A field at Anathoth – 27 September 2019

Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” (Jeremiah 32:8)

There’s a very nice range of pickles and preserves in the supermarkets with the brand name Anathoth.  It is a Hebrew feminine plural noun and it means “answers”.  When you say I want answers, anathoth is what you want.  Jeremiah is standing there in the ruins of Jerusalem and the temple, the people being herded off into exile in Babylon, Judah now a vassal state of Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah is challenged to buy his cousin’s field at Anathoth.  It is scarcely a smart time to be buying real estate.  But Jeremiah buying that field is what we call proleptic prophecy.  Proleptic prophecy is an act of faith – Jeremiah buys the field as though Jerusalem were restored and all was peace and prosperity again.  In Hebrew faith however it was more than that… the gesture of buying the field mysteriously helped recovery and restoration to happen.  Jeremiah drove a stake in the ground.

And when Jesus’s followers in our day find ourselves willing to be different, unwilling to be deaf to the call we hear, to the scriptures we love, to the way that opens for us to walk…then we are anticipating another day of faith, which we may not live to see.  When in a clamorous, violent, confused, rancorous world we opt for the treasures of silence and stillness, humility and the ways of love… our feeble voices are speaking to the world from a better time and a better place.  We are buying a field at Anathoth.

Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see we wait for it with patience… words of St Paul.[1]  We don’t see the church of the future, and it’s hard to imagine.  What we do see is Jesus’s people, far more around the world than we realise, who respond instinctively to his way, his call, his placing his life on the line, his lack of arrogance.  Many are in the formal church, many not.  And they arise from every christian sect, or none, every ethnicity… as though those categories are less and less decisive any more, or helpful.

Waiting moreover is not some unfortunate choice thrust upon us.  It is purposeful waiting.  We need to learn it.  It is honouring God, who is encountered when we are still, and – to put it plainly -- have shut up.  Elijah on Mount Carmel encountered God not in the earthquake, wind and fire, but in what in the Hebrew translates as a silent voice of stillness.  As Jesus taught, the kingdom is already present, in our hearts and in our midst.  We join him there, as it were, on the field of Anathoth… as the writer to the Hebrews put it, the promise of things not seen.

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[1] Romans 8:25

Another kind of church – 20 September 2019

If you are allowed the Old Testament reading on Sunday, you will hear one of Jeremiah’s “lamentations”.  Judah is under prolonged siege by the armies of Babylon… cruel times, like today, where conflict destroys life and culture and leaves a wasteland.  Jeremiah is shattered by the result – the city is gone, crops and fields burned, the temple is in ruins, and the people are terrified, desperately needy, scattered everywhere.  My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? (Jeremiah 8:18-22)

Sarah Bachelard, the Australian Anglican priest of the Benedictus Community in Canberra, gave five talks at the John Main Seminar in Vancouver last month.  She asked, how is the Christian church to be from now on?  It’s an interesting question for us, caught as we are now in a strangely similar context but in the 21^st century?  What are the church and christian profession for, as the climate teeters, as power is increasingly misused, truth made negotiable, as millions become displaced and prey to starvation and disease – and as the formal church in the west collapses, except in the meantime for where it is offering excitement, entertainment and credulity to needy people instead of faith, a kind of credulous idolatry that now needs to be named as such because however well-meaning in places it misrepresents the way of Jesus.

Another reality in all this for us is conflicting voices, different opinions, dividing people into parties and sects, deeply so in religion.  Then there is our natural reluctance to believe the facts.  We are products of a largely stable life and faith now deeply under threat.  So, asks Dr Bachelard, from her land of drought and bush fires, how do we respond to Jesus here? 

We have no complete answer, but contemplatives learn how to let go of what needs now to be thanked and discharged.  We let go, not with rancour or loss, but by grace and with grace, because this is one of the key ways the Spirit of the Risen Christ opens doors in us to growth and understanding.  At this kairos in history, says Dr Bachelard, we are letting go, for instance, of christian tribalism, denominationalism, us and them.  We let go of infantilism, the kind of religion that never grows up.  Of course, what we let go of won’t change anything much, except in ourselves.  But, says Dr Bachelard, whatever the church is like from now on, it will need to be a school for christian maturation, for making disciples who are teachable, open and humble and hospitable.  The way of Jesus is clear enough from the gospels, and we know that as we learn stillness and silence, and how to let go of what’s in the way, the Spirit of truth, as Jesus promised guides us into all the truth, from within.  No one knows whether we can save the planet, but again, contemplatives learn what the Psalmist knew, for instance: waiting and longing, and being what Jesus taught.

Silence: a spring within us - 13 September 2019

(This week the group was led by Jenny Collins.)

It seems we, as a culture, are deeply afraid of silence. The running from silence is undoubtedly running from God, from our soul, from ourselves, from the truth, and from freedom.

Richard Rohr (A Spring within us)

The Dominican Sisters who taught me were fond of mottoes. One, ‘ Veritas’  meaning ‘truth’ or ‘the search for truth’  was embroidered on our school blazers. A second, ‘Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere’,  meaning ‘to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation’ they attributed to St Thomas Aquinas a philosopher, theologian and Doctor of the Church who was also a Dominican Friar. As the Sisters explained it, ‘contemplare’ underpinned their life as women religious and was the foundation for their work as teachers. 

As a young person, I rather liked ‘Veritas’; I could relate to the idea that my life could be shaped by a search for truth. If I think about it, it is probably one of the reasons I became a teacher and later an historian.  And I am sure it explains why so many of us love  music – that ethereal expression of truth and beauty. Aldous Huxley put it this way, ‘After silence, that which comest nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music’.

Over the years I’ve  had more trouble with ‘contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere’.  The Latin is rather poetic but putting it into practice  is rather more complex.  As a teacher of  a class of 30+ adolescents, silence was an unusual occurrence; for a parent of four children silence offered a  rare escape from the demands of family life.

Recently I have come to value meditation for the peace it offers, the truth it touches and the surprisingly shifts it bring to life. Of course there are still the distractions of a busy brain and the wayward thoughts that chase you out of stillness. Speaking the mantra can help but its so easy to drift away.

           

I find Richard Rohr reassuring on this subject. He tells us that God meets us exactly where we are – not in some imaginary state of perfection. And we can find the way to silence when we learn to let go of  our carefully created ego and return to what the Zen masters call the  ‘face we had before we were born’.  So  now I begin to  understand;  to practice ‘contemplare’ is to be in an empty space, made emptier by my failure. There, as Richard Rohr puts it, God is able to speak to us and sometimes we are able to hear.  In that space,  where we  ‘stop thinking and just look’ we encounter the nothingness, nakedness, and emptyness where God can most powerfully meet us and teach us.  (Jenny Collins)

Jesus turns around – 6 September 2019

It may be interesting to be reminded that someone, somehow, at some time, introduced us to Jesus.  It may have been parents, in our childhood, even before we were explicitly aware… biblical stories read to us.  It may have been more generally, in church… or a particular youth leader we admired and listened to.  Perhaps it was a friend and contemporary, or some evangelist up on a platform.  It may have been something we read, all by ourselves.  Jesus invited people to follow him… and indeed, in every age, people do.  As Fr Laurence Freeman points out, at first we see him as it were from behind as we follow, and catch the echo of his teachings.  “Follow” is the word so often used.  Some follow whole-heartedly, others tentatively or timidly, intermittently…

But at some point, it may be dramatically and all at once, or it may be much more diffused over time – which only shows how we are all different and how the Spirit blows where it wills – at some point, it is as though he turns and sees someone following[1]… he asks who touched me?[2] – he addresses us, he calls my name.  At some point, by whatever means, it becomes personal, an encounter or an awareness we are disinclined to talk about, deeper than we want or need to try to describe.  The point is, our heart is now involved along with mind and will. 

This is part of trying to understand what makes a Christian disciple in the 21^st century.  And it is important to stress, for one thing, that the Spirit who does this work, the Spirit Jesus promised, is not likely to be bound by our understanding of what is proper or orderly, or to be restricted by what we always thought, or by sacramental doctrine, or by our moral performance.  We have to stress moreover what is obvious, that this discipleship does not miraculously solve our problems.  But now we are seeing them differently. 

We need to make two points – they may seem to you to be a statement of the obvious.  The first is that it is not compulsory to be a Christian.  Most people in the world are not, and some of us are personally disinclined to tell anyone they should be.  “Christian” happens when someone is encountered by Jesus, at the level of heart and will.  It is an interchange of recognition and love, and life is different thereafter.  It is when Jesus, as it were, calls my name. The second point is that the Jesus we encounter is not a friend of fences or walls or divisions social or otherwise.  This is reflected in our prayer and in our life, as disciples.  We are having to say this repeatedly at present… because our world, our politics, our social systems, our attitudes, seem to be getting more stratified and exclusive.  We are building walls.  Some religion likes to divide people into “saved” and “unsaved”, “baptised” and “unbaptised”.  It may be useful for administrative purposes, but is completely unhelpful if what we are after is to teach the way of Christ.  What he “saves” us from is self, and sets us free to live as the Creator intended.

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[1] John 1:38, et al. 

[2] Luke 8:45

Reflections

(The group was led on Friday 29 August 2019 by Dr John Collins.  This is what he said in introduction…)

Reflection for Meditation Group

I was reflecting on the  gospel that will be read in many churches this Sunday. In it you will find these familiar words.

'When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take your seat in the place of honour. No, when you are a guest, make your way to the lowest place and sit there…

"Taking the place of honour" caters to the ego emphasizing  the important person I think I am, my mana, my perceived rights. It is a statement that we are in charge and this is what is going to happen. Whereas “Taking the lower place” is an act of faith and humility.

In meditation we put the ego to one side , letting everything go. Our heart and mind take the lowest seat and we are there in faith.

Ross reminded us some time ago that the word humility comes from the Latin Humus, which means the earth, the soil; reminding us that we are just a small part of God’s creation. This Sunday many Christian Churches begin a Season of Creation, a tradition which originated in the orthodox church .

Much of our historic attitude to the created world around us has been one of domination and exploitation. The consequences of this approach are becoming crystal clear with climate change, loss of many species and ongoing pollution of our land and our oceans. We have become aware that we have  been taking the place of honour in the created world and using our power thoughtlessly.  Sunday’s gospel calls us to humility, back to the Earth; and  faith which can translate into our caring engagement with all God’s creation . Letting go of our desire to control as we do in meditation is a good place to start.

John Collins