lives, in the life of the church and in the life of our nation. It is not easy but it is necessary otherwise life will always be bits and pieces cobbled together in a magicians illusion, not perfection.

 

Living with integrity as God lives is our designated vocation, let’s make it real. Amen

Be awake, Jesus is back!

Matthew 24:36-44

Today is Advent Sunday beginning the count down to the coming of Christ in to the world. It is the count down to the beginning of the end to the ruthless power of violence, persecution and isolation presently deemed to be in charge of the world. The coming of Christ into the world is to usher in the reign of God and to bring about a change of orientation and the end of the ego self as the reigning image of power and entitlement.

Today is also the beginning of the year of Matthew, a writer with an end-time or apocalyptic orientation. Matthew believes history is divided into two ages -- a present, evil age that God would soon replace with a new age, the reign or kingdom of God. The old age is marked by idolatry, sin, injustice, exploitation, sickness, enmity between nature and humankind, violence, and death. The new age will be characterized by the complete rule of God and by authentic worship, forgiveness, mutual support, health, blessing between nature and humankind, and eternal life.

For Matthew, God is acting through Jesus Christ to effect the change. The birth, life, and resurrection are the first phase of the transformation, with the complete manifestation arriving with the second coming. Meanwhile, Matthew’s community lives in a conflict zone between the ages. God calls the Matthean community to follow the instruction and model of the Matthean Jesus.

Some scholars affirm that many in Matthew’s congregation were losing confidence in the coming of the Realm. The apocalypse was delayed. Their witness was fading. Matthew wrote to encourage them to continue. (Ron Allen)

For a community enthused by the hope of regime change and the possibility of freedom from both the tranny of the Romans and the seeming assault on their values and beliefs, the return of Christ and his Kingdom couldn’t come to soon. It hadn’t, it didn’t or hasn’t.

Or did it?

Many cartoonists have commented on this desire to find Jesus and to find Jesus in his return to the world. It is often a comment on those who knock on our door with the desire to convert us to their vision of faith with the question, ‘Have you found Jesus?

Well, one of my favourite t-shirts is this one – “I have found Jesus-he was behind the sofa the whole time”.

I have been accused of being heretical for wearing it, but I suspect it captures something of the apocalyptic message of this passage. Be awake, Jesus is already here, have you missed him?

If we are always looking west we will never see the sun rise in the east. Until 1697 all swans were believed to be white. No one had seen a black swan until Dutch explorers led by Willem de Vlamingh became the first Europeans to see black swans, in Western Australia. It has become a way to describe events we are unable to predict because there is no precedence, experience and awareness on which to base our judgement. The election of Donald Trump could be a black swan event.

We do know the coming of Jesus was one such event and the second coming of Jesus through the coming of his spirit in the world after his resurrection is another such event. Matthew is often read to speak of that time when his kingdom will come in power and turn on its head the world in which we live, ushering respect, justice and compassion – the with-ness of relational wholeness empowered by love.

Do we still live waiting for that event, for if we do I fear we short change the gift of the spirit and the capacity we have to live in the kingdom which is to come, now.

My t-shirt is a reminder to me to:

·      Be awake to the now, to the spirit of Christ at work in the ordinariness of material being. Jesus may not be physically behind the sofa but he is to be found in all those places where the structures of power and tyranny, capitalism and false democracy are challenged by those who represent equality, compassion, justice and inclusion. What is more apocalyptic than that? The Anglican churches with prayer rooms for their Muslim friends or including LGBTI within the leadership of their church or making space for those who are different and deemed less than us, and more. Those who stand against the systemic violence of war, winners and losers, banned for life and builders of walls and barriers to freedom.

·      Be awake to the opportunities I never expect to have, the black swan experiences which open up possibilities for my voice to be heard, my love as a verb to be experienced or my simple presence next to someone who is being excluded, oppressed or avoided to be felt.

·      Be awake to the truth that Christ has already returned through the power of his spirit and it is my responsibility to be ready to act, speak and be the prophet of the reign of Christ, now. This is not something coming from above or in the future, this is to come from within and now; from within this material existence and from within me and it is now, this very moment I am being called to love – to be the action of love in this world.

I witness this amazing second coming everyday.

·      I see it here in this parish. When someone gets sick, faces  the loss of someone they love or the possibility of their own death, I witness Christs spirit at work in this congregation – the kingdom of God acts. People visit, ring, prayer, cook, wash and are just present. People tell me when I ring offering assistance, ‘Not to worry Vicar, I am being well cared for by my friends here.” I have had others say how much their ‘St Oswald’s family” have done in their time of need.

This is an example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I also see it in the efforts people make to support refugees, homeless, unemployed; to go to rallies and marches; to advocate on those who are excluded.

This is another example of turning the power of oppression upside down and acting out the second coming of Christ in this place.

·      I see it in the capacity of people to continue to live as joy and hope for others when the odds are stacked against them. For example:

o   ARtlifting is a US program using art to engage homeless people. It is not therapy or feel good helping. Homeless people explore their artistic talents and the folk at ArtLifting  run exhibitions, art shows and auctions, selling the art and lifting people from dependency to independence.

o   I see it the work of Slingshot which has launched Australia’s first ever Indigenous start-up accelerator program called Barayamal. The accelerator aims to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs build successful business ideas into worldclass products.

o   I see it in a record for the University of Western Australia where six Aboriginal medical students will graduate this weekend, including Vinka Barunga who wishes to become Derby’s first indigenous doctor.

o   I see it in the many ways, places and people who are embodying the spirit of Christ and revolutionising the world, we just have to be awake.

Matthew does have a focus on the second coming, we do live in the in-between times, not as a place of being in limbo, but as a place where the second coming is ours to institute. Be ready, be awake, and act as if Jesus has already come. Amen

The With-ness of Being

At the back of the house where we stayed on our break runs a little river. It gurgles and gargles alongside large native trees, over the remnants of such trees laying across it and over little rocky rapids as it makes it way down to the meeting of waters, a place where, as the name suggests it reaches other little rivers.

 

I went for a walk in the bush behind this spot and wandered along beside another of these little streams that seemed to me to giggle and laugh its way down hill over trees and rocks, alongside little eddy’s which were havens for those who didn’t want the wild ride the middle of the stream offered.

 

Beside both of these creeks were banks inhabited by  a multitude of life, animate and inanimate. Multi hues of greens, browns, yellows etc covered the banks hiding a variety of life and activity only partially glimpsed by the naked eye.

 

We drove through the forests above Marysville to marvel at the savagery of nature and the capacity it has for returning to continue the search for wholeness and fulfilment. The sense of interconnectedness and relationship as different species worked together to bring back life under the stately skeletons of eucalypts who perished in the fires was awe inspiring.

 

Charles Darwin concluded his last chapter of his ground breaking book with the following:

 

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. ……….. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

 

Darwin encapsulates for us a series of ideas relevant to our celebration of the reign of Christ on this the Feast of Christ the King. In the last few months and longer we have experienced the upsurge of isolationism, populism and blame sharing most of us have not previously experienced. It seems that many of the givens in our society  have been overturned and replaced by ideologies and movements determined to wreak havoc on our sense and sensibilities. The rise of the right in Turkey, Brexit, the rise of the right and one nation here, the success of Donald Trump and the possibility of the extreme right exerting power in Europe alongside the growing influence of China and the continuing power of Russia all seem determined to change how the world has been for most of our lifetime.

 

In the midst of this how do we make sense of the reign of Christ? What does it look like in a world in continuous flux? Who or what is in charge? How do we discern Christ the King in this seemingly unmanageable mess?

 

In our reading Luke has Jesus in conversation with another on the cross which goes like this:

 

“Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 

There are three things in this exchange in the midst of Luke’s passion story I think is worth remembering, not only for our world but for the church and on this day of our AGM, our parish – wholeness, relational and love.

 

These three words could be used to sum up both the Gospel of Jesus and the thrust of Darwin’s work.  Creation is, through the evolutionary process, working towards relational wholeness empowered by love. It is the reason why we are to always be hopeful about the future, the future of the parish, the church and the world.  The turmoil we see is the result of the process into wholeness, the ultimate end of evolution and faith. It is the result of being in relation with others and the Other as we work to fulfil our calling to abundant flourishing in the natural and spiritual worlds. It is not the end.

 

The conversation between Jesus and his companion is about relationships – you will be with me – the word with describes the reign of Christ. It is about with-ness not separate-ness. Christ is not a king separate from the agony of the process to wholeness. And by association God is not a distant God who arbitrarily chooses when to intervene, on who’s behalf to intervene and for what cause to intervene.

 

Much that was distasteful was said during the recent US election, but the moments which disturbed me most were when both candidates ended their speeches, at various times, with God Bless You or God Bless America. How dare they co-opt God into their ideologically inspired campaigns? How dare they think that God is theirs to invoke in such away? 

 

Christ is with us, right in the very middle of it to such an extent that his desire for wholeness for all takes him into the deepest with-ness or relationship possible – death on a cross – the ultimate in suffering and in sharing the suffering of others. It was the worst of death for those who challenged the way of the powerful and fearful and it is all the evidence we need for the with-ness of Christ, and by definition, the with-ness of God.

 

Wholeness is the process of creation. We are engaged as human beings in the ever-forward process of wholeness and fulfilment. We are deemed to be the pinnacle of created beings, but like all created beings we are not finished yet. There is more to come to create wholeness in capacity, capabilities, knowledge, wisdom and co-operation with all that is. It is the direction of faith taking us toward the reign (kingdom) of God. It will be complete when we live relationally in justice, respect and compassion. It will be that time when all is complete and all live in completeness. It will be the fulfilment of love.

 

Love is the spark of creation and the energy that empowers the process towards fulfilment. All creation, humans included, are imbued with the creative spirit of Christ and it is the spirit, this love, this essence of God, who is responsible for empowering the urge toward relational wholeness – the reign of Christ. Love is not an emotion. Love is not a concept. Love is not just a descriptive word. Love is a verb and it is the a verb or action word at the centre of all that is.  Without love, without the creative spirit who is God and love, there can be no hopefulness, no striving for existence and wholeness.

 

These three words – relational wholeness empowered by love – describe the reign of Christ in the world. It is the ongoing with-ness of Christ at the darkest and most difficult moments and also at those moments of great joy. They are to be our motto for how we live individually, in community and in our church. If we live these three words well we will attract others to see and participate and we will share with others and ourselves the reign of Christ here and now.

 

These three words must be at the centre of all that we do if we are to survive, grow and flourish, not for ourselves, our memories or our hopes, but to usher in the reign of Christ now and forever. Amen.

Love God and Do As You Will

In this last weeks we have witnessed some unsavoury sides of society, both here and overseas. The inappropriate behaviour of Eddie Maguire and friends along with the strident responses to the tragedies in Orlando and in England with the death of Jo Cox have bordered on the bizarre. Interestingly enough we have not heard the same responses to the multiple deaths in non-white communities.

Eddie McGuire and friends have forgotten a very important fact of life. Culture, corporate culture, church culture, societal culture is what you do. If what you do is bullying by nature and you do it enough it becomes the culture. The AFL and clubs such as Collingwood have trumpeted a culture of inclusion and zero policy to bullying and harassment. Unfortunately that now looks a little lame.

Now the church is not immune from the same criticism. Our performance in handling the child abuse issues, bullying, gender based issues at both Church wide  and parish levels is often out of sync with the culture of love we preach and promote.

Academic Andrew Macleod writing in the SMH, commenting on these and other issues within social media and online forums writes:

‘Initially, when I signed up, Twitter and Facebook were places to debate public policy. They were places to send and receive alternative views, to refine one's opinions and sometimes to change one's views based on new perspectives.

But recently the tone of social media has changed. Social media is now a place where there is lots of talking and very little listening. While debates no longer take place, shouting matches do. While new online friends can be made, real ones can be lost. I found myself becoming guilty of this, too.’

He goes on:

‘When something tragic happens now, social media gives us a platform, not to speak, but to yell. Not to engage, but to bully, not to consider, but to scream. Social media has lots of proclaiming and no listening. Things can be said online that threaten friendships in reality.

And I found myself doing this and I didn't like what I was becoming.’

Culture is what we do. And if we are not careful what we do will begin to mimic the world in which we live. Like the frog in the saucepan of cold water placed on a stove, we only know we are in trouble when it is too late. The water is no longer cold. We are no longer living the culture we thought we were, we are now living differently.

James and John in the Gospel reading, find themselves in this very situation. These loyal disciples and companions of Jesus, living within the cloistered culture Jesus was developing act, not out of that culture, but out of the culture of the world around them. The justly earn the name of Sons of Thunder for their outburst. They throw a tantrum because things weren’t going their way and wish to punish, no, annihilate the Samaritan village that had not welcomed them.

Jesus rebukes them for their break from his code of practice, his expectations of those who followed him. Paul takes up the same idea in his letter to the Galatians – here he is directly addressing how those within the Christian church treat each other. This is about respect, love and modelling of the right behaviour.  The hardest thing to be is a Christian because we must at all times be reflecting on our practice and assessing what is the culture we are modelling.  Paul writes: "For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”

Aubra Love writes: "To avoid 'devouring one another' (5:15) requires personal responsibility, restraint and stewardship of care for one another." This requirement sits firmly on all who profess faith in Christ and not just the Vicar, Wardens, Parish Council or others in positions of authority. It is the requirement of all who participate in the corporate life of the body of Christ.

We are:

• Responsible for the culture of our community. How we treat each other, how we allow members to treat others and how we model the culture of respect, inclusion and safety. Inside schools and workplaces the role of the bystander is emphasised. A bystander is someone who sees or knows about bullying or other forms of violence that is happening to someone else; they can either be part of the problem (hurtful bystander) or part of the solution (helpful bystander). It's easy to ignore incidents of bullying, or walk away thinking "at least it’s not me. But believe it or not, by doing nothing you are contributing to the problem — and you may be giving bullies the "okay" to carry on with their behaviour. Research shows that bystanders can effectively stop bullying within 10 seconds of an intervention

• Showing restraint and thinking carefully before you speak or interject or make a judgement about another. The Galatians had a habit of marking who was in or who was out, of identifying others and judge them and their actions. We are all called to be aware of this for a judgemental culture is a bullying culture and it is the very culture Jesus and Paul speaks against. One of the comments Andrew Macleod makes about online and media commentary is that it often lacks restraint and goes to the extreme. This can be seen in the 3 cases I mentioned earlier. In each we have had people stridently using the situation to make a point without stopping, taking time think and reflect on the whole story before commenting. Restraint is vital if we are going to build a welcoming, inclusive and respectful Christian community.

• Stewardship  is not just about money, it is about how we manage our relationships wherever those relationships maybe. Stewardship is defined as: the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving, in this case relationships and the stated culture of the church. The Galatians had the stated culture of Christian love and inclusion but instead were intent upon devouring each other over minor issues, jealousies, set ways of doing things and the need to get their own way. James and John showed little restraint and stewardship towards both others and the culture Jesus was advocating for. In fact, they showed little stewardship toward their relationship with him for he was indistinguishable from the culture he represented. This is a challenge for all of us in terms of maintaining relationships. How much do we value others so that we speak up when we see others being bullied or harassed is the question the Bystander program asks. It is one we need to ask our selves with  responsible restraint.

St. Augustine of Hippo  said it this way: 'love, and do what you will.'" The full passage reads: “Once for all, then, a short precept is given unto you: Love God, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: In all things, let the root of love be within, for of this root can nothing spring but what is good.”

In other words, Augustine is arguing objectively rather than subjectively–that when the love of God is the governing principle of our lives, then all that we think, say, and do will necessarily be yielded to that love.  If our love of God is real and profound, then obedience and faithfulness, right thinking and right actions will flow irresistibly from that love.  

May we live responsibly, with restraint and deep stewardship the relationship of love demanded by our relationship with Christ in all that we do. May we remind each other of this as necessary as we join in living the culture we desire.

As usual Paul has the last word: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

Love & War

³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:31-35

 

At a leadership conference for handpicked sailors, a lecturer from the ANU made the commented that the reported incidence at Abu Grahib prison by US military personnel couldn’t happen in the Australian forces because we were so well trained to behave otherwise.

 

After a moment of mouth open bewilderment, I spoke up and suggested that he was either being reckless in his confidence in our troops (us sitting in the room) or he was deluded into believing that we were, somehow, superhuman and therefore would not act irrationally or emotionally if the circumstances were right.  Both of which I knew from my understanding of myself to be possible.

 

On this eve of ANZAC Day, arguably Australia’s national day, let us keep an informed mind about war and those who find themselves involved in them. War is not rational, it is irrational. Killing others, especially your own, to achieve a politically ordained solution to an intractable problem is irrational. To ask people who find themselves in the midst of the subsequent conflict to act rationally is irrational. The war fought in our country for control over the land and its resources, the unnamed and unremembered war, was irrational. The wars fought on other shores for the political and power needs of others have been irrational. The wars we continue to fight are more so.

 

Why do we expect people who find themselves caught up in the big business of mass  killing not to behave irrationally on the ground just as those who are behind the scenes, governments, corporations and media do? Why do we elevate these young men and women to a level of sainthood they never sought and can never live up to?

 

War is abominable. Being caught up in it at the ground level is horrific and can never be forgotten. Society appropriates war and the outcomes of war for its own purposes, to give meaning to an event that was often a failure but was so costly it needs to be elevated to the spiritual to allow us to live with its memory.  This ANZAC Day it is worthwhile unpacking the fairy-tale and taking a peek at the legend for what it is, the disastrous plans of misguided men who were willing to sacrifice fellow men, women and children to feed their own political, economic and power delusions, be they on the shores of Gallipoli or on the plains across the states of Australia.

 

The truth is we live between betrayal and denial, between upholding our values and respecting others, between hate and love. In todays shortened Gospel reading Jesus gives the well recognised, oft heard call for love: “³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” In light of tomorrow James Hillman says we have tried brotherly love for 2000 years and it has failed, humans have an insatiable appetite for war.

 

It is interesting to note where John places Jesus command to love. Paul S. Berge notes, "In the midst of his betrayal by Judas and denial by Peter, Jesus calls the community to live in love with one another, a pattern expressed in his own life and death."

 It sits squarely between the betrayal of Judas who had, according to John, just left the room to carry out his dastardly deed; and the denial of Peter, the denial that abandoned his teacher and companion to face the foe alone. One does not hear this command and behaves badly, the other behaves badly even though he heard it. Both had been well trained and taught by Jesus. Both had seen the evidence of Jesus identity and mission. Both had participated in the various miracles and events, eyewitnesses to the capacity Jesus had for his fellow humanity.

 

Yet, when the bullets started to fly, they failed him spectacularly. One went over to the other side, deserted to the enemy and the either denied any involvement or knowledge and refused to stand up when he was called upon to do so.

 

Love, love in the style of Jesus is tough love. It is the hardest thing to do. To stay fully engaged in relationship with others and self in the midst of life takes a resolve only grace can give. We, like Judas and Peter, fail to keep this commandment, not just once nor 7 times, but 70 times 7. Regardless, it is a our cornerstone, without which we find ourselves slipping into despondency and permanent failure.

 

The new commandment is to love one another as I have loved you – accepting and respectful of all that goes to make up who you are. Jesus love for both Peter and Judas remains despite the disappointment. Jesus love recognises we are not perfect but that we do endeavour to live out his commandment.

 

In the midst of the chaos of life in the world, the chaos that sits with in us as we deal with the stuff that comes our way, and the chaos that arrives unscripted and unwanted to turn our rational world into an irrational world.

 

As we unpack the legend of ANZAC and all the wars fought either side of the Gallipoli encounter we discover people who stay true to Jesus’ call. They carry out acts of bravery, sacrifice, comfort and camaraderie with those they stand beside and those they stand against. They do the incredibly rational in the midst of the unthinkably irrational. They put legs on Jesus command in circumstances most of us would find impossible.

 

Jesus command is a command to love in tough circumstances and to love those who are tough to love, particularly ourselves. It is to exhibit such love without violence and to find a way to reconcile us to others in the midst of the irrationality of their circumstance and ours. It is how we engage with people who have hurt, isolated and alienated us. It is how we engage with those who oppress, control and incarcerate others. It is the way we get on with creating life in the midst of a society committed to death.

 

How do we do that? There are no 5 steps to success, but we do begin with a clear mind and understanding of who we are and what we are capable of. It then follows that we work to retain that understanding in all our engagements with others. Love is the capacity to retain our humanity and to ensure others retain theirs despite differences, conflicts and blame.

 

Jesus lived such a paradigm into our imagination. We are to live that paradigm into the imagination of the world, starting right where we are. 

The Father and I Are One

 

John 10:30

Jesus, in John’s gospel, is Jewish, very, very Jewish. Not only is he Jewish he is very devout. John reports him attending synagogues, upholding various laws and attending a range of festivals just as a devout Jewish boy would. Jesus grew up in this environment. His parents were very Jewish and abided by all the appropriate practices and rituals. We can follow them through key incidents in the various Gospel retellings of his story.

 

There is no doubt about his heritage. Both John and Jesus rely heavily on the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, for images, ideas and connections to the story of the Israelites from Exodus to the promised land and more. Jesus lived the Psalms and understood his life and mission in terms of the stories of his peoples past.

 

In modern Christianity there is a move away from the Old Testament (the Christian form of the Jewish scriptures) to sole reliance on the New Testament scriptures. This has happened for a number of reasons:

• The proliferation of violence, often attributed to God or, at least, carried out in God’s name.
• The apparent irrelevance of the laws and moral positions found therein for modern life.
• The expectation that the Old Testament must be historically factual and true, and it fails to meet the modern scientific standard for such.
• The idea that the Old Testament is fulfilled and superseded by the New Testament and is no longer required reading for Christians.
• The idea that the Old Testament was about law exclusively and the New Testament is about love exclusively.

Each of these ideas have developed lives of their own (and I will deal with some of them in posts on my blog over the next few weeks) and a sense of the bleeding obvious for most Christians. Yet it seems to me that that was not the case for Jesus and those who wrote about him. Yes, Paul and others reimagined the story as contained in the Jewish Bible so that it could be understood and embraced by non-Jews, but the truth remains, key ideas and images of the Christian faith continue ideas and rituals at the centre of the Tanakh.

 

Today we come to one of those stories, the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. An appropriate story for the baptism/dedication of Oscar. The Festival of the Dedication of the Temple or Hanukkah, commemorates the Jewish people’s successful rebellion against the Syrians in the Maccabean War in 162 BCE. A ritual cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple occurred after the Jewish people’s victory. It is believed that there was only enough consecrated oil to keep the lamp burning for one day but the small bottle of oil miraculously lasted for eight days. Hanukkah, also known as Chanukah, is referred as the Feast of Lights or Festival of Lights for this reason.

 

Why would John have Jesus walking in the colonnades of Solomon (the wisest of the Jewish fathers and the builder of the great temple) in the temple rebuilt by Herod, the despot? What is the significance of the confrontation with the synagogue scribes about his identity? Why doesn’t he answer them plainly?

 

Jesus is abrupt and brutal. It is very obvious who I am if you just see the connections, follow the bread-crumbs, join the dots. Those who are able to listen, those you are called to shepherd they understand my identity. Oh by the way, since you have separated your self from the sheep, you fail to hear because you think you know. Jesus continues, but here goes, here’s another clue.

 

Earlier in John 8 Jesus, in one of the ‘I am’ sayings says: “I am the light of the world”. Here Jesus turns up at the Festival of Lights, the Dedication of the Temple.  Paul S. Berge writes, "In the setting of the festival of lights, Jesus is the true light of the world; in this festival of the temple, Jesus is the true temple in whom the presence of the Father dwells."

 

The imagery is powerful and very deeply connected to the ritual and imagery of the Old Testament. This story would not work without a deep understanding of the Jewish scriptures. The synagogue people get it and don’t like it. Jesus has appropriated for himself equality with God. In verse 31 ‘The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” Here we find a sense of exasperation the Jews have with Jesus - the word ‘again’ – he constantly provokes them by couching the things he says and does in terms of their scriptures.

 

His finishing statement – “The Father and I are one” is more than they can take. Yet it is the bringing together of the covenantal relationship begun by God and related in their scriptures. It is what they believed in as a people, a oneness with their God, but were unable to see fulfilled in Jesus or anyone else for that matter.

 

And perhaps that is one of the major issues we have with the Old Testament.

• We don’t want to recognise ourselves in its stories, violence, legends and failures because we know we are not like that because we are constantly affirmed by family, friends and consumer society.
• We don’t want to recognise the possibility of a God who does in fact get angry, make judgements about us and leave us to stew in our own juices because it is always somebody else’s fault anyway.
• We don’t want to admit that there are time when we want God to be more like a marauding Messiah than Jesus turns out to be, because we do have a hit list of those we would like God to smite.  

It’s just a little too real and too close to home.

 

In the baptism service we recognise our place in God’s economy and commit ourselves, individually and communally to live in relationship with Jesus who is both the light of the world and the true temple. We dedicate, give back, welcome into the church a young person who will live in relationship with Jesus as a light in this world and a temple indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Baptism symbolises our desire to be one with God in this world and the next.

 

It is the moment we pick up two key ideas of an Old Testament Festival and celebrate them in the life of one individual, in our desire for life to epitomise oneness with God. This connection to traditions of great depth, meaning and longevity give us hope for ourselves, for the one baptised and for the future of our faith. The Old melds into the New as life goes on in the shadow of the past and the light of the present and the future, the light who is Christ, the temple and dwelling place of the everlasting Godhead.

 

Let us join with Oscar and cast ourselves into the baptismal waters to rise shining and in dwelt by the spirit of Christ. Amen. 

Peter - Exposed & Free.

John 21:1-19

 

One has to feel for Peter in today’s gospel reading. What with all h has been through in the last few days, the  betrayal of Jesus, his failures to live up to his promise to standby Jesus, the empty tomb and the great disappointment  at the seeming failure of a great and powerful dream, he is now out on the boat and his nets are coming up empty.

 

Can’t even do what he has always done, catch fish.

 

Everything has fallen apart. No thing remains as it was and his life is all out of shape and there is no inkling that it will improve. The way the fishing is going, he is going to starve to death any way, so why worry about the Jews or the Romans?

 

The little aside John gives us, when Peter and the disciples recognise the presence of Jesus is very revealing; “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.”

 

‘For he was naked” -  why was he naked? Was it the preferred practice of the fisherman? What is it about boys and water that they want to take their clothes off and jump in? Were they all naked? It seems it was only Peter, as there is no reference to anybody else getting dressed and diving in?

 

And anyhow, isn’t this backwards? Wouldn’t you take your clothes off to dive in, not put them back on? I mean, it seems way more sensible to me, not to get your clothes wet early in the morning when there is little sun to dry you out.

 

When they get to the shore, a charcoal fire, Jesus standing near it organising a meal, confronts Peter. Jesus breaks into people’s lives around the disarming practice of sharing a meal. Throughout the gospels time and again Jesus breaks in, confronts, reveals himself and exposes others for who they are around a meal. The last supper, the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the various meals for the disciples, Mary and Martha and the leaders of the synagogue and more. The meal is central to Jesus self revelation and it is no wonder the Eucharist sits front and centre in our Eucharist, for it is here we are examined and transformed into the people available to the Spirit of God.

 

Peter was naked because he had been exposed by the events of the last week. All his talking big, super confidence and his knowledge of Jesus had been exposed by his failing to stand when it counted most. We find ourselves stripped and exposed for all the world to see when what we say and profess to know and be is confronted by the brutality of life. We may know all the formulas, understand all the terminology, know the truth of the scriptures, but is worthless if, when faced by life, we slip into the culture and practice of those who have no faith.

 

Peter was exposed to those around him in a way that left no doubt as to his ordinariness, his sameness with everyone else. He was no better or worse than those he was with, but He was no better than them. And they knew it and went fishing with him all the same.

 

Mateship, friendship, companionship can be the most powerful indicator of who we are. We are identified by those who see our faults and remain faithful to us. These are the people who don’t point the finger, pick out our faults, remind us of our failures. They simply go fishing with us. 

 

It is interesting that in the encounter with Jesus when Jesus asks him if he loves him, the final term for love Jesus uses is philios. Frank L. Crouch writes: "When Jesus himself clarifies the highest form of agapē, he does so in terms of philios. Love for friends is no second class love here."

 

Love of friends, the love which remains despite one failure after another, is the love Jesus calls Peter back to around a charcoal fire, just like the one around which he denied Jesus the third time. This is no deep and mystical spiritual love, just the love of one human being for another. A love without limits, without expectations, a love that simply asks to be replicated in our relationships with others. Peter was given no great mission. All he was asked to do was to love others in a way that would feed them in the midst of personal doubt, pain, oppression, doubt and fear.

 

“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.”  More from Merton: “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”.

 

Peter may have been hurt because Jesus confronts him and forces him to be realistic, not to over promise and to remain always true to himself and to others. He may have been hurt because no-one likes to be reminded of their failures, yet Jesus is not reminding him to shame him, only recasting that moment in the light of a new day so Peter can move forward in friendship with both Jesus and those around him. 

The conversation finishes, in between mouthfuls of fish, with the simple call to “Follow me”. When we come to the meal with Jesus, we are not brought to our knees by our failures, but are welcomed and encouraged hear the call to follow. Not to be perfect, not to be punished, not to be failure free but to simply follow. To go out into the world showing friendship to self and others in a way which validates life in the midst of death. Yes, we may find ourselves naked and undone as Peter did, it was in that state he was met by Jesus, welcomed in deep friendship and encouraged to go forward into the world as a friend.

 

As we come today to this Eucharist let us do so confident in the love of Christ, our Eternal brother and our friend, taking up the challenge to ‘follow’. Amen 

The Mystical Love Of God

1 Corinthians 13

I have new glasses. One doesn't know how blind one is until one gets new glasses.  Things are sharper, clearer, fuller in colour and shape. I notice things I had previously missed. It is easy to go through life with limited sight and think that is all there is.

 

Paul is often described as a lawyer, a writer who focuses on the actions involved in being a disciple of Christ, a moral theologian more interested in the law than in the spiritual essence of our faith. Nothing is further from the truth.

 

Paul is a mystical theologian charged with connecting the mystical with the practical, but never by diminishing the mystery or power of love. His encounter with Christ was a mystical disruption so powerful it rendered him blind, a metaphor for his realisation that the truth he had followed and enforced was a truth without sight, without the mystical power of love, of God who is nothing but love. The generosity of God can only be described as unconditional love, and by definition the one who is generous is love.

 

1Cor 13 is used to reinforce the qualities of creaturely love. We read it at weddings, at funerals, baptisms and almost any event when Psalm 23 is also read. We have reduced this passage to the banal, the pedestrian hope for something more than lust, greed, manipulation and violence. Somehow we have taken the truth out of this passage and dumbed it down to mean little more than a recipe for relationships.

 

It is not.

 

In this passage Paul is speaking of God. Love is God, God is love. God generously gives us life, maintains it, remains engaged and never leaves us. Why? because we enter this world having exited the Godhead where silence is love, to live in the noise of the ordinary as words of love. We are birthed in the waters of love as Gods word spoken into the world and an oasis of love remains at our centre, no matter how hard we attempt to obliterate it through our ego driven existence. We return to the Godhead, not simply when we die, but in each step i we take to let go of all we gather to ourselves as our identity.

 

It is right to think of this passage at all the key life moments for we are to become God, to become love incarnate in the physical world in which we live. It is not right to reduce this passage to the lowest common understanding. God was incarnate in Jesus and Jesus was love in relationship to his world, his place, his culture and the people he encountered. God is no less incarnate in us and we are to strive for being as selfless love in our world, our place, our culture, and amongst the people we encounter.

 

Meister Eckhart calls us to an "action without doing", a being that is empty of the need to do, allowing God who is closer to us than we are ourselves, to flow through us into the world. Like Paul, he pleads for us to get ourselves out of the way of the hesed, or unfailing love who is God, and allow love to flow in and out of us freely and without restrictions. Eckhart reminds us that God becoming incarnate does not diminish the Godhead. Jesus is all of God in the world yet the Godhead remains as it was, is and always will be, one and complete.

 

This passage calls for us to lower the barriers of self and to let go of those possessions (psychological, spiritual and physical) that we hold onto as evidence of our existence, giving us the illusion of autonomy. It asks us to detach from everything and attach to no thing, the only thing that matters, to God who is love.

 

A man, maybe a woman, was walking along the edge of a very high cliff admiring the view. Suddenly the edge gave way and they plunged earthward at a great pace. Somewhere in the midst of this they cry out, 'God, save me!' And they were a brought to an abrupt stop by a branch from a withered old tree sticking out from the cliff that catches in their belt. They are left gently bouncing up and down. When they get their breath back, they realise they are only half way down, or is it half way up? Not knowing what to do, they ask God for help again. Back comes a deep heavenly voice, 'let go of the branch!' They look up, they look down and then cry out, 'Is there any body else up there?'

 

Paul asks us to do the same in this passage, to let go, just as he had to of, all that makes sense of our life and to trust in the dark void, the mystery of love. We are to let go of the stuff the world convinces us we need, approval of others, possessions to define us, degrees to make us more worthwhile, emotions and actions we are addicted to. If we are to deconstruct the system which allows 60plus people to have the wealth of 3.7billion we are to let go of our addiction to what they are selling, the illusion of happiness through wealth, power and violence. 

 

If we are to deconstruct the system that diagnoses and labels people with illnesses only curable by big pharma drugs we have to let go of our need to find a reason for our sadness, disappointment and disillusionment with our lives. There is a great video doing the rounds on the web in which people are urged to ask their doctor about the curative qualities of nature as a possible cure for their illnesses. In a similar way Paul is prescribing detachment as the means to discover abundance.

 

He says when we let go and attach ourselves to nothing it won't look the way it is, you won't be able to discern the length, the breadth, the depth, the beauty and the subtleties of God who is love, you will only have a sketchy understanding, a hazy picture with lots of snow and distortion, you will only have a dim understanding but it is enough. It will be a scary place, just as it was for the person caught half way down the cliff, asked to let go of the only thing apparently giving them hope.

 

Paul's promise, God's promise is that as we do, we come home, we return to where we were before we were born. We re-enter the unity of the Godhead and 'then We will know fully, even as We have been fully known.' This is not just a promise for after we leave this mortal coil, but for our life upon it. It is for Eckhart the experience of the virgin where virgin means someone who is detached from images, ideas, worldly illusions.

 

It is the essence of the incarnation where with Paul we can say 'it is no longer I that lives, but Christ, God's spoken word, who lives in me.'

 

You may say this is beyond us and it is, but what is beyond us is in us, for we only have our being in the generous love who is God and therefore there is no beyond. For we can finish with the great affirmation Paul leaves us with, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." Amen