Dark Care - 28 August 2020

Part of one of the Old Testament readings for next Sunday:  O Lord… remember me and visit me, and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors. In your forbearance do not take me away; know that on your account I suffer insult.  Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.  I did not sit in the company of merrymakers, nor did I rejoice; under the weight of your hand I sat alone, for you had filled me with indignation.  Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.  Therefore thus says the Lord: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.  (Jeremiah 15:15-19)

Post equitem sedet atra cura – behind the horseman sits dark care – wrote the Latin poet Horace of someone fleeing on horseback from the law.  Jeremiah is not fleeing from the law, but in his zeal he has plunged into atra cura, the dark hole of depression… and this was not at all what he thought should be the reward for his devotion and faithfulness.  He is very angry.  He wants retribution on his persecutors.  He is angry with God: …on your account I suffer insult …you have filled me with indignation.  Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.  Well, that stops the conversation.  It’s all God’s fault.  A passage like this however could be uneasily familiar to anyone who has endured real depression, or what St John of the Cross called the Dark Night. 

God’s response to Jeremiah starts with one Hebrew word which is, I think, the key to it all.  Shub שב) in Hebrew) means to return – if you turn back, says this translation.  In Greek, and therefore in the Christian scriptures, it is metanoia (μετανοια), often translated repentance.  But metanoia is not feeling sorry, it is turning around and going home.  In spiritual understanding, this returning is the fundamental movement of faith and love.  It is not that the prodigal son feels sorry… of course he does… it is that he goes home, he returns, and on his returning he finds an open door.  In our prayer of silence and stillness, the primary movement is returning, away from self, back to the simplicity of the mantra.  God says to Jeremiah in his deep distress: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me.

In returning and rest you shall be saved, the prophet Isaiah tells Israel, in quietness and trust shall be your strength.[1]  Father Laurence Freeman points out that this returning, metanoia, is the process of being still, shedding the carapace of the high maintenance self, what Jesus called leaving self behind… living more each day as the self God sees and knows and loves, the self not deceived by self…

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[1] Isaiah 30:15

Seventy times seven - 28 August 2020

The Epistle for next Sunday: If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” (Romans 12:18-20)

In this cliché-ridden age we often hear, “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy…”  What would you wish on your worst enemy?  Paul, in this difficult statement, says first that we should leave vengeance to God.  The problem with that is, firstly, that we are still vengeful, just passing the buck – and secondly, that God doesn’t always come up with the vengeance we might think appropriate.  Then Paul says we should be kind to our enemies because that heaps burning coals on their heads.[1]  Kill them by kindness, evidently.  The best thing he says in this passage is, If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

But it reminded me of the passage in Matthew:  Peter said to him: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive?   As many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him: Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21-22)  If you are a literalist, that’s 490.  To this day scholars argue about whether the Greek means 70 x 7, or 70, or 7 + 70 = 77… whatever, Jesus is saying there is no end to forgiveness.  And thus, I may say, he makes most of us feel guilty. 

I think everything I have ever preached or taught about this has been some level of compromise.  There are wounds that are frankly unforgivable.  There are acts and atrocities that need to be remembered from one generation to another.  There are people in adamant refusal to admit what they have done, let alone repent of it.  There are sins whose damage can’t be repaired, no matter what we might wish, say or do.  Human response has moved from lynching to fervid Victim Impact Statements, to public humiliation, effectively declaring someone a non-person, even injecting lethal drugs while victims watch, and feel “closure”. 

Richard Holloway used to be the Episcopal Church Bishop of Edinburgh and Primate of Scotland.  He resigned and became agnostic – and began to produce some of his most luminous writing.  In 2002, in the wake of the Twin Towers atrocity and other hideous things, he wrote a small book, On Forgiveness – the subtitle is: How can we forgive the unforgivable?[2]  It is one of the wisest and most sensitive books I have ever read.  In his final chapter this agnostic makes a point I had never heard before:  

There are some deeds so monstrous that they will drive us mad if we do not forgive them… Only unconditional, impossible forgiveness can switch off the engine of madness and revenge and invite us, with infinite gentleness, to move on into the future.  

It is what he calls the insanity of grace.  A person grounded in the discipline of silence and stillness, a person sitting light to the ego, someone personally a recipient of grace, might just manage to do what Jesus prescribed, in love, and peace, and freedom.  Holloway writes:  …the mystery remains that this prodigal universe sometimes redeems its own pain through extraordinary souls who, from somewhere beyond all possibility, forgive the unforgivable.

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[1] He is quoting from Proverbs 25:21-22

[2] Richard Holloway: On Forgiveness (Canongate Books, 2002)

Cheerful Compassion - 21 August 2020

 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.  For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.  We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. (Romans 12:3-8) 

…part of the Epistle for next Sunday.  Paul is writing, probably from Corinth in Greece, to the infant church in Rome, people he has not yet met… he hopes to stay with them soon, on his way to Spain.  Here, in the latter part of his towering letter, he is setting out the many ways in which faith in Christ is transforming us – Do not be conformed to this world, he writes, but be transformed -- the Greek word is metamorphosis -- by the renewing of your minds. 

It is hard to imagine what life as a Christian in 1st century Rome, day by day, would have been like.  But it would have borne some resemblances to life in Level 4 lockdown, possibly Level 3.  And Paul is telling them they are different.  They are being changed by Christ.  This has implications in hardship, anxiety and adversity.  They need not expect to think or react in the ways many others do.  They should not be afraid of being different, of finding that they are not sharing some of the prevailing prejudices, fears and judgements.  Even within the church, he points out, they all differ from each other… God has gifted each person differently, and Paul lists some of the gifts.  He ends the list with the one that really caught my attention:  compassion, he writes, in cheerfulness.  

Well that’s interesting… cheerful compassion… indeed the Greek word is hilarity1.  It is as though among the changes Christ may work in us is the readiness to laugh, a disinclination to take ourselves too seriously.  We often talk about how the discipline of contemplative life and prayer tends to distance us from the ego and all its fears and requirements.  It is a kind of freedom from self.  We are, as Jesus put it, leaving self behind… painfully sometimes, and too slowly, but gladly.  And Paul spells out some of the consequences in his next few sentences:  

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.  If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 

[1] From hilaros (ἱλαρος) – joyous, mirthful, merry.  The word occurs in the title of one of the most ancient Christian hymns, “Hail Gladdening Light”, Φῶς Ἱλαρόν (Phōs Hilaron), sung at the lighting of the evening candles.

In Tyre and Sidon - 14 August 2020

 

The gospel for next Sunday[1] has Jesus in Jerusalem confronting the pharisees and scribes.   They had seen Jesus’s disciples eating without washing their hands first.  We think of hand washing before food as sensible, among Jews however it was a religious requirement, and the scribes and pharisees were shocked.  This legalistic piety seemed always to irritate Jesus.  You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he said: “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me… teaching human precepts as doctrines”.  And he proceeds to explain that what defiles a person is not eating non-kosher food or failing to wash your hands, but what comes from the heart, the words and actions that reveal the inner person.  Jesus was angry – blind guides of the blind, he called the religious leaders.

Then, says Matthew, he left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  Well, that’s quite a walk[2], north into foreign territory… as though Jesus needed to distance himself from Judaism and its scribes and pharisees.  Today the district of Tyre and Sidon is coastal Lebanon.  Back then it was part of Philistia.  It was inhabited by Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians… Palestinians.  And, says Matthew, a Canaanite woman came and started shouting.  She was desperate for her daughter, tormented by a demon.  Jesus’s first reaction is to ignore the woman.  She pesters them, the disciples urge Jesus to send her away.  Jesus seems to agree – I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  The modern way of saying that would be, “Not my territory… not my problem”.  It sounds to me as though he is still feeling conflicted.  On the one hand he has this foreign woman looking for his help – on the other hand his own people are being led elsewhere by blind guides.  Lost sheep, he calls the Jews of Jerusalem.  The woman persists.  Jesus then says, cruelly, I can’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.  But she replies, Even the dogs can have the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. 

Here is Jesus himself being shown the way forward, God’s way, by a woman… foreign and pagan, sunk in superstition, who knows nothing but her love of her sick daughter.  Back in Jerusalem they are bothered about ritual ablutions – Matthew has Jesus saying in another place[3], The pharisees do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long…  Blind guides, he says yet again, you strain out gnats but swallow camels.  But now Jesus is remembering the wideness of mercy… that love and truth may be found, as it were in foreign lands, beyond the safe walls of the church… even as far away from righteousness as the district of Tyre and Sidon…  Missionaries of another era liked to say, patronisingly, that they were in partibus infidelium – in the lands of the infidels, the unbelievers, the land of unknowing.  But those who were paying attention there learned wisdom they didn’t learn in church.  And when you think about it, that is more or less where we are in stillness and silence, living in a time and culture of unbelief and confusion… waiting for God without requirements or preconditions, but open to be taught.

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[1] Matthew 15:10-28

[2] 450-500 kilometres, roughly Auckland to Palmerston North.

[3] Matthew 23:5, 24

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 [RM1]

The Fourth Watch - 7 August 2020

 

In next Sunday’s gospel lesson[1] we hear how the disciples were rowing across Lake Galilee at night.  Jesus had made them go on ahead, while he stayed on the far side of the lake, alone, in prayer.  But a storm blew up and they were in danger.  In the fourth watch of the night, it says…  Both Romans and Jews divided the night into four watches, each three hours long.  This was the fourth watch, roughly between 3 am and 6 am.  So they had already been rowing quite a while.  Perhaps in the storm and the dark they didn’t know where they were.  It was in the fourth watch that they saw Jesus coming to them, walking on the waves… I should mention here that the fourth watch was also, in the ancient mind, the time when the demons of the night start to stream back to where they belong, before daylight.  The disciples assumed they were seeing a phantom, says Matthew.

Well, let’s say something about the fourth watch.  I think we know it quite well.  It is when you have to report at the airport at 7 am, or you have a 3-hour written exam at 9 am, and you haven’t slept since midnight.  In a refugee camp in Syria or South Sudan it might be the time when it seems nothing will ever be good again.  For any of us it may be the time when we are unaccountably wide awake for no reason whatever except to annoy us.  Or it is the blessed moment when the fractious toddler finally goes to sleep, or a wandering adolescent finally gets home via a downstairs window.  Anything that happens seems magnified in the fourth watch... and the storm doesn’t have to be a storm on the lake. 

...and in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.  Now, do not treat this as some official narrative of events – if we do, we trivialise it and miss the point.  It is the early church’s way of telling their experience of the risen and present Jesus, in the storms they were encountering.  What they are saying here is no surprise to anyone who practises a discipline of contemplative prayer.   In the turmoil, whatever it may be, or in the anxiety, or the loss, he is present.  Somehow he is above the storm.  That is where Peter would like to be too, and he calls to Jesus.  If Peter also can walk on the waves, then all his troubles will be over.  But of course he can’t, he sinks, Jesus rescues him from drowning.  They are depicting how they found faith in the midst of persecution and daily insecurity.

In many ways it seems to be the fourth watch of the night now, in human events… if we list only world-wide intractable viral disease, the resurgence of racism, warfare and the displacement of millions, the rule of tyrants and bullies, and the menace of climate change…  It is a true kairos.  If we have found how to be still and silent, how to lay aside fear, including the fear of death, and the clamant demands of self… then the eye of the heart, as Paul calls it[2], may indeed see him bringing hope and peace and a way forward each day, in faith and helpfulness.  As Peter found, we get a clearer view of what we can and what we cannot do to save the world.  We learn the importance of being, and of being true. 

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[1] Matthew 14:22-33

[2] Ephesians 1:18