Hospitality – 30 June 2017

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me… (Matthew 10:40)

I think it comes as something of a surprise to some life-long church goers that hospitality is actually central in Christian scriptures and in Christian faith.  Israel was never allowed to forget that they were once homeless and wandering.  It’s a salutary memory.  It became an article of faith and life that they were to welcome the widow, the stranger and the orphan.  The prototype was Abraham who welcomed angels unawares.  Failure in hospitality was an affront never to be forgotten.  The Rule of St Benedict states that the monastery will never be without guests… each guest is to be welcomed as Christ (RB 53:1). 

But the word gets devalued in our culture.  The “hospitality industry” runs hotels and cruise ships, pubs and bars from the salubrious to the Aussie boozer, and massage parlours.  More often on our lips the word means having friends to stay or in to dinner, with nice food and ambience.  The church has what it technically calls eucharistic hospitality, which refers to who is welcome (and therefore who is not) at Holy Communion. 

You can think of contemplative prayer, our silence and stillness, as a form of hospitality.  God is present to us, we are present to God… as (I think it was) Thomas Merton put it quaintly:  In us God is completely at home.  Hospitality is recognising that God is the unseen guest at the barbecue.  It may be as a needy person, someone who is not coping, someone frail or dying…  It may indeed be simply in the delight of our friends, old friends, and all our shared memories…  It may be in children, and parenthood, or grandparenthood, in good times and bad – indeed, what we call family life may be seen as a deep and committed form of hospitality. 

Hospitality goes inevitably with freedom.  There can be no hospitality where there is any agenda of possession or control, lies or manipulation.  Jesus, in hosting us at his Table, we may assume, is not deceived by our dressing-up or the masks we wear – in his hospitality it is not only that we are free to be as we are, but essential.  It is the way we are seen, and welcomed.

So hospitality is a meeting of hearts.  It depends on being unafraid of truth.  It is an aspect of love, which as St Paul wrote, bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all (I Cor 13:7). 

So, as ancient Israel understood, it is indeed difficult to refuse hospitality… so long as we ourselves are the beneficiaries of God’s limitless hospitality, rather than God’s exclusion or condemnation.  We are part of the generosity of creation, made and sustained in love.  We are in no position to shut the door on anyone, let alone someone needing rest and peace, if they come in good faith.  Of course it has dangers.  In our discipline of prayer, as we become less defensive of ourselves, we become also less afraid and more hospitable.

Love trumps all – 23 June 2017

The gospel lesson for next Sunday (Matthew 10:24-39) seems unpleasant and uncompromising to me, and I decided a week ago that I’m simply not up to it…  The more so, having just read a newly published account of the life of Héloïse,[1] who was briefly mentioned in our discussions last Friday.  Héloïse of Argenteuil was the wife of Peter Abélard.  They lived in France in the high Middle Ages.  Both of them had brilliant minds as philosophers and theologians.   Abélard was a young and popular teacher at the great cathedral school of Paris.  Héloïse was one of his many rapt students.  She could attend his lectures only by disguising herself as a man. 

Predictably they fell in love.  A love affair between teacher and student is a fraught enough situation in our day… but in the medieval world ruled by a church hierarchy of powerful men for whom the role of women was devout subordination and submission, such a thing was perilous indeed.  The glories of gothic architecture and the plainsong liturgy, the great monasteries with their storehouses of learning, all existed alongside a culture of poverty, brutality, disease and superstition, seasoned with arrogant hypocrisy from those who possessed the wealth and the power.  There isn’t time to tell the story of Héloïse and Abélard, except to say that it was a life of tragic enforced separation and much suffering.  Héloïse had a son, Astrolabe, who was taken from her and whom she met again only in his adult life.  She found some security and peace eventually as abbess of a small community of nuns.  Héloïse and Abélard died far apart from each other, separated by a church of terrifying authority and cruelty – all deemed to be to the glory of God.

It is worth noting, I think, that the kind of prayer we are pursuing – Christian Meditation, a form of contemplative life and prayer, in which our only issues are simplicity, silence and stillness, waiting and attending – has never been cordially encouraged, or for that matter understood, by any church emphasizing order and conformity, and control of the ways people believe and behave.  So it is no accident that it is in our day, when the fallibility of the church, its actual frailty and sinfulness, become plain for the world to see, that there is a resurgence of this ancient mode of prayer. 

Yes, the lovers Héloïse and Abélard were way out of order.  Yet they reflected God’s love and the compassion of Christ more surely than their accusers ever managed.  When she was dying, Héloïse wrote what she called her Confession of Faith, and it says: 

I, despite life’s trials, have found faith in a God who embodies Love; a God who also aspires for us to love and to apply that love with truthfulness and good intent… 

That love is what forms and sustains our prayer, and for many of us is the only way our hearts can believe and belong to God.

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[1] Mandy Hager: Heloise (Penguin 2017)

Holy kissing - 16 June 2017

A question was asked last time we met, about St Paul inviting the Corinthian Christians to greet one another with a holy kiss.  You will find this at the end of I Corinthians, and again at the end of II Corinthians.[1]  Maybe kissing everyone was routine behaviour in Corinth, whereas back in Jerusalem it might have got you into bother.  The question had me looking around the passage, only to find all sorts of things to wonder about…   Listen to how Paul signs off what we call his second letter: 

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.  Put things in order.  Listen to my appeal.  Agree with one another.  Live in peace.  And the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss…

Put things in order…  Without knowing specifically what Paul had in mind, we can ask what it might mean around here for things to be put in order.  Maybe they need to be put in order anew each day… making some decisions for ourselves about priorities.  We call in question the requirements of the troublesome ego, demanding as it is always to be fed and pampered, and dressed up.  As the ego steadily disappears from its primacy, the true self emerges, the self that was always there, created and loved by God from the beginning, the self open to God’s Spirit.  So to that extent -- which is a large extent -- things are getting put in order, slowly and steadily, one might think, day by day. 

Listen to my appeal, writes Paul.  He wants them to pay attention to his teaching as an apostle.  Having or finding a teacher, listening and according respect, has become a shaky virtue in our culture – in II Timothy the writer describes people: who having itching ears… accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and… turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.[2]  We now have websites where school pupils can actually grade their teachers and post sometimes offensive comments about them.  In the ancient world, and even today in some cultures, the teacher is always accorded a special place of respect.  Jesus, we read in the gospels, taught with authority.  Paul, for all his human failings, was also a teacher of authority.  Christian spiritual growth always needs this careful virtue of humble and attentive listening.

Agree with one another…  You may have to agree to differ.  What matters is that you understand why the other person thinks, says, does what they do.  This kind of agreement is certainly a fruit of contemplative prayer and life.   Formerly in Corinth they were at each other’s throats – that is entirely out of order in the fellowship of Christ.  And so Paul adds: Live in peace… 

After all that I still don’t know about the kiss.  The Greek says a holy kiss (εν αγιω φιληματι).  Well, I’m a little wary of those ones too. 

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[1] I Cor. 16:20, and II Cor. 13:12

[2] II Timothy 4:4

Trinity – 9 June 2017

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a serious attempt to say something accurate about God… while suspecting all along that we can’t really do that.  If you go on line and track down the Athanasian Creed, which is still honoured in major branches of the Christian church, and read how that describes the Trinity, you may be inclined to agree that more words does not always mean more clarity.  The first of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles however puts it as succinctly as you’ll find anywhere: 

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.  And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

But then, if we turn to the more mature writings that made it into the Christian scriptures [I John 4:16], we find some simplicity: 

God is love.

those who abide in love abide in God,

God abides in them. 

Love is about all we can say accurately, or I would think helpfully, regarding God.  John, or whoever the writer was, captures this simplicity.  To abide in God is to abide in love – to abide in love is to abide in God. 

I think that probably frightens some people, because their woundedness in life makes it hard for them to imagine living in love.  Perhaps their hearts are blaming God for their adversity in life.  It can be frightening also because such a concept brings God close.  Love is an intimate relationship.  The wonderful young French Christian thinker, Simone Weil, wrote how in what she called affliction, when there may seem to be no light and no healing:  The soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least to go on wanting to love… If the soul stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something which is almost equivalent to hell.[1]

The Trinity, looked at through the eye of love, as it were, shows us God the Creator and Father, making and sustaining everything by love.  It shows us God in Jesus, teaching, reconciling, healing, in love.  And it shows us God the Holy Spirit as the way God abides in us, leading us, inspiring, fanning the flame of love.   And as we often say, the test of our prayer is not whether we move mountains, so much as whether we grow in both giving and receiving love.

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[1] Simone Weil: Waiting On God – The love of God and Affliction (Collins Fontana 1975, p.80)

Living water – Pentecost, 2 June 2017

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive… [John 7:37f]

This was the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, at the end of the harvest.  The feast lasted seven days.  On the last day, “the great day”, the priests took water from the Pool of Siloam, up to the temple, and poured it around the altar.  Jesus watched this ancient ritual.  I imagine the water would flow away tidily in channels put there for the purpose -- the priests would be unlikely to get their feet wet.  The water was to remind all the worshippers of the rain that fed their crops and refreshed their lives, literally water of life.  It may have reminded them of Moses striking water from the rock in the desert, God’s provision against thirst in their time of desperation… 

Water is fundamental.  Life cannot continue without it.  Our astronomers wonder if they have found water on moons of Saturn… if there is water, there may be life.  All religions have some symbolism of water.  In Christian baptism, water is the sign of new life. 

We fret these days, no doubt with good reason, about the quality of our water, about unwanted organisms in it, about chemical additives…  And with climate change we wonder about continued supply, about drought and scarcity, about ensuring we have good water stored and ready at home for any calamity.  We cannot imagine life without water. 

Jesus sees, not only water being ritually poured from sacred vessels, but what he calls living water (ʿυδωρ ζων).  You have to imagine bubbling, sparkling, lively and clear water, rushing over rocks and pools, supporting all manner of life, sometimes in torrents, sometimes still and deep.  This is living water, always moving, always changing.  Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well [John 4:14] how the Spirit creates in us, he said, a spring of living water, welling up to eternal life. 

It is important, pursuing contemplative life and prayer, to remember that we can freely in our hearts locate this well of living water in ourselves.  Praying from the heart, rather than from the mind, we find the open door.  We become hospitable to the Spirit Jesus promised, who comes quietly, and over time.  And indeed, a spring of living water may appear.

The wind – 26 May 2017

Language struggles to express lucidly what Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit are all about.  We end up with a list of analogies and word pictures.  Each one no doubt sheds light on some aspect of what God gives us in the Holy Spirit of Christ – what Jesus’s promise means when he said, When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father… he will testify on my behalf [John 15:26].    So it is that we have “tongues of fire” and an alleged “gift” of ecstatic speech – both of which I find less than helpful.  But Paul lists for us a range of “fruits” (καρποι) [Gal 5:22] – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – and also a range of “gifts” (χαρισματα),– wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits… [I Cor 12]  Later he lists these “gifts” as offices in the church – apostles, prophets, teachers, deeds of power, healing, forms of assistance, leadership…

However after all that, in declining years, I find my favourite depiction of the Spirit has not changed in 50 years.  It is back in John 3, the encounter with Nicodemus.  Jesus speaks to this pharisee of the wind.  As a pharisee, Nicodemus had a structured, orderly, prescripted life.  But of the wind, Jesus says:  It blows where it chooses... you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [John 3:8].  Luke in the Book of Acts tells us that the coming of the Spirit was like the rush of a violent wind [Acts 2:2].  James K Baxter gave this analogy a special Kiwi flavour when he wrote about the wind blowing across the paddocks, both inside and outside the fences.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, Jesus tells Nicodemus. 

I remember, from long ago, a ferocious lecture from a visiting cleric, on what he saw as the “perils of private inspiration”.  And indeed, we did know about what can follow when someone claims to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit while the rest of us remain uninspired in darkness.  Private inspiration was deeply suspect.  Chaos could ensue.  Tried and tested rules could be transgressed, the church’s vast collective wisdom set aside.  This man had evidently not read the yearning prophecy in Joel, which Peter quoted on the Day of Pentecost:  I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit [Joel 2:28]… 

This gift of the risen Jesus to his followers is the same wind of the creation story, the ruach, the breath of God, that blew over the abyss, separating light from darkness, bringing newness to life, making new worlds, initiating meaning and purpose – and all in love.  Nicodemus needs to stand in the wind, says Jesus.  Outside somewhere.  Discipleship does mean feeling a draught or two, it entails being uncomfortable in places and at times.  It does mean making friends with change.   Prayer is out in the wind, where we are still and silent, with listening hearts, and paying attention. 

The Spirit of Truth – Easter VI, 19 May 2017

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  [John 14:17]

First, let’s divest ourselves of this perennial bother that normally surrounds the word “truth”.  If you say that what you claim is the truth, there will be someone who thinks otherwise.  You may be not so sure yourself.  If any church claims to be the one true church, the one with the truth, they needn’t expect a flood of conversions, except perhaps in parts of the USA.  “Truth” has become a relative and negotiable term these days, claims are regarded as suspect and liable to be disproved in the next issue of The Listener -- and as you know we even have something called alternative truth, alternative facts… whatever that is. 

…so that, having what Jesus calls here the Spirit of Truth is not going to make us somehow seem right or infallible.  Neither should we feel it does.

Jesus laid down one or two serious markers about truth and falsity, it seems to me.  One of them is the question… Is it loving?  The Samaritan was loving, even though he was of the wrong religion.  When people ask how they know whether Christian Meditation, contemplative life and prayer, is actually getting them anywhere, doing anything for me… the response is a question:  Are you becoming more loving?  Love and truth are inseparable.  Moreover, whatever it is being propounded, if it excludes and alienates it is unlikely to be very true.

Another marker is the question:  Is it practicable?  It is not a matter of how I feel, or what I say I believe.  It is a matter of what I am, and am becoming, and what I do.  I am reminded of that marvellous Maori woman, Eva Rickard, who said we need “less of the hui-hui[1], and more of the do-ie, do-ie”.  So… am I changing under the work of grace?  Am I finding Self, its image and its needs, to be decreasingly important and increasingly disposable?  Am I finding myself less afraid of life, death and the future?  

A third marker might be humility.  As Benedict and plenty of others have seen, truth and humility are inseparable.  When some demagogue rants and roars, threatens and promises the earth, feasting all the time on adoring fans and sycophants, it is time to watch how truth is suffering.  Truth usually doesn’t make a noise.   The Spirit of Truth, who is the Spirit of Jesus, quietly occupies our hearts.  Our discernment of truth may be more in spotting and noting untruth.  The first task is to become friends with silence and stillness, attention, and quiet consent to the coming of the Spirit of Truth.  He abides with you, said Jesus, and he will be in you. 

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[1] In New Zealand, a “hui” is in Maori terms a meeting to discuss some issue at great length with speeches.