Not far from the kingdom – 29.10.21

 

The Gospel for next Sunday…  One of the scribes came near and… asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mark 12:28-34)

I am intrigued by Jesus’s response, You are not far from the kingdom of God… it’s tantalising… only a little way to go… what does he still have to do?  Jesus has just given the classic Jewish answer to the scribe’s question.   The scribe needs for some reason to rank the divine commandments, as though lowedown the list might be optional.  Which is the greatest commandment of all?  Jesus replies, and the scribe marks him correct… awfully decent of him… and the scribe adds, to love God and to love one’s neighbour is more important than all the sacrificial offerings of the temple worship.  Jesus must be right, thinks the scribe, because I agree with him.  Over in Luke we find a similar version, about a lawyer asking Jesus which is the greatest of the commandments; Jesus says, Well, what’s in the Law, how do you read it?  And the lawyer gives the same answer from the Book of Deuteronomy, You shall love…etc – and Jesus says, That’s right… so do it.[1]  It is not our ideas, primarily, that need changing – it’s not at that level -- it is our hearts.  Entering the kingdom is not believing the correct stuff, finding the answers – it is entering a change of heart, or a heart ever open to change… to being blown by the wind of the Spirit… or to alter the imagery again, to what the Hebrew scriptures beautifully call returning and rest[2]... coming home, to where we belong.

Some people object to the word kingdom, because it’s male.  The Greek word Paul uses is feminine.  Let’s say realm, then… the realm of Jesus, the realm of God, is where -- whether abroad in the world and in human events or in the recesses of my heart – God’s command is done, has precedence, is loved, informs and decides my life… the level at which the Way of Christ is freely chosen.  The road less travelled, one might say[3], is the one that goes all the way, the road that leads to the realm of Christ. 

The scribe is nearly there, says Jesus.   Jesus encourages him, I think.  He is on the right road because it is to love God and to love what God has made… and to forsake idols… what Jesus called pure in heart.[4]

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[1] Luke 10:25-28.  The original commandment is in Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

[2] Isaiah 30:15

[3] See Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken.  If you read the poem, ask yourself, which road did he take?

[4] Matthew 5:8

Romans 8…4 – More than conquerors – 22.10.21

 

One more visit to Romans 8… Paul wrote this when he was actually on his way to Rome; he sent the letter on ahead, to introduce himself to these people he had not yet met.  The church at Rome is one Paul did not found, but he is well aware that here are believers living at the heart of Roman imperial power… there are indications that some of them were part of the government and of the ruling class… and they were all living amid Rome’s brutal intolerance of anyone they thought could be a nuisance.  The Roman state paraded always as conqueror… and Paul deliberately responds… we are more than conquerors[1] through him who loves us.

More than conquerors… That is our theme…  Rome conquers… that is what Rome does.  It is the way power is achieved… by taking it, one way or another – I came, I saw, I conquered, famously reported Caesar.  One of Handel’s great choruses, See the Conquering Hero Comes, from the oratorio Judas Maccabeus… was actually intended to celebrate the triumphant return of the Duke of Cumberland (Butcher Cumberland) from the field of Culloden where he had bloodily defeated Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie… subdued the Scots (he hoped) and begun a very nasty round-up of dissenters.  There are parts of the world where religion still behaves exactly and abominably like that.  When heroes conquer it doesn’t pay to be in a dissenting minority.  So it seems to me important to find a route away from the military metaphor here, and to get a civilised sense of what Paul might have had in mind when he said we are more than conquerors.

We are not at war with anyone.  That’s the point.  Inspired by Jesus’s Spirit, led by the risen Lord, formed in his teaching, we don’t have enemies.  Perhaps that comes as a surprise.  In the Letter to the Ephesian Church Paul writes^[2]: Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers… the authorities… the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil…  And he goes on to describe our spiritual armour and weapons for that.  To be more than conquerors is to have found a way through the darkness that inhabits so much of our world, and so much of the human spirit.  It is to be enlightened in the darkness – a word that belongs as much to Christian faith as to Buddhist or any other – enlightened by Christ.  In an ancient Christian hymn they sang, Awake sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light![3]  The light shines in the darkness, says John, and the darkness has never overcome it.  Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, says Jesus.  God is light, writes the Apostle John, and in him is no darkness at all… the darkness is passing away, the true light is already shining.  Whoever says I am in the light, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness…  Whoever hates a brother is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has blinded him…[4] it could hardly be clearer… these are the most basic of Christian teachings.  That is how we live in Christ, that is how we pray, and that is how we confront, daily, the forces of darkness in ourselves and in others, and that is how we are more than conquerors.  

We are, he writes in conclusion, inseparable from the love of Christ.  It is deeper in us than hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword.  I am convinced[5] that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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[1] ὑπερνικῶμεν (hypernikōmen), “we more than conquer”... should appeal to all fans of the sports gear branded Nike, a Greek word meaning victory, which is part of this word.

[2] Ephesians 6:12. Paul lists four Greek words all describing what the believers saw as “spiritual forces”, driving people to evil.  What makes us do evil?  Paul expresses it movingly in Romans 7:14-25.

[3] Ephesians 5:14

[4] John 1:5; 8:12; I John 1:5; 2:8-11

[5] In Greek it’s one word, pepeismai (πέπεισμαι) from the verb peithō (πείθω) to persuade.  Paul is utterly convinced.

Romans 8…3 – Sufferings – 15.10.21

 

Half way through chapter 8 of Romans, Paul turns to what he calls the sufferings of this present time…  a phrase that probably rings a bell...  although, people in Syria, in Yemen or the Sudan, in many places, might smile at what we here call suffering.  But suffering is not solely a matter of the intensity of the pain… suffering is also, for whatever reason, having to be afraid, fear of having to move on, fear of income petering out, fear of the future, of disease, of extreme weather… fear all the time of helplessness, uncertainty and instability, and that our resources of nervous strength may not be up to it.  Fear of dementia is now a major prevalence for many… and many are living in fear of Corona Virus and the time ahead.

But 1^st century Paul sees the hope of a better life coming… He is so keen on this, I wonder if he seemed to the Roman Christians to belittle their sufferings… I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed…[1]  It will all be alright, one day soon.  And we needn’t scoff… this is a piety, a naiveté that has sustained Afro-American people, and plenty of others, Catholic and Protestant, from slavery until now… Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home… my home is over Jordan… Lovely, wistful, longing songs about heaven...  when I get to heaven gonna put on ma shoes, gonna walk all over God’s heaven…  Paul however means more than that – he sees the whole of creation being made new.  The world is groaning in labour pains[2] for the new world to be born, writes Paul, and our suffering is a sharing in that labour.  He writes about the created world being in bondage to decay… and how it will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  These grand themes have been taken up by various Christian writers in our times, some of them very movingly.  God is making all things new.  Creation and history are moving towards their focal point, their Omega Point, of redemption in Christ, God’s eternal loving purpose as Creator.

Well… it may be so… but that information is not a lot of use to a poor old codger I encountered in hospital ward… for whom the sufferings of this present time included no visitors allowed, not even his loved next-of-kin… his catheter’s playing up and he has lost all dignity, he knows he’s not getting better, and there is no way he can be comfortable… and I am wondering about Jesus saying: In the world you will have troubles and sorrow, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.[3]  Be of good cheer…?  I am back there where Jesus simply assumes we will bear pain and loss… we are drawn to him by love, he says we are to live his way, with him, in a world of both beauty and suffering, both love and pain.  We are to leave self behind, he says, we are to relinquish any lingering notion that we control life and events, or that we should be in control, and the even more pernicious notion that we have some entitlement, privileged shielding from pain or adversity that other people don’t have.  We are to love one another, said Jesus…  

Perhaps Paul’s best wisdom in this passage is where he says:  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… The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  And God, who searches the heart, knows…[4]  Well, that is the prayer we pray… too deep for words, says Paul… It is Jesus’s prayer in us, here in our real world, through adversity… his stream of love, flowing in us once we are still and silent and receptive. 

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[1] Romans 8:18

[2] A curious Greek verb, συνωδίνω (synōdinō), means sharing labour pains… not unknown evidently, sympathetic labour, Couvade Syndrome.

[3] John 16:33

[4] Romans 8:24-27

Romans 8…2 – Flesh and Spirit – 8.10.21

 

Last Friday we found ourselves in Paul’s extraordinary chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans… and the theme was… No condemnation!  The way of Christ is not about sin and guilt – it is about love and mercy.  Back to chapter 8 now, and to where Paul writes about us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (vv.4-6).

We are, I think, intelligent Christians and we prefer our expressions of faith to be intelligent.  So this passage could be bothersome… until we can tell Paul’s truth, not now in the terms of his culture of the 1^st century, but in terms of our times, our ways of thinking, our experience of life and of God.  For one thing, wisdom has taught us to hesitate about stark mutually exclusive alternatives – good or bad, black or white, all or nothing, one or the other, yes or no… or that ridiculous expression, It’s as simple as that… which it almost certainly never is.  But Paul does make an irreconcilable difference between what he calls flesh and the Spirit… you can live either way, but, he writes: To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  He thinks you can’t swither from one to the other… although we might think that most of us do.  Those who are in Christ Jesus, he says… that is to say, those of us who have entered a life-changing bond with the risen Lord, and his people… it may have been a dramatic change, as it was with Paul, or it may have been a more gradual, gentler growth into Christ… the point is, we now feel alienated if that bond is set aside or in any way denied, even compromised.  There are important ways in which we do live one way or the other, in the flesh, or in the Spirit. 

It is true, I think, in our day, that life in the flesh is hugely popular and plenty would say inevitable.  It is not that it’s bad… any more than life in the Spirit is all milk and honey.  Life in the flesh is the life in which I myself, my ego, my interests, many of which are worthy, or it may be me and my whanau, come first, have priority, are paramount.  Life in the Spirit is life which we receive day by day from God, in gratitude and love, the loving source of life… in Jesus’s words, the Way, the Truth and the Life[1].  Contemplative life and prayer is a way into this life in the Spirit.  Ego, as we constantly say, is never obliterated – we need our egos – but is given its proper place which is not the place of God, and in that place comes to be understood better, becomes more merciful, more compassionate, gentler with self, a lighter drain on creation and the environment.  I live, says Paul, yet not I but Christ lives in me…[2]

Now, if you read the passionate expressions of Romans 8, then the way I have described it may seem anaemic and timid by comparison.  Paul overflows with enthusiasm and he loves hyperbole.  None of that needs blind us to the wonder that he is describing.  In contemplative life and prayer, learning the sounds of silence, being fully present and paying attention in stillness… then these great truths do seem to open up.  And in Paul’s words, It is God’s Spirit now bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…

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[1] John 14:6

[2] Galatians 2:20

Romans 8 – 1…No condemnation – 1 October 2021

 

St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, is a torrent of inspiration.  If Paul had written nothing else but Romans 8, he would have been still a towering figure in our understanding of God and of life.  But where to start, in this chapter in which every phrase and nuance seems to announce love and freedom…?  I could begin at the beginning where we have this startling announcement: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  As God sees us, says Paul, no matter what we may think of ourselves, we are loved and known and unconditionally welcomed.  No condemnation… 

It was Fr Richard Rohr, writing about compassion, who drew me back to Romans 8, with this statement:  Much of the early work of contemplation is discovering a way to observe ourselves from a compassionate and non-judgmental distance until we can eventually live more and more of our lives from this calm inner awareness and acceptance.  In a contemplative stance, we find ourselves smiling, sighing, and weeping at ourselves, much more than needing either to hate or to congratulate ourselves—because we are finally looking at ourselves with the eyes of God.[1]  So let’s focus on that point this morning.  In a steady discipline of silence and stillness much change starts to happen.  Fixed attitudes come gently up for question.  Certain memories seem to lose their sting, or to appear in a more truthful light… much happens.  But basically, in this space in which God of course is fully present as always, and in which we now are learning to be as present as we can, the sight we have of ourselves is adjusting more and more to the sight God has of us. 

One point needs to be made clear…  I am not saying that we plunge somehow into this work as soon as the bell rings for meditation.  No – the bell is the signal to become still and silent, with the help of the mantra.  That is our task.  And that is perhaps the first lesson in humility for us – contemplative prayer is not what we do, but what God does in us as we make space and deeply, inwardly consent, over the days and weeks and years.  We cease passing judgement on ourselves – or, if we do believe we were wrong, we accept that gently and even with a quiet inner humour.  There is no condemnation…  Condemnation is unhelpful, inappropriate, surplus to requirements.

Fr Richard quotes Paul in this chapter 8:  When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…  “Abba, Father!” indeed could be a very fine mantra.  But what is happening is that our spirit, our ego perhaps, the way we see ourselves, is changing towards God’s view of us as beloved daughters and sons.  Instead of any judgmental view of ourselves, we become able to look at ourselves with compassion, with gentle understanding, even with humour.  It is not about sin and guilt – it is about mercy, compassion and love.   God’s Spirit is bearing witness now with our spirit, writes Paul…  God is no longer someone we have to please and propitiate.  It may be that this re-formation entails the rather painful throwing-off of long-held religious assumptions which we always took for granted… such as how wicked we are.  But dealing with that is the work of the Spirit too, once we make the space.  We will come back to chapter 8, but for the moment those two words will do – No condemnation…

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[1] Richard Rohr, Just This (CAC Publishing: 2017), 58–59.