God Values Creation

In todays readings we connect the story of the reluctant prophet Jonah with that of the obedient Son Jesus. The bridge connecting them is the need for repentance and how much more powerful is the call of Jesus than Jonah. Sitting between these two readings is the Psalm calling for purification from sin.

 

For those of us aware of our personal fault-lines and that of the world in which we live this maybe sufficient for faith. Jonah’s reluctant call to the people of Nineveh resulted in salvation for them in the face of the imminent wrath of God.

 

Yet a wrathful God about to wipe out even one whole city because of human nature is not an understanding of God I find easy to live with.  This is not about God being a God of love who simply wouldn’t do this but about a God who values human nature so much he came amongst us to be the archetype human being, living a life of obedience unto death.

 

Even the story of Jonah points to the value God places on humanity. A wrathful God would not have rescued Jonah. Someone who was so much bother, so sinful in terms of obedience to the will of God was, it seems to me, already set for the same destruction as the people of Nineveh. God goes to so much trouble to bring Jonah to repentance, again reluctantly, if we go on and read Jonah’s reaction to the redemption of Nineveh, it speaks of the value just one person has in the sight of God.

 

Jonah’s personal return gave hope for those in Nineveh – he was a sign of the value God places on the created world. The people of Nineveh become aware through the life and words of Jonah of just how much they were valued by God and respond, perhaps not so much to God’s wrath, but God’s hesed – unfailing compassion and generosity.

 

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus promises the same hope for us, and it is up to us recognise who values us and what that value means for our day-to-day life.  Jonah wasn’t valued because he was perfect he was valued because he was human. God did not focus on his sin but on his capacity for obedience, stuttering as it was, resulting in the redemption of both him and others.

 

This is a powerful truth. God values us not because we are sinners in need for a blood sacrifice but because we are conscious creatures capable of great blessing. The obedience of Jonah is celebrated in the obedience of others his goodness brings about. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is celebrated in the lives, deaths and resurrections of ordinary human beings who embrace his life of obedience and justice.

 

Our journey this lent is to be one away from the wrathful God who punishes human beings for being human – for sin, and towards a God who values human beings as creatures of immense possibility, compassion and hope and who have the example of Jesus and the companionship of the Holy Spirit for the journey into wholeness, love and justice.

Christified

John 1:29-42

^29”The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

 

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Have you ever had the experience when something you have said comes back to you completely misunderstood and is interpreted, so impossibly disconnected from its original context and intention, it seems it took place in a completely different universe? The tragedy is such an event can ultimately come to define you, what you believe and how you live, taking on a life of its own.

 

Working in a school, I saw many bad decisions made by young people fittingly described as permanently defining moments if they were allowed to take on such an aura. Peer pressure, the need to belong, the first burst of passion or an encounter with alcohol or drugs suddenly took on a life of its own, becoming permanently attached to the young person involved. Yet life moves, times change and people mature, becoming somebody completely different to the one you remember. They are no longer the same or living in the same context or environment. Their world has changed and so have they. They have out grown the experience once synonymous with them and find new ways to be defined and understood.

 

Merton suggests the only person who is inconsistent is the one who is always the same, who remains connected to ideas, thoughts, philosophies and practices which worked once upon a time and have now taken on the rigour of known truth never to be challenged or changed.

 

David Bohm, the physicist and philosopher, speaks of creativity as being the passion to find the new in the experiences of life and to exalt those above the known and the accepted. He and others affirm this as the practice of all creatives - artists, musicians, mystics, scientists and theologians.

 

For theologians and mystics - you and I – we risk becoming solidified believers. Maybe a better term is petrified believers. We remain connected to a way of seeing our faith and our Christ, locking us in the past, not allowing us to expand with the evolving universe. Running the risk of being at odds with orthodox understanding of our faith, I would suggest we need to let go of images which worked when they were written and begin to explore new ideas appropriate to our 21^st century understanding of the universe and the laws of creation as seen in the urge for wholeness and creation.

 

John and the other New Testament writers were writing in a very different world to the one we live in. The understanding of the universe as a static creation in which the earth was the centre of all that existed, where God was above the sky in a place called heaven and our existence on this planet was temporary and transitory until we made the transfer to heaven or hell. Such a world view no longer exists or can be supported and neither does a world in which the understanding of the need of a sacrificial lamb dying a violent death so we can live free of sin can be.

 

John, the Jewish mystic, uses an image from the Old Testament, a ritual of symbolically addressing and confronting ones’ alienation from God and of making amends for simply being an ordinary human being. It was a ritualistic act all participated in and allowed reconciliation between God and the community. It was not a personal act but one done in and on behalf of the community. If we read "‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” literally, it seems to infer that God sent Jesus for just one purpose; to die to become the basis for substitutionary atonement or the idea Jesus was sent to die to set us personally free from sin.

 

If we consider ourselves Trinitarian, this idea raises a number of questions in terms of the relationships within that iconic symbol of unity and diversity. If we consider God as pro-life and essentially committed to the ongoing creation of the universe, does it not seem a rather brutal approach to take to deal with a relationship issue? Is there not something amiss if the only reason we celebrate the incarnation as understood in Jesus is that Jesus is our get out of jail card and we never have to face the music for our own falling short of the mark because of the violent death God prepared for him?  Or is there something else at work here in John’s comment and in the thinking of John the gospel writer?

 

If we take the hymn to Christ at the beginning of his Gospel seriously then there is surely something else alluded to here. Jesus is present at the beginning of all things and is the empowering present in the ongoing journey of creation as seen in the evolutionary process. Jesus is the ultimate in created consciousness and therefore the ultimate image of the creator. The incarnation is testament to the relationship God has with creation in that he becomes fully participant in the process to wholeness.

 

As one commentator suggests: The Jewish disciples of Jesus understood the identification of Jesus, the symbolic Yom Kippur sacrifice, as a symbol of the human yearning to be at one with God. It was their way of saying that the death of Jesus was not a tragedy, but was a free and complete act of human self-giving. In offering his life without the need to protect, defend or preserve his selfhood, they were saying that in the death of Jesus they had caught a glimpse of who and what God is. They had experienced in Jesus life fully lived, loving extravagantly, as having given them the courage to be fully themselves, fully human.

The death of Jesus was therefore originally interpreted as an act of ultimate self-giving that greatly enhanced life.

A God of sacrificial atonement seems out of sync with 21^st century cosmology and scientific knowledge. Now it is appropriate to  understand the death of Jesus as the fulfilment of an individuals commitment to the process of evolution – one dies so another or a species may flourish and become something completely knew. Jesus embodies the creative intent toward an ever burgeoning, ever blossoming world – he lives the ultimate example of created consciousness so that others may do likewise through love in action – the Spirit. The Spirit is released to empower you and I through a mystical experience of Christ for ourselves.

 

As Jesus grows and becomes the Christ, leaving behind his ego self and his personal individual identity, it is so we may experience the possibility of doing the same. He is the Lamb of God in the sense he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of becoming. He deals with sin, the dislocation from oneness via the ego self, in that anyone who has a real experience of the Christ will become Christified and do likewise.

 

And perhaps here is the reason we wish only to see Jesus as the means to our personal redemption. To accept the task to become Christified – like Christ – will entail us moving away from our personal egos and taking the journey to complete kenosis or self emptying as Christ did, so others and humanity may evolve into Christ.

 

It is a costly act. It will cost materially, physically, psychological, emotionally and spiritually. You will see things differently and from a new place and find yourself marginalised and locked out of normal society. You will not be accepted now, nor will your words and actions be seen to be appropriate. They may, as they did for Jesus, be deemed so after the tragedy and they may then empower others to do the same.

 

The challenge for the church, you and I, is to leave behind a set of symbols appropriate for another age and begin to search for the Lamb of God in a strangely different world than the one John was writing in, and the one in which much of the definitive theology was done in, such as the middle ages. We now understand the world differently on a day-to-day basis and must risk disconnecting our theology from a world view that is no more, rediscovering the Lamb of God in an expanding universe. To not do so, spells the end for faith. 

Baptism of The Christ

Baptism of Christ. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John. Davezelenka

Matthew 3:13-17

 

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, the iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, often reduced to the role of a theological statement about the identity of Jesus. We pay little to the relationships between Jesus and John, Jesus and the created world, and Jesus and spiritual experience by using it to prove Jesus is divine and already righteous without the need of John’s baptism.

 

Yet this is an incredible story, told in all 3 synoptic gospels, each with their own twist but consistent in the central truths portrayed. John is baptising on the banks of the Jordan. It is a baptism for transformation and change, a baptism not of ritual but of experience. He is challenging those who come to be transformed by the experience and to go away and transform the world in which they live. Yes the word sin appears, but it is not the trivial definition we use of personal sin today, but an understanding of the disconnection from our one-ness in creation and our need to rediscover our co-independence in our movement in relational wholeness empowered by love. His is a baptism of community for an evolving creation destined to find its beginning and completion in Christ.

 

John is correct, Jesus has no personal need for such baptism, but he does have a representational need to do so. He comes to John, his cousin and mentor, as a student comes to a teacher. This is about participating in the experience and become a participant in the journey to wholeness which is a journey to himself. The great Christian mystics such as Merton, Bede Griffiths, Teilhard de Chardin and others, along with the seminal mystics from other faiths and spiritual practices, all speak of the journey to wholeness as the journey to self. They all, in their various understandings, equate the inner journey of discovering your true self as the experiencing of the Christ at the most intimate and personal level. Merton write that the only journey a human takes is the inner journey.

 

Karl Rahner, a modern Catholic mystic, writes: “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.”  Jesus and John both agree with Rahner, without a deep and undeniable experience of God there is no way of being for Christ in the world.  This is not necessarily an emotionally charged moment of bells and whistles, it is often the breaking open of ones self perception in such a way one becomes a completely new being, unrecognisable from the one who existed before, especially and most importantly, by ones self.

 

In the baptism of Jesus this is exactly what happens. Here we have a young man recognising his need of John’s tutelage and baptism and coming in obedience to John’s call. For many this may fly in the face of what we think about this story. Jesus is not just following a divine script. He is a created being, a thinking man, making a considered decision to be baptised by John.

 

It is an act rooted in a personal relationship with John and completed in the created world. Both points are very important. Jesus is an ordinary person, engaging with others and the created environment who experiences a mystical awareness of his true self in the midst of both. Jesus does not have his mystical experience, his awakening to his true self, in isolation from others or the world. It occurs in the midst of an act of obedience, surrounded by others engaged in the same, on the banks of a shallow and narrow river on the edge of the desert.

 

What happens next is, apparently, witnessed by others, but most specifically experienced and reflected on by Jesus, not just in the desert where he went after this occurs, but in his discussions and teachings with those who followed him. This event dislodged Jesus from his ego self and set him on a deep spiritual path he invites all of us to participate in – through journey through him to him.

 

Jesus is the fulfilment of creation and brings with him into our world both the way and the end. In his baptism he understands this truth. He participates in an act representative of the evolving understanding of the spirituality John brings and is connected to the source of all creation (God) by the power to bring us to evolved fulfilment (the Spirit). God speaks, the Spirit hovers of the waters, just as in the first creation myth. God speaks similar words to those attributed to him then, ‘and God saw it was good’. Here he says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

 

An interesting comment in itself as Jesus has yet to do anything, his ministry has not begun, there have been no acts of power, words of wonder or miracles of healing. It seems the ordinary human being Jesus is deemed to be sufficient by God and the simple act of responding to John’s call has opened the gates of heaven and placed Jesus in a new relationship with God.

 

Is this just an experience only Jesus can have? Do we read this story and listen to this sermon and go, ‘Nah, couldn’t happen to me. I’m not good enough. Only Jesus who was God’s son could have this experience.” We have been fooled by the idea that because we understand Jesus was both divine and human and somehow that excludes us from emulating such experiences. The truth is that this should be the normative experience for those on the spiritual journey. It is not the experience only of Buddha, Dalai Lama or Jesus or Mother Teresa or Rumi or any of the other spiritual pilgrims, it is the experience we all are destined for if we participate in the acts of being human and open to the possibility of such experiences.

 

I suspect Jesus was unaware of what was about to happen to him when he came to John, despite the prophetic words of John and Jesus's response. I suspect Jesus was still coming to grips with the guidance John had been giving him and simply wanted to do what was necessary. His baptism dislocated him from his self-understanding in such a way that he heads into the desert to make sense of it all. What happens there is the continuation of his evolution into the Christ and the path that would take him to complete self-denial and love on the Cross.

 

Yes, this an iconic story of incarnation, subservience and mysticism, but not one reserved for Jesus and out of reach for you and I. It is available for us if we participate in the journey to relational wholeness in the created world out of love for God and others. This experience will set us on the Way to the Way, it will bring us, through the experience of Jesus to ultimate fulfilment in Christ. It will occur when we become open to the possibility, diligent in our worship and practice, inside and outside liturgy, and when we come just as we are, just as Jesus did. Amen 

Seeing Differently

Mathew 3

Grand Canyon by David Hockney

Today we meet the hermit from the bush. The bloke who ignores the social requirements for appropriate dress and, by the smell of him, for the use of water for something other than drinking, a man who is on the outside looking in, John The Baptist, so named after the rite he made his own.  It is interesting he wasn’t called John Camel Hair or John Who Needs A Bath or John the Vegan, but he wasn’t. He is John the Baptist.

 

John is also remembered for his aversion to sin. His baptism was predicated on repentance, the recognition of sin by an individual who then takes steps to repent of that sin through the cleansing and renewing act of baptism. Now sin got a bad name when I was growing up. It seemed to include everything that was enjoyable – eating too many lollies, drinking too much soft drink, getting your sibling into trouble, dipping the pigtails of the girl who sat in front of you in the inkwell and many more mortal acts. The last may very well have been mortal if she could run faster than you at recess!

 

Sin has been trivialised to many normal and ordinary acts of being human and it seems it is still in that place. Yet John the Baptist’s idea of sin was much expanded on that of our parents, nuns and the morality police of our youth. John refers to the systemic sins maintaining the status quo, the sins of entitlement due to right acting, of doing what was expected of you and reaping the rewards. It was the sin of identifying clearly the status of each individual, their rights and their responsibilities. It was ensuring those born into privilege maintained that privilege. It is about exclusion of others from the benefits you have based on class, skin colour, health or otherwise, gender and age.

 

²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In other words, the possibility of instituting the promised kingdom does not belong out there, to others or to the future. It belongs here, in you and now. It is calling you and I to make it real – to put love into action and respond to the covenant requirements of kindness – respect, justice and compassion. It is not a task of people like John or even those whom he spoke harshly about; the first is just one man and the latter group won’t change until they have no choice. It is up to you to ensure they have no choice by you own love in action for yourself, others and the world.

 

John wasn’t interested in who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, but who stole the cookie jar and who allowed the cookie jar to remain stolen. He was particularly tough on those in privileged positions and saved his strongest words for them, but he didn’t let the ordinary folk off the hook either. John’s expectation was that is if you recognised your complicity in this corporate sin, then you needed to show evidence of a change of heart, mind and action. He says: “⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

 

Bearing fruit can be as little as sharing the troubles of those who live next door, advocating for a fairer share of society’s wealth for all, ensuring those who on the outside get to come in side. There is no prescription for bearing fruit and there is no particular type of fruit – love, justice, compassion, kindness, advocacy, giving and more – all work if that is what the situation needs.

 

Ben Witherington suggests: "Repentance, or metanoia, to use the Greek word, refers to far more than a simply being or saying one is sorry for past sins, far more than mere regret or remorse for such sins. It refers to a turning away from the past way of life and the inauguration of a new one, in this case initialised by an act of baptism."

 

And this isn’t easy. Those who describe the Christian life as easy and a cop out haven’t tried to live it! It is incredibly difficult to live in such away that each day is a further step toward wholeness and another from stuff we have held onto and has held onto us. It is being prepared to shed our previous static identity and accept the uncertainty of unfinished business.

 

Crabs and other crustaceans do not grow in a linear fashion because of their hard outer shell. Up to 20 times in its lifetime a crab moults, in effect moves out of the old shell and grows a new one. This happens 6 times in the first year. It is a difficult and excruciating time, not to say a vulnerable onee. If your shell is your protection, wandering naked around the sea floor is not a comfortable place to be. Yet it must happen if it is to grow into maturity.

 

Repentance requires we shed our tough and hard formed identities both as a society and as individuals. What served us well in another time and place no longer does. What we have come to accept as the way things are, no longer is appropriate and we have to change structures, ideas, ideologies and religions.

 

John the Baptist calls that the coming near of the kingdom of God – the ever evolving recognition of a new way of seeing. David Hockney, the wonderful English artist, paints what he sees but what he sees in isn’t always what is physically there. He suggests we see two ways – physically and psychologically; physically by recognising objects, like a camera. Seeing psychologically is different. If we look at a scene we will focus on one particular element that takes our eye in that scene. Because we do, that tree, face, animal, colour becomes clearer and larger in our view and seems to be larger and more significant than the rest of the scene. There are a whole lot of reasons why this happens but we rarely if ever see what is there. We see what we see.

 

In art this works well, in community and individual life here is a glitch to be aware of. What we think is the case may not be so because we are seeing, hearing, engaging with it as we see the world – focusing on what is important to or has a specific meaning or interest to us. We may miss what is really happening. We are not called to see physically or one dimensionally as a camera but we are to be aware of the psychological pre-determinants affecting our response to the world.

 

John the Baptist calls us to confront society and ourselves to engage in the very difficult process of moulting, like the crab, and to recalibrate our seeing. In this way we begin to recalibrate the world by helping to break it out of its restrictive shell and welcome in relational wholeness empowered by love - the kingdom of God.

 

Oh and this won’t get easier when Jesus enters the picture. It gets harder, because he increases the requirements and calls more from us. “¹¹He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Seeing through the eyes of Jesus changes everything.

 

John’s repentance is the ongoing reassessment of self and society required of all who profess faith. It requires action and outcomes and can’t be avoided. It is our vocation. How will you see differently when you leave here this morning?

Not Me!

Luke 19:1-10

Why do we like Zaccheaus but never want to identify ourselves with him and his ilk?

 

As kids growing up on a farm post WWII we loved to play war games. Near our house was a hillock full of granite boulders and broken craggy trees providing an ideal spot to build forts from which to recreate great imaginative battles. The problem was no-one wanted to be the baddy. Everyone wanted to be the goody. So we often ended up defended ourselves from imaginary enemies who threatened the safety of the world!

 

Nobody wanted to be or identified as the baddies then, and no one wants to do so when they grow up. We can easily recognise the failure and faults of others and easily draw a line between ourselves and “them”, because we always find a way to be seen to be a goody. We exaggerate our perception of ourselves as being good people and are often blind to our baser nature and our real selves. Rarely do we see the sin of others in our own actions, thoughts and words. We are always in the right.

 

When we read the gospel stories, such as Luke’s story about Zaccheaus, we are appalled at the elitist position of the Pharisees and take a stand next Zaccheaus, defending him from the nasty Pharisees. Yet Zacchaeus was a thief, a robber, a person who did indeed spend much of his time taking money from the poor to feed the rich – that is himself. He was no angel. He was indeed a villain.

 

I would suggest he would be someone we would rather not be seen with, let alone share a meal with. If he moved in next door we wouldn’t invite him over for a welcome drink. Zaccheaus was no good. Yet we defend him and not the Pharisees. We fail to see ourselves in the Pharisees or in the bad guy.

 

Jesus not just says hello but goes home with Zaccheaus. Zaccaheus makes a big statement about returning what he had taken, rather grandiosely, and Jesus pronounces salvation has been witnessed. Those standing by condemn both of them. They stand with neither Jesus nor the chief tax collector.

 

And this is too easily the default position we can take for ourselves, the place of immunity, untouched by faults exhibited by others unable to place ourselves among them. In an individualistic worldview, the fault always occur elsewhere. It is not I but you who does these things I abhor.

 

Along with this goes the act of accepting inappropriate behaviour from those who are apart of our inner circle or those we spend time with. We are blind to the fact that some around me, if not me, are behaving badly. We make excuses, allow things to go on unchecked and refuse to call out bad behaviour because they are ‘nice people’, ‘well intentioned’, ‘mean no harm’.

 

The church has found itself caught in this trap. Abuse of all kinds have been tolerated, ignored, excused with statements like these. We have found it difficult to recognise sin in ourselves and in others because we want to see all those around us as good people. Therefore we tolerate behaviour that would elsewhere be called out and dealt with as inappropriate.

 

Much of such behaviour is entrenched and requires deep and honest self reflection by individuals and by communities to change. It is painful, costly and lengthy. The tax collector makes a start in the euphoria of the moment but will have to actually put his words into costly and embarrassing action. He will have to admit to the extent of his inappropriate behaviour. There are no shortcuts.  He will have to confront people who are understandably angry, upset and very unforgiving yet that what it means to be saved in an ongoing manner. Salvation is a process and he will find the process difficult.

 

The church and us here at St Oswald’s are on a similar path. Due to the types of behaviours which have been allowed to occur in the past and continue to day, not just child abuse but the more subtle, and sometimes not so subtle manipulation of others to get our way, we are faced with making changes which protect and support all.

 

The Diocese has developed a comprehensive process for dealing with such issues and we will explore this more fully in January with a seminar on such. Until that time there will be several changes occurring around the parish to ensure the safety of all. For example, the parish centre will become the hub of parish life. All staff will work out of the parish centre to ensure people are supported. All appointments to discuss any issue with staff (vicar, secretary, organist or choir director) will be scheduled and held within the parish centre when the centre is open and staffed. A new approach to governance is being adapted for the parish to ensure we comply with best practice and the changes to the new Diocesan governance act.

 

These may seem cumbersome but are necessary because, whether we like it or not, not everyone we encounter is perfect, like we are. Like Jesus we recognise that the tax collector has to start somewhere on his process of redemption. Simply by recognising the tasks he needs to carry out he has taken the first steps towards salvation. Those around Jesus and the Zachheaus are yet to do so. They are still transferring their failures onto the baddy and holding fast to their righteousness.

 

The world outside the church is looking at us for the signs of accountability and repentance and until we are honest with ourselves and face up to our sins they will remain critical and sceptical of us.

 

So where do we start? Well, we could begin by:

 

• Being aware of why we do and say things to others;
• Being mindful of the impact our words and actions may have on others;
• Being mindful of personal space and boundaries;
• Thinking before we speak and ensuring what we say is appropriate for the person, time and place;
• Being prepared to honestly reflect on our motivations  - what is behind what we want to do?;
• Being mindful of the big picture and not just what we want to achieve?
• Being aware that we are to be concerned with our behaviour and not pointing the finger at another, the sin here of the bystanders.

 

Zaccheaus encounters Jesus and begins the long road back to redemption in his society. Whether he ever made that journey, we will never know. But Jesus endorsed his commitment to do so and his willingness to begin the process of deep personal assessment necessary. In AA, an important part of the process to sobriety is to write an inventory of all whom you have hurt and then to look at how you can set things right. It takes honesty, humility and great courage to do so. Zaccheaus had that ahead of him.

  

As we the church begins to put right what we have made wrong, as we as individuals in the church reflect on the role we have played and may continue to play in continuing inappropriate behaviours, we too have a long road ahead of us. Like Zaccheaus we can commit ourselves today to the necessary self awareness to make that possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Everyone Gets an A!

• Ben Zander and Everyone gets an A
Ben Zander: So I give everybody an A in the class. Everybody gets an A.
Ros Zander: Ben and I have a practice called, “Giving everyone an A” It started because Ben has a graduate class at the New England Conservatory and he had a lot of very anxious people in this class. And Ben said, “I don’t know how to get by it. So I said, “The only way to do that is to give them all an A, from the beginning of the year.” So what we developed was that every student got an A and had to write a letter, dated the following May, saying,
“Dear Mr. Zander,
I got my A because…”
So then these beautiful letters emerged. Just saying that, the person that was sort of hidden inside there, the person who the student would be, if there were no barriers, no fears, no little voices in the head, telling them what they couldn’t do.

Giving the A is a completely different paradigm. It is the paradigm of possibility. And we say that the A is a possibility to live into, not a standard to live up to.

• The story – Everyone gets and A. Matthew 20: 1-6
i) What happens in the marketplace?

• The Paradigm of Possibility
i) God is maddeningly generous. He gives everyone the same possibilities and the same the same reward – his unfailing love and mercy.

ii) His justice is mind-boggling. Even late starters can be winners because God's Rule isn't competitive. Everyone who genuinely wants to comes first!

iii) Under God's Rule, it's always Now. Matthew Fox quotes Meister Eckhart as saying, "God is always the newest thing there is".

• In Conclusion
o Ben Zanders idea is not new – it is as old as God’s interaction with his creation – the Biblical story is all about living into the possibility – from Genesis to Revelations that is the distilled message of God. God has always given us an A (original blessing) – it is we who mark ourselves down and then live as if we deserve an F (original sin).

o Go home today and write a letter to God which starts
• Dear God
I got an A because…. And list all the reasons why and what that might look like for you.

o And you may very well begin the journey of living into the possibilities God has for you, now.

Hebrews 4:15-16 – The Voice From Offstage

Anthropologist James C. Scott says that there’s a difference between the way poor people talk “onstage” and “offstage.” Studying forms of everyday resistance among peasants in a small Malaysian village, he noticed how the poor and weak were good at acting like they recognized the authority of the ruling elite in public. “Onstage” they almost always gave the impression of complying with a social order in which they suffered injustice. “Offstage,” however, when no one in authority was around, peasants mocked the system through gossip, slander, stealing, dragging their feet, and sabotaging their masters’ plans.

Being offstage, out of the limelight allows us the freedom to speak the unspeakable, to tell the story as it really is to us and to distance ourselves from the authoritarian position of those who hold the power in our lives. Being offstage allows us to say what we really think about church structures, government leaders and policies and restrictive laws which dictate our behaviour in public even when they are in fact censuring who are and what we say to the detriment of sensible debate and discussion.

That is why we need to keep alive the tradition of comedy and humour in our society. Recent reactions to various comedians on radio, TV and the big screen smacks of those “onstage” wanting to dumb down debate and stifle anything that challenges stereotypes, political correct sacred cows and more. Comedy and humour is society speaking offstage, saying the things that need to be said, and highlighting issues that we have attempted to paper over, or simply recognizing a reality those onstage avoid. The problem with modern day humour is that so much is now deemed off limits that it is stuck in the gutter because there they can safely offend everybody not just individual groups sensibilities or political correct doctrines. If we aren’t careful we will lose all the opportunities to speak in a way that takes the debate offstage. This has probably already occurred through the development of experts and self-interest groups who control the debate on key issues such as global change, human rights, parenting and gender issues for example. There is little or no room for the voice offstage.

A group of people working to deal with poverty in a community were sitting around the table discussing the way forward when one of the group suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea to ask the people in the community themselves (something I have found to be the only thing to do); there was a lengthy silence as the group of experts looked uncomfortably at each other before the facilitator said, No that would only slow us down. AN opportunity was missed in our world of experts to hear what some of the answers were from the people who know and live and experience the questions.

In a society where the High priest held all the power, had great position and was the representative of all those onstage, the writer to the Hebrews suggests that not only was Jesus the high priest, but that he was also like us yet without sin. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

A Jewish priest was a direct male descendant of the Aaron, brother of Moses. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, they performed specific duties in relation to the daily and festival sacrificial offerings. The high priest, selected from the group, sometimes held considerable political influence and also supervised during the key service of Yom Kippur. In the Second Temple period various high priests were appointed by both Jewish and non-Jewish political governors, becoming an issue of considerable controversy. Also in this period, the high priest sometimes served as the president of the ruling legislative council, the Sanhedrin.

The high priest was onstage – he was in the public eye and, along with all those who surrounded him, represented a part of society those offstage had to negotiate in their relationship with God. Often the high priests were corrupt and such power ensured that any relationship with them was an unfair one..

So when the writer to the Hebrews uses these words in relation to Jesus, he does as Jesus often did and speaks offstage, he turns them upside down and gives them a whole new meaning.

Jesus through his relationship with his Father, the God of Israel, was the one who came to intercede on our behalf, a truly priestly role. Not only did he intercede in his earthly life through his teaching and his actions, his example, but his unbroken obedience to his Fathers will took him all the way to the cross himself.

As a human being he came to experience what it was like to be among those who are offstage, out of the position of privilege, unable to be apart of the righteous because of their social position, their gender, their infirmities, hurt and shame. He took on our humanity in such a way that he became that humanity for himself.

Unlike those in power who speak through advisers and leaders about the needs and circumstances of the poor, the disabled, the troubled and the difficult, Jesus became human to experience that for himself, to place himself in the way of sin and to stare it down so that we too could do the same.

It is interesting that throughout Jesus earthly life his greatest recorded wisdom comes not from official debates with the keepers of knowledge, the experts, (with some exceptions) but with those who were offstage. He had the audacity to ask people what they wanted and gave it to them, he empowered people with words that spoke to their place in this world such as in the sermon on the mount, he stood with people who were about to be stoned for their actions by the self-righteous; it was what Jesus spoke to those off-stage which got under the nose of those in power, and what ultimately brought about his death.

Not only did he engage with humanity, he had the opportunity to sin and didn’t. He was one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. What a wonderful verse. He battled the temptation to sin as recorded in the desert after his baptism and then throughout his life for Luke comments that devil departed from him until an opportune time. Jesus knew what it was like to be tempted but he is an example to us that through relationship with him and his father sin is no longer our challenge.

There is much discussion theologically over the meaning of this verse. Some see it to mean that Jesus was impeccable, that is, unable to sin because of his divine nature. And for many years I found this understanding a stumbling block to faith. If Jesus was incapable of sin, he wasn’t like us at all, he only looked and acted like us, and I felt I was set up. How could someone who was incapable of sinning understand how I felt as a sinner and when I sinned? Was this some kind of cosmic joke?

Yet the power comes when I understand that Jesus was ‘peccable’, able to sin but because of his nature and his relationship with God chose obedience as the better way. Jesus became human and lived and died as the example of humanity living life to the fullest so that we too could become fully human.

Yes we do have a great high priest who intercedes for us and we have a great high priest who has lived the experiences of being ordinary and doing so with out sin.

And here is the possibility that Jesus life, death and resurrection brings to us, the possibility of knowing that we are not alone, unable to deal with those things which plague us, because Jesus is here, offstage with us and says in a clear loud voice within with authority, ‘I know what you are feeling and I know all is not lost, come to me and all will be well.’

14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.