Going along the road with Jesus – 28 June 2013

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” [Luke 9:57-62]

These sayings challenge us at the sensitive point of our readiness and willingness to let go of things.  Jesus is walking along the road.  Various people would rather like to go with him.  To understand this we really do need to suspend our literal compulsions for a while.  It pays to have a feeling for poetry and imagery.  To one seeker Jesus starkly says that foxes and birds have homes, however simple, but Jesus doesn’t.  Not even the Old Time Religion.  It’s a journey and the landscape changes.  There may not be a settled theology or belief any more, or a church you can call a home – or a clear notion of what it’s all about.  It may be that Jesus’s disciple on the road has had to let go of some of these expectations in order to move on. 

Another seeker seems to say that he will have more time for all this once he has got his elderly father off his hands.  Then he will be freer -- or maybe it’s that then he wouldn’t have to suffer the old man’s disapproval.  A third seeker wants merely to go home first and say goodbye.  Reasonable, one might think.   It reflects a culture such as ours, in which any suggestion that family, team or one’s mates, or whanau may not come first is incomprehensible.  Blood is thicker than water... whatever that means.  Mates do not split on mates.  Family closes ranks and withholds vital information from the police, because family of course outranks what is right or true.  We assume this kind of priority... until Jesus comes down the road and says there is a higher priority, something truer.

Walking with him is a pilgrimage of letting go, discovering and understanding how we can live more simply and with more integrity, and how we can travel lighter in various ways. We remember the landscape we have passed, but we are not there any more.  Certainly, possessions are among the first to come up for review, although we may still be surrounded by them and enjoy them – we discover that we are looking at them differently.  Family relationships come to be seen in context, in perspective, for what they are – and what they are of course includes gratitude for the past and all its lessons.  It is very much an increased ability and willingness to live in the present moment.

Frightened by Jesus – 21 June 2013

When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.  And they were afraid.  Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.  Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.  [Luke 8: 35-37]

Congregations next Sunday will be edified by -- as it has always seemed to me -- this difficult and unpleasant story.  Jesus, in gentile territory, exorcises the demons from a psychopath who lives and rages among the tombstones.  The demons, after a conversation with Jesus, enter a herd of gentile pigs, which then stampede over a cliff to their deaths.  Wonderful.   I can’t elucidate this event in any real way.  I think the church remembered and recorded it because it was spectacular, mainly –and placed it alongside the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the stilling of the storm, and the instant healing of the woman with the haemorrhage.   It appeals to those in the church who need to be fed with the dramatic and miraculous.  In contemplative life and prayer we tend not to be quite so impressed.  We experience faith more in day-to-day things, the intractable and unanswered questions, the mysteries of life and its injustices, and the simple need each day to put one foot in front of the other.

One of the puzzling aspects of this story however we might consider.  When the local people saw the madman at last clothed and in his right mind, and listening to Jesus, they were afraid, says the writer.  Eventually the people asked Jesus to leave their district because, says the writer, they were seized with great fear.  What are they afraid of?  The man, ostensibly, was healed.  Was it that they had lost their pigs?  That would be upsetting, but not frightening, surely.

How do we normally process and manage life in a world of much evil, violence, hideous illness?  We hope it all keeps far away, never comes near us, we cope by being able to carry on provided it is always at a distance.  The madman was obliged to live outside the town in the cemetery.  I remember trying to deal with some angry parishioners who had their dream home in a street where, suddenly, it was proposed to use a nearby house as an IHC home.  But now, here is Jesus upsetting the precarious balance of trying to have everything nice in the town and everything nasty somewhere else.  He is making the demoniac one of us. 

But still, this is one of the passages of scripture I find really difficult, mainly because the world view of the 21^st century is far removed from the world view of Jesus’s day.  But evil and suffering have not changed, and neither has the often irrational fear it all generates.  In our prayer we are exposed to the love that casts out fear, and we are in the company and sharing the prayer of the one who constantly asked, Why are you afraid?    

Do you see this woman – 14 June 2013?

Turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?  [Luke 7:44]

Well, no, he didn’t.  What Simon the Pharisee saw was an exasperating interruption to his dinner party, a scandalous event in his home, an embarrassment with his guests, a nuisance, and the effrontery of this local woman.  I imagine Simon was himself an upright and exemplary man – although he evidently thought he could omit the normal courtesies of foot washing when he welcomed Jesus as a guest.   I don’t see him as hypocritical.  To Simon it would have been normal and necessary to see people under important social and religious labels – the righteous and the unrighteous, the devout and the irreligious, male and female, Jew and foreigner, safe and unsafe, clean and defiled, productive and idle.  So no, he did not see this woman.  I imagine he neither knew nor cared about her personal circumstances or the demons she endured. 

Contemplative life typically and steadily renders us uneasy about social labelling.  We come to see that pinning a label on someone, placing them in some convenient category, may satisfy our need for order and control.  It may justify certain courses of action – this person is loose living, so my kids may not play at their house – this person brought his problems on himself, so it’s his own fault and I won’t be coming to his aid – this person is hopeless, so lock him up and throw away the key.  Pinning labels belongs to a simplistic moral universe, because the labels are at best only partly true, and because they relieve me of having to understand things better.  In contemplative life and prayer we may see the shallowness and injustice of labels that have been pinned on us – and even when they were true, they were short on mercy and grace. 

So no, Simon didn’t see the woman.  Jesus did.  Maybe he didn’t like all that he saw, but he knew there were things to understand.  She had been speaking the language she knew, which was pain and sorrow – and, said Jesus, also love.  She washed his feet, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with oil.  Whoever she was, she was capable of something beautiful.  And if Simon is blind to it, how sad is that.  Her sins, said Jesus, which are many, are forgiven – because she loves.  So there is something utterly basic in spirituality for Simon to learn here, for all his religious leadership and authority.  She may have broken all the rules, but what God sees is her heart’s longing and her love. 

Jesus has compassion – 7 June 2013

Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.  As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out.  He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town.  When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”  The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.  Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favourably on his people!”  This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.  [Luke 7: 11-17]

The church remembered this story initially on the level of a literal historic event – Jesus raised to life a widow’s son, evidently an adult, who had died.  And as the story was transmitted in the oral tradition with which Luke was familiar, the point of it is to show Jesus as a “great prophet” who works wonders, and as God’s obvious favour towards Israel.  The story is recorded only in Luke. 

I think Luke himself saw more in it than that.  He mentions Jesus’s compassion.  He tells us that this widow had lost not only her husband but now also her only son.  So, as things were at that time she was now destitute.  Economically at any rate it was a catastrophe.   We approach this story as inhabitants of the 21^st century.  We are not familiar with dead being brought to life again, but we are very familiar with issues of personal tragedy, of irremediable sorrow, of poverty and destitution, and of some sections of society being specially vulnerable to hardship, and of loss of hope.   Jesus reacted with compassion.

Whenever you ask one of the principal teachers of Christian Meditation a question such as, What’s in it for me...?  How do I know if I’m doing it right...? ...the answer tends to be along the lines of, Are you becoming more loving and understanding...?  Are your attitudes coming up for review...?  Are you finding yourself more patient and insightful with needy people, less judgemental...?  Are prejudice and bigotry starting to irritate you more...?  

The Greek word, “have compassion”, used here – Jesus had compassion for the widow -- comes directly from the noun meaning the inner organs, heart, lungs and bowel.  I suppose the obligatory reaction if you are interviewed on TV, I’m absolutely gutted, is not so far off the mark.  Having compassion is a bit more than having pity or feeling sorry for someone.  Jesus felt her pain and understood her sorrow and predicament.  Our consent to God in prayer will call in question and steadily weaken our defences against being hurt, our self-protection mechanisms, and open us more to God’s real world.