Knowing and loving – 28 November 2014

After all these years it seems to me that Advent is something near impossible to explain.  God comes into our life and our world, our hearts.  As St Paul puts it memorably in two words: in Christ.  The baby, the young man, the teachings, the death, the resurrection – Advent is our hope and our expectation that all this is so, that it happens and that it is true.  Incarnation is a solid Christian word, although it is outside the vocabulary of most people.  It means made flesh.  That is our flesh and bone.  In St John:  The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.

That incarnation, made flesh, is for Jesus’s followers a haunting and life-changing thing.  We were made flesh.  If Jesus shared and knew, experienced, this mortal, fallible life with all its perils and ambiguities, then it is not really possible for us to be content to do less.  I came across a talk Rowan Williams gave to some ordinands on retreat.  He spoke to them about what he called the terrible threat of knowledge without love.  He is referring to our culture which is obsessed with needing to know, needing to have “the facts”, however distorted through an extremely compromised media, needing “answers”, is a common cliché, needing to see people properly exposed, humiliated and punished, needing to have “justice done”, needing scapegoats, someone to blame – all of this somehow perceived as the “truth”.  This knowledge is power but without love.  It produces typically revulsion, contempt, the illusion that we have the truth about someone or something – and sometimes even amusement at other people’s pain.

Incarnation requires of us something enitrely different.  The Psalmist says of God (Ps 103:14 KJV):  He knoweth whereof we are made, he remembereth that we are dust.   So must we.  The truth about us, the truth about someone else, is not told until we understand how and why with accurate sensitivity.  It is what William Langland, way back in the 14^th century, in Piers Plowman, called “kind knowing” – not just the alleged facts, but the doubt, the agony, the temptation, the darkness and abandonment.  Jesus is represented by St John as saying, I judge no one.  To the woman discovered in adultery he says, Where are your accusers?  Is there no one who condemns you?  Neither do I condemn you.  Rowan Williams writes how Jesus seemed to sense the precariousness of human goodness, love and fidelity… No failure or error could provoke his condemnation, except the error of those legalists who could not understand that very precariousness. 

To be incarnate to another person, as Jesus was, as we are called to be, is the polar opposite of humiliating, ridiculing, condemning and rejecting.  It is kind knowing, kind understanding.  And if it is difficult because we also have been hurt a bit too much, perhaps, or because it seems important to be stern and unyielding, then we may learn incarnation in the stillness and silence of our prayer.  It is the space and the context in which we are simply ourselves, without boasting and without excuses, present and receptive to God and to all truth.  God is incarnate to us and we to God.  Then the Spirit of Christ is able, as Jesus said, to bring us to the truth, the kind knowing, the understanding and love. 

Sheep and goats – 21 November 2014

Next Sunday is the last of the liturgical year, and of course we get the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  It’s stark and uncompromising, and I feel it never improves from one year to the next.  Those who had fed the hungry and the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, visited the prisoners, are at the final judgment set at the Saviour’s right hand in glory.  Those who had neglected these things are consigned, with rejection, humiliation and abuse, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 

The worst way to deal with this parable, it seems to me, would be to rush out and feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the prisoner – in order to be among the sheep rather than the goats.  It won’t work, and it’s not the point.  One aspect that interests me here is that the sheep didn’t know that they had been doing all these things:  Lord, when did we see you hungry…? and so on.  The goats, similarly, didn’t know that they had been neglecting all this.   Everyone was surprised.  This is scarcely welcome news for the overly righteous, the morally scrupulous, because it seems to indicate that what matters is at a deeper level than our actions and fulfilment of duties.

However, this list of benevolent acts is what Catholics call the Corporal Works of Mercy.  They add one more to make the list up to seven, so we have:  Feed the hungry, Give water to the thirsty, Clothe the naked, Visit the prisoner, Visit the sick, Free the captive, Bury the dead.  There are also the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy:  Instruct the ignorant, Counsel the doubtful, Admonish sinners, Bear wrongs patiently, Forgive offences willingly, Comfort the afflicted, Pray for the living and the dead.  There are actually study guides and work sheets on sale for instruction in all this, if you’re having difficulty. 

The realities in life, as we well know, are otherwise.  If we must have labels, which I find distorting and oppressive, then the fact is that most of us find we are sometimes among the sheep and sometimes among the goats.  And that’s on a good day.  We are unsure, also, about this God who separates sheep from goats, according to those criteria, and consigns the goats to perdition.  Something is badly the matter with that.  Christ is the icon of the invisible God, St Paul teaches, and the picture in this parable does not seem Christlike.

But the parable does give us a very timely urgency about social justice, and it links this directly with God’s purposes.  In our contemplative life we expect to be changed, and for the change to continue and develop.  I may not be feeding the hungry or visiting the prisoner right now, but I will be some way involved in healing a broken world and bringing relief where it is needed.  I may be in a position where I can influence decision-makers. 

What also strikes me about this is that all these works of mercy are equally well done by atheists, Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, or people with tattoos – and many do just that.  These are not uniquely Christian acts.  Jesus in this parable expected his disciples in any age, to do what is simply good and necessary – it may be with Amnesty or with Doctors Without Borders, or it may be in our own neighbourhood, family or churches.  But we do it, we see it done, we feel it and we yearn for it, more and more as our egos and ego-needs diminish.

Going on alone – 14 November 2014

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his servants and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.  [Matthew 25:14-15]

…the Parable of the Talents.  The servant who had been lent five talents made them into ten; the one with two talents made four; the one with one talent took fright, buried it, and eventually returned it safe and unsullied to his master.  Parts of the American church have a lot of fun with this parable because it is all about capitalism, about wealth and righteousness belonging together, and Jesus even seems to justify usury. 

I think the key to the parable is in the very first sentences, which I read.  The point is the master’s absence.  This is emphasized.  In Matthew he goes away on a journey (Gr. αποδημων – to another country).  Then he went away, Matthew repeats.  It’s the same stress in Mark.  In Luke he is a nobleman who goes off to a far country.  And that I think is the issue – it’s about going on alone, without the immediate sense or awareness of God…?  It’s grown-up faith.  If we want to be really adventurous with this parable, then we ponder living without the presence of someone we love…?  Living without adequate health perhaps, or money, or faith and hope…?  And when you think about it, there are various other points in the gospels where Jesus explicitly stresses his coming absence, as though the disciples need to understand this.  I think this parable does reflect the early church having to come to terms with the fact that Jesus has not returned as some expected – neither will he.  Life as a disciple, as we know, might well be comforted by the perceived presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or by the promise that he will be with us always, even to the end of the world.  But life is equally marked by the presence of absence. Then, says Jesus in the parable, he went away.

“Talents”, by the way, in this parable, certainly do not mean personal gifts and aptitudes, the kind of thing referred to in the unspeakable TV show “NZ’s Got Talent”.  The talent in Greek (ταλεντον) was a measure of volume, generally the amount of wine in one amphora.  “Talent” here may mean a talent of gold, an unimaginable sum, or silver, or wine.  The talent was a lot of whatever it is.  The parable then is about what we do with what we own, certainly our assets in the sense understood by Inland Revenue, but also what we do with the whole environment we have inherited.  It is up to us, because God is not about to appear and make it all right.

Grown-up faith, then, is about getting on with it.  It is about living, not huddling, in the midst of life and risk.  It is not about measuring everything by how we happen to be feeling at the moment – which is no measure at all -- or rushing for safety as did the servant who buried his talent securely in a hole.  It is about risking mistakes and daring to be vulnerable and fallible.  It is moreover about consenting to being made this way in life, even at our advanced stage or age, by God’s wild spirit of resurrection and new life.  Our prayer of silence and stillness, which you must admit is somewhat sparse of reassurances, is for many of us the best and truest way of being, in this kind of world. 

Oil shortage – 7 November 2014

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. [Matthew 25:1-13]

Only Matthew records this parable -- and it bristles with questions.  Who are the bridesmaids? Who is the bridegroom? Is foolishness really a reason for exclusion from the kingdom? Is indeed anyone excluded? Why were the wise bridesmaids so uncaring? Why was the door peremptorily shut and no one else allowed in? What does the oil signify?  This is not my favourite parable.  Is the form in which it reaches us through Matthew the same as the form in which it was told by Jesus?  Or does this form of the parable reflect more the 1^st or 2^nd century church under adversity and wondering how long before the Saviour returns?  I don’t know you, says the bridegroom to the foolish bridesmaids who still asked to be admitted.  He did know them… and that is not my understanding of faith.

It is clearly about being ready when the time comes.  So what time is that?  The time of our need in life, one might think.  Last Friday in our brief discussion, it was mentioned that we experience different seasons in our lives, seasons of experience and maturity which change us, sometimes deeply.  In mindful, contemplative understanding, a major thread which runs through these changes over the years is the constant challenge to our ego.  The young adolescent, we think quite properly, must be thinking about self and the self’s future – perhaps we worry if they are not.  But our prayer of silence and stillness is a daily calling into question of the ego’s requirements of us, examining what we assume to be our needs.  Humility, letting go, relinquishing control, which may have been unimaginable at age 18, may indeed start imperceptibly at first to replace more familiar ways of reacting. 

Nothing stays the same, even if we devote ourselves to control and safety – as indeed some people do.   Change for them becomes our enemy.  But in a climate of prayerful silence, when we have ceased asking for things, and instead are still with empty hands and a consenting heart, the Spirit of God – the oil for the lamp, as it were – is able to continue God’s work of creation in us, replacing fear with love, and making all things new.