Romans 8 – 1…No condemnation – 1 October 2021

 

St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, is a torrent of inspiration.  If Paul had written nothing else but Romans 8, he would have been still a towering figure in our understanding of God and of life.  But where to start, in this chapter in which every phrase and nuance seems to announce love and freedom…?  I could begin at the beginning where we have this startling announcement: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  As God sees us, says Paul, no matter what we may think of ourselves, we are loved and known and unconditionally welcomed.  No condemnation… 

It was Fr Richard Rohr, writing about compassion, who drew me back to Romans 8, with this statement:  Much of the early work of contemplation is discovering a way to observe ourselves from a compassionate and non-judgmental distance until we can eventually live more and more of our lives from this calm inner awareness and acceptance.  In a contemplative stance, we find ourselves smiling, sighing, and weeping at ourselves, much more than needing either to hate or to congratulate ourselves—because we are finally looking at ourselves with the eyes of God.[1]  So let’s focus on that point this morning.  In a steady discipline of silence and stillness much change starts to happen.  Fixed attitudes come gently up for question.  Certain memories seem to lose their sting, or to appear in a more truthful light… much happens.  But basically, in this space in which God of course is fully present as always, and in which we now are learning to be as present as we can, the sight we have of ourselves is adjusting more and more to the sight God has of us. 

One point needs to be made clear…  I am not saying that we plunge somehow into this work as soon as the bell rings for meditation.  No – the bell is the signal to become still and silent, with the help of the mantra.  That is our task.  And that is perhaps the first lesson in humility for us – contemplative prayer is not what we do, but what God does in us as we make space and deeply, inwardly consent, over the days and weeks and years.  We cease passing judgement on ourselves – or, if we do believe we were wrong, we accept that gently and even with a quiet inner humour.  There is no condemnation…  Condemnation is unhelpful, inappropriate, surplus to requirements.

Fr Richard quotes Paul in this chapter 8:  When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…  “Abba, Father!” indeed could be a very fine mantra.  But what is happening is that our spirit, our ego perhaps, the way we see ourselves, is changing towards God’s view of us as beloved daughters and sons.  Instead of any judgmental view of ourselves, we become able to look at ourselves with compassion, with gentle understanding, even with humour.  It is not about sin and guilt – it is about mercy, compassion and love.   God’s Spirit is bearing witness now with our spirit, writes Paul…  God is no longer someone we have to please and propitiate.  It may be that this re-formation entails the rather painful throwing-off of long-held religious assumptions which we always took for granted… such as how wicked we are.  But dealing with that is the work of the Spirit too, once we make the space.  We will come back to chapter 8, but for the moment those two words will do – No condemnation…

---

[1] Richard Rohr, Just This (CAC Publishing: 2017), 58–59.

Don’t worry, be happy – 17 September 2021

 

Happy… says Basil Fawlty, oh yes, I remember that…  Sibyl had just intercepted Basil arranging a bet on Dragonfly in the 4.30 at Aintree.  That particular avenue of pleasure has been closed off, says Basil.  Happiness is a memory. 

It is hard to say what happiness is, except that we know when we’re not.  The United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 famously says that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are our unalienable rights[1].  These days the popular assumption would be that happiness is getting what I want – as though… what else could it be?... the satisfaction of my desires, my expectations of life, the attainment of my dream.  It is widely assumed… firstly that I am entitled to get what I want, and secondly that I will be happy if I do.  Happiness then is primarily about me. 

And at this point I am really puzzled to know what to say.  A scholar of the Christian scriptures would want to say that what we are calling happy, for the Hebrew and Christian writers is commonly called blessed[2].  That is, blessed by God.  But somehow popular religion has warped and twisted that idea out of recognition.  God has blessed me raises all manner of problems.  Who is this God who inscrutably  blesses some but not others?  If blessing is the reward of uprightness, then we can easily produce many good people who are singularly unblessed… and we can find some truly nasty characters who have all they want for their happiness.   Most of the world has realised, moreover, that religious faith is no guarantee whatever of happiness.  Can an atheist never be happy?  Many Christian believers seem to be happy because it is expected… I’m so happy, here’s the reason why / Jesus took my burdens all away… we used to sing.  But we began to suspect before leaving adolescence that Jesus does not take all our burdens all away.

Joy is another biblical word.  The Greek chara (χαρά), joy, is the second in Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit[3].  Chara however is not the ecstatic leaping and jumping which seems now to be obligatory in the event of a triumph in sport, or in the stranger regions of religious charismania.  Paul sees joy as a fruit of the Spirit.  Joy is given to us, even at times in the midst of suffering – the joy that seekest me through pain[4].  It does not depend on everything having gone right, or as we might have wanted.   But around this point I run short on wisdom.  Happiness certainly depends on how I am feeling.  But if you have encountered joy… that sense of gift and wonder, the freedom of having been able to set self aside, the presence of God in our anxiety or dismay… joy awaits us in the silence and stillness, as a peaceful, gentle assurance, and a lovely surprise.  Paul knew it, and he listed joy right there in that initial trio of gifts of the Spirit: Love… Joy… Peace…  Joy, bracketed by love and peace.

---

[1] The Declaration says… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  “All men” means not only the American people, but all men and women of whatever race, colour or creed. 

[2] In Hebrew, barak (בּרךְ ).  Barack Obama’s parents named him blessed.  In Greek makarios (μακάριος), as in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).

[3] Galatians 5:22

[4] Hymn by George Matheson: O Love that wilt not let me go.

Do not forget to listen – 10 September 2021

 

Two passages in the lectionary next Sunday may seem to be at odds.  One is from the Letter of James: Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.  And the other is in Isaiah: The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.  Morning by morning he wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.[1]  And right there is a fine definition of a teacher… someone who listens as those who are taught. 

One of the central features of Christian Meditation, it seems to me, is what contemporary jargon would call listening mode.  Just for a little while we stop fussing and fretting, planning and directing things… directing people... we stop justifying ourselves… giving our opinion… we stop in order for listening to be possible.  As St John of the Cross puts it, My house being now all stilled[2] – this is the space in which we “hear”, or we are open to hear, God’s Word, God’s Truth, and we are open to grace, mercy and love.  It is not that we see visions or hear voices, but in the Apostle James’ lovely phrase, we welcome with meekness the implanted word.[3]  I realised when writing this talk how in meditation we are actually passive, receptive.  It is startling because it is not normally how we think we should be – we should be active – in fact, we have invented a new word, proactive, which I presume is even better than active… we are helpers, rescuers, we make people feel better.  But here, our house being now all stilled, we are doing something else, we are doing what is primary.  It is what Jesus said about Mary, Martha’s sister in the home at Bethany; Mary had made the better choice, he said[4]. Once we stop and listen, God can initiate and continue the work of creation in us, the work of love and recreation, day by day.

So, in a discipline of meditation, listening, says Isaiah, as those who are taught -- we reinforce our listening in all of life.  The stillness makes us more present to other people at other times, because we remember the gift of listening, we get better at it, we hear more accurately and with compassion.  Paul speaks of the eyes of your heart being open…  We become less inclined to react to each thing we hear with some response about ourselves... what happened to me.  We recognise the many times when it is better not to say anything.  Simone Weil, the young French Christian philosopher, said the act of attention that we give to someone is the greatest act of generosity we can make.  It is a moment of setting self aside, the first ingredient of love.  …he wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught, says Isaiah.  So we can say to the Apostle James that it is good to be a teacher, although he thinks it is hazardous – provided we know how to listen.  Knowing that is good anyway, teacher or not.

---

[1] James 3:1-2; Isaiah 50:4

[2] St John of the Cross: The Dark Night

[3] James 1:21 - ἐν πραΰτητι δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον.  “Welcome” is a verb for receiving guests cordially in your house.  “Implanted” is what we do when we plant or graft a seed or cutting where it can be nourished and grow.

[4] Luke 10:42

Then… - 3 September 2021

 

In the lectionary for next Sunday we find this matchless poetry from Isaiah.  You will recognise some of it from Handel’s Messiah:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water…

A highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Holy Way;

the unclean shall not travel on it,

but it shall be for God’s people;

no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.

No lion shall be there,

nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it…

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be on their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

I should stop there… it needs no improvement from me, I know.  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened… but the poetic then is… when? – it is never now, it is always not yet… if ever.  Now is bewilderingly different.  Matthew Arnold expressed it in his poem, Dover Beach:  The Sea of Faith was once too at the full, and round earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.  But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world… And we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. 

If we look at how things are these days, there is not a lot to suggest that it will all come right… as they say in movies, everything’s gonna be just fine… they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away…  We are people of faith and hope, and yet it is as though the world is collapsing into irreligion, or violent, divisive, silly, distorted religion, into endemic strife, government by warlords, sociopaths or tyrants; climate change fuelled by mismanagement, neglect and greed; refugees and desperate homelessness, disease…  a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.  What will our grandchildren face? 

Fr Laurence Freeman wrote recently: It seems to me, more and more, that meditation is not an optional extra for children facing the kind of world that we are giving them. It is an absolutely necessary life skill.  Those of us who follow contemplative life and prayer, are now on the frontier of what it will take to live and grow in faith in the time that is upon us.  We are in a kairos – remember that word? – and any profession of faith that can’t deal, for instance, with the roots of fear, with the need always for certainty, with the dominance of the ego… any faith that can’t relinquish hatred and resentment, that can’t cope with change, that has never found how to be still, how to bear pain, how to let go of possessiveness… any faith, in other words, that refuses to grow up, is unlikely to survive.  One day we will come to Zion with singing.  One day sorrow and sighing will flee away.  We can’t speculate how, or when.  But we hold the hope because it is true, decent and loving, and Jesus is risen, and we live the faith that sustains that vision and that hope. 

What comes from within – 27 August 2021

 

In the Gospel for next Sunday[1], Jesus confronts the pharisees.  The pharisees were critical that Jesus’s disciples neglected to wash their hands before food.  Mark explains this for us; he says this kind of requirement was called the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles. So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders…?  As we know, Jesus’s relationship with the pharisees was what we might call crisp.  Listen to the intensity of his response:  You hypocrites!  Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

Jesus is adamant here because the point at issue is central to faith and life.  It is not a matter of conformity, to the tradition of the elders, however hallowed – although we know that washing your hands before food does have quite a lot going for it.  We are not defiled, rendered sinful thereby, if we don’t do it, or if we eat pork, or if women come forward in leadership, or if we have difficulties with doctrine, or express our sexuality otherwise than the church allows…  We are defiled by what we generate within – any list for 2021 would include greed, deceit and betrayal, violence and abuse of others, wilful blindness to truth, nursing hatred and resentment, revenge, exploitation of others in whatever form – the list only grows. 

But it is a list of the many manifestations of egoism... me first, “me time”, as someone informed me recently: It’s me-time now.  In our times of silence and stillness, we have a space, cleared somewhat by the mantra, in which our own words, desires and opinions are shut down, or perhaps made simply to wait aside, somewhere behind the mantra, for now…  Ego, with all its urgency and busyness, is shifted off the space it ought not to occupy.  I think it is the hardest of all lessons, having self step aside… not because ego is intrinsically wrong or evil, but because we habitually give it priority that belongs to God.  Ego, we might say, is a mixed blessing.  Some of it is no doubt admirable – some of it is not.  In meditation however it is surplus to requirements.  We do what we can to set ego aside – more accurately I think, in our prayer we are consenting to God’s Spirit reducing the ego and bringing forward our true self.  The self that begins to emerge, in these processes of love and grace, is the self God made, and sees, and loves.  The hardest of lessons becomes the greatest of freedoms – it dawns on me that what comes from within (in Jesus’s phrase) is now being checked and changed and brought into obedience to God.  It is what the Benedictines like to call conversatio, conversion, a daily return to our true self – and what comes from within are the fruits Paul lists as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.[2]

---

[1] Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23. “Tradition of the elders” is paradosis tōn presbuterōn (παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων).  If you listen to the song “Tradition!” in Fiddler On the Roof, you get an idea of the strength of these traditions and precepts.

[2] Galatians 5:18-26

Do you also wish to go away? – 20 August 2021

 

The gospel for next Sunday[1] has difficulties for some of us.  It is the passage in John chapter 6, where Jesus talks about eating my flesh and drinking my blood.  He says those who do this… abide in me and I in them…  Whoever eats me will live because of me…  I know what Holy Communion means to many Christian believers – I also know that numerous others such as Quakers live and bear witness without the sacraments.  It didn’t help when I found that in this verse the normal Greek word for “eat” is not used – John chooses a distinctly stronger verb which means greedily devouring food, bolting it down, as Henry VIII reportedly did – or the Cookie Monster in Sesame Street.[2] 

But for all that… what really caught my attention is what follows.  Many of his disciples… this is the wider band of men and women grouping around Jesus at that time…  many of his disciples heard it… they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you?... And then we learn… many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”  It was a crisis… over this talk of eating flesh and drinking blood.  For some it was a tipping point, and the question was whether to continue with Jesus. 

But why? what was the problem?  Jews, Romans, Greeks… the whole ancient world was quite familiar with ritual animal sacrifice.  The temples were the chief source of meat for those who could afford it.  Great minds such as Socrates and Plato seemed to assume that the sacrifice of animals somehow pleased the gods -- and here now is Jesus offering himself (or his followers understanding him later) as the Lamb of God, slain for the sin of the world… Some among his followers at that time found this distasteful.  It’s not only eating flesh and drinking blood, it’s also the assumption, unquestioned by many, that a sacrificial offering is necessary to expunge sin and guilt – what theology calls substitutionary atonement.  What these people had seen in Jesus was not that at all.  If you have love and grace and mercy, which is what they saw, then you are encountering God at another level than mechanisms, liturgies, rituals, requirements.  They are abiding in Christ because Christ is abiding in them, as he promised.  It is not the ingesting of bread and wine, but the surrender of heart and will.  In St Paul’s words, Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.[3] 

Turning back, moreover… going no longer with him, is what many have done in our time.  But when Jesus asks the Twelve, Do you also wish to go away?  Peter responds: To whom shall we go?  He has already found Jesus’s company to be roomier than the church…  When Jesus said, In my Father’s house are many mansions[4], he was talking about his kingdom, his realm, here and now, his company, his people... in heaven and on earth.  Roomy, as we say these days… with indoor-outdoor flow.  Peter gets it right for once.  There is room in the house for anyone, in Benedict’s phrase, preferring Christ.  It is spacious in this house, you could have a feast… which Jesus seemed to think was always a possibility.

---

[1] John 6:56-69

[2] The normal Greek word “to eat” is esthiō (ἐσθίω) – but here we have trōgō (τρώγω), which is to gnaw or devour.

[3] Romans 5:20

[4] John 14:2.  “Mansions” in Greek is monai (μοναὶ), the same word as “abide”.

Wisdom’s house – 13 August 2021

 

Wisdom is a special word in the bible.  We have encountered her before.  Wisdom is always feminine – in the Hebrew cochmah, and in the Christian scriptures the lovely Greek word sophia[1].  So it is that the lectionary alternative OT reading for next Sunday takes us to the Book of Proverbs:

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls,

she calls from the highest places in the town,

“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”  (9:1-6)

Now, sitting a lifetime in the pews you don’t get to hear much about Lady Sophia, Lady Wisdom, because it seems hardly to belong in the familiar biblical message, we never heard of it in Sunday School…  This writer personifies Wisdom as a woman to be reckoned with, equipped with her team of female servants.  She builds a house of wisdom, with seven pillars – seven signifies completeness in Hebrew thought.  She has meat and wine… and she vigorously invites in the simple, those without sense…  Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.  It’s an astonishing image in the patriarchal culture of Judaism. 

But it’s more than that…  Lay aside immaturity… walk in the way of insight.  Lady Sophia is inviting us to grow up.  St Paul writes: Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise… because the days are evil.[2]  It is not a time for nominal, conventional faith, what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace[3]; it is not a time for reliance on any tribal god of miracles, rewards and punishments, a god who has to be placated and beseeched, who keeps a running score of merits and demerits.  We must no longer be children, writes Paul[4], tossed to and fro… but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up[5] in every way into him who is the head, into Christ… 

In Lady Sophia’s house, as it were, we learn to set aside infantile religion and to walk as Jesus taught.  We shed our fears of change and of mortality… and discover one sunny morning that we are not so charmed, not so anxious, about ourselves.  We learn to pray in a suitable, simple, disciplined way, and we learn the riches of silence, and the distinctive way of Christ. 

---

[1] חָכְמָה (cochmah), σοφία (sophia).  In both languages the noun is feminine, and wisdom is personified as a woman.

[2] Ephesians 5:15.  Paul distinguishes between unwise (asophoi… ἄσοφοι) believers, and wise (sophoi… σοφοί).

[3] Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship -- …billige Gnade, eine Gnade ohne Nachfolge, ohne Kreuz, eine Gnade ohne Jesus Christus, die Quelle der Gnade. Cheap grace, a grace without discipleship, without the Cross, a grace without Jesus Christ the source of grace. 

[4] Ephesians 4:14-15

[5] auxanō (αὐξάνω), to grow up, in this verse contrasts with nēpios (νήπιος), an infant.  Even in the 1^st century church Paul has found that some believers are already preferring to remain in infantile dependency, which may be religion but is not faith.