A recess...

Our weekly Christian Meditation group at Warkworth is going into recess until September.

The reasons are mainly that overseas travel (including for the leader) and other matters will make attendance pretty erratic between now and then.

In early September we will decide what happens next, and the group may resume. 

Meanwhile, of course, we know that it is only the weekly meetings together that are in abeyance -- the discipline of meditation continues!

There has been a request that I continue to post "talks" on this blog in the meantime.  We will see about that... 

Shalom to all,

Ross Miller

Growing up – 9 May 2014, Easter 4

One of St Paul’s many valuable insights is in the familiar words of I Corinthians 13:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

Earlier in this letter Paul is critical of the Corinthian church because, he says, they have failed to grow up.  The signs of this of which Paul is particularly aware are their quarreling, their divisions, their hankering after charismatic leaders and spiritual entertainment.  Later, writing to the church at Colossae, Paul describes what grown-up faith is like – rooted and built up in Christ, established in faith, abounding in thanksgiving.  To the Ephesians he actually uses words such as coming to maturity.  We must no longer be children, he writes – and the hallmarks of immaturity include what he describes as being blown around by this or that teaching – the hallmarks of maturity include cordial unity with others who are different, and one of Paul’s most famous phrases, speaking the truth in love.  Speaking the truth in love, he writes, we must grow up in every way into him…

The tragedy in many places is that an infantile form of faith is not only practised and taught, but is vigorously defended.  It tends to be legalistic and moralist.  In some places it encourages the ego, promotes a gospel of success and material prosperity with dollops of self-righteousness.  It confuses prayer and superstition, and dines out on what are perceived to be miracles.  People will remind you that Jesus said we must become as little children – as though Jesus meant deliberately somehow stunting growth and maturity.

One teacher, Richard Rohr, points out powerfully how growth in Christ has a great deal to do with what he calls saying farewell to our loyal soldier – that is the version of us that earned credit from doing as we’re told, presenting an adequate image, being self-consciously busy and admired, using religion as a comfort blanket, being ruled by emotions… or else, its flip side, living chronically guilty because we are not the way we think we should be.  Mature faith comes with the withering of that ego, the simplifying of life, the increase in mindfulness.  A primary discipline on this pathway is the prayer of silence and stillness. 

And so it is that Paul can write …but when I became an adult…, as though there is and must be a change – in a Christian church or congregation just as also in an individual – a change from childish dependence to mature faith and discipleship.  It is tragic when people who may have been assiduous church members all their lives, yet remain infantile in their faith, dependent and superstitious.  As St Paul writes:

…until all of us come to… maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  We must no longer be children…  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. [Eph. 4: 13-16]

Jesus himself came near – 2 May 2014, Easter 3

Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him... [Luke 24:15-16]

This story of the encounter on the road to Emmaus is exclusive to Luke, and it remains one of the most tantalizing of the gospel narratives.  Two of the disciples were walking seven miles to Emmaus – that’s just over 11 km, about the distance from Algies Bay to Warkworth (if you don’t divert to Charlies).  Jesus comes and walks with them.  They don’t recognize him.  And yet one of the major points of this story is to convince Jews especially that the risen Jesus is really him, flesh and blood.  After some three years of ministry, they don’t recognize him…?  Then he seems not to know about all the drama of the last few days – Luke astonishingly portrays Jesus as totally disingenuous, pretending, it seems, that he hasn’t heard all this.  But he still takes trouble to explain the Hebrew prophecies to them.  Even when they arrive where they are to stay at Emmaus, the stranger Jesus makes to continue on, and they have to urge him to stay.  It is only when he breaks the bread at the meal that they recognize him.

I don’t know whether anyone at our schools or in this age of cyber-speak is teaching any more what my generation called literary criticism – how to read layered narratives like this, how to spot the different levels of meaning, how to discern what the writer was actually trying to do, to convey, how to assess a literary construction. Perhaps contemporary prose and verse tends to be so two-dimensional that literary criticism is like trying to fish in a puddle.  Luke is telling us here something vital for us to know about the risen Jesus and about resurrection life for all of us.  He comes to us, wrote Albert Schweitzer, as one unknown… 

We encounter Jesus on our journey in often mysterious, unexpected and oblique ways.  Sometimes it may be that, later, in looking back, in retrospect, we wonder if that had been him, in Luke’s words, coming near.  We encounter him along the way – not so much in standing around singing sentimental choruses or in inspiring studies designed to solve our problems, but in weekday life, moving along the road of our daily journey, experiencing life and other people.  He draws near, as Luke tells us.  Perhaps we don’t see it at the time.  Later, it may be in some holy moment such as at the sacrament, it may be many years later, it dawns on us what actually changed us and inspired us, strengthened and empowered us, at that moment. 

Contemplative people become generally slow and reluctant to make dogmatic statements about these things.  We feel very comfortable with reticence, a decent veil thrown over things we experienced and came eventually to understand.  In our kind of prayer, what we are most familiar with is the humble soul and the grateful heart, and all the mysteries that remain, rather more than the tales of triumph and victory. 

But whatever… each of us in our own ways becomes accustomed to the sense that Jesus has drawn near on our road, and made a few things clearer, and perhaps even broken bread with us.