Coming to Zion – 23 August 2019

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)

…part of the Epistle next Sunday.  All those rich phrases may however have a soporific effect -- people assume they are not likely to understand all that, and wonder indeed if the reader does.  But, as often is the case, it repays a closer look.  What we call the Letter to the Hebrews is a bit of an enigma.  We have no idea who wrote it – Origen in the early 3^rd century famously wrote that God only knows who wrote Hebrews.  It certainly reads as though it was written for Jewish Christians of the Diaspora, some of whom, when the Messiah did not quickly return, were being tempted back to ancient and familiar Judaism. 

But that is not us, and this is not the early church or the Middle East. This passage is the writer’s colourful way of explaining where we are who belong to Christ… who we are, and what we’re doing here.  It is reassurance, intended back then for people once Jews, part of an ancient identity with ancient laws and practices – but now exiled, adrift, Christians now, in a new spreading faith of often warring factions, the old familiar landmarks gone…  Does this ring a bell?  In our day this writer’s message is more likely to be meaningful to people like the historian Diarmaid MacCullough who describes himself now as “a friend of Christianity”.  He feels alienated from the church, being gay and having suffered abuse and rejection, but as a scholar he deeply values the treasures of Christian faith and often takes part in its rituals and events. 

So… the writer to the Hebrews says essentially, remember who you are, where you are, what you’re doing here.  You are part of a vast Communion of Saints, seen and unseen.  You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem[1]… Jesus himself put it: My kingdom is not of this world.  The kingdom is present, in and among us, universal and true, while aspects of the visible church may be indeed the opposite of the kingdom of God.  It is inwardly seen and inhabited.  Then the writer reminds us we are not alone here.  We are among innumerable angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven…  “Innumerable” in Greek is myriads – so it is not just countless numbers of saints and sinners, but an endless variety, in this Communion of Saints.  … and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant… That is where we are, simply in our prayer, silent and still, or at the sacrament of bread and wine.  Various teachers have pointed out that there is really only one prayer in the universe – it is Jesus’s prayer to the Father, a prayer of unity and love.  It is echoed in John 17.  Our prayers, our contemplative silence and stillness, our praise and intercessions, are all part of this one great prayer.  When we come to prayer, we join this myriad unseen company, all joining in Jesus’s prayer of love and unity before a loving judge.

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[1] Mount Zion and the Temple, and the city, had been utterly destroyed by the army of Titus in 70 AD, following a prolonged and terrible siege.  This was a profound grief to the Jews of the Diaspora.

They will be divided – 16 August 2019

The Gospel for next Sunday has this puzzling passage.  Jesus says:  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51-53)

The song says he came singing peace … but here he is announcing inevitable division, even in the hallowed relationships of immediate family.  He spells out the fault-lines, generations within the family at odds with each other.

Family is such a curious thing.  One of the pivotal characters on Coronation Street is Gail, whose family year by year redefine dysfunction.  Last I heard, she had two sons in prison.  Gail is nevertheless unshaken in her belief that family is paramount.  Normal questions of right and wrong seem not to apply to family relationships.  Gail will do anything for her offspring including breaking the law.  A caricature, perhaps… but she represents a familiar tribal ethos in which history may get rewritten, skeletons locked deep in the closet, official mythologies created, and children rarely told the truth.   Most historians, biographers especially, know that truth rarely thrives in family narratives.  You may be disloyal elsewhere, but not to family. 

Jesus creates a different community.  He called it the Kingdom… because, in the thought-forms of those days, and long after, every human society was subject to some kingdom, with a ruler, good or bad[1].  Jesus announces the Kingdom of God, a spiritual kingdom, subject to God, ruled in peace and justice, love and truth.  He says that to be part of this community, subject to this king, may indeed trigger conflict with other allegiances -- the iwi, the ones we were born among, brought up and taught to love and respect.  Some decision we make, or some opinion we hold or express, which accords with what we are finding in Christ, is at odds with what the family expects of us.  It comes to be seen as disloyalty, or hypocrisy, letting down the side.

Moreover, “family” as we know is a flexible concept.  It can be much wider than the folks at home.  The gang, or the tribe, can be family.  Similar loyalty is expected in places to the nation, or to the ethnic group, or one’s social status, or to the religion… the “church family”.  Jesus warns here – and he words it as a warning -- that allegiance to him takes priority, and so carries always the possibility of conflict.  The only way I know to resolve this is in contemplative life and prayer, receiving the gifts of love and non-violence in our attitudes and memories, becoming steady and gentle and always ready to listen.  When Jesus has priority, it is always, necessarily, in humility and with a peaceable heart.  These are fruits of the prayer of silence and stillness.

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[1] The Greek word is basileia (βασιλεια) = kingdom.  There was the kingdom of Caesar, the kingdom of Satan, etc.  Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God.

Violence – 9 August 2019

Wars and fights among you, where do they come from?  Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?  You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder.  And you covet something and cannot obtain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts. (James 4: 1-2)

Bryan Jackson’s strange book on Warkworth: Incidents, Accidents and Tragedies, opens with an account of the apparently de facto wife of the local medical practitioner, Dr Edwin Theophilus Jesse Ick-Hewins, horse-whipping the local pharmacist, J Charles Cadman, who she thought had maligned her.  Mr Cadman’s allegations would scarcely raise an eyebrow today.  However this was 1911, and while Mrs Ick-Hewins felt insulted, Mr Cadman was publicly wounded and humiliated – I trust he had suitable liniments and soothing salves in his pharmacy shop.

Our subject is violence, and the notion that violence is ever an appropriate or sensible response to dispute.  The doctor’s wife thought it was -- and she then presumably felt better.  Violence is pandemic.  I don’t know that there has ever been a peaceful human society.  We have violence against children in Syria, in Yemen, and in many other places.  Violence brings towns and cities to rubble, destroys crops and livelihoods, irreplaceable libraries and sacred shrines.  Doctors and others working to relieve suffering become subject to violence, as also do journalists seeking out the truth. We have “domestic” violence in many homes, and again children suffer.  Many factors make violence almost a reflex reaction, mindless and blind.  Words are used to do violence, and this is now facilitated by powerful tools such as Twitter and cell-phone texting, driving some to suicide. 

The writer of the James Epistle says violence comes from our conflicting desires.  The KJV translates it the lusts which war in your members, but it means simply desires… life frustrates me, I am not getting what I want, I can’t handle what I do get, I’m afraid, angry, out of options, I do what I don’t want to do…  On the much wider social and international scales there is always the serious risk that competing wishes or demands default to violence.  There must be tens of thousands of battered Toyota utes rushing around the Middle East with machine guns mounted on the back and excited young men dedicated to violence, knowing little else.

Jesus teaches otherwise, and the Spirit of the risen Christ, when we make space for this, attacks the roots of violence in us.  One day it dawns on us that even our hidden violent thoughts, malevolence, and what in German is called Schadenfreude – pleasure at the suffering of others – is becoming attenuated within us and we don’t want to live that way or have those reactions.  The Spirit is calming our conflicts, opening pathways of peace… it develops day by day, year by year, as we make space in prayer and in our hearts.  Yes, there are situations in which violent people have to be stopped… and that may mean physically and with retaliatory violence.  We hate it – it’s part of our bent world.  It is still a fact that we are people of peace and reconciliation, trust and understanding, in company with Jesus.

On getting weary – 2 August 2019

A long reading from Ecclesiastes is on the menu for next Sunday.  But sadly it’s listed in the Lectionary as an alternative reading and I rather think it will be avoided.  In one verse it says:  All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

Now let’s do what lots might hope we’d do… that is, leap ahead suddenly to make it alright and everyone feel better and go home happy.  Indeed it is true, Jesus said: Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden…[1]  He recognised the human condition of world-weariness, tiredness of life.  He offered a “place” of both rest and hope, in him. 

Nevertheless, it seems to me, we have reason to be grateful to the Hebrew Qohelet – the word means Teacher, or more literally Assembler, someone who assembles wisdom for us – the sage of Ecclesiastes is called Qohelet. He is a wonderful weary sceptic who by some wondrous grace emerged in the canon of Hebrew and Christian scripture.  Ecclesiastes is indispensable. Shakespeare drew on it, as did Tolstoy, Hemingway, Robert Burns, G B Shaw…  Pete Seeger’s song, Turn! Turn! Turn! is straight out of chapter 11.  Edith Wharton’s novel House of Mirth references a sentence in Ecclesiastes: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.  I recall a pious old hymn which began with the incomparable words: Art thou weary, art thou languid, art thou sore distressed…?  Don’t you love “languid”!   Qohelet says the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing… these days when it seems you have seen it all, heard it all, nothing surprises you now...  An Auckland doctor who has done a lot of emergency medicine wrote in The Listener about the road toll – he said you can’t change people’s behaviour; they/we will continue to make stupid decisions.  His letter was an almost perfect statement of the doctrine of original sin.  G K Chesterton said it memorably: I tell you naught for your comfort, yea, naught for your desire, save that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher…[2]

Well, so it does.  Faith points us to where the light can be seen, sometimes brightly, other times dimly and flickering.  True faith will always be open to the sceptic, even the pessimist or the agnostic – and the Bible certainly supports that openness, and the tension of not knowing.  Similarly, what we know as contemplative prayer and life, with its awareness of silence and stillness, humility and gratitude, is open always to hesitancy and question.  We have space, that is hospitality, in our hearts for those who have lost their way in faith – not to correct them and make everything right, but to listen to world-weariness, to faith-weariness, to battle-weariness, and gently to point towards the light we can see.

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[1] Matthew 11:29

[2] G K Chesterton: Ballad of the White Horse

Asking, searching, knocking – 26 July 2019

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. (Luke 11:9)

We enter now on quite sensitive ground.  One of my former Classics teachers, renowned for his circumlocution, called it "ground on which the footprints of angels are conspicuous by their absence".  Part of growing up in faith however is taking leave of some assumptions in faith that may have been long held, even cherished, taken for granted.  Among these is what secular thought sees as the “cargo cult”.  This is the belief that if I think I have a need, or if someone else does, I can beseech God to intervene and change the course of events… praying for a fine day for the church picnic, for instance, or for a parking space outside the dentist.  Some apparently think also that the more people praying for whatever it is, and the longer and “harder” they pray, the more likely it is that God can be persuaded.[1]  And then, if it doesn’t happen as they wish, the rationalisation is that “God did answer but the answer was No”.  Presumably this god actually lets someone die if no one prays – and even sometimes if they do.  This is superstition, it is not faith.  Neither is it what Jesus meant.

Let’s take the three verbs together – Ask… Search… Knock…  It is a literary parallelism… a stylistic form common in Semitic writing… you say the same thing twice or (here) three times, but in different words, for emphasis[2].  Taken together these three words are a strong invitation from Jesus to open the mind and heart to God and to life, to become a seeker, rather than merely a consumer or user of religion, to become a pilgrim, someone not frightened off by a change of scenery or a change of mind, or a change of events.  Ask… Search… Knock… he says.  It is a leaning forward in life. People who ask, search, knock, learn how to draw a line under whatever is past, if necessary.  They are open to the future, with its hidden perils and unanswered questions. 

To Ask… Search… Knock… then, we need to have dealt with fear, in this case fear of what we might find or hear, or what might require change somehow.  People who can Ask… Search… Knock… are people who are free to listen, who have an inner respect for truth, even when it is ugly or inconvenient or threatening.  Fear, writes John, evaporates with love[3].  Ask… Search… Knock… is the attitude of people not concerned first with self-protection, or with being always right, people who are not confusing love with possessiveness and control.  Søren Kierkgaard , the Danish 19^th century Christian philosopher, said that for many people life is like sitting in a train with your back to the engine – you look out the window and what you see is what’s now already past… so you are experiencing the journey in retrospect.  If you are aware of the present moment, it too is already moving on.  Jesus as it were invites us to turn around, to greet what’s coming, and to meet it in the openness of faith and love.  I think that is something of what he means by Ask… Search… Knock…

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[1] In some quarters this is called “Power Prayer”. The prophet Elijah memorably demolishes this superstition… see I Kings 18: 20-40

[2] Donald J Trump does it all the time.

[3] I John 4:18

Keeping it simple – 19 July 2019

If you attend to the Epistle reading next Sunday you will hear St Paul extolling the risen Christ in rapt, lyrical wonder.  And then he adds:  It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Col 1:28)  I think in this passage he may be quoting an early church hymn of praise.  Christ, he says, is the ikon of the invisible God… the first-born of creation… before all things… in him all things hold together… head of the body, the church… first-born from the dead… reconciler of all in earth and heaven… and so on.  These categories, what theologians call High Christology, I find, are too rich a diet for me at this age and stage and trying to live meaningfully in the 21^st century.  I need simpler sustenance.  Simplicity, I find, comes easier, along with generous dollops of mystery, not to mention humility.  We had brief discussion here some weeks ago about personal difficulties in reciting some parts of the Creeds… the Nicene for instance: Only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father; through him all things were made… 

I am well aware people once went to their death defending these things.  And we might add, there are contemplative teachers of our day, including the founder of the WCCM, Fr John Main, who similarly extol the “Cosmic Christ”.  Indeed it is very ancient teaching, and is enshrined in Orthodox spirituality where a favourite depiction of Jesus is as Christos Pantocrator, Christ in Majesty and Power, ruling all.  The final Sunday of the liturgical year is called Christ the King – a Sunday on which, if I could, I got someone else to preach.

There are those of us who meet him in simplicity, more easily than in what humans deem to be majesty, complexity or power, triumph, victory or judgement.  Something in us, it may be, has shifted, feels alienated by ecstatic praise language we never normally hear except of pop stars and sporting icons… and suspicious of what I would call eschatological imperialism – Jesus sitting there ruling all, judging all at the end of time.  Jesus himself taught reticence – you go into your room and shut the door… that is, your inner room, the room of the heart.  He sought seekers, not relentless flatterers.  He was found often enough with society’s rejects, the powerless, oppressed perhaps by religion, the poor, the foreigner, women in subjection to patriarchy and power, the despairing…  He taught peacemaking, healing, reconciliation, forgiving.  He dared to teach, You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…  Above all the Father he loved is not our enemy, but rather a compassionate God whose love, in truth, bears all our frailty and error. 

It is he whom we proclaim, writes Paul.  We warn and we teach in wisdom… he writes, in order to present everyone mature in Christ.  “Mature” in Greek is teleios (τελειος) – it means complete, fit for purpose… I think of a shaped and finished kauri salad bowl fresh off the craftsman’s lathe, a lovely thing.  Paul says he warns and teaches in wisdom, seeking some such result in those who follow Christ.

No fences – 12 July 2019

"And who is my neighbour?"  Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. (Luke 10:29-33)

I like to hope that Jesus’s parable maligns priests and Levites unfairly.  Jerusalem to Jericho is to this day a dangerous road.  Yes, they should have stopped… we have all “not done what we ought to have done”.  The Samaritans on the other hand were by no means part of Israel.  They were ostracised because they were different, they had certain different beliefs, and they had their own temple on Mount Gerizim.[1]  In Jesus’s story, the Samaritan, the heretic, the Untermensch, the inferior, risks stopping to render generous help.  It meant hanging around on that lawless road.  He had to go out of his way to find a lodging for the injured man… he paid for the lodging and even said, When I come back I’ll refund whatever more you spend.  That story would have been startling indeed to Jewish ears. 

The story was Jesus’s answer to the question, Who is my neighbour?  My neighbour, says Jesus, is the one who needs me, or who responds to my need.  My neighbour may be the one I never expected, the one religion has perhaps ignored or failed or abused or discarded.  I don’t cease to be a neighbour, moreover, because there is nothing practical I can do – neighbourliness begins in coming near, as the Samaritan shows, that is, a willingness to understand, listen, risk, share pain and anxiety – it begins in the heart and moves into practical help.  The Samaritan, says Jesus, was moved with pity.  His first instinct was not self-protection – although he may have been well aware of that need.  The others went by on the other side.

So neighbourliness, Jesus recognises, doesn’t have sides.  In that way it is God-like.  It ignores social walls and boundaries.  My protestant tribe in my youth was un-neighbourly to the Catholics, for instance, for all our diligent church devotion and attendance to the Gospel.  Some even thought that was righteousness.  Jesus demolishes those fences.  In his own life he simply ignored them.  There are no fences, consequently, in our silent and still presence to God.  If they emerge -- memories or damage or whatever between us and anyone else – it’s better not to fight these things, or try to pull down the walls.  That would probably be a losing battle.  We go back yet again to the faithful, gentle repetition of the mantra.  We restore its priority in our prayer.  It is God who, in God’s time and way, will bring down the barriers and make peace.  Paul wrote it this way:  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… that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace. (Ephesians 2:14-15)

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[1] A remnant community of Samaritans exists there to this day.  See also John 4:9.