Advent I, Stay awake – 27 November 2020

 

From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates… But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.  (Mark 13:28-29, 32-37)

Our neighbour grew a fig tree at our boundary, outside our kitchen window.  And true enough, it produces leaves, then fruit, signalling summer.  I for one am grateful for these simple signposts.  From the fig tree learn its lesson…  The lesson according to Jesus is, Wake up!  He is very much in favour of being awake.  Some years ago I was staying with my cousin and her German family in Freiburg.  They had two hefty sons in late adolescence.  And one morning I heard their mother getting them out of bed – she called Wachet Auf! – Wake Up!  It took me by surprise because that is the title of an old German Advent hymn, which Bach set to a famous chorale.  The hymn pictures the watchmen on the ramparts, needing to be awake, straining to see the first light of dawn.  Stay awake, Jesus repeats… you don’t know what is going to happen… be alert!  The last thing you want is to be found asleep. 

Jesus links this need for wakefulness with knowing what the time[1] is, as we say – what is going on… summer is near…  Sometimes we don’t know what day of the week it is.  I have another cousin, a lovely person, who has no idea what is going on in the world, or why it’s happening, never pays attention to the news, has nothing to say if you mention particular people or events.  At the same time, her up-to-date knowledge of local people and gossip is encyclopaedic.  Well, perhaps her charism, as we say, is more local and social than global and political. 

In discipleship, awake means also being alert to the effect our words and actions have on other people.  In the silence and stillness of contemplative life and prayer we increase our sensitivity to how others are feeling and reacting.  We learn to suspend reaction or response, but rather to be silent and still, and to wait.  We take leave of any need to respond verbally to everything we see or hear, especially with stories of what happened to me… because we are awake, first, to the other person’s struggle and the load they bear, not so much with solutions as with presence, and with God who is the healer.  So the prayer we practise, for all its stillness and silence, in fact wakes us up.  We are ready to listen, compliant to change, humbler, better equipped, open rather than defensive, less afraid of life…

Mark recorded these sayings at a time when the believers widely expected Jesus would return at any time.  We are long past that.  But Jesus’s requirements remain – you don’t ever know what is around the corner.  Being awake is quite a good idea… rather than day-dreaming, living in dreams and fantasies, dining out on memories, or living in fear.  Being awake is being in touch with reality, with the facts of life and death, and with presence and grace of God in it all.

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[1] The Greek word used is our old friend kairos.

Compunction - 20 November 2020

 

Compunction, I think, is not a word we use frequently.  If you say you have no compunction about doing something, you probably mean that you think you can do it, or say it, without hesitation or guilt… You may mean that even if you have hesitation, you will do it all the same. 

Compunction however is quite an important word in monastic circles – and none of that is what the monks mean by compunction.  Thomas Merton says:  The clear-sighted recognition and mature acceptance of our own limitations is called compunction.  Compunction is a spiritual grace, an insight into our own depths which, in one glance, sees through our illusions about ourselves, sweeps aside our self-deceptions and daydreams, and shows us ourselves exactly as we are.  But at the same time it is a movement of love and freedom, a liberation from falsity, a glad and grateful acceptance of the truth...[1]

Well then, there is a bit of a problem… the litany for Ash Wednesday, for instance –Pour out a spirit of compunction… That is certainly about guilt.  The church, Catholic and Protestant, has a long-standing investment in guilt – either the guilt you feel over something you did or said, or didn’t do, or the anticipated guilt, the compunction, which might stop you doing it.  But here are the monks saying compunction is not about guilt, it is about knowing ourselves… as Merton puts it: a clear-sighted recognition and mature acceptance of our own limitations. 

I think Merton chose his words carefully.  Clear-sighted recognition comes first.  Here we are in the realm of grown-up faith, which is faith beyond dreams and day-dreams, fantasies and power-plays.  It is the faith that now knows with relief and gratitude that I do not rule the world or even my small corner of it.  I am not a stable genius.  It is not appropriate for me to make dogmatic statements, pronouncements or judgements.  Growing up, maturing in faith, brings better clear-sightedness.  I am aware of what I do not know, and of former opinions I have had to revise.  I hesitate now to say much – I would rather listen and think.  That is clear-sighted recognition…  Merton says it is a gift of grace, and it is a freedom, a release.

Then he says, mature acceptance of our own limitations.  This is when we realise, not only that we don’t know everything, but that we needn’t expect to – we are setting self aside, we are relinquishing the need to be superior.  If we lead, it is as Jesus said as one who serves.[2]  We are learning to live in mystery and wonder.  We can reflect upon ourselves.  We can stop trying to control other people.    

You see yet again how counter-cultural all this is.  If we understand compunction in the sense that not only the monks but all contemplatives do, then we can see also how it flows from a discipline of silence and stillness, distancing from the ego, the public self… more importantly, finding the self God sees, the self God made to be free.

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[1] Thomas Merton: The Silent Life

[2] Luke 22:27

Talents – 13 November 2020

 

The Parable of the Talents, the gospel reading for this Sunday (Matthew 25:14-30), is too long for me to read it here.  But that is only the first of its problems.  You recall… a wealthy man called three of his servants; gave one five talents, another one two, and the third just one talent.  Now this in itself stretches belief.  A talent was actually a measure of weight, and a talent of gold roughly equalled 6000 denarii in the coinage of the day.  One denarius was one day’s pay for a labourer.  So the first servant got the equivalent of 30,000 days’ pay.  The master then went away, it says, and the servants were expected to invest these talents and make a profit.  The master returns.  The first servant has doubled the investment, and so has the second.  The third servant, being timid, had buried his talent in the ground, and now he can hand it back entire and safe.  He gets fired and cast into outer darkness, while the other two are put in charge of many things. 

Now if this were a church parade of the Chamber of Commerce, I expect they would be quite happy and on familiar ground.  I always thought, when this parable came around in the lectionary, I should get the church treasurer to preach.  Anyone but me…  You don’t have to be a Christian to know you should use and develop your talents, not bury them in the ground. 

But is that what Jesus is saying?  We have a clue in the fact that the talents entrusted to servants were ridiculously valuable.  The servants would never have handled such wealth.  There is another clue in the fact that each servant received a different quantity of talents – the talents were not equally or equitably allocated.  We have a third clue in the fact that the master goes away, and returns for a reckoning.  So there is to be accountability. 

But I think St Paul gives us the most convincing way of looking at this parable.  In Paul’s First Letter to the church at Corinth he finds it necessary to make some pungent comments.  They had been dividing into parties, some for Paul, some for Apollos, and so on, as though life and faith were a game with winners and losers.  That may sound familiar, in this political and populist time…  Our conversation and news reporting, you may have noticed, have become full of sporting metaphors, some of them quite violent and uncompromising.  Paul will have none of this among Jesus’s followers.  Some of their leaders had been getting, in Paul’s word, puffed up[1]… and Paul rapidly deflates them:  What makes you different? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast…?  What does any of us have that we did not receive… the beating heart, the blood circulation, the bodily senses, the versatile brain, the capacity for love, the ability to reflect, the possibility of wisdom, the grace of gratitude, of reverence, of stepping aside or of fronting up… did we create any of these things…?  These are talents we were given, in varying degrees indeed, but in greater magnitude than we realise… to use and to develop.  I am not so sure what to say about eventual accountability… except that along the road we have discovered grace and mercy.  In the end, at any accounting, it will be love that is the winner.

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[1] Greek φυσιόω  (phusioō) – to inflate, to boast or brag. Surprisingly prevalent.

Dies irae – 6 November 2020

 

The lectionary next Sunday provides this somewhat timely passage from the prophet Amos as an alternative reading…  Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!  Why do you want the day of the Lord?  It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake.  Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?  I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.[1]

Well, in our day we are unlikely to cower in terror from Amos’s God of Wrath, or what he calls the Day of the Lord.  Dies Irae – Day of Wrath – is a medieval (or earlier) Latin hymn intended to scare us into righteousness.  You may know it from the high drama of Mozart’s or Verdi’s Requiem Mass, replete with trumpets and big drums.  Vatican II removed most of the Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass, but the very last verse, Pie Jesu, has become a trendy solo for boy soprano. 

Jesus does not depict a God of Wrath.  God is to be loved and served.  Jesus depicts a Creator of love and faithfulness, a forgiving God, who nevertheless requires what Amos says is essential… justice and righteousness.  Justice is to roll down like waters – it is to be there, and it is to be there for everyone, it is not to be manipulated or bought; justice is there to set things right, never to promote privilege or to be at the beck and call of the powerful.  Righteousness in Hebrew understanding is right relationships – you care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.  Time after time, in the Hebrew prophets, God is depicted as witheringly contemptuous of worship and sacrifice if it is not accompanied by justice and righteousness.  My Father’s house, said Jesus in the Jerusalem temple, is to be called a house of prayer for all people, but you have made it a den of thieves.[2]

Justice and righteousness suffer whenever religion is co-opted into the service of the powerful or the privileged.  Religion becomes distorted, even corrupted, to other requirements… whether we are thinking of the religion of Constantine, or the co-opting of Islam in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, or of Hinduism in India, or Buddhism in Thailand or Myanmar… or protestant evangelicalism in  the USA.  The proper place for faith is on the edges of the inside, where it is fed by simplicity and silence, where people are free to live without walls and divisions, labels and discrimination.  In the words of the writer to the Hebrews: Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured.  For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.[3]

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[1] Amos 5:18-24

[2] Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46

[3] Hebrews 13:13-14

Living liminally…3 – 30 October 2020

 

I am not sure that a protestant should be pointing this out, but the current Pope does seem (in some respects) to be living liminally, moving at times away from the inside towards the edge.  His latest thoughts on same-sex civil unions is a case in point.  So in response we have multiple priests and prelates protesting in high indignation from the inside of the inside, and at least one archbishop urging us to pray for the soul of Pope Francis.  I think his soul is OK… what interests me yet again is the principle, that the more we distance from the inside, the more clearly we are able to see and know and love Jesus and his teachings in their simplicity.  In the apocryphal Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the risen Jesus tells his disciples… find contentment at the level of the heart… And he adds:  Beyond what I have already given you, do not lay down any further rules nor issue laws as the Lawgiver, lest you be dominated by them.[1]

It reminds me of St Paul, writing to the Galatian church in exasperation – they had been turning back from the simplicity of the Way of Christ, to the familiar rules and forms of Judaism, to authority, to making barriers and building walls, defining truth, deciding who is in and who is out… and Paul writes:  O you foolish Galatians!  Who bewitched you?  …Now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian… you have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female – all are one in Christ Jesus.[2]  And that, it seems to me, is more or less what Pope Francis and others are seeing and saying from where they are.  It is the view from the edge of the inside that moved the Desert Fathers and Mothers after Constantine made the church and the faith official.  I think of the Beguines, women, mostly in Belgium and the Netherlands, from the late Middle Ages until today, who distanced themselves from clericalism and patriarchy, much to the consternation of the bishops, in order to live in community simply, freely, and in service to others, in response to Jesus.  Or the Quakers, the quiet folk who call themselves the Society of Friends – they date from the 17^th century, and in simple response to Jesus they make a sacrament of silence, they renounce violence, and their doors are open to anyone of good faith... Christlike characteristics, you might say.

You may be puzzled – you may want to come to the defence of the church – and I certainly understand that.  There have always been plenty of good and saintly people in the church, I know.  The distribution of grace and goodness is always a surprise.  But around Jesus there is a strange force that points us away from certainty and comfort, to where the wind is blowing somewhat, and new things appear.  One day he does not seem to be present at the altar rail, so much as waiting and speaking, perhaps in silence and stillness, far away from there.  And that, I would think, is the point of contemplative life and prayer.

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[1] Gospel of Mary Magdalene, p.9:1-4

[2] Galatians 3:1, 25-28.  Ὦ ἀνόητοι Γαλάται…!

Living liminally…2 – 23 October 2020

 

In the year 313 AD, with the Edict of Milan, the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion and forbad persecution.  No doubt he assumed the Christians would be grateful.  Father Richard Rohr says it may have been the single most unfortunate thing that ever happened to Christianity.  We moved from the margins of society, from maybe 2½ centuries of living at the limits, to the centre, to the place of power.  A lot of the church would have celebrated this – calamitously missing the point.  But Fr Richard says we developed a film over the eyes… After that, we couldn’t read anything that showed Jesus in confrontation with the establishment, because we were the establishment, and usually egregiously so. Clear teaching (by Jesus) on issues of greed, powerlessness, nonviolence, non-control, and simplicity were moved to the sidelines, if not actually countermanded.

And so, one of the astonishing facts of Christian history, many believers, not grateful at all, began to migrate from the cities to remoter parts of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Cappadocia… the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4^th and 5^th centuries.  We will come to them later, and we will mention others in history who disestablished themselves in order (as Bishop Richard of Chichester put it) to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.[1]  Richard of Albuquerque states simply that in the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes, we see that Jesus assumed his followers would be at the margins… otherwise these scriptures don’t make sense.  It is our habitat, it is where we are called to be.

If we reflect on our own experiences of church and discipleship over the years, is it not possible that God has been speaking God’s word to us in what we assumed were the negativities… the uninvited guilt-laden doubts; the times we interiorly disagreed or disliked; the times we went home feeling angry, sad, alienated; the times when something that should have happened didn’t; the church leaders, movers, shakers, who let us down in some way… but also the realisation that the church we knew actually had little to offer the people we knew, out towards the margins; our sense that something was wrong but we didn’t know what it was; the realisation that what was once a comfort zone isn’t any more; our instinctive distrust of certainty and any whiff of hypocrisy, or self-righteousness, or the smug hymns of the saved and safe…?  This, in all its variations, degrees and nuances, reflects life and discipleship at the edge of the inside, where the view… is better, wider, but we could do at times with a bit of reassurance.  The good news is, in all this we are hearing the Word of God who speaks in our circumstances.  It is not primarily about why the young people are not going to church – it is about why we are not, or why at times we wish we hadn’t.  It is about us, at our age and stage.   And I am suggesting that we are indeed hearing God’s Word, where we are, and how we are – and that the primary task, the initial  and essential task at present, is to know how to be still, and wait, pay attention and listen.

At the margins moreover we face our questions.  This may be costly and brave.  Things are not right simply because Bible or Church Authority says they are, but because we find it so in silence and solitude, humility and love… measuring by the way of Christ.  We learn to discern things differently, out towards the margins…   

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[1] Prayer attributed to Richard, Bishop of Chichester (1197-1253).  When King Henry III denied him access to the cathedral and to the bishop’s palace, Richard spent two years wandering barefoot through his diocese, living very simply on the charity of his flock.