Making melody – 17 August 2018

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-20)

The phrase in there which arrests my attention is where Paul writes: …singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God.  He adds other little bits, such as at all times, and for everything…  It reminds me about a human reality so humdrum that normally, unless it is annoying us, we scarcely give it a second thought – and that is the common experience of having a tune, some song perhaps, or hymn, or a theme from pop or some classical work, replaying incessantly in our heads.  It can continue until we’re sick of it, but still can’t expunge it.  Maybe Paul didn’t have exactly this in mind – making melody in your hearts – Paul didn’t have radio or TV or smart phones.  But they had melodies, and here, to the church at Ephesus, Paul advocates singing in your hearts as an alternative to getting drunk with wine which is debauchery. 

I know I am already sounding facetious.  If you don’t ever have some relentless tune taking possession of the neurones, then you may not know what I am talking about.  But I realised that inner singing, another kind of mantra, you might say, can be turned to good effect.  But if the tune that installed itself uninvited in my synapses is, as recently, a wretched song they had played on TV1’s Hymns for Sunday Morning, to the accompaniment of Salvation Army ladies swinging tambourines, both words and music equally execrable, then it strains my slender virtues of hospitality.  It was eradicated finally by my donning noise-cancelling headphones and playing Fauré’s lovely Cantique.  By spiritual defiance I turned it into an inner song of thanks and praise to God. 

Possibly Paul is having a bit of fun here.  It may be that the Ephesus Mothers’ Union had sent him a complaint about wine consumption in the Ministers Fraternal.  So he alludes to two radically different approaches to life.  One of them is prevalent and powerful in our day, and I recently heard it called, repeatedly, at a funeral, “Having a Laugh”.  Plenty of things had gone wrong, various speakers said, and it had all ended in disaster, “but we had a laugh”.  Whether these choices for life are fuelled by alcohol, or obsessive sport, or drugs or partying… it is essentially a feeding of self.  An sizeable proportion of the population seems to know no other way.  There is another way.  It is living by gratitude and wonder, what Paul calls giving thanks.  Self is dethroned.  These changes begin to happen in the silence and stillness of prayer.  We discover our wonder and thanks for the gifts that are sustaining us… life itself, and breath, air, forests and oceans, birth and death, memory, understanding and forgiveness, the lessons of adversity and pain… everything we did not create, and can by no means control.   In Paul’s words: giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything.  He wrote that in prison, you know, in Rome.  And he has music in his heart, songs of love and gratitude.  Perhaps one way you can describe the Christian contemplative life is just that – simply making melody, and being thankful.

Bread of life – 10 August 2018

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry… (John 6:35)

In this Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells his followers he is the Bread of Life.  But then he makes statements I have difficulty following, such as whoever eats this bread will live for ever… and the bread which I give for the life of the world is my flesh…  This seems strangely foreign to the ways many of us find we can respond cordially to Jesus and his way.  Perhaps what we are reading in John reflects more the understanding of the early church at Ephesus, or wherever it was that John’s Gospel came together, at that time, and their developing teachings about the sacrament.

I am personally inclined to keep it simple – and bread, as we know, is an analogy with built-in simplicity.  The ancient, even primeval combination of flour and water in all its varieties sustains human life to this day,[1] from the most delicious Selkirk Bannock to the ship’s biscuit which they knocked on the deck first to shake out the weevils.  People come together to break bread.  Thanking God for bread, and thanking God for life, are much the same thing.  The very word companion, in its derivation, means someone who has bread[2] – the word company implies meeting around bread.   When gluten intolerance was discovered, we quickly found ways to keep making bread without it, because bread is basic and life-supporting. 

Jesus applies to himself the expression Bread of Life.  Quite a claim… I am the bread of life. What bread is to us in our daily lives, so Jesus is to us.  Sustenance, nourishment, strength…    So we – practical, sensible, 21^st century people – have to ask, how is this so, in any way that makes sense?  For some it is a sacramental reality.  Jesus is present in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, and to join in the sacrament is to be nourished, strengthened and sustained.  The altar of Iona Abbey, of exquisite white Iona marble, has carved into its front, I am the Bread of Life.  The sacrament is, for many, the principal way of encountering the Risen Christ, and is paramount in their faith and life. 

There is another path which for some opens up more easily.  We are fed by his word, his teachings, confirmed in us by the presence of the Spirit he promised, and likened to the wind.  In a daily life which admits prayer and mindfulness, attention and humility, we are sustained by the Spirit of the Risen Lord, so that the teachings we know from Galilee and Jerusalem are received in ever new and fresh ways.  The facts of Calvary and the empty tomb inform and inspire our attitudes and decisions and actions.  It dawns on us one day that we are scarcely capable of living in any fulfilled sense, any other way.  This is being fed by the Bread of Life.  The two paths are not mutually exclusive – most followers of Jesus walk them both.  One or the other may predominate.  But if at your table at home you still give thanks for simple bread, while friends, it may be, or grandchildren, look on somewhat mystified, you are remembering also the bread that will sustain you far beyond today.

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[1] Archaeologists in Jordan have found a site with traces of bread which have been carbon-dated to 14,000 years ago. 

[2] From Old French etc… COM + panis (bread).

Speaking the truth – 3 August 2018

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ… (Ephesians 4:14-15)

On Coronation Street, the truth is routinely suppressed, concealed or distorted.  That is how you handle the truth.  Children are instantly sent upstairs if there is any chance someone might tell the truth.  The truth is not to be heard and believed, so much as approached as you might approach a live land mine, or else concealed, manipulated and eventually used against someone.  In the world’s high places these days the truth is negotiable.  What is plainly true can be flatly denied if necessary.  Lies can be paraded as truth.  Poor old Pilate had lost sight of truth amid all the grubby realities of political life – What is truth? he plaintively asked.

But we well know the consequences of claiming in some circles, or even suggesting, that we have the truth.  It is to risk being labelled as arrogant, or deluded, or at any rate getting above ourselves.  Or hypocrisy… it will be rapidly pointed out that our lives are not always shining tributes to truth, let alone infallibility.  It is a curious thing:  Kiwis actually love, at times, making dogmatic, ex cathedra pronouncements, especially about issues in sport or politics, or what’s wrong with the church.  It’s the way blokes “debate”.  But any conflicting opinion, however intelligent or researched or manifestly true, easily evokes anger and ad hominem responses.

Well we can’t claim infallibility, and would scarcely want to.  In the company of Christ we do not claim to know what’s right every time – and wisdom has taught us to be careful about prescribing what other people should do or believe.  We make mistakes, and as the monks say, we fall down and get up again.  We have found Jesus to be, as John’s Gospel teaches, the Way, the Truth and the Life,[1] but this turns us into disciples – that word in Greek means a learner, one who seeks to understand – it does not turn us into demagogues or pharisees.  Jesus himself taught that we should be transparent, our Yes should be Yes, and our No should be No.[2]  Part of “no” is “I don’t know”.

To St Paul it is the intention to be truthful that matters.  Negatively it means developing a sense to discern untruth, deceit, dishonesty.  It also means the willingness to speak truth to power and exploitation in whatever ways we can, which usually isn’t much – but always with humility.  Paul sees this gift of discernment as “growing up”.  No longer children, he writes, tossed around by winds of politics or fashion or trendiness, or religion.  We are constantly asking, at least inwardly… is it Christlike, is it accurate and generous, is it true…?  We speak the truth in love, he writes, growing up in every way into Christ.  These things are formed, not in argument, but in silence and stillness.

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[1] John 14:6

[2] Matthew 5:37

When it is dark – 27 July 2018

It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.  (John 6:17[RM1] ; cf Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52[RM2] [RM3] )

This is another story of the disciples in a storm on Lake Galilee.  Quite recently we touched on a former event which has Jesus asleep in the boat, they wake him and he commands the storm to cease.[1]  Now, in John’s Gospel, but also in Matthew and Mark, the disciples are again in a storm on the lake.  They are far from land, we are told.  The narrators stress, it is dark, the fourth watch of the night, says Matthew – that is the Roman measurement of time and the 4^th watch is about 3 am, just when everything seems worst, as every insomniac knows.  The wind was against them, we read, they were making headway painfully, says Mark… beaten by the waves, writes Matthew.  So we recognise the despair and fear, the sense of helplessness, being able to see no way out.  This narrative, in all its versions, is packed with allusion and metaphor, intended to make us think about our own storms and darkness, to make us use our imaginations, help us to identify with the inner realities and with Jesus’s presence.

When they see him he is walking on the water.  Remember, says John, Jesus himself had been increasingly troubled and oppressed by the crowds and their demands.  The latest was that they had wanted to make him king, presumably in the place of Herod.  They were calamitously misinterpreting his message – and so Jesus needed to get away by himself, in the hills on the other side of the lake, away from the disciples also, for a few hours – he made them go back across the lake, report Matthew and Mark.  Now, in the storm, in the dark, they see him, but think at first it is a ghost, a phantom.  Curiously, we are even told that Jesus meant to pass them by…  A man I talked with has suffered a string of pointless, cruel setbacks and tragedies, and through it all he has struggled honestly to do what he can and stay afloat.  But when the latest blow fell he told me how his friends said to him, “That’s life, mate.”  But he said, “It’s not life, is it -- it’s not a fair go.”  He is in the dark and he is in a storm.

When it is a dark and stormy night you either have a faith or you don’t.  You have either learned along the way, perhaps long ago, what Jesus means when he asks them why they are afraid, or you haven’t.  You have either learned that life is not about the self and its survival, or you missed that somehow, or you rejected it. 

Faith is what happens in the dark.  It is how we react when we can’t see.  It is what is in us, despite all that is happening.  It is where we are when we shut down the activity, relinquish the control – control that was always illusory anyway – when we become still and silent, consenting as deeply as we know in mind and heart to the way of Christ.  And then we may indeed see him, as it were walking on the waves, in the storm.

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[1] “Being afraid”, June 22, 2018

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 [RM1]

 [RM2]

 [RM3]

No longer strangers – 20 July 2018

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens… (Ephesians 2:14-19)

If Paul wrote this, he probably did so from prison in Rome, near the end of his earthly life and ministry.  It is addressed to a church he knew well in a thriving Roman colony called Ephesus.  Paul had spent a couple of years there, at first among his fellow Jews, then with Jewish Christians, as their community widened to take in other nationalities and faiths living in this centre of trade, drawn to Christ.  We can imagine a Christian community of Jewish, Greek, Roman and other believers, meeting in homes, rich and poor, slave and free, educated and illiterate, male and female…  Normally they would be content to keep to their own kind – but now Christ creates a new community across these boundaries.  It is not that differences are suddenly unimportant, let alone cancelled out.  It is that the differences begin to be understood, appreciated and celebrated.

Paul writes:  He is our peace.  To Jews, as you know, this is shalom, the pre-eminent Hebrew word which embraces health and well-being, not only the absence of conflict.  Unity, peace and understanding are essential to shalom.  And as Paul speaks plainly, he, Jesus, is our shalom.  How is that?  Jesus, says Paul, has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility…  Not abolished the differences – Jews still live differently from Greeks or Romans.  The problem was never that we are different -- the wall was constructed of hostility, the determined memory of ancient injuries, it was teaching children to hate, it was reacting with violence to any offence, or by speech which labels and dehumanises other people and creates enemies…  To live with Jesus and his people is to live without walls of hostility.

Then secondly, Paul writes about one new humanity[1].  Well, it is a distant vision.  At a time of history such as ours, when frightened people are withdrawing back behind frontiers, going to war pointlessly, refusing care to desperate refugees, following demagogues and tyrants, taking leave of God and faith… it seems wistful at least to talk about one new humanity, making peace, he writes, reconciling differences.  Nevertheless it is a vision we keep.  It is there in our hearts and in our prayer.  It influences and guides the ways we live, and certainly how we pray.  As Paul writes: For through him (Jesus) we both (Jew and Gentile) have access in one Spirit to the Father. 

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[1] Paul actually writes one new man (ἑν καινος ανθρωπος… hen kainos anthropos).  Modern translators needed to make it generic and include women.

God is not what we think – 13 July 2018

Fr Laurence Freeman, among others, likes to say that God is not what we think.  He means two things, mainly.  First, that all attempts to define or describe God by thinking, logically, rationally, wind up less than a howling success.  In the sub-tribe of the Christian tradition I come from, the chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 entitled “Of God and of the Holy Trinity” is a triumph of rich, ornate language over simple clear truth.  God is not what we think. 

Secondly, Fr Laurence means, if we insist on finding God down the road of reason and debate, we are looking in the wrong place anyway.  The Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet of the Middle Ages, Omar Khayyam, famously wrote:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went…[1]

Of course, it’s not a criticism of reason and logic.  The homely writer of the Cloud of Unknowing tells it in another way, in plain language:  But now you will ask me, “How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?” and I cannot answer you except to say, “I don’t know!” …Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think!  Why?  Because he may well be loved, but not thought.  By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never.[2] 

It does not mean that we leave our brains at home.  But it does mean that our world and our understanding are widened.  “Knowing”, it turns out, may be not necessarily understanding, but a matter of becoming still and open to change, learning to receive what we call grace.  For Jews, any attempt to describe or depict God simply ends in distortion or idolatry.  For followers of Jesus, we learn from St Paul for instance, that it is Christ who is the image, the icon, of the invisible God.[3]  For St John, God is understood only by love.[4]  Indeed, love is the test.  Hate speech, for instance, or attitudes, however disguised, cannot be in the name of God.

So -- continues the writer of the Cloud of Unknowing -- although it may be good at times to consider the kindness and worthiness of God, and though it may be enlightening and part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this work, it should be cast aside and covered with a cloud of forgetting.  Step on it resolutely and enthusiastically with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you.  Strike hard at that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.  And whatever happens, don’t give up.

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[1] Rubaiyat, Quatrain 27

[2] Cloud of Unknowing, ch.6.  Also 2^nd quote, final paragraph.

[3] Colossians 1:15.  “Image” in Greek is eikōn (εικων)

[4] eg. I John 4:7-21

Travelling light – 6 July 2018

He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.  He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.  If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” (Mark 6: 8-11)

Travelling light is an admirable concept, a noble goal which, speaking for myself, is yet to be attained.  Neither am I likely to reduce my lifestyle to a staff, a pair of sandals and one shirt – carrying, says Jesus, no food, no bag, no money.  I am fond of being warm and well fed, surrounded by books, and having some mobility.  But in no way can this passage be read as a general instruction for all Jesus’s followers.  He called to him “the twelve”, it says, and sent them out to share his ministry, and gave them those instructions.  Our task, in our time and where we are, as always, is to discern what is here to help and edify us. 

First comes the phrase, nothing for their journey except…  For their journey, in the Greek, is simply “on the road”[1].  Nothing on the road except…  One of the general differences between much of human culture, and the life Jesus invites us to, is indeed that Christian discipleship is seen as a journey.  It contrasts with the surrounding culture which prioritises safety and security, home and family, walls and fences, defences, borders, right ways and wrong ways.  The culture of Jesus invites and enables us to move on, or at least be open to moving on, to change, to ask questions.  Symbols of this include sitting light to possessions, travelling light.  Jesus pointed to the contrast when he said that foxes have lairs, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head[2].  Indeed, the whole concept of “following” Jesus implies journeying, travelling on in life – inwardly moving and listening, responding and changing, learning better, becoming more like him.  He is not challenging so much the inventory of our possessions – although that may still be something to think about – rather our need to own, possess, control, use and consume.  The planet and its resources are reeling because we have forgotten how to travel light.

It means also an end to shopping around.  I think that is the point of the strange instruction that they enter a town, stay in one home until they leave the town.  If the town is not interested or hostile, then leave.  Don’t argue the point with anyone.  Jesus leaves people completely free to decide for themselves.  Move on, he says… shake off the dust.  We might ask, what are the implications for us, living now amid people, most of whom report no interest in God or religion, and find life manageable, indeed preferable, without all that.   It is, as it always was, much more a matter of how we live, inwardly and outwardly, than of what we say or preach. 

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[1] Εις ὁδον (eis hodon), on the road, en route.

[2] Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58