In The Thicket

There is much said and written about the found violence in the Quran and some interpretations of its voice.  Media and politicians and some church leaders are quick to point the finger at the text as the reason for the violence of terrorism, war, treatment of women and children and its own form of law.

 

I am no expert on Islam but I do read the Christian scriptures and am constantly challenged by the violence there in, the violence accredited to heroes of faith, and the violence that emanates from or is sheeted home to God. And I am always challenged by the violence of the cross as the central focus of our faith.  It doesn’t matter how I read the texts, last weeks or this weeks, I am left with a sense of unnecessary violence as an integral part of my faith.

 

This violence is in full view in the Genesis reading of the binding of Isaac – the akedah – and the intervention of God at the very last moment to rescue the boy. It is often this intervention that is spoken of as the compassion of God but the reality is that Isaac was facing death at the hands of his father because of a command apparently given by God. Human sacrifice was prevalent in Abraham’s time. even though it had been banned by his people it still had a deep hold over the people and their understanding of God. Otherwise there could be no story. Abraham would have dismissed this idea as a madness and left it behind. He didn’t’. He went along with it.

“Not only do the prophets condemn such sacrifices in honour of Molech, but the Hebrew Bible even notes the power of such sacrifices when deployed against Israel in battle:

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. [2Kings 3:26-27]

The story of Isaac—horrific as it is—must also be read alongside the even worse story in Judges 11 where Jephthah offers his daughter as a human sacrifice in fulfilment of a vow.” (Jenks) It is a confronting story to read. There is no intervention by God; no last minute testimony to their faith, as the story of Abraham and Isaac is often interpreted; it ends as it was intended to, with the father killing his daughter to maintain a vow.

 

In the story of Isaac we get the straying sheep stuck in a thicket and all ends well. But does it? Has the damage been done? Have we ended up with a tainted God, a God who is not afraid of using violence and who is not impartial – he saves Isaac but not the daughter of Jephthah? Has this image of God continued to haunt the church, not the least through the interpretation of the cross as the inevitable means to solve God’s relationship problems with his creation?

 

Modern day atheists such as Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins and others cite this seemingly in built desire for violence as the reason to dismiss any discussion of a god or God’s existence. You and I have our own stories and questions regarding the seeming disparity in justice, fairness and compassion shown by the world to those we love and care for. Where was God? Why did God allow such and such to happen? Why did God do no thing about this tragedy or disaster? Many who no longer profess faith can point to a moment when the perceived disparity between a God of love and a God of violence changed their heart and mind.

 

We cannot simply pass this off as an Old Testament anomaly. There is much in the birth of Christianity that raises the same questions. The history of the church in all its forms is replete with violence ranging from inquisitions, crusades, persecution of witches and women, the abuse of children and more seem to make a lie of the image of God as all consuming love.

 

What are we to do with these stories and experiences and how are we to frame or reframe the image of God? How are we to read the scriptures and the history of the church containing many such stories in such a way that we too do not find it all too incongruous and slip away ourselves?

 

We could:

·      Simply ignore that they are there and go merrily on our way oblivious to the impact they have on others – the ostrich approach;

·      Embrace them and spruik a wrathful God who will do what ever he please to whomever he pleases, but never to us  - the bring it on God approach;

·      Spend copious amount of time to study the research and academia and develop an appropriate intellectual understanding of why this would be so in this particular time for this particular people - the there is always a rational reason for stuff we don’t like approach;

·      Simply accept the incongruous nature of evolution of thought and understanding and get on with living out our understanding as truthfully and respectfully as possible – the living with the questions approach.

 

Living with the questions and the questionable seems to be the way faith and understanding has developed or evolved. It does not come pre-packaged fully comprehended ready to roll. It has to be grappled with, argued about and lived to become real. There is a sense that the stories which disturb us are a part of that process. Abraham’s almost murder of Isaac was stopped when Abraham had an insight and recognised the foolishness of his ways. Jephthah fails to stop his crime because his vow was more important than the outcome and he didn’t recognise the very same insight. The accrediting of the process in both cases to God forgets the cultural impulse to child sacrifice and the incredible growth in understanding required for Abraham to change his mind. No wonder the story is told with God at the centre, Abraham had to frame his experience this way to explain how he could do such a tremendous about turn.

 

If we are seeking a squeaky clean narrative of the evolution of the understanding of humans interaction with the Divine then we won’t find that in the scriptures. If we are seeking a nice neat interpretation of stories such as today’s Old testament story then we are fooling ourselves. The path to spiritual understanding and experience is a prickly one, as prickly as the thicket that caught the lamb. Not to learn to live with incongruous stories of an evolving relationship, and to learn to live with all our questions will find us  running the risk of abandoning our faith. Embrace the questions and the messy stuff, it is the only way. 

What Makes A Person A Person?

John 15:9-17

We were standing on the top of a high dam wall outside Inverell. I was there as part of a large military training exercise, providing welfare support to the contingent of soldiers, engineers and other auxiliary staff.  In front of me, a soldier was being placed in a harness ready to abseil down the dam wall which seemed to fall away into oblivion from where we stood. As the soldier started his descent, the Captain in charge of the exercise turned to me and said, “What about you Sir, are you going over?” I could feel every head turn toward me, waiting for my reply. I was twice her age and right then felt way older than that. Going over the wall was the last thing I suspected I would be doing when I rose that morning. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Sure, I’ll go over.’

 

Have you ever had a moment when you agreed to something and immediately regretted it? Well, I did then. I was put in the harness and I crawled over the edge.  Out there it seemed further down than the started 113 metres (371ft) On command I began the most terrifying few minutes of my life to the bottom of the dam wall. When I finally gained the ground I was possessed with a mix of sheer relief for having survived and a sense of achievement to have overcome my fears and stepped out into what seemed impossible only a few minutes before. Although I was quick to say no to going down upside down when they asked me back up on top!

 

It was a thrilling and scary experience I was glad to have done right there in front of the young soldiers. The young Captain gave me a big high five and a grin as wide as the dam wall and after that we were best of friends with her. As a result I was welcomed as one of them by the soldiers who were there and those who heard the story, and let me tell you, every one heard the story.

 

Last Sunday we suggested that Christianity was a progressive religion. In other words, faith is where our journey in Christ begins, and faith is the engine which propels us to grow and become one with God. We never stand still. Faith takes us into places, experiences and relationships we had previously thought unattainable or highly improbable. Faith propels us out into the open, beyond the protection of our fears and need for control. We are opened up to the possibility of God hidden in the ordinary life.

 

John Spong suggests that this passage is about the transformation of the open, not the redemption of the fallen. In this passage we have begun to move beyond our initial experience of God’s saving grace, from the joy of salvation into the joy of being fully alive. No longer are we enslaved to the power of ego, sin, we are opened up to the transforming journey of life lived in relationship with God.

 

Rene Descartes offered one answer to the question of what it means to be human when he wrote: “I think, therefore I am’. Merton, Eckhart and other modern Christian thinkers such as Desmond Tutu and Pope Francis offers an alternative answer, I am in relationship….therefore I am.’ The Zulus of Africa have a concept called Ubuntu: a person is a person through other people. A person is a relational being means, according to Anthony Howard, ‘implies that you become more fully a person – or all that you can be – in relationship with other people’, with the other. We are hard wired to be in relationship with the other.

 

If we are open we step into the very same relationship with God that Jesus had, a relationship in which we move from strangers to friends, from servants to companions, from one who does not know the mind of God to one who is trusted with the bringing in of the kingdom of God. Life takes on a very different complexion when we are opened up, and open our selves up to an intimacy with God we could never have imagined, in fact we may have feared, was possible.

 

Fear closes us down. Faith opens us up. Fear builds walls where there is no need for walls. Faith finds ways to dismantle the very walls our fear constructs. Faith is found and finds its expression in and through love. The love that we receive from God through the human touch of a Christ who fully lives out his humanity, even unto the cross.  His expression of love for God and humanity was such that he placed no limits on how far it would take him. And he went there because he was willing to obey the commandments of God.

 

These were not laws or rules of spiritual purity and righteousness. They were the commandments that come packaged in God’s dream for the world, a dream for world in which love, justice and peace reigns supreme over and above the law of fear. They were the commandments given to those who had stepped into a transformed relationship with God and were counted as friends, not servants, not people who simply did what they were told to without question or thought. Servants are those who do the bidding of someone they fear. They hide behind statements like, ‘I’m just doing my job’, ‘it is legal therefore it must be ok’, ‘I’m just taking orders’. 

 

The history of the world attests to the horror down to others by servants. The holocaust, prison camps, genocides and killing fields of the world speak eloquently to the violence of the servant.

 

Jesus says our faith takes us to a very different place. It takes us into a relationship where we are accepted as friends, a part of an intimate interaction where we know the mind of God and play an active role in the implementation of God’s dream. We are co-creators of the kingdom of God in a way that brings joy and fulfilment, not only to a divine plan but to ourselves.  We become engaged in a project bigger than our ego self and expand to include others in our life and our dreams. We no longer just do what we are told but use our intelligence, initiative and capacity to build love, peace and justice in our world, both in our immediate world and the world outside and beyond our boundaries.

 

John expresses this idea clearly in this passage as he has Jesus explain our journey on three different levels:

 

·      A journey from servants to friends – from law to love

 

·      A journey into friendship by choice, his choice, the providence of God’s grace

 

·      A journey into love and joy, a complete-ing of our true self and of the kingdom of God.

 

Today we have the opportunity to live into the possibility of faith through gratitude to the unfailing goodness of God. God calls us to step beyond our fears and to take the step into responsible faith, responsible for how we value our friendship with God and how we actively live out that friendship in the world around us. Do we do it as servants who simply follow instructions or do open ourselves up to become co-creators with the Trinity of  a just an peaceful world.  The choice is ours and here, today is a good place to start.

 

Amen 

Life is a Risk - Lent 1

Taking risks is often seen as the specific territory of teenagers, particularly teenage boys. Time and time again we are told the latest tragedy, accident or foolish behaviour is the result of young men responding to the adrenalin rush of going one step further than it was wise to do.

I would suggest we have all taken risks, foolish risks and survived, sometimes in one piece, sometimes a little battered and broken but still standing, mostly a little wiser, at some point in our lives. Looking back over my youth I confess to many such risky behaviours, but how else would I get the nickname ‘Loose’? I was given that name because I consistently went one step further than those around me at the time. I drove faster, drank more and took crazy risks others only talked about. Amazingly, I survived.

Yet, taking risks is a part of all of our lives.  It is dialled in. Perhaps not in the foolish way some teenagers and I have experienced it, but in a calculated and planned manner. No business succeeds without the risk of going broke. No athlete competes without the risk of not finishing. No politician leads without the risk of failure. No person loves without the risk of being rejected. Getting married and having children is a risk. Risk is hard wired into our lives as humans.

Therefore it is no coincidence the first thing God does with Jesus after his baptism is, he takes a risk with him. He sends him out into the desert for 40 days without food. He was fasting. Fasting is no easy task. 40 days without food would mean, not only were you hungry, but your mind would start playing tricks on you, you would start to think dangerous thoughts and begin to look for a way out of the situation you found yourself in.

At the end of the 40 days, ‘he was famished’ and that’s when the temptations begin. Not at the beginning when he was fresh, full of commitment and discipline. Not halfway through when he was hungry but still filled with the desire to get it right. But at the end. God places Jesus in a solitary aloneness where there was no consolation except his relationship with God. Would that hold? Could Jesus experience the desolation of his humanness and resist the temptations that arose with in and without him and hold onto God? Could he?

The temptations come in 3 distinct forms, but they are typical of the temptations we face everyday.

·      In the first Jesus is tempted to use his power to create food for himself, the ‘old rock into bread’ trick. If you have the power and you’re hungry, do something about it. This is the battle between Jesus’ divinity and humanity. If he succumbed he would have denied the Incarnation, he would no longer be human, just a divine actor on a stage called earth. He remained human.

We are challenged many times to do things just because we can, and by so doing, shortcut our experience of being human in exchange for less pain, suffering and joy. Just because we can, should we?

·      Secondly, Jesus is tempted to change sides. From where he is standing he can see the world and us tempted to get what he came for the easy way. This is the ‘old the end justifies the means’ justification. I am here to rule over the world, here it is being offered on a platter, why not just say yes and take it? Doesn’t matter how you get it, but if you get the outcome you need, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Jesus is being asked if he can trust God with this task, even the process will be difficult, painful and risky. He does. He chooses to trust his relationship with God, even though he suspects that this is going to hurt, that it will cost him and without commitment, discipline and trust there will be no outcome at all.

This is a major temptation for us. We want to avoid pain, suffering and struggle and be happy all the time.  The temptations of the consumer world promise that. Wear the right clothes, buy the right car, live in the right street, use the right toothpaste and it will all be yours. Your can and will achieve the kingdom of happiness. Alas, we know from experience that’s not so and we either become bitter, sad or blame others (especially God), or we simply settle for less than the kingdom God promises. The kingdom of God is only accessible through the full journey of our humanity, a rollercoaster o pain, suffering, discipline, hope, good times, not so good times and more, but they all add up to that moment when we die to ourselves and are resurrected into a new way of being human.

·      Finally, Jesus is tempted to find out if God loves him as much as he says he does. He is asked to take the ultimate risk and leap to certain death, waiting for God to rescue him. He doesn’t.  He simply says don’t set God up; don’t let your expectations get in the way God works. He resists that temptation on the Cross, where people are taunting him and calling upon him to call upon God to save him, he doesn’t. In the midst of the pain of being a human who was deserted, brutalised and lost, he maintains his trust in his relationship with God.

This is a temptation we can easily fall for. When all has collapsed and we are desperate, how about calling God out, seeing what God will do?  Judas tried that and he got more than he bargained for. Like Jesus we are called on to stay faithful in our brokenness, trusting that God will be faithful to our relationship.  But at all times we are to be faithful. That was the purpose of the Incarnation. Jesus came to experience what it meant to be a human in relationship with God and other humans. Like him, we are to grow into it.

For Jesus it was a risk to become human, leaving his divinity behind; for God it was a risk to put Jesus in a place of great risk, that of being human (Jesus could have succumbed, it was always a possibility otherwise we have been deceived); and for humanity, us, it was a risk, for if that happened we would remain eternally lost.

Being human is the only way to live into the risk of God’s love. Go for it!

Text: Luke 4:1-13