Passion Sunday, 23 March 2018 – Obedient to death

…he humbled himself and became obedient to death. (Philippians 2:8)

The usual way, in the church, of dealing with the next week or so is to follow the drama.   It begins with Palm Sunday and the children singing Hosanna… all the events of Holy Week leading up to the Last Supper… the cruel horror of Good Friday… the empty abyss of Saturday… the lighting of the Easter flame, and the Good News of Easter morning.  People involve themselves in the drama – and in the human realities of cruelty and pain -- as much or as little as they choose.  Some make sure to remain securely within their comfort zones.

Not having to preside at these things any more as I once did, there is space to look at it in other ways.  I was struck by Paul’s phrase about Jesus, in the middle of the lyrical passage in Philippians 2… he became obedient to death.  We have encountered that word obedient before.  The Greek word Paul uses here is formed from the verb meaning to listen.  The only difference is a prefix which intensifies it – so it means to listen intently, constantly, to devote attention.[1]  “Obedient” certainly does not mean that Jesus doggedly obeyed an imperious divine will that decreed death for him.  Obedient to death, rather, means that he trusted the mutual bond of love with the Father, even down the path which led where it did.  It is such a shame that the words obey and obedience denote in our day mainly some slavish adherence to authority or to some law.  The biblical word by contrast implies a life of listening and consent, in love.  Jesus knew, I think, that that bond, enlivened by prayer, continues through and beyond death.

Approaching Easter 2018, then, what I seem to see is a civilisation (if it can be called that), at any rate a generation marked increasingly by death, swamped almost everywhere by guns and other ways of killing.  State-sponsored assassination is the latest, nothing new in history admittedly, but it has become more blatant.  I see a western culture terrified of ageing and of vulnerability – and more recently for some reason, the growing phenomenon of senility, like a premature extended goodbye…  But whoever we are, as we know, we are walking that same trail of mortality. 

Chris Nichol, who runs the Sunday morning hymn session on channel 1, last Sunday described Jesus’s path to the cross evocatively as “Me Too”.  Jesus identifies in his own life and body the path we follow… which for many, often, becomes bloody, painful, pointless or humiliating.  “Me Too”, the phrase that has emerged for women to identify with the abuse of women, serves quite well to describe Jesus going to Jerusalem and Calvary.  But the point is deeper than that.  Jesus walked that path not as some grim inevitability, but in loving obedience, in the bond of abiding.  It was no less terrible for him, no less frightening, and I think the gospel narratives reflect that.  But he was hearing a call of love, as we might.  When Pilate cynically asked “What is truth?” Jesus was in touch with light and truth, and the love that rules sovereign over life and death.  Moreover, arraigned before Pilate, bound, flogged and humiliated, he witnessed to it, you may recall, by silence.

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[1] ὑπηκοος  (hupēkoos) = hearkening, listening to.

Lent V, 16 March 2018 – I will write it on their hearts

The lectionary Hebrew scriptures reading for next Sunday takes us to the Prophet Jeremiah:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.  (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

Jesus would have been familiar with these ancient words, read in the synagogue, taught and studied.  And indeed, there is a certain maturity of faith in which “the law” – we would be more inclined to say God’s Word, perhaps – becomes inscribed on our hearts.  Remember, a couple of weeks ago, we were thinking about Jesus and compassion, and how the ancient world assumed that our deepest thoughts and emotions are seated in the inner parts, and they use the Hebrew words meaning bowel or heart… well, here it is in Jeremiah: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. 

Inscribed on our hearts, however, does not mean that our minds are therefore closed.  In Christian terms it means that the way of Jesus has become the focal part of us, deeply affecting our choices and decisions, and the ways we react to events.  Perhaps in computer terms it is our default position.  It may be that we derive a deep inner satisfaction (what the Bible sometimes calls joy) from our awareness that this the way we choose, the path less travelled, with all its implications.  But at the same time we are not afraid of newness, of hearing or learning other things.  The way of Jesus opens our minds.  Truth is not fenced in to keep it safe and unsullied.  We don’t have to protect God’s Word.

And moreover, we are not engaged in some nervous continuing conflict with God.  Jesus teaches and shows a stable, confident relationship of love.  We do not live in fear, then, of offending God, having to ask, “Where did we go wrong? why is God punishing us?”  Jesus frequently taught, “Don’t be afraid… why are you fearful…?”  Jesus counsels living without fear of God, of life, or of tomorrow.

The relationship is within.  We encourage each other, of course, and always should, but this inner bond is at another level than discussion groups or trendy spirituality.  The writer of the 1^st Letter of Peter counsels:  Let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.[1] 

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[1] I Peter 3:4

Lent IV, 9 March 2018 – A Jewish teacher

Jesus lived and died a devout and practising Jew, a teacher, a young rabbi.  Christians need to be reminded of this, even more so in our day.  Jesus never heard of the Christian Church or the New Testament.  To 1^st century Jewish ears, his teaching was fresh, startling, often radical.  A lot of it exists for us in the form of sayings, aphorisms, and of course parables.  Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… You see how it is relentlessly counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the pure in heart… the peacemakers…[1]  In large sectors of American and other faith communities today, to be blessed is to be comfortably off, to be happy, and safe – more or less the opposite of what Jesus taught. 

You shall not kill, said the Law of Moses…  Well, said Jesus, if you’re angry you are already in peril.  The point, he taught, is to be reconciled with your adversary.  You shall not commit adultery, says the Law...  Well, says Jesus, lust, greed and possessiveness condemn you, whether you commit adultery or not.   An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, decreed the Law…  No, says Jesus.  As Gandhi put it in our day, an eye for an eye simply makes the whole world blind -- which is more or less what is happening.  You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy, said the Law…  Love your enemy, said Jesus.  He stood conventional wisdom on its head.

When you give money… do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…  When you pray, do not heap up empty words -- go into your room and shut the door…  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…  Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing…  Do not judge; first take the log out of your own eye…  If you forgive others, your heavenly Father will forgive you… as though the unforgiving are simply unforgiven.  Of course all this is hard, and complicated, in practice.  It is a lifetime of effort – made simpler for us, many have found, in a discipline of prayer and silence in which we are open and consenting to these changes being built in us by God’s Spirit, the same Spirit who empowered, motivated and taught Jesus.   He said, My yoke is easy, my burden is light.[2]  But it is not that we are trying our best to imitate him – that would indeed be a heavy burden -- it is that we are learning to receive the spiritual power and inspiration he knew.  We are learning to set ego aside, to take ourselves less seriously. 

I think the Spirit can use the experiences we have accumulated by our senior years, and the lessons we have learned along the way.  We can be alert to this.  We have, if we’re halfway sensible, developed a sense of what matters and what doesn’t and perhaps never did.  The many ways in which human frailty and error surface, in cruelty and stupidity, selfishness and blindness… there are few surprises for us now.  The way of the Jewish Jesus makes profound sense, especially in the context of the prayer of silence and stillness he himself used. 

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[1] The “Sermon on the Mount” is in Matthew chapters 5-7, and in parts of Luke.

[2] Matthew 11:30

Lent III, 2 March 2018 – Using a whip

Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  He told those who were selling doves, “Take these things out of here! (John 2:15-16)

I wonder if there exists, in some church in Italy or Spain, a tattered grubby bunch of cords claiming to be a holy relic, Jesus’s whip.  Given the state of religion, it might even have special powers attributed to it, such as repelling tax inspectors.  This is one of those irritating times when the lectionary gives us a major event in the gospel story, something attested in all four gospels… and it’s an embarrassment.  Jesus furiously charged through the temple precinct, overturning tables, scattering money, chasing traders and their wares out.  And I can assure you, if you consult 100 different preachers and commentators on the numerous websites available, there is nervousness and an inability to come to terms with the fact that Jesus raged, shouted and hit people.

During Lent we are looking at the pre-Easter Jesus, various pictures provided by the gospel records – and we are asking what we find there for our grown-up faith and our senior years.  One writer I came across this week was remembering his childhood and youth, and how, on entering church he would be reminded at the door to be quiet and still.  Yes, we were expected to compose ourselves.  The writer’s point is that he mourns the loss of reverent stillness in worship and in the sanctuary.

But this story is not about how to behave in church.  Jesus found the house of God given over to a racket.  You have to imagine the sacrificial animals waiting to be sold and slaughtered, their vendors calling out the prices and herding the animals, the racket in more than one sense of the money changers – because you had to buy your animal with the temple currency, not Roman.  Ordinary folk coming to Jerusalem to fulfil their religious obligations were being royally ripped off, exploited by the powerful of the temple cult.  So Jesus was angry.  My Father’s house, he quoted[1], shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.

Jesus taught and practised a very different response to God.  In returning and rest you will be saved, in quietness and trust will be your strength, said the prophet Isaiah.[2]  Prayer is not trying to impress God with how busy or sacrificial we are, but entails the opening of the heart in stillness and silence, in love and trust.  It is a matter of being fully present to God – which is often difficult amid liturgical busyness and chatter.   The church doesn’t always make it easy.  Jesus intervened on behalf of ordinary folk, and in the interests of peace and simplicity.  The temple had got between God and the people, and was making money out of it.  Yes, I think he was very angry.

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[1] Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11

[2] Isaiah 30:15