Transform, Restore, Reconcile

For some weeks now a group of Northland people have been preparing for this year's Angel Tree. It's under the umbrella of Prison Fellowship in which local people have been very active especially since the building of the Corrections Facility at Ngāwhā. Sue Nash (of Holy Family Church) has been an inspiration and Parish Council appreciates Jessica Scott's willingness to front for our parish, along with the Robinsons. Angel Tree contributes to a crucial factor in life after incarceration – that there is a viable family life to return to and that the person knows he has a place among his family and his community.

In a recent Herald article I read that Corrections minister Anne Tolley had taken a shine to an English prison initiative. Certain inmates at Doncaster are allowed to spend lengthy periods with their children, in a family friendly area. The scheme is understandably limited to minimum security fathers who pass behaviour standards.

"While we were there, there was a father who was bathing his 18-month-old daughter. She comes in once a week, and the two of them go through a normal parenting day. He has a day with his little one and he has done [this] since she was born," Mrs Tolley said. "It's to try and maintain those links, so they don't miss the development of that child, so the child gets the benefit of a dad."

She asked them about the record of violence with this scheme. She said, “they looked at me as if I was nuts.”

How do you react to this? Or more generally, what do you think when you hear about kindness to people convicted of crimes? There's a prevailing attitude that considers prison is about making wrong-doers pay. If they're not suffering, then the system is going soft on them. It is so easy to get sucked into the dominant culture's cries for retribution and punishment.

I heard a senior police officer say recently that the people they most often come into contact with “are victims too”. His big concern is the issue not being tackled even though it is the major contributer to the crimes they encounter most. The issue is alcohol and it's almost always there, be it drugs (more time spent drinking before and after drug taking), violence, sexual abuse, car accidents... It makes sense to Police that when they are dealing with offenders they offer to put them in touch with help: 0800 787797 for Alcohol Drug Helpline. In Northland a trial is running whereby Emergency Departments and the Police can, with the person's permission, make a referral so that a helpline caller will contact the person. It is much easier to respond to a phone call than to make the initial call. Already the stats are impressive about the help being received and changes made.

Back to the matter of attitude. Against the dominant culture of retribution, which labels wrong-doers and risks leaving them on the outer of a normal life, the Christian Way provides us with a counter-culture: a much more effective attitude and one that is true to our humanity because it is true to our spiritual foundation.

The law of the land says, a person is innocent until proven guilty, and when proven it is hard to gauge when that guilt ceases.

The law of our God says, a person is loved regardless.

That's my starting point, ending point, and everything in between. Victims loved and needing compassion and understanding; perpetrators loved and needing compassion and understanding. I am impressed, from my limited knowledge, with prison guards. For us outside it can be hard because we think of the awful things prisoners are in for. The guards seem to me to be enacting this principle, not focussing on what the person has done but treating all equally as people who matter. And of course wise to individuals' ways: “as cunning as serpents and as open as doves”, in the words of the Master (Jesus).

Often in our church it is like we're in another world: no swearing or abusing, no drunkenness or violence. Then I remember that among our relations are people of all sorts – if not our blood relations, then our relations because of our shared humanity. Equally, unconditionally, loved by God.

Prison Fellowship's motto is “Transform, Restore, Reconcile.” If you'd like to help build bridges for offenders to live good, healthy lives after prison, get in touch with Alan Robinson. He's our parish secretary but, more importantly, he's the Mid-North Chair of Prison Fellowship.

Shalom, Robyn

We tend to turn off the people we most need to hear. The people to whom we are least attracted often have the most to teach us. If we identify those to whom we are least drawn, we can make a special effort to listen to them attentively.... Answers can shut down growth; good questions encourage growth. Answers sometimes terminate our listening; questions stimulate further listening.

Source: Listening Hearts

Christian voices in the public arena

Have you been hearing Christian voices in the public arena lately? I've heard quite a variety: there seem to have been a number of matters that have got people acting on their faith, and speaking out for Christian values in the wider scene.

There's the (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill. Seventy church leaders, including some names I know well, released a joint personal statement¹ on the day of the first reading of the Bill. They were speaking out for “the uniqueness of marriage” and “the complementary role of male and female.” For myself, I would own up that my links are with Christians for Marriage Equality Aotearoa², who call on people of faith “in the light and hope of the Spirit of Jesus... to  respect the dignity, freedom, and committed love of same gender couples to enter into the rite of marriage.” Christian voices are on both sides of this debate, Christian voices being heard, and they are speaking clearly and respectfully. May it continue to be so throughout the Bill's processes in Parliament.

More significant I think are the Christian voices that are being heard in many communities, engaging in local politics and protests. As I write it has been a bad week for job losses, with families and communities around the country very concerned for the future. The epitome of the trauma and the challenge is Christchurch where the earthquakes have intensified the situation and sharpened the focus on the issue of doing right for people, now and in for the long term. Education Ministry plans for re-structuring felt like another big after shock to them, another challenge to work through for people whose resilience is not what it used to be.

You might recall Peter Beck announcing his resignation as Dean of Christchurch Cathedral. It wasn't because, with the cathedral “munted” he had no job. The cathedral congregation continues. Rather he resigned to stand for the City Council, and he did so to continue what he'd been doing since 4 September 2010 – trying to be a voice for people at risk of being ignored. By and large they are people of the Eastern suburbs, more generally they are people of lower income and with less education. He was successful in the election, and he wasn't alone as a visible Christian presence on the new Council. A Presbyterian colleague of mine, Glenn Livingstone, was also voted on. As church ministers Peter and Glenn are able to give a profile to Christian faith as it expresses itself in social action. They are far from alone in this activist faith but as ministers they wear their faith on their sleeve and can give courage to others. Christian voices – and hands and feet – are on the ground in Christchurch contributing to its renewal. And they are reminding those in power to listen to the people. Methodist colleague Mark Gibson in New Brighton is one of a number whose internet messages indicate that the Christians are active and vocal in doing kindness and seeking justice for that city and its people.

But it's another matter of national concern that really got me thinking about Christian voices in today's social environment. “Politicians think its fine to lie” was the title of Tapu Misa's article in the Herald this week.³ US Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan was the extreme example she began with, but the target of her critique was what she called John Key's “Banksian contortion”. We've long bemoaned the untruths of politicans, but what is worrying is that it is now being treated as acceptable. We're told that the important thing is whether they are found to be breaking the law. It doesn't seem to even be embarrassment, to be found to be dishonest.

Tapu Misa writes openly as a Christian and I greatly appreciate her voice. She can be heard alongside a number of other voices in our secular society, who are speaking out on this matter of truth and honesty. For me it is core business for us as church to stand up for such fundamental values. Not the law, but the spirit. In other words, ethics – the way we relate to others and the integrity we seek in being true to our humanness.

My Bible-in-schools have been looking at the creation stories with which the Bible begins. One aspect stood out for the children of two quite different cultural and economic environments – Riverview and Kaeo. The idea that we are a reflection of God had their eyes light up.

That's who we are – that's who we can be. But only if we are taking on qualities like honesty, integrity, kindness, justice, respect, and love for one another.

Shalom, Robyn

1 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1208/S00472/church-leaders-unite-to-speak-up-on-marriage-amendment-bill.htm

2 http://www.facebook.com/ChristiansForMarriageEqualityAotearoaNZ

3 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10836026

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

Frederick Douglass, 19th century escaped slave

Two issues of concern

Three soldiers killed in Afghanistan, following on from two killed just two weeks before. As I talk to a variety of people, there seems to be a common mind that peace-keeping work is the role for our armed forces. It feels like we are now caught up in a war, pitting us against others as the 'enemy'. If we are to be involved in other nations, it is surely to work with people, peace-keeping and peace-building.

I've been reading through my father's letters from war-time and it's brought back the conversations we had over the years about the morality and otherwise of war, particularly given we try to be followers of Christ. It was something extreme in the situation with Hitler that led to the decision to sign up. Something extreme that all situations since have never had, in his view. Dad really questioned his decision in retrospect but came to accept that, at the time, and in the understanding of the time, the call was to serve.

These memories strengthen my view that Jesus turned the world upside down by challenging the powers, without resorting to violence to overthrow them. Self-sacrifice, yes. Anger at injustice (in the Temple), yes. Yet, love your enemies, not hate them.

Our armed forces achieve so much when they are providing safety and stability, and given the task of helping to rebuild communities.

Our love and prayers to those who have lost loved ones in these recent times, and to those who are fearful of the coming months. Also, our prayers continue for the people of Afghanistan, that one day they will have a homeland at peace.

* * * *

An opportunity to teach positive values for our society or evangelisation by stealth: that's the debate underway at present concerning Bible-in-Schools in New Zealand state primary schools.

I'm involved in this programme at Riverview and Kaeo Primary Schools. For close to 25 years now and I've continued my involvement because, without it, our secular education system, has no opportunity to share stories from any faith heritage. Without faith stories, values can end up being just abstract words. Without stories, topsy-turvy ideas like little boy David standing up to giant bully Goliath and paying back wrong with forgiveness would be totally unbelievable.

Unless our education system can agree to include a well-resourced and well-delivered course on Faith and Religion, we need Bible-in-Schools – done appropriately – to help with education in an important aspect of 21st century life. If we don't have some understanding of the way values and life-beliefs are a strong bond for people who share them ('religio' means to bind or to join), we will struggle to understand most international issues and many of our own country's social issues. What is more, if we don't develop an ability to identify and reflect on our own personal values and life-beliefs, we can end up at the mercy of advertising, peer pressure, and, in a word, consumerism. Currently Bible-in-Schools is the only tool in the school system to introduce young people to a major factor in the lives of millions of people around the world.

I've been working with St John Youth this year, taking them through the requirements for their “Faith” badges. St John is founded on the work of a Christian order in the age of the Crusades when the contest between Muslim and Christian, and Jew, was at a peak. The purpose of the order was to tend the wounded, and offer care and compassion to whoever needed it.

For the younger ones the Faith badge involves thinking about their own values and beliefs and identifying ceremonies and festivals that are important in the local community. For the next age-group up, they learn about the beliefs and rituals of different people and about different faiths and their festivals.

I'm enjoying it because I have a chance to explore different faiths and be myself, the chaplain who claims the name Christian among the mix of faiths. I can encourage the children to name what they believe and see as of real importance in life and see 'faith' as therefore relevant to them. And this is especially the case for those who are not part of any church, and who would perhaps claim to have no faith.

Is anyone without faith? Without being part of an organised religion perhaps, but I think everyone has basic beliefs steering their lives. What makes a difference, as I see it, is being able to name them and reflect on them; to grow through the journey of living to become who it is that is most authenically 'me'.

Some of us find it good to grow together, by gathering at church. I wonder what other ways there might be for supporting the faith journey of another?

Shalom, Robyn

I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m working at it, and I'm amazed when people walk up to me and say, “I'm a Christian.” I think, Already? Wow! Maya Angelou

Hospitality

Just by chance first thing in the morning, the day of the workshop about our new church and community facility, I read this from among my emails:

Space for Change to Take Place

Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbour into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment.¹

There was a buzz when I read this at the start of the workshop. It was like we are saying, “Yes, this is what we are on about; this is what we want to create.” But the test is achieving it – not just having the good intentions, feeling we are welcoming, but others experiencing us and our place as such.

The main problem with the traditional church, as I've known over my years on this good earth, is that we've fitted on the “not to” side of this list of comparisons. Whatever has been intended, that's not how it's been perceived.

As a particular church, this parish has been pretty good at having “fluid edges”, opening our buildings to use by a broad range of people and having a reputation for not coming on strong with religious language. In parishes I've been part of there's usually been quite a number of “Friends of the Church”, people who support good work we do (including financially), people who are completely comfortable coming to our buildings for their own use.

But there are still plenty of others who feel more comfortable keeping away. It's safer, they reckon. For some it's a case of “once bitten, twice shy”; for many there is simply the expectation of judgment and pressure to change, of conformity and losing freedom to be who they are.

This is not to say that God, Jesus, or some spiritual understanding are not part of their lives. Often something like this is, but they don't think a church could connect with them and help them spiritually. A bit like Alice Walker has her character Shug say:

"Tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.”

What Shug says next is a pointer for our purpose:

“Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God."²

In the early 1970's St John's Uniting Church in Kensington, Whangarei, presented a brief to their architects that said, build a building so the community can share it with us. St John's Church Centre opens into a foyer large enough for gathering and hospitality. The layout makes it easy for people to go to events in different areas and the worship area is great for concerts. (I can vouch for the acoustics after rehearsing there for a combined Whangarei Choral Society/BOI Singers concert.) A Child Care Centre was an early tenant, until it grew to need a separate building on another part of the property. A Community House “One Double Five”, housing community development, law, and youth services, is alongside on Methodist Mission land.

There's so much in common here with us and what we've been planning for the last five years and more. Progress is slow on the physical side of things and that can be frustrating. And worrying because we don't yet know the costs and how it will all fit our budgets. However, maybe it is giving us time to work on the non-physical side: to broaden our understanding of others, develop warmth and open hearts for strangers and people who behave differently, and share our faith simply by offering a space that will allow God's spirit to work in people however is right for them.

We're already on the way towards this. Many comments collected at the workshop point towards genuine hospitality as our driving force. We want to offer it – offer space for change to take place. We're learning how to recognise if it's just good intentions on our part and us in effect still doing the same old, same old line of “church has what's good for”.

We can open ourselves up as a congregation to create a space – physical space and spiritual space – where others quickly feel at ease to explore and make themselves at home. If we do, I know we will grow.

With the challenging opportunities in front of us for our Kaeo church, this applies for both congregations.

God bless our Home!

Shalom, Robyn

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.         Mother Theresa

1From Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen

2From The Color Purple by Alice Walker

On earth as in heaven

Heaven as an other-worldly paradise: this conception popular since the Middle Ages is facing serious challenge. And it's happening not because of loss of faith, but because of a return to faith. A return to biblical faith.

“The oft-cliched Christian notion of heaven – a blissful realm of harp-strumming angels – has remained a fixture of faith for centuries,” writes John Murawski in the Washington Post.¹ “But scholars on the right and left increasingly say that comforting belief in an afterlife has no basis in the Bible and would have sounded bizarre to Jesus and his early followers.” Studying the Jewish roots of the New Testament has been like the patient restoration of an ancient fresco, Murawski suggests.

I like that image because what is so often found by careful restoration is a greater richness and beauty than we even had before.

What triggered this press article is the fact that Tom Wright, who is definitely not on the liberal/progressive side of any theological debate, has “add[ed] his voice to the chorus” on getting heaven all wrong. So this isn't the academy debunking orthodox beliefs, and it's not from people detached from everyday faith or the life of the church. It arises from careful reading of the Bible and learning about the culture and faith in which our Christian faith was born. What is more, it uncovers a deeper faith, a very practical and purposeful faith, and it doesn't lose any of the comfort for this life of an after-life to come. Nor does it lose any of the seriousness for now of an after-life of the negative kind – remember that this other-worldly concept of heaven came as a two way package, heaven and hell.

The Bible speaks clearly about consequences, good and bad, for the life we live here and now. It makes a difference what we do and who we trust (have faith in). “I go to prepare a place for you,” says Jesus. “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” he also says. But this is talking not about another world, but about this world. That's what closer study of the Bible is revealing.

N T Wright takes the basic tenets of the Christian faith seriously and I regularly use his commentaries on the Gospels for my Sunday preparation. His dialogue volume with progressive writer Marcus Borg (who is closer to my own way of thinking), exploring topics such as the Resurrection, Jesus and God, the Virgin Birth, the Return of Jesus, stands for me as a reminder of the power of dialogue for discerning God's Word and not just my own theories. Borg and Wright have enormous respect for each other and such writers give us so much more for our own faith and understanding than polemicists at the extremes like Richard Dawkins.

The message of the Gospels is of the Kingdom of heaven here and now, transforming this world to be as God would have it be. This is how first century Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and became the church understood it. Because of Christ, people of faith have the confidence to pray “your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

In biblical terms, heaven is God's “arena”, life and all reality operating according to God's dream and will for it. The promise of God's blessing from the beginning was that “heaven would come down”, e.g. for Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Israel, the exiles in Babylon, and Jesus' contemporaries under Roman oppression. It is the promise of the age to come. This is N T Wright's translation for what we have read traditionally as “eternal life” and I like it.

For Biblical faith holds the hope that God will transform this world, completely transform it from the tangled mess we know too well to the vision of God's kingdom: peace, justice, and well-being for all. As Christians we hold that hope too and, with the Spirit's lead, we are part of God's work doing the transformation already. Little things maybe, where love is given, hope is shared, bad habits and structures are changed. But genuine “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Living our lives by faith, we are living with a foot already in the age to come. Rejecting Christ and his way, our feet are stuck in the mess. Long-term, this choice affects our soul – our sense of self, our relationships with the world and other people, and therefore how we can let go of this life when our time comes. Who we are with God.

The biblical record gives us no certainty about after death, but one thing is sure: it's okay, because it's in God's hands. How that is precisely for each of us depends on how we are with this ultimate Spirit and Source of Life.

Heaven: Jesus' mission is to bring it to this world, a mission he wants us to be part of. God's safe-keeping: what we trust is ours forever, together with those we love, just as it is for all of God's good creation.

Shalom and God bless, Robyn

1http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/nt-wright-asks-have-we-gotten-heaven-all-wrong/2012/05/16/gIQAD4lTUU_story.html