An Open Table - All Are welcome

Luke 15:1-32

 

Driving through south-western Victoria recently, I became aware, in a way I had not been before, of Australia as a fenced country. Ownership of the land is defined and marked out by fences, fences of all types, stone and rock, wood and wire, roads and rivers. It occurred to me that fences speak about where we place people in the geography of our country, the value we place upon them in our economy and the lingering presence of past definitions and practices.

 

Our gospel reading opens a window into the slurs and asides spat at Jesus by his detractors and opponents. ‘“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In shame based societies proper conduct in public, keeping appropriate company and not keeping inappropriate company was all about keeping up appearances. You kept company with those of a similar status as yourself or made the effort to engage with those above or beyond your class. You did not keep company with those deemed to be below you – not consorting with the servants, slaves, prostitutes or drunks.

 

Table fellowship, whom you ate with, was the place this was most obviously evident. When people challenged Jesus about who he was with, it wasn’t a comment about his open and generous nature or his willingness to include everyone, it was about how radically he disregarded the sacred nature of table fellowship. Jenks suggests “the slander is more a marker of social conflict between Jesus and his opponents rather than an index of his personal values and conduct.’

John Dominic Crossan writes:

“In the first as in the twentieth century, a person might create a feast for society's outcasts. The could easily be understood even or especially in the honor and shame ideology of Mediterranean society as a benefaction and one of extremely high visibility. No doubt if one did it persistently and exclusively there might be some very negative social repercussions. But, in itself, to invite the outcasts for a special meal is a less socially radical act than to invite everyone found on the streets. It is that "anyone" that negates the very social function of table, namely, to establish a social ranking by what one eats, how one eats, and with whom one eats. It is the random and open commensality of the parable's meal that is its most startling element. One could, in such a situation, have classes, sexes, ranks and grades all mixed up together. The social challenge of such egalitarian commensality is the radical threat of the parable's vision. It is only a story, of course, but it is one that focuses its egalitarian challenge on society's mesocosmic mirror, the table as the place where bodies meet to eat. And the almost predictable counteraccusation to such open commensality is immediate: Jesus is a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He makes, in other words, no appropriate distinctions and discriminations. He has no honor. He has no shame.”

 

Jesus was pulling down fences and breaking the sacred nature of table and the rules set up to protect it. Jesus simply doesn’t recognise those rules and lives with little regard for social ranking in terms of who one eats with. One may in fact include many people from many different social rankings thus causing confusion about what is and is not acceptable.

 

Here is a principle worth considering  by the world and by the church.

 

Australia, we are told is a classless society, one in which everybody has equal opportunity to be well fed, well educated and to be happy. There are no privileged classes and there are no underprivileged classes in the telling of this story. Yet we know that this is not true. A recent article suggested that good looking students get better grades than not so good-looking children and we suspect this also applies to university entrance and job success. We know that if you go to a private school you will have better resources, better social networks and that more opportunities may indeed come you way. We know that certain suburbs and types of people are to be avoided if you wish to live amongst your own social class. Aspirational people seek to live closer to schools with a good academic record to give their children the best chance, value education and tutoring and avoid their children mixing with the wrong peers.

 

Social ranking matters. Symbols of social ranking matters, Houses in the right suburbs, children in the right schools, overseas holidays, right labels on clothes and the right badge on the care all matter, otherwise why would people incur great debt to achieve them

 

Once we have arrived at such social acceptance we avoid those we have left behind. We move on and begin to look for the next plateau in the social ranking game.

 

Jesus sets the challenge in this story. His behaviour is radical and anti aspirational. He spends time with those he likes, those he befriends, those who enable him to be the fully engaged human being he was. He is not stifled by societies expectations but takes social, intellectual and spiritual stimulation from the most interesting and alive people he knows, those without expectations and fences, those outside expectations and fences. He challenges us to let go of our dependence upon our class aspirations and become classless and at home with whoever we wish to share table with.

 

For the church this is another great taboo, who shares table with us? Is this life-giving table available to all or only to those who are like us, come from our class and share our world view? Over the recent years the church has had to, and continues to be challenged to redefine who is welcome, including slaves, non-whites, women gays, trans-genders, believers from other denominations and people of other faiths. What was once only a denominational practice, open only to those who believe like us, is now challenged by the diversity of our understanding of who are recognised as persons (slaves, indigenous,LGBTI people and women and children). Our Archbishop, in a press release Friday reminds us all to be open to the possibilities with in the upcoming plebiscite on marriage equality and that we, as reflective people, are to exercise our consciences on this matter.  Our church, the Anglican Church has had to face this because of its historical attachment to the establishment and has come rather late to practice a welcoming hospitality to all, at least to some degree.

Who is welcome at this table – there is no limitations based on class, gender or race; there is no fence built to keep people away. All are welcome. This is the church and the society Jesus speaks up for and challenges the table based social ranking of his time. This the church and society we are to speak up for and challenge the fences built to keep people in or out of our own safe places. Amen. 

Pentecost - Being Christ in the World.

John 15:26 - 16:15

 

 

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day of the breaking in and breaking out of the Spirit in the lives of all who live a life of love and compassion in Christ. To be en christos is to be empowered to live and love in a manner which challenges the accepted ways of the world. To, in fact, be Christ in the world. You. Yourself. No-one-else.

 

No longer is there a Jesus to turn to for direction, teaching, hope, advice and spiritual comfort. You are on your own. You are to speak as if you are Jesus and to act as if you are Jesus because, for John, you are. And you will experience life just as Jesus did. For you are mystically one with Christ.

 

John writes about the coming of the Spirit at a time when we associate Pentecost with miracles, speaking in tongues and other super-natural events, and yet that seems far from what John has in mind. No where in this farewell discourse does he mention the doing of miracles or speaking in tongues or ecstatic experiences s being the lot of the those he was writing, his community which was beginning to feel the wrath of persecution and the struggles of remaining faithful even within the synagogue.

 

One would have thought if these were to be the tools of a disciple’s life, John would have spoken strongly and clearly about the power available. He doesn’t. Instead he links the disciples lives and experience of life directly to that of Jesus and stresses that the Christ is now in them as God was in him and that is all they need.

 

Jesus is saying that even if I go away, the meaning I came to bring will not disappear. What I have done is to open to you a new understanding of what it means to be human. Trust it. Now that it has been opened, it cannot be closed again. Spong writes that Jesus continues with; ‘The spirit of truth, which proceeds from the father, will come to stand where I have stood.’

 

David Ewart suggests "Whatever else we may want to say on this day of Pentecost about the Spirit, it is important to notice that Jesus always refers to the Spirit as the Spirit of truth. And in John truth is always the way, the life, the light, the joy, the friendship."

 

Here we discover a mystical and mutual indwelling bringing into existence a new being in relationship. It is no longer one of authority but of indwelling friendship. It is a new way of engaging with the divine. The divine is no longer up there, beyond the clouds, but has entered life, your life, my life in the form of the very spirit of truth. This was the spirit we saw in Christ and now will be visibly evident in the lives of those who form the ‘body of Christ’. Us.

 

William Loader, of Murdoch University says, "Jesus is not left behind that we might soar into spiritual fantasy and relish the prospects of more magic and more religion. John promises no such flights and is silent about future miracles. The task of the disciples and disciples after them is to bear fruit, to let the seed sown in death rise to new life. Transitional events are minimised. What matters is life and love."

 

Our life and lives are transformed by the indwelling Christ. It is our actions, thoughts, experiences which become the visible presence of God in the world. Pentecost is not about the supernatural crashing into the world in the form of special effects and magic tricks, it is the empowering of ordinary people to do ordinary things so that extraordinary changes take place in people, places and things.

 

In the Anglican Church there has been a process for young people to take communion after confirmation. When I was a school chaplain I used to alternate the services with 2 out 3 services for the High School students being a Eucharist. Almost all of the young people had neither church background nor any religious education in relation to the sacraments. Yet when the invitation was given many would come forward to take communion. Fortnightly 25% of the 600 students did.

 

Some teachers and other clergy questioned to authenticity them taking communion. Yet these young people made a conscious decision to come forward as did those who decided to stay in their seats. For both groups this was not simply following the crowd but a deliberate act of the will.

 

And it was a truly Pentecost experience every time. They would look directly into you eyes as you distributed the sacrament, moving from bread to wine respectfully and deliberately. While they may not have been regular church attendees outside school, their reverential actions spoke loudly about a deep sacramental and mystical experience of God. They were experiencing being in Christ. They trusted what was within them and stepped forward in faith to receive.

 

John’s Jesus speaks to the ordinary person, saying I know what it is like to be a human who is different to those around me, to march to a different spirit. Jesus says I also know the spirit is sufficient for all your needs, not only your physical needs, but your need to make decisions, to live in a certain manner, to endure hardships and persecutions.

 

It is perplexing when we see the Spirit at work, and adults even Christian adults, respond with questions and doubts, unable to accept that God is at work in ways and in people outside of what we perceive as the normal spiritual way. We simply shut down Pentecost.

 

Here we sit amongst a community of people who are open to possibility. That is why they bring their children to ballet, make school lunches, run exercise classes. It is all about what is now and will be in the future. It is about awakening the spirit with in, going beyond the mind that is. It is the mystical ordinariness of the incarnated spirit of God alive in the daily activities of human beings.

 

In an experience known as the Louisville Epiphany, Thomas Merton expresses what this Pentecost event is, and it is no different to the first event in Acts.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

 

We are challenged on this Pentecost Sunday to see the supernatural possibility in the natural, to see God’s spirit already at work in those around us and to find ways to engage and to be en christos with them. We are not to demand that they change or convert to our thinking but to find ways to befriend and to compassionately be one with them. In doing so we open up the miracle of Pentecost and bring about a new world for all. Amen’

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The Foolishness of Wisdom - God At Work in the World.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31, John 2:13-22 

The Bible is full of fools and foolishness. God’s story, old or new is full of fools and foolishness. Even the wisdom we discover there in seems to be at odds with the wisdom and learning we encounter in educational, institutional or everyday life. Paul points straight to the cross, Jesus points straight to the tearing down of the temple through the cross, Moses at 80+, Abraham and Sarah at almost 100 years of age, David as King and the list goes on.

Not only was the wisdom in the Bible at odds with the prevailing sense of the world, it simply marches to a different rhythm to the world we live in. 

Yet, the wisdom and knowledge the world we live in has grown up with is not certain and true.Take, for example, the creation of our universe which has been said by scientists to have begun with a big bang – the big bang theory. There are at least three other theories standing against the big bang theory. The latest from a group of scientists at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, suggests that the universe was simply there all the time and had no need for a big bang theory explain it.

Ideas such as the world isn’t flat, or it isn’t carried on the back of a large tortoise or the sun revolves around earth were all foolishness at one time or another. Over our lifetime we have seen the wisdom of the day overturned time and again, and what would have looked as foolishness, become the new wisdom. Who could have imagined we could instantly connect to someone on the other side of the world with out going through a telephone exchange, having someone dial the number, waiting for the operator on the other side of the world then finally connecting and have to listen through the crackle and noise inherent in the cables under the sea? 

The suggestion that God could be found present in the world in the person of Jesus from Nazareth was foolishness to those for whom God was distant, beyond the clouds and only to be found in the Torah or through interventionist acts from beyond, was foolishness. Even for the majority of Christians God was seen as part of a three tiered cosmos, outside our world, someone who chose who to rescue and not to rescue and was, arbitrary to some degree, in who was in and who was out of his kingdom.

Today we know that God doesn’t live beyond the clouds. We have been there and God, as a person cannot be found. We know, from experience, that God cannot be manipulated into rescuing, saving or healing us. We have come to understand what Jesus and Paul said was true and not foolishness. We are made in the image of God, God is within us and we are within God, and we are on a journey to discover ourselves as we discover who God is to us. Jesus oft said 'Today the kingdom of God has come near' reveals the truth that God is nearer to us than ourselves and our mission is to be still and know that I Am is God.

This was the message of the mystics of all ages and is the core message of John’s Gospel. John was Jewish and his language to describe Jesus and his purpose comes directly from Jewish mysticism. It is the language of unity, being and one-ing. Right at the beginning of his Gospel he lays a hymn of praise and recognition to such an understanding of Jesus. He is not talking about a physical being, a real person or a God who has become a man, but to a being who has always existed and is indelibly apart of the one who simply says I Am. And if we are made one with Christ then we are also made one with the ground of all being, I Am. John uses those two words over and over again to describe Jesus. He is not subtle.

In the temple John directly connects Jesus, I Am, with the temple and all that goes on there. The temple cult sat at the centre of Jewish religious, social and political life. It was the place where the Holy of Holies contained God, and to some sense, where God could be seen as holding them. Jesus, John’s I Am, comes and confronts this worldly wisdom and says this is simply man made. “Here you have created a place where you strive to contain and manipulate God according to the written law and practice. I will destroy the validity of such wisdom and replace it with what may seem like foolishness, a death that says relationships; emerging, growing and defining relationships, with creation and with each other become the places where you encounter God. The possibility of such a relationship is available to all, and especially those that make it real in their lives.

Paul reminds us: ‘For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’ We could say that God’s love is greater than man’s law. The ongoing story of the two members of the Bali 9 and their struggle with Indonesian law challenges us all. The law is a straightener. It should be designed to bring people back to the centre of themselves and society. The parameters and the judgement of the law should be flexible and able to respond to the steps people make to come do so. To pursue the ends of law simply to make a point is pigheaded brutality and needs to be avoided.

Over and over again, in my engagement with young people in schools, I and those I worked with, faced such a challenge. Yes, this behaviour is inappropriate simply deserves severe censure or expulsion. Yet, what is the outcome we seek? That this child may return to the centre of his or her community and not be expelled from it. Therefore do we follow the letter of the law or do we find ways to allow this person to find redemption? The latter, often seen as foolishness by those for whom punishment is the only reward, was chosen more often and not. And it works.

Saw a message from a young man recently whose history is dotted with great failures. He is now a member of the Army Cadets and was recently promoted to a corporal. It is one of those wow moments. If his misdemeanours had been handled by the letter of the law, this may not have been possible. Relationships and compassion pave the way to redemption.

Sin is not a legal problem, it is a relationship problem; the relationship with self with others and with the I AM, and can only be solved by the foolishness of love, love in the shape of the cross and the taking up of that cross by us in a way that it allow others to journey back to the centre.

May we do this in a way that values individuals and their life experience, be they the young who need direction and correction, or us who are slightly older who need to know that, contrary to the wisdom of the day, are in fact the embodiment of the wisdom experience God has brought our way, if we have processed those experience through the foolishness of the crucified and reimagined Christ.

The World Needs More Holy Fools.

The world needs more holy fools - people who seem to be out of step with the rest of the world, eccentric and a little odd. Without them our world would just slide off into oblivion, unaware that the daly grind is just grinding it into nothingness. Holy Fools are the rocks that chip away at the 'biegeness' of life and call us back to reality, a reality that says that much of what I am doing is of little or no value. That in fact I take myself way to serious and actually think that what I do in my work a day grind matters. Yet Holy Fools know something else, they have an intuitive understanding about what truly matters.

Holy Fools say things like "Don't sweat the small stuff, it's all small stuff", "First things first", "Calendars are moral documents", "Irrelevance is a gift", "Smile and they will wonder what you're up to", "Play with others and great things will happen", "Be still, very very still, and above all else, don't wobble", "Love your neighbors as yourself", "Turn the other cheek" and loads more.

Holy Fools miss meetings to watch their kids play footy, recite poetry and act in the school play.

Holy Fools take time out to have coffee with their partners, buy some flowers to take home and to secretly order a subscription to their favorite magazine.

Holy Fools go home to sit with their parents, visit a sick mum or dad in hospital or just take them out of the nursing home for a day when responsible people would be at work.

Holy Fools find ways to combine work with their passion, practice non-violence wherever they are and know that the words "Federal budget" and "government policy" refer to a moral document that expresses the true nature of democracy as it is practiced by those elected to govern.

Holy Fools speak out for peace, ethical behavior and social justice even if it means looking like a fool.

Holy Fools know that it doesn't matter what others think about them, just what the man in the mirror thinks, what that moral compass at their core knows and what God, however they see the ground of the being, sees them.

I recently met a man who is a minder to many of the great superstars of music and movies who was asked to write a tell-all book. The contract was worth more than $1 million dollars. He said "No". Why? Because he said he would have to look his 11 year old son in the face and know that he had failed him for he would no longer be a man of integrity, and being a man of integrity was what he wanted his son to be and how could he if his father wasn't? Being a millionaire may have bought his son security but not integrity!

That's a Holy Fool!