21 December 2018
Advent Canticles 4 – 21 December 2018
He
has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts
of their hearts.
He has brought down the mighty from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich empty away.
(Luke 1:51-53)
Part of the Magnificat…
Mary’s song of joy when the two mothers meet, Elizabeth and Mary. I am very much on the outskirts of all
this. You know how people often say, “I
know exactly how you’re feeling”… when of course they don’t, and they can’t. What they know is what they are feeling, or
felt. We don’t know what these two women are feeling. We are distant onlookers, rightly hesitant
about approaching, and we sense mystery.
But we may listen to Mary’s song.
It is very moving poetry… and it is profoundly subversive. God, she sings, by the birth of this child
has done three things.
The first is: He has
scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. It is in Greek. “The proud” is a word meaning those who deem
themselves naturally superior, the arrogant, the ones who believe they are born
to rule. But there is simply no place at
the cradle of this child for proud self-satisfaction or egoism... wherever it happens, in presidencies or the
highest places in church or politics, or in our homes or the secrets of our
hearts. It doesn’t belong. It is simply inappropriate here. Mary sees such people “scattered”, she says,
with all their pretensions.
Secondly, He has
brought down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. This is about power. “The mighty” means those not only wielding
power but enjoying knowing others are powerless – the Greek word denotes
powerful dynasties. Mary sees such power
defused, cancelled – as in the end, in history, it always is. It is the meek, the humble, said Jesus, who
inherit the earth.
And thirdly, he has
filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away. This is more than turning on Christmas
dinner for the city’s needy… it is more than foodbanks… admirable and all as
they are. It is a vision of justice, equity
in which no one is hungry, children are nourished… in which there is no culture
of flaunted affluent greed or the diseases of over-indulgence.
Mary’s vision… we scarcely see it happening in fact. There is the poetry… and there is the
reality. Human arrogance, the misuse of
power, greed and inequity, continue to thrive.
Eventually the followers of this child began to realise that the
kingdom, as he indeed taught, is within.
The same Spirit who inspired Mary’s vision sets about changing
hearts. Mary knew what Jeremiah had
prophesied[1]: I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts. Or Ezekiel[2]: I will
remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh… I will
put my Spirit within you… These, in
ancient terms, are the changes to which we consent in the stillness and silence
of our prayer.
14 December 2018
Thankfulness – Advent 3, 14 December 2018
You will say in that
day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your
anger turned away, and you comforted me… With joy you will draw water from the
wells of salvation. And you will say in
that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among
the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known
in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing
for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 12:1-6)
The Principal of Mahurangi College, on sabbatical, spent five
weeks in South Sudan, a war-torn place, schools destroyed along with much more of
the infrastructure, children now having lessons under trees or in the ruins,
bringing their own chairs… But David
MacLeod found students “bright-eyed and eager to learn”. He went on to Canada, with schools better
equipped and financed than here in NZ. There
he found students “disinterested, poorly motivated and contributing to a youth
mental health crisis… The Canadian kids just had a dullness in their eyes by
comparison”, said David MacLeod. Of
course, those are generalisations, but still, I imagine, we are not entirely surprised.
The passage from Isaiah is the Lectionary Canticle for
worship on the 3rd Sunday in Advent.
It is about joy and thankfulness.
Isaiah is filled with gratitude… this is the 8th century BC,
when the Assyrian was coming down like a
wolf on the fold.[1] Gratitude is a principal marker of grown-up
faith – but the gratitude we mean is decidedly not on the level of counting your blessings, naming them one by
one. That is more on the level of
Aunt Daisy than Jesus or Isaiah… if your blessings outnumber your disasters, so
the story goes, then you’re ahead – but that’s not faith, it’s
accountancy. A related cliché says: There’s always someone worse off than you… Believe me, there are situations, some of
them quite common, in which there is no one worse off. Nevertheless, gratitude was not unknown in
Auschwitz.
Real gratitude flows from God. It is a gift of faith, not something we
generate ourselves, like remembering to say thank you to Aunty Agatha. Gratitude and praise is a grace we receive. It is a sharing of God’s joy in creation and
in constant re-creation. To say “Grace”
at meals, for instance, though we may do it perfunctorily, if at all, is a “kairos”, a spiritual moment. The food before us is a gift, part of the
gift of life and love. So we pause,
properly, to think however fleetingly how all is gift – and of the atrocity of
famine in the world God made and gave to feed us. Neither is this gratitude giving thanks because
we are safe and privileged – that is what the pharisee did. We give thanks that food is there at
all. We give thanks for the hope that is
in us, which is often “hope against hope”.
We give thanks for life and breath, for love and goodness, and kindness,
for second chances and the lessons of adversity. We give thanks for light on the horizon, the
promise of Advent.
07 December 2018
Advent Canticles 2 – 7 December 2018
The Song of Zechariah, more commonly known as the
Benedictus, normally gets said or sung in morning worship – but on Advent II it
is given a special place. Zechariah, a
priest in the temple, so the story goes, sang this at the circumcision of his
child John, whom we know as John the Baptist.
This was remarkable because Elizabeth his wife had long been labelled
“barren”, which in practice meant useless.
They were elderly people – Luke stresses all this -- they may even have
had their names down for Summerset Falls.
We are also told that Zechariah had been struck dumb, before John’s birth,
for having expressed doubt to the Angel Gabriel that any of this was
possible. So Zechariah’s song was the
first thing he had been able to speak for quite a while. I do hope you are keeping up with me…
For some two-thirds of his song he lyrically celebrates his
belief that God is about to intervene and deliver Israel from the hands of
their oppressors, the Romans. The
Deliverer will be from the royal house of David. Everything God promised to Abraham, and ever
since, is about to be fulfilled. Then
suddenly he directly addresses this baby, his baby, the whole point of the
observance in the temple today. Luke
renders this in Greek as an emphatic shift of focus… and you, little child…[1] Have you ever noticed that abrupt change, as
you recite the Benedictus?
It is difficult to resist, as a father, interpreting this in
21st century terms. What is
Zechariah expecting of his son? A worthy
replica of himself…? a young hero…? a dutiful prospect on which the father will
spend a fortune for education and formation…? a sporting icon perhaps…? a
credit to the family…? a loyal assimilator of his father’s goals and ideals and
values…? Zechariah is not, he is letting go of his son. Certainly he will do all that is expected of
a father and a parent, in love, in nurture, in care and provision, in
counsel… But fatherhood does not mean
ownership and control. Fatherhood
eventually means letting your child go. Your
child is another person, not under constraint to replicate anyone or anything. Zechariah’s child will serve faith and hope
and goodness in his own ways.
The Benedictus ends in sublime poetry about God. Zechariah sings of the tender compassion of our God – the Greek literally says “bowels of
mercy”[2]. He pictures the dawn suddenly rising in the
east, enlightening, shining on those
sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, guiding our feet into the way
of peace. It is a lovely prophecy
that Zechariah weaves over this newborn child, utterly mysterious, profoundly
hopeful and faith-filled. Advent waits
for the dawn, never more needed than in the 21st century… a dawn of
mercy and truth, light in the darkness, hope for those who see nothing but the shadow of death, a discovery of ways
to live in peace.
[1] Καὶ
σὺ δέ, παιδίον… very focussed and emphatic.
[2] We
have encountered ancient anatomy before.
τα
σπλαγχνα (ta splagchna) means bowels, innards,
heart and lungs. It is seen as where our
deepest feelings and reactions come from.
The word is used here, of God.
30 November 2018
Advent Canticles – Advent I, 30 November 2018
Advent, despite the depredations of the secular world, is
not Christmas. Why not, this time
around, I thought, attend to the Psalms in the Lectionary for Advent. But as it turns out, only for the 1st
Sunday in Advent do we actually have a Psalm.
For the other three Sundays it is Canticles – The Benedictus, a Canticle
from Isaiah, and on Advent IV the Magnificat.
For Advent I then it is Psalm 25, the first half of it. Unto
thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul… That’s from the Coverdale version,
1535. It is the version used in Anglican
prayer books, one way and another, down to the present day.
My God, I have put my trust in thee; O let
me not be confounded,
Neither let mine
enemies triumph over me…
The Psalmist turns to prayer. His or her prayer is heartfelt and personal
from the outset. It is not any formal
saying of prayers, although that, as we know, has its important place. Here however the Psalmist is not hiding at
all from God, or from herself. There is
no one else present. She says, or sings,
I lift up my soul… Her life, in the most hidden depths she
knows, she is offering back to God. And
she is deeply aware of what she thinks are its defects. God may not be seeing the defects she sees…
but this is her prayer, and she means every word. She wishes she had better words.
O let me not be
confounded… The Hebrew means
blushing, ashamed, even disqualified.
Her deepest desire here is to be confident and honest before God. Neither
let mine enemies triumph over me…
When we read the Psalms, or hear them in church, “my enemy” is a
frequent presence, but “my enemy” may not at all be some attack from
elsewhere. “The enemy” may be within,
personal, obstinate, lifelong – an addiction perhaps, an intractable memory,
some perceived inadequacy, some failure...
We read the Psalms as what they are, poetry, and charged with meaning we
never suspected. These prayers in all
their red-bloodedness give us a voice. So
we linger over them, and love them. The
Psalmist is speaking for us and often movingly.
Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy
paths.
In her stillness and attention
in prayer she is reminded that life and the world are not primarily about
her. God’s way is primary, not mine;
God’s will, not mine; God’s word, not mine.
Hebrew loves to say the same thing twice with different words – in this
case, four times: Shew me… teach me… lead me… learn me… The third one is a word derived from the noun
meaning a goad, a prod, even a rod of correction. It is as though we learn, often as not, if we
are willing and listening, which often we are not -- by the adverse things that
happen, the setbacks, the calamities.
The Psalmist in her prayer submits to leading, or prodding, so long as
it is along the path of truth, love and goodness. And so her prayer goes on… Psalm 25. You may be able to read it yourself in the
First Week of Advent.
23 November 2018
Strangers and sojourners – 23 November 2018
Rabbi Josh Whinston serves the Beth Emeth (House of Truth)
synagogue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A
couple of weeks ago he led a team from his congregation some 2700 kilometres to
Tornillo, Texas. This is beside the
Mexican border, and it is where the US government has one of its camps altogether
housing now some 14,000 children of refugees, separated from their
parents. The Jews from Michigan were
bearing witness to something timeless.
They bore a word from God. All the Hebrew scriptures, the Law, the
Prophets the Writings, stress repeatedly that they themselves, the Hebrews, were
more than once strangers and sojourners, and may be again, that they must never
forget this, that their constant obligation and privilege, in their security
and prosperity, is to welcome the stranger and the sojourner, never to oppress
them but to share land and opportunity.
In Hebrew “stranger” is a little two-consonant word, ger.
Moses in Egypt named his son Gershon, “a stranger here”, to be a sign to the Hebrew exiles in Egypt. Rabbi Whinston would have read from any of
numerous passages – Solomon’s prayer, for instance, at the joyous dedication of
the temple: We are aliens and transients
before you, as were all our ancestors.[1] Israel’s judges are warned to judge fairly
whether it is for Hebrew citizens or for strangers, aliens.[2] Job’s righteousness, he insists, is partly
that he has never left the stranger out in the street or refused hospitality to
the alien.[3] The Torah repeatedly forbids any oppression
of the stranger, the foreigner, the needy, the widow, the orphan… and the
reason: …for you were aliens in the land
of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.[4]
Here in New Zealand we are bordered entirely by ocean, too
wide and dangerous to be crossed by desperate people in inflatables. Maybe Iceland is in a similar situation… remote,
and safe. But nevertheless we too were
once strangers and sojourners – Maori emigrated here; White Settlers from
England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, the Balkans, China; war
refugees, children from Poland; more recently, South Africans, and immigrants
from all over the South Pacific. That is
one reality – that human habitation of New Zealand has been from the outset by strangers
and sojourners… as were all our ancestors, said King
Solomon. It is as well for us to be
humble and grateful. The second reality
is for mindful and contemplative believers.
It is that, in our prayer, which is where we are most real, boundaries cannot
thrive, neither defensive walls nor fences nor searchlights nor guard
patrols. So the land of our prayer is
not particularly safe or cosy, or likely to be.
The land of prayer is a land of change, a land of welcome, a land of
risk, a land of making room and of expense, a land of understanding. We enter that land when, in the company of
Jesus, we wait in stillness and silence, and in his Spirit, and at war with no
one.
16 November 2018
Paroxysm of love – 16 November 2018
The lectionary, as we come within a couple of weeks of
Advent, gets increasingly difficult... for
next Sunday, a ferocious apocalyptic passage in the Book of Daniel, beyond my
wit, I’m afraid… the strange Letter to the Hebrews – I have always struggled
with it… and the brief record in Mark where Jesus predicts the rape and pillage
of Jerusalem and its temple – done indeed as we know with brutal thoroughness
by the army of Titus in 70 AD.
But also in my mind have been much more recent straws in the
wind. In conversation here last Friday
the erosion of our coasts, cliffs and beaches was mentioned… the whole matter
of climate change and its causes, and its relentless inevitability and our seeming
reluctance to face facts. One of last
Friday’s group (Eddie) talked movingly about living very much on the edge, the
miracle of his day by day by faith. It
was also, in the south, a day of storms, floods and destruction… mayhem in the
White House… another mindless shootout, and immense forest fires, in
California… a terrorist incident in Melbourne…
Much of our responsible journalism is now daily deploring the breakdown
of decency and truth, in biblical terms the removal of moral landmarks… What do we do? What do we think? How do we pray? How are our children and grandchildren going
to live? What future has a seemingly impotent,
divided and compromised church?
Faith, as we repeatedly say, is moving toward the light we
can see, one foot in front of the other.
The Letter to the Hebrews, scholars think may have been written quite
early to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem.
Persecution was increasing, and some Christians were returning to their
Jewish faith in the hope that they might protect their families. Next Sunday’s passage is from chapter 10, and
one sentence reads: Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and goodness… Provoke...?
Provoke to love…? This is an
instance where the translators seem frightened someone will be upset if they
say what the Greek says. It says: Let us
learn together paroxysms of love and good actions… In Greek paroxysmos (παροξυσμοϛ) the word used here, means an incitement, provocation. Paroxysms of love, however...? In medicine, I find, a paroxysm is “a sudden
return or intensification of symptoms”.
The advice to the beleaguered Christians in Jerusalem seems to be simply
to pick each other up, day by day, and get on with what you know best – caring
for each other and doing good… being present and being true. That is our task in faith when, as G K
Chesterton expressed it with the First World War looming, the sky grows darker yet, and the sea rises higher.
We don’t have special formulae to explain events. We don’t have secret recipes for peace in the
world or peace of mind. We have the way
of Christ and the fathomless symbols of the cross and the empty tomb. We have each other. We have a pathway of prayer, stillness and
steadiness. We have, if we know good
teachers, a treasury of wisdom from history and literature. Always ahead is the light which, as John
writes, the darkness has never quenched. In that setting, says this writer, we learn
paroxysms of love and goodness. Rabbi
Jeffrey Myers of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the scene of one of the
more recent gun atrocities in the USA, in his sermon on Shabbat to his
traumatised congregation a week later, said simply: Follow
the path of good. It is the only way to
heal…
09 November 2018
All she had to live on – 9 November 2018
The Gospel lesson for next
Sunday you may know by the title, The Widow’s Mite. Jesus is in the temple precincts, and just
about everything he sees is making him sad and angry. This is reflected in what he says,
particularly in Matthew’s account – Jesus is in furious grief. He laments over Jerusalem, the temple, and the
apocalyptic events he sees are coming.
He turns ferociously on the rulers and religious leaders… hypocrites, white-washed tombs, blind
guides, snakes, brood of vipers, locking people out of the kingdom, full of
greed and self-indulgence, loading burdens on people but not helping to lift
them with so much as a finger…
He watches worshippers
arriving. They drop their offerings of
money into the temple treasury, thoughtfully situated at the entrance. Some people drop in substantial sums. A widow arrives and places there two coins –
two lepta in Greek equalled one Roman
quadrans, something like our old
penny. Jesus said it was all she had to live on. Now the normal take on this is… how
wonderful! She gave all she had. She gave from the heart – the others gave
from their abundance. They could spare
it, she could not. And so, we should all
take note of the depths of her love and devotion.
Well, count me out… She need never have given all she had to live
on. Neither should the church have
accepted it. The standard interpretation
surely misses the point. She gave all
she had to live on because she thought she should. She had been taught that God expects this and
it’s called sacrifice. People are taught,
in some places even today to “give till it hurts”, and that God’s favour will
be bestowed in return. With humble
respect to St Paul… I have real problems with his counsel to the Corinthian
church, where he certainly claims that the degree of blessing you receive is in
proportion to the money you have given (see II Corinthians 9:6-15) -- or more
accurately, the magnitude of your sacrifice… Paul writes: The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who
sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. And so we have, at the seriously shallow end
of the Christian swimming pool, what is now called the Prosperity Gospel, that
your receiving in life is directly linked to your giving, and perhaps to your
righteousness.
God loves a cheerful giver does not mean God loves reckless superstition. So much that passes for Christian these days
is actually a chronic refusal to grow up, as Paul put it, into Christ[1]. What Jesus teaches begins within – treasure in heaven, he calls it[2]. The God whom I expect to reward me for my
generosity and my upright years of service – but might withhold reward
otherwise – is not the God Jesus called Father, but idolatry. In contemplative life and prayer we are led
by the Spirit through this preoccupation with self. Our duty, as always, will be to do justice,
to love mercy and to walk humbly… as Jesus knew from the Prophet Micah long
before. The temple’s duty to this woman was
to care for her dignity and give her a future… not to relieve her of all she
had to live on. Another of Jesus’s
accusations against the pharisees was that they devour widows’ houses – which is, in a way, what is happening here. Jesus also says don’t bring your gift at all
if you are not at peace with your brother or sister. Always the real issue is within, a quietened
and obedient heart – which the Dalai Lama calls, with typical simplicity, a
good heart.
02 November 2018
Knowing the truth – 2 November 2018
It is good to be
clear what we mean, and emphatically do not mean, about the truth. You
will know the truth, said Jesus… the
truth will make you free[1]. We do not mean that somehow we possess a body
of truth – the bible or our beliefs, or anything else. We mean that we are finding under grace how
to become free of illusion, delusion, fantasy, and from the pernicious untruths
of prejudice and violence, hate and fear. We come to sense an alert when we ourselves
are less than true... in Leonard Cohen’s remarkable words: Going home without my burden / Going home behind the
curtain / Going home without the costume that I wore. Perhaps
we became untrue because pride got in the way, or fear of loss of face,
or of someone’s negative opinion. It may
even be a generous desire not to hurt someone else – often excused as “white”
lies. It may be that a need to be
included makes us in some way untrue to ourselves… or the need to have some power
or possession. With some, often enough,
it has become a habit of preferring fantasy-land, living my dream, imagining great
deeds, rôle-playing a life that isn’t happening or never happened.
Jesus says truth and freedom go together… freedom from falsity and illusion. When Thomas Merton finally entered the
monastery to become a novice in the Cistercian Order, he wrote his famous
sentence: So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me and I was enclosed in the
four walls of my new freedom.[2] Merton was finally being true to
himself. Fr Laurence Freeman writes: Impatience and illusion meet their match in
meditation. It is extremely difficult to sit for any extended
time, silent and still, attending and consenting, while still hanging on grimly
to untruth, covering-up for ourselves, keeping unfair judgements of
others. Love and grace enable us to
greet reality and the present moment… gently, as we are able, and with freedom
and gratitude. The truth will make you free.
So “truth” does not mean that we are on one side of a line, a boundary,
a trumpian wall, as the “Enlightened”, let alone “Saved”, while others on the
other side are “in the wrong”, “unsaved”, or consigned to perdition. The
contemplative does not enjoy the luxury of knowing they are right and others
wrong, writes Fr Laurence. God does
not take our side against others, some will be surprised to hear. If there is any dividing line (Jesus does
talk about the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares, etc), it is
between those who persistently divide in the world, ignore human need, create
division -- and those who live to unite and reconcile and build up
understanding. That kind of truth is
free of the fear of difference.
I appreciate that we may nevertheless have genuine fears of insecurity
and violence… understandably so. But in
our prayer we are welcoming truth and reality, and therefore at times, it may
be, pain and risk also. The Spirit makes
us free for this, more and more, day by day.
26 October 2018
God’s two silences – 26 October 2018
Father John Main, whose vision and teaching really led to
the initiation of the World Community for Christian Meditation, was a
Benedictine monk. His talks to
meditation groups were gathered together and published. One of those collections is entitled The Way of Unknowing – and one of the
talks therein is entitled God’s Two
Silences. I think it is particularly
important teaching for grown-up faith.
God’s first silence – if we may use these terms – is what we
read at the beginning of the Gospel of John.
In the beginning was the Word…
The Word, God’s Logos,[1]
was before all time, primal, writes John.
The Word was with God, and the
Word was God… all things came into being through him, and without him not one
thing came into being… and the Word was made flesh… God’s Word is God’s eternal loving will and
presence, eventually glimpsed in Jesus, whom Paul calls the icon of the invisible God.[2] Here is a mystery, to be received but scarcely
explained. It is God’s first silence,
not spoken, not written, but vibrant with love and purpose, creating and giving
life – and light, says John. God’s knows
us from before we were ever made. To pay
attention, to pray – to listen, is the Benedictine word – to be silent
and still, is to enter the silence of God, waiting, hearing, consenting to the
Word of God. That is what we do. Very often it does not seem quite that way,
it seems fractured and interrupted. It may
seem that all we do sometimes is glimpse a little light in the distance. The mantra helps because, if we use it, it is
a returning-point, to being still, silent, listening, consenting. If God and we are both in silence – and God
always is – then we are in accord.
God’s second silence, says Fr John Main, is the silence of
absence and loss. This silence is to be
taken seriously, not overlaid by feverish forms of worship or sentimental
spiritual advice. John Main writes that
this silence of absence and loss has a purpose.
It is the way we learn the perils of possessiveness. It is true that we can experience times of
great peace and reassurance, joy and wonder in nature… but these are all gift,
not of our making but of immeasurable grace, infinitely beyond our owning or
control.
We learn in contemplative life and prayer to be content with
both silences, loving God because God is love, not because God makes us happy
or fixes things. The Psalmists of Israel
knew both silences – and interestingly, the Psalms we don’t get to sing in
church so much are largely the ones expressive of God’s second silence. More recently the French woman Simone Weil
wrote movingly of the second silence. In
the abyss of the Second World War and occupied France, she wrote: Affliction
makes God appear to be absent for a time… more absent than light in the utter
darkness of a cell… The soul has to go
on loving in the emptiness, or at least to go on wanting to love… Then one day God will come to show himself to
this soul… But if the soul stops loving
it falls, even in this life, into something which is almost equivalent to hell.[3] Perhaps so – but as John emphatically states,
the light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has never overcome it.
[1]
John 1:1-18. “Word” in the Greek is Logos (ὁ λογοϛ)
[2]
Colossians 1:15
[3]
Simone Weil: The Love of God and
Affliction.
19 October 2018
Not so among you – 19 October 2018
James and John ask Jesus an infantile question about seating
arrangements in the kingdom of heaven. Yet
again Jesus reminds them, it is not about precedence or greatness or mutual
importance. That is the way the gentiles
think, he says. It shall not be so among you.[1]
There are subtleties of Greek translation here. Jesus is not, as it were, ordering them,
commanding them, about their behaviour.
He is not telling them to be humble.
James and John may have been trying to stake out for themselves high
places in the order of precedence in the kingdom – we can assume that others of
them had their own hopes about that – but I don’t think Jesus is responding
here by requiring them not to think that way.
He is saying what we often say in contemplative life and
prayer, that time in Jesus’s company does in fact change us. In time to come they won’t be thinking that
way, he is saying. And indeed, in a
discipline of loving discipleship, prayerful silence and attention, however
intermittent and erratic it may be at times, we do begin to discover values
shifting, fears and anxieties lessening, steadiness increasing, love and
compassion emerging where it was not so prominent before… It seems to me that Jesus is simply observing
to his disciples, who prognosticated about who would be greater, that they
would change. They would lose that need
for recognition, power or control. The
greatest among them would be servant of all.
That is the way it would turn out among them, I think he is saying.
In the 21st century there are all sorts of ways
in which in fact we need power or authority – being powerless is not
good in modern society. It is not power
that is wrong, but the misuse of power – whether it is in high politics and
policies, or whether it is any form of bullying, or some employer sordidly
demanding favours from an employee wanting promotion. When people of wisdom and goodwill find
themselves in positions of power, and where they are able to use that power for
good, it is a wonderful thing – and it is a form of servanthood in Jesus’s
terms.
Servant never means servile.
Jesus’s statement, it shall not be
so among you, expresses his faith that his followers will use whatever powers they acquire, humbly and
well, and to enhance God’s creation. If
you think about it, much power resides within the family unit – power to
encourage or to cause despair, power to embrace or to alienate… the family can
make or ruin people’s lives, children’s lives.
Horribly, I would think, too often in Christian history, “the Christian
family”, elevated as an ideal, has in fact masked oppression or
restriction. This is reflected in much
of our literature and biography.
It shall not be so
among you… Our discipleship is to be
prayerful and thoughtful in our basic relationships – husband, wife, parent,
sibling, friend, employer, citizen, church member… and as Jesus pointed out,
our relationship includes our kindness towards ourselves.
12 October 2018
Silence in an evil time – 12 October 2018
It is difficult for us to visualise Israel in the 8th
century BC -- as remote from the time of Jesus as the High Middle Ages is from
us. It was the late Iron Age. There were two kingdoms, Judah in the south
and Samaria in the north. Amos the
prophet emerges in Judah, in a time of endemic violence and official
corruption. He is, he says, a sheep
herder and a grower of figs. He
addresses the north, Samaria, misruled by Jereboam II, and he condemns …you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring
righteousness to the ground…! It
seems eerily familiar in recent times. And
he goes on:
They hate the one who
reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. Therefore
because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have
built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted
pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are
your transgressions, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the
righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate. Therefore
the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time. (Amos
5:7-13)
Keep silent comes
as a surprise… but Amos thinks so. We
know that he wrote his prophecies, rather than proclaim them in public. It is as though there is a pitch of determined
evil and greed, with law and truth becoming negotiable, when speaking up for
God and righteousness is simply not going to be heard except with public derision. It is not merely that evil things are
happening – it is that powerful people are determined on their own way irrespective
of its effects on others. At such a time,
says Amos, the prudent will keep silent.
Persistence in prayer, passive resistance, peaceful persuasion,
patience… will be the ways to bear witness.
We now know moreover that there was a major earthquake in
that region at that time – it is referred to by Amos himself, it is mentioned in
other writings, and it is traced in the geological and archaeological records. The earthquake occasioned fear and disruption. Again, how familiar is all this?
There are two things to bring together for our
discernment. One is all that is going
wrong. Power is getting priority over
justice, truth and equity, godlessness is becoming the norm among many decent
people, religion is in confusion and increasingly despised, violence reigns in
many places with all its terrible consequences… we seem more and more
susceptible both to climate change and to seismic catastrophe. The
other is the question, how we are to be, to live, to respond. We can take a hint from Amos… and from the
wisdom of Ecclesiastes: There is a time
to speak, and there is a time to keep silent[1].
Both times matter. In contemplative life and prayer we create a
rhythm between the two – including in daily life, among friends and family. We know that both are essential – speaking,
and silence. We are learning discernment
in speaking, what Benedict calls restraint of speech. We are learning the fruits of silence,
openness to the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth, gentle resistance… Either way, it is a matter of truth and
simplicity, in life and in prayer.
05 October 2018
Letting go – 5 October 2018
Letting go is a major theme of contemplative life and
prayer. It is as though we have two ways
we can live – one is clinging, and the other is relinquishing. Jesus seemed to be in no doubt… freedom and
truth, joy and peace, if they are there, are down the path of relinquishing.
Let’s look at clinging.
Of course we know what it means -- it means to hang on to something, to grip,
stick or adhere. A character in a novel
I read referred to his ever-looming mother-in-law as Old Clingwrap. In Old English, interestingly, cling could
mean also to wither or shrivel… which is a bit of a warning. We can easily cling to possessions, as we
know. That can be good, or not. These things we own may be beautiful, or
valuable, or carry memories – important then for such reasons. We all have property, and we do what we can
to keep it nice. We protect it. We give thanks for it. It is important to have a view of how we
would be if we had to relinquish it – as, at present, in Sulawesi or Syria. Jesus visited these themes, and there are
echoes in the Sermon on the Mount and in the parables.
But possessions are only the start. There is clinging to or letting go of aspects
of the past. Of course, we can’t
“un-remember” things. Neither, in a way,
should we. It matters, often, that we don’t
forget, that we re-member, in the sense that we reassemble the past in our
minds and memories, accurately and with understanding, even when it is
painful. The relinquishing of memories,
then, is not pretending anything was otherwise than it was, but doing the work
to ensure that events of the past are accurate and understood, and that they
are not poisoning the present any more.
The stillness and silence of contemplative prayer is a gracious pathway down
which the stings of the past may indeed be gently drawn, and we realise one day
that we have moved on.
Or it may be that the challenge is to let go of people. Sons or daughters grow up, we hope, have
their own lives, aspects of which we don’t share… we lose loved ones, who
aren’t there any more… old friends unaccountably change… I am well aware that this is a minefield of
many emotions. But love is scarcely love
if it clings, or tries to control or possess.
Love entails the willingness to let go, to accord freedom to the loved
one. It is the way we are loved, by God,
who as we know creates and gifts us with freedom and choice. Our love of God too is very much a matter of
letting-go. We do not own or control
faith or truth. We humbly receive these
things, learning as we go, and confirming it day by day, that all is gift and
grace.
If you think about it, letting-go may come with a sense of release. If I can, as I can, I relinquish control and
the need to control. Faith says it is
for the sake of something better, which I may not yet fully see or understand. Ageing, often problematic, may indeed be seen
in another light. Other people can do the tasks I used to do. I may have to take leave of religious
assumptions that sustained me once upon a time, but not now. I now require space, for mindfulness, for
thought, for managing physical issues, for remembering and reassessing and
enjoying, for being still and silent, and perhaps alone. And there will come a time, a kairos, when I must let go even of all
that. And in Lady Julian’s words, all will be well.
28 September 2018
Because the bell rings – 28 September 2018
One of the best-known quotes from the Benedictine writer
Sister Joan Chittister originated when she was addressing her fellow nuns in a
seminar, and she asked them, “Why do we pray?”
They supplied all sorts of worthy and lofty answers. But Sr Joan said, “No – we pray because the
bell rings.” And indeed the Rule of St
Benedict provides[1]: On hearing the signal… monastics will
immediately set aside what they have in hand and go with utmost speed, yet with
gravity… But then comes a typical
Benedictine touch – the first Psalm, Benedict orders, is to be said quite deliberately and slowly, to give
time for latecomers.
Now what is the point here?
Sr Joan provides it, in a way, in one sentence: Prayer
is not just one more thing in the day….
She adds: We are meant to go to it
consciously, seriously, with concentration, so that every day we may become
more and more immersed in the presence of God. Well, to modern devotees of the secular
culture, this sounds simply incomprehensible...
more and more immersed in the
presence of God. It is what they
always feared about religion and religious people, that you retreat into some dreamland
based on hopes and myths, and lose your grip on truth and reality. But also, to many sincere church-going
people, it sounds over the top. Prayer,
they would say, is a Good Thing, no doubt, in its place… and so on. It suits some church folk very well (not all
of course) to have their prayer said for them in an orderly and objective
manner, by priest or vicar or pastor, in familiar language, at set times.
A contemplative person is one who, we might say, after weeks
or months of perhaps shaky attention to a discipline of silence and stillness, woke
up one morning and realised that familiar attitudes and actions were shifting,
altering. Making a space in which we are
simply present, having a mantra as something to return to repeatedly from the drip-feed
of distractions and preoccupations… all of this is effecting change. The changes are subtle, but at times
unmistakable. There are various ways in
which prayer-silence, attention, insight, we might say, are now quietly and
gently spilling over into all of life.
The heart and the mind inwardly know… oddly enough, often enough, by
unknowing. We may be aware of a new
steadiness. Fears, anxieties, seem no
longer to loom the same ways. We are
disinclined to talk about it much – or at any rate, if we do, we might later
wish we hadn’t.
It is what the 17th century French Carmelite
monk, Brother Lawrence, called The
Practice of the Presence of God.[2] It is absolutely not that we have
become starry-eyed and always on the edge of some rapture... “heavenly-minded
but no earthly use”, as some have put it. Just the opposite – we are now freer than we
were to attend to truth and to reality, and to bear pain.
In the monastery the bell rings at set times. In lay contemplative life it rings frequently,
usually faintly in the background, as a reminder and a call. We are those for whom the bell tolls… we hear, and we respond with love.
[1] Rule of St Benedict, ch 43
[2] My
copy is a translation by New Zealander, E M Blaiklock (Hodder & Stoughton
1981. Published also by Thomas Nelson,
1982).
21 September 2018
The Parable of the Child – 21 September 2018
Then he took a little
child and put (the child) among them; and taking (the child) in his arms, he
said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark
9:36-37)
There are levels of meaning here. The disciples had been having a private chat
about precedence… who is great in the coming kingdom, and who will be not so
great. Jesus inconveniently intervenes… what
were they arguing about? He reminds
them, whoever wants to be first must be
servant of all… which sits uneasily with our culture of being a winner,
getting ahead…
I think however it is what we might call the “Parable of the
Child” that brings this event to life.
All three gospel writers report, a
little child,[1] a
toddler, an infant. The point of the
diminutive noun is that this child is helpless without us, is entirely
dependent on adult care for growth and health, maybe even for survival. Jesus took
the child in his arms, it says. It
is the child who is first, has precedence, in Jesus’s kingdom. There it is for all to see. There is no higher priority in the
kingdom. Jesus could scarcely say it
more clearly – but he nails it with his words: Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever
welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me. God is watching that child, and what we do…
or neglect. On one level it is about our
duty of care for our children, of course – but it is also about what matters
most in Jesus’s kingdom, which is decidedly not power, wealth or
achievement.
Al Jazeera ran a reportage on what is in fact happening to
children, at present, in various places as a result of war, violence, ignorance
and neglect. We saw children in their
thousands, many of them skeletal, already too ill to respond to medical help
and recover – in Yemen, in Syria, in the Congo, in South Sudan… I think there is a special place in hell for
people who make war on children.
Then there is the searing truth of generations of gross
abuse of children within the church and elsewhere. And after we have expended a million words on
cause and blame and retribution, the fact is, the only satisfactory response is
for the violence and the abuse to utterly cease, and for children to be cared
for as our first duty, as Jesus clearly taught.
…then, in my anger, perhaps providentially, Fr Laurence
Freeman intervened in a general post. He
reminded us: The contemplative response
to violence should affirm the goodness and potential of humanity. Further along he wrote: Meditation
doesn’t solve problems. It transforms how we see and approach them – including
the most ancient and intractable problem of humanity, the inhumanity of
violence. We are to do what we can,
of course, which is to renounce violence, so far as it lies with us, at any
rate absolutely against children – and again absolutely, as we can, teach and
initiate and practise love and recognition of children, and care, shelter, food
and education, security, hope and faith, for the children we know. If we neglect that, I suspect, any of our
other achievements might strike the heavenly courts as unimpressive.
14 September 2018
Response – 14 September 2018
…on the way he asked
his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still
others, one of the prophets.” He asked
them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:27-29)
On the way… is a
popular motif in the gospels. They typically
talked as they walked, on the road. It’s
a picture to trigger our imaginations – they learned as they went along, as we
do, day by day, if learning and growing are what we want. Not everyone welcomes learning new things or
changing. If what we hope for is things
to stay the same, with certainty, safety and security, then learning and
growing are scarcely going to happen.
But in Jesus’s company, evidently, the changing scenery facilitated
developing hearts and minds.
He asked them first, what are people saying about me… who do
they say I am? The answers show how we
feel better if we can categorise, simply pin a label, good or bad, on someone[1] –
that way, we have pigeon-holed things in an orderly manner, we know what we
think, and best of all, we may have established that we are not
threatened, life can continue… So, reply
the disciples, some say you are John the Baptist back to life again, some say
Elijah, others say some other of the prophets.
It is a warning about labelling
Jesus – if I want to know who Jesus is, really, it’s pretty pointless to ask
around, conduct a poll, do a street survey, even around the church.
So Jesus asks: But you…
who do you say I am? Peter knows the answer. You are
the Christ, ὁ Χριστος, the Anointed One – Messiah,
in Hebrew. It is a catechism answer, and
the implication is that, since it is the “right” answer, it is the answer for
everyone. In some Christian circles defining
Jesus correctly (or Mary, or the Trinity…) is used as a test of orthodoxy… as
every parish minister discovers before long.
But Jesus asks a crucial question.
Who do you say I am…? It is an invitation to discover, in our own
personal experience, over the years and through the mysteries and setbacks and
sadnesses, as well as the triumphs of life, who he is. What matters is not the catechism answer, but
my answer. Moreover, my answer today
might differ significantly from my answer 30 years ago, or even last year –
because I am further along the road, learning as I go. The issue is not whether I am “correct” in my
answer, but whether my answer is what I am living by, enlightened by, whether
my answer is coming from doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly. What matters is not the labels I put on
Jesus, even labels prescribed by church or bible, although they may be helpful…
so much as what he is making of me as I take step after step, as I remember the
great gospel themes and teachings, as I review what has happened in my life and
among the people I know and love, and as I value the times I am able to spend
in silence and stillness, simply present to God as God in Christ is, and always
was, present to me.
(In our group's discussion later, one member said Jesus might have been clearer if he had asked, "But who am I to you...?" I agree.)
(In our group's discussion later, one member said Jesus might have been clearer if he had asked, "But who am I to you...?" I agree.)
[1]
Eg. I was labelled, on Facebook this week, “a racist low-life”. The person feels better now, having
categorised me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)