Advent I – Isaiah 2:2-4 - 29 November 2019

Rowan Williams says that in Advent we all become Jews once more.[1]  If all we do during Advent, then, in life and in worship, is sentimentally anticipate Christmas, we are missing a wonderful season… the sounds and songs of Advent.  So I thought it was time for some sublime Hebrew poetry – indeed, the four passages from Isaiah the Prophet set down for Advent readings this year.  Here is the first:

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house will be established…

and will be raised above the hills;

all the nations will stream to it.

Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.”

…They will beat their swords into ploughshares,

and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation will not lift up sword against nation,

neither will they learn war any more.[2]

This is some seven centuries before the time of Jesus.  Even back then the Jews are waiting, seeing in their hearts a better day, a reign of peace, an abandonment of cruelty and violence – and it must have seemed then, as it does now, a hopeless dream.  What they knew was, as Rowan Williams expresses it, a hunger to be spoken to, to be touched, to be judged and loved and absolved.

But, says the prophet, the first Advent requirement is that we take leave of our idols.  Idolatry is worshipping, giving ultimate value to what is not God.  Jesus called it, where your treasure is.  Isaiah in this same chapter says: On that day people will cast their idols of silver and of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats.[3]  And so in contemplative prayer and life, in what may be a long and demanding process, our idolatries are being removed from usurping the place that belongs to God.
  

Notice too that, in Isaiah’s vision, the Lord’s House is open to all.  The Jerusalem temple wasn’t.  It is an end to Jewish exclusivism: all the nations will stream to it… many peoples will come… And what will happen at the Lord’s House…?  …They will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war any more.  Advent then is when we listen to Isaiah – we call our idolatries again into question; we question whatever in our faith excludes rather than includes; and we question the violence that may lurk in our actions or speech or our attitudes.  To borrow a modern trendy phrase, in Advent we are invited to live the dream.  It changes us, which is always what has to happen first.

---

[1] Rowan Williams: A Ray Of Darkness (Cowley Publications 1995, p.5)

[2] Isaiah 2:2-4

[3] Isaiah 2:20

Christ the King – 22 November 2019

And so we arrive at the final Sunday of the liturgical year, Christ the King.  Yet again I had a look at the texts and imagery surrounding this day, mostly about victory, majesty and power... and yet again came back to, for instance, the dispute among the disciples as to who would be the greatest.[1]  Jesus tells them:  The kings of the gentiles lord it over them… But not so with you.  The greatest among you will become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves…  I am among you as one who serves.  


The Feast of Christ the King is actually a recent invention.  Pope Pius XI inaugurated it in 1922, not 100 years ago, in the wake of the First World War.  Europe was falling again into class and race divisions and militant nationalism, and the Pope sought to teach that it is Jesus who reigns as Prince of Peace, reconciling all to himself.  But Christ the King remains an image that resonates power and (some would insist) dominance and masculinity.  That may not be at all what Pope Pius intended, but a doctrinal formulation perhaps appropriate in 1922 may be seen now as simply replacing the power of politicians and demagogues and armies with the power of some christian imperialism...  Christ the King… based allegedly on love… except that, tragically, love is not what many now associate with the christian church.  And there are those of us who find it difficult to offer heart worship to a Christ in Glory, Christos Pantokrator, Christ Ruler of All, “exercising dominion over all creatures” (Cyril of Alexandria).
  

I am way out of my depth in all this.  That may already be evident.  Richard Rohr wheels in a theory in physics called Quantum Entanglement.  Sub-atomic particles seem to know and are able to react to each other while far apart, even though there is no imaginable means of communication between them.  So, it is thought, we can posit a mysterious force field of love and goodness, in which my loving thoughts or actions actually affect others far away – some people like to explain prayer this way.  Equally, evil or negative attitudes or actions produce corresponding negative reactions.  And these mysteries, some think, are a way of seeing the triumph and reign of Christ in power.  He rules by some such hidden, transcendental network.


For others of us, it is a more subtle thing, not enhanced by being explained or defined.  He reigns by love.   His reign is completely unlike that of any earthly ruler we have seen.  He knows our griefs and bears our sorrows.  He suffers our rejection of him.  He seeks the lost.  He fills judgement with mercy.  His power is never power of coercion.  His judgement is never condemnation.  His kingdom is not some “spiritual” version or replication of earthly kingdoms.  It is, Jesus told Pilate, not of this world.[2]  To be quietly at prayer, alone or with others, is to come to the threshold of this kingdom where Jesus reigns, and to start to hear its songs and to share its hopes and longings.  It is a matter of being present to him, as he is present, always, to us, to the end of the world.

---

[1] Luke 22:24ff

[2] John 18:36

The end of the world – 15 November 2019

Around this time of the year we get lectionary readings about what theology calls eschatology, the apocalypse, the end of the world.  But it’s not only the Bible… when the All Blacks lost to England in the Rugby World Cup semi-finals, the Herald on Sunday carried a front page totally black except for a tiny message in the middle that if you want any details you’ll find them in the sports section.  Their on line edition had the headline, End of the World.  Time, you might think, for grown-ups and grown-up faith.  Christians have always been fascinated by the end of the world, and one instance is in Paul’s letters to the church at Thessalonica – the expectation that the end is near, the Lord will return, history will be wound up, the sheep will be separated from the goats, and the “saved” will enter eternal bliss.  So it is that for centuries, repeatedly, weird predictions of the end of all things have emerged… and 20 centuries later we are still awaiting the last trumpet.


The end of the world may indeed be nigh, or may seem that way, brought about not by God’s cleaving the heavens, so much as the environment becoming uninhabitable by reason of climate changes, rising sea levels, uncontrollable disease and famine, increasing resort to violence and oppression…  The apocalypse in other words is entirely believable but largely man-made.  I read somewhere some American zealot informing us that God won’t let it happen.  He had some special revelation to that effect.  Wiser heads are disinclined to predict what God will or won’t do. 


The Apostle Peter has some sensible advice towards the end of his First Letter:  The end of all things is near; therefore be serious[1] and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers… maintain constant love for one another… be hospitable without complaining…[2]   What could seem more prosaic.  And yet there it is – if I knew that the end of the world were to happen tomorrow, what would I do?  I think I would be still and silent, inwardly receptive and without fear, but loving and hospitable – and take my pills as usual.  In another place Peter writes:  Therefore beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace…[3]  For many people these days, the end of the world has more immediacy.  Ferocious bush fires in California and New South Wales, Queensland and elsewhere seem apocalyptic when you are being compulsorily evacuated and it is suddenly possible you will lose home and livelihood.  Or when civil war sweeps over your homes and towns, or disease wraps up your life.  So it is always the end of the world for someone, somewhere, somehow, sometime soon.  


Faith says that with Jesus it cannot be the end.  It may become the end of what needed to end.  Life is not snuffed out.  It is death that is defeated.  God made life, and light.  The life God made does not end pathetically with the world burned to a silent smoking cinder, moving on forlornly through space – faith sees all things being made new.  Meanwhile we say our prayers and take our pills, and care for each other.

---

[1] “Serious” = Greek σωφρονέω (sōphroneō) = sober, sensible, ie. not end-of-the-world lunatics.

[2] I Peter 4:7-9

[3] II Peter 3:14

Making peace – 8 November 2019

Making peace is one of our remits from Jesus.  It’s in the Beatitudes:  Blessed are the peacemakers… they will be called children of God.  Peacemaking, in Jesus’s teaching, is up there with being pure in heart, poor in spirit, meek, merciful, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and being among those who mourn.  St Paul picks it up in his Letter to the Romans:  If possible, as much as it lies with you, live peaceably with all.[1]


The assumption is that living peaceably and making peace flow from each other – peaceable people will tend to be peacemakers. There is an episode of M*A*S*H in which the surgeon Hawkeye Pierce is exasperated beyond endurance at daily trying to reassemble healthy young bodies ripped around by high explosive.  He hi-jacks a Jeep and charges in to the top level peace talks at Panmunjom.  Of course the most he can achieve is to make his impassioned speech about the utter futility of the Korean War – and treat the top general’s dyspepsia – before he charges furiously back to post-op.  Hawkeye was making peace the best way he could.  Perhaps the greatest obstacle for peacemakers is that so many people actually prefer conflict, or assume it is somehow a way of resolving differences.  Realists will tell you conflict is inevitable. The human cost becomes “collateral damage”.  Most of us can think of families in which conflict persists, pointlessly and poisonously.  So much of our sport is somewhat guided conflict.  Our politics is all about winning or losing, often at the cost of abuse and humiliation, tribal disputes, playing games with the truth.


You will have noticed Paul’s careful provisos… If possible, as much as it lies with you, live peaceably with all.  He knows well that it’s not always possible.  He knows that conflict can get easily out of hand, and as far as it lies with you can be not far at all.  Family disputes… church disputes... tribal feuds including racial strife.  A society free of conflict is unimaginable… and in any case, there are plenty who will want to inform us that conflicts serve useful purposes and shake out what is bad in us... like lifting the cap on the old fashioned car radiator to release the steam.  Well, what is bad in us is dealt with much more wisely, over time, in a discipline of silent prayer and stillness.   I would in any case rather live in peace, in shalom, that rich Hebrew concept that brings together not just tranquillity but also health and justice, kindness and goodness, and truth. 


Being a follower, as Jesus saw it, entails a personal rejection of aggression and violence, in all its subtleties including violence of words and attitudes.  Peaceable people become peacemakers, even at times when nothing is actually said, by being at peace within themselves.  And that, I think, is Jesus’s first work… settling peace within us, as we make space for that, and allow ourselves to be truthful and reconcilers.

---

[1] Matthew 5:1-13; Romans 12:14-21

Simplicity – 1 November 2019

We mention simplicity often enough, but it’s another matter to form a clear idea of what simplicity as a response to Jesus might actually ask of us in our time and in our individual circumstances.  For most of us, by the time we came to any awareness of contemplative life and prayer, we had already been long committed to all manner of complexities and compromises in our lives and relationships and possessions, and obligations. Perhaps we are hoping Jesus’s call to simplicity is not as demanding or uncompromising as it sometimes sounds.  (Take only one pair of sandals, etc…)  A couple of reminders, then…  

The first is that Jesus teaches at the level of our hearts – what he gives us is not another law, not a set of practical instructions about our lifestyle or our possessions.  He gives us primarily an invitation to walk his road in his company, to think his thoughts, to share his reactions.  If the simplicity of this bond changes our lives over time – and of course it will -- it is because our hearts are now telling us that such change is what we want.  And that’s good -- our hearts are consenting.  

And secondly, we remind ourselves that the prayer we practise, silence and stillness, is itself already a radical exercise in simplicity.  We are learning how little depends on us anyway – not even beautiful words -- that all prayer in the end is a matter of joining the eternal prayer of Jesus, a prayer of love and unity.  We are shedding our illusions of control.


So…  Blessed are the poor in spirit, he says… blessed are the pure in heart…  He calls in question much of our superfluous speech – Let your word be Yes, or No… (Matthew 5:3, 8, 37 – that would tidy things up a bit!)  Paul advocates simplicity also in the life of the community – Live in harmony… associate with the lowly… do not claim to be wiser than you are….  Be wise in what is good, writes Paul, and guileless in what is evil (Romans 12:16; 16:19).  

One of the Desert Fathers, Abba Arsenius, famously said: I have often had to repent of having spoken, but never of having kept silent.  Simplicity was cultivated in the desert spirituality of those early centuries, with great relief (although it was often overdone or distorted), because it was so different from life in Rome or Alexandria, and from life in the church.  The desert priorities are equally different from most of the life familiar to us. 


Christian Meditation is one exercise in simplicity because we are taking the attention off ourselves, and in the process we are learning to be more selfless, more generous, kinder, more loving, in our daily lives. We come to learn the essential elements of Jesus’s way better because we are understanding them now from within. This is what poverty of spirit means, setting self aside, becoming poor in spirit.  So Christian Meditation is not primarily about relaxation, it’s not mindfulness, it's not about feeling good, de-stressing.  These may indeed be by-products of meditation, they’re not the purpose of meditation.  The purpose of Christian Meditation is that we should become his disciples – imperfect but wholehearted.  We learn… or perhaps more accurately, we discover… a new inner humility and gratitude. 


Ageing too can assist the grace of simplicity.  Maybe we shed possessions, however timidly – but if we can’t bear to be parted from the lumber of former years, then that certainly suggests spiritual sclerosis.  We work out simplicity in our own ways.  It’s best done with a sense of humour.