The sheep and the goats – 24 November 2017

This Sunday is the last of the old liturgical year, and the following Sunday is the First in Advent, a new Christian year.  In 1925, Pope Pius XI decreed that this Sunday would be called Christ the King, and the lectionary takes us to Matthew 25 and the stern account of the Sheep and the Goats.  Christ the King in glory sits in judgement and separates the sheep from the goats, on the basis of how they have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited those in prison – or how they have not done these things.

Rather more ancient is an Anglican designation for this Sunday, which comes from the Collect for the day in the 1534 Book of Common Prayer: Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded… So it has been popularly known as Stir-Up Sunday -- and a timely signal therefore to make the Christmas pudding. 

But all this is putting off the moment when we respond intelligently to this strange picture of Christ the King, sitting in glory and in final judgement, separating people, labelling them indelibly sheep or goat, saved or lost, on the basis of their service record (…unto me) – and consigning the failed, the goats to perdition.  It is uncomfortably reminiscent of horrifying separations at Auschwitz or Ravensbrück, and such other hideous things that are happening still to people in 2017.  The narrative in Matthew takes no account of who had seriously tried but failed in life, or of people who never had a chance, or people who laboured under crippling handicaps not of their doing or deserving, or people who did everything right but for self-serving motives.  Robert Burns put it better:  What’s done we partly may compute, but know not what’s resisted.[1]

There are numerous Christians who accept this story with its uncompromising message… and are presumably unworried about its implications… or simply hope they’re among the sheep.  But there are others of us who encounter Jesus very differently.  In his kingdom, as he said, we do not have a binary society of winners and losers, us and them, the right and the wrong, black and white, rich and poor, male and female, Christian and Moslem, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, whole and broken.  Neither did St Paul, we should note.  Far from separating the sheep from the goats, wrote Paul, Jesus demolishes walls, heals divisions.[2]  In John 17 Jesus prays: …that they may be one, as we are one.

The walls and divisions come down first in our hearts, the primary battleground, and the process continues to happen there in a practice of silence and stillness, dissolving prejudices, calming fears of difference or of being vulnerable, replacing blame and guilt with mercy and love.  And a different person means, to that extent at any rate, a different world.

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[1] Robert Burns: Address to the Unco Guid or the Rigidly Righteous.  It’s worth reading… based on Ecclesiastes 7:16.

[2] See Ephesians 2:13-22.

Thief in the night – 17 November 2017

For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  When they say, “There is peace and security… [I Thess 5:2-3]

The two letters from Paul to the church at Thessalonica are among the earliest writings to have made it into the Christian scriptures, and they are generally dated at only 20-25 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.   Those 1^st-generation Christians lived in expectation of the Lord’s return, the Day of the Lord.  But already there is a note of caution.  Jesus doesn’t return in the way they expect, and so here Paul is writing also about the discipline of waiting.  How do we cope with delay, uncertainty, unpredictability? 

Last week we were reinterpreting[1]… now in the writings of Paul we have to reinterpret some more, find what we might mean in 2017, by the Day of the Lord.  This Day of the Lord is what the Greek language, including in this very passage, calls a kairos (καιρος), a moment, an event in life, when something crucial happens.  So it is a time of change, a time for decisions, a discovery that things are not going to be the same again…  For the Thessalonians, the Day of the Lord if it happened would certainly be a kairos.  Being bereaved is a kairos, obviously… so is having a baby.  Conversion, Baptism…  Falling in love… but also in human experience, parting, separating…  A bad diagnosis… A loss of trust in someone…

In Paul we find two teachings about this, and they go oddly together.  The first is that, as he says, the Day of the Lord, whatever it may be, may be sudden and unexpected.  This is the Thief in the Night.  Mature faith has learned to live therefore in an unfair and unpredictable world, to expect the unexpected and undeserved.  Moreover, for mature faith the Day of the Lord, whatever event it is, is not seen as something God does to us.  The God Jesus called Father does not unaccountably afflict anyone with disease or punish or strike anyone down, or take our side against others.  Paul writes: You are not in darkness, for that Day to surprise you like a thief… we are children of light, he writes, we are awake and sober.  I would add, if Paul permits… and we do not live in fear and superstition. 

Paul’s second point is that in mature faith we learn how to wait, patiently if necessary, when necessary – not grinding our teeth or raising our blood pressure, but acquiring the strange gift of being still and letting the river run of its own accord.  For some of us this is a rather hard lesson, and sometimes, I agree, it may be necessary to be impatient.   The Psalmist however knows how to wait.[2]  Contemplative prayer is very much a matter of waiting in silence and stillness.  And for the true contemplative, in whom fear is being dispelled and the need to control is being tamed, waiting in silence holds many good secrets.

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[1] Bridegrooms arriving, and foolishness…

[2] eg. Psalm 62:1, 5; 33:20; 69:3; 27:14; 37:7 etc… Also eg. Isaiah 8:17; Romans 8:25; Galatians 5:5…  cf T S Eliot: East Coker III – I said to my soul, be still, and wait…etc

Five out of ten were morons – 10 November 2017

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.  [Matthew 25:1-2]

So… in Jesus’s parable of the bridesmaids the ratio of foolish to wise in the Kingdom of God is about 50%.  (I don’t know how many weddings I have conducted in years gone by, but when it comes to bridesmaids 50% wise may seem a little on the hopeful side.)  The Greek adjective used here for foolish is mōron (μωρος).  It may sound familiar.  Their foolishness however was not that they were asleep when the bridegroom finally showed up – both wise and foolish, it says, were asleep.  It was rather that they had insufficient oil for their lamps when the moment came.  They were not ready.  The wise ones (and this is how it has always seemed to me since I first heard this story as a child brought up to share happily with my younger brother and sister, whether I wanted to or not) the wise ones may have been wise, but were nevertheless rude and uncaring: …there wouldn’t then be enough for all of us… go and buy some for yourselves.  And while the foolish were away doing that…the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.  Later the (foolish) bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’  

It ends up with a slap in the face.  The door is shut.  He doesn’t know them.  This is in conflict with the prevailing sentimental religious hopefulness, that everyone gets there in the end… God shuts no one out… or as we learn in American movies: Everything’s gonna be just fine.  So we have a task as intelligent grown-up Christian believers in the 21^st century, to find the wisdom (σωφια) here if we can. 

The foolish bridesmaids had neglected to have enough oil.  In both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, oil is a potent symbol… olive oil of course, supplying light; essential for food; olive oil was a useful skin emollient…  The great seven-branched menorah in the temple was fuelled by oil (not candles).  There was a prevailing myth that its oil never ran out.  Olive oil was pretty well essential for life in the ancient world.  In ancient Greece it was a capital offence to cut down an olive tree. 

So we in the 21^st century might ask, what is essential, in that kind of way, in the life of faith – and living as we do in a maelstrom of competing faiths and increasingly no faith at all?  What makes the difference between a formal religion of generally good behaviour, sneered at by much of the world -- and a life of faith supplied, empowered, enlightened daily by love, grace and mercy…?  It is not a question of who gets to heaven and who doesn’t.  Rather, it is a question, as Jesus said, of setting self aside.  The enemy of faith is (grammar alert!) the first person possessive pronoun – my needs, my rights, my faith, my God, my church, my opinions, my tribe, our culture, our way of life…  In contemplative silence and stillness, nothing is less appropriate… words have ceased and hands are empty.  With the help of God we are gently consenting to the setting of self aside. 

Loving my neighbour…3 November 2017

The discussion last Friday brought us once again to the practicalities of a consistent Christian life... questions asked by people who live in the real world.  Living with neighbours, for instance, as we know, can turn into a bracing test of Christian behaviour.  We can become bewildered and confused by anger, it may be, or frustration or defeat.  A neighbour who won’t cut down a tree… a neighbour who does cut down a tree… a neighbour who defaults to abuse… a neighbour who has drunken parties… 

One of our really effective teachers, Esther de Waal, has written about what she calls pausing at the threshold.[1]  Esther de Waal is an Anglican, a Benedictine Oblate and a writer also on Celtic spirituality.  She lives in the Welsh borders.  She says there are different kinds of lines in the sand, as it were.  You can have, for instance, a boundary.  A boundary is probably there for a reason and it is to be respected.  The American poet, Robert Frost, wrote about boundaries, Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down…  but then he quotes his neighbour who simply says, Good fences make good neighbours.   Or you can have a frontier.  That is another matter.  A frontier says, Stay out!  It says, if you want to come in you must seek permission.  The President of the United States is making a frontier, 10 metres high, between the USA and Mexico.  Huge prefabricated sections are already being tested.   Or thirdly, you can have a borderland.   A borderland is a meeting place where different people, cultures and histories, ways of life, languages, races, encounter and learn from each other.  So a borderland will be where people might change their minds or alter their opinions.  At any rate, you can’t be sure of the outcome of your hospitality.

Moreover, in a borderland, what happens on the border happens also personally and interiorly.  We have borders, lines in the sand, not only between our properties, or between countries, but in our minds and hearts.  If the border within, as it were, is a borderland, then you know to practise hospitality, as the scriptures understand that word.  You are not afraid of the meeting of ideas and opinions, or different creeds or races.  As Esther de Waal points out, you still have your own boundaries within – you know who you are, you know what is unresolved within you and you are giving hospitality also to your doubts, fears and frailties.  An inner borderland is an open mind.  But if it is a frontier it is not open, it will be threatened by change, perhaps even by truth.

In practical terms then, if our inner boundaries are a borderland, then we are always available for listening.  Perhaps we want to understand what lies behind abuse or intransigence.  We discern when to leave well alone.  We do what we can always for peace and understanding.  We come to any encounter in the borderland as people of prayer, of the meeting of silence and stillness.  It is not a magic formula, it doesn’t solve everything – but it is the way we live.

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[1] Esther de Waal: To Pause At The Threshold – Reflections on Living on the Border (Morehouse, 2001).