January Sunday Reflections

4 January 2015

Isaiah 60:1-6 Society's centre becoming a place of hope

The post-exile prophet, who built on the inspiration of the first Isaiah three centuries before, pictures what would have seemed as unbelievable then as now: that the cultural centre and power centre, Jerusalem in their case, could be a place of genuine hope. Jerusalem has been decimated by other nations. Political divisions are sharp, between those wanting to rebuild a self-contained nation, ethnically and culturally pure (Ezra and Nehemiah tell of that), against those who had heard the Isaiah message that their God is God of all creation and their calling is to be light for all the nations. So arguments over politics are at once arguments over faith. Who do we believe is important in God's eyes? What is our vision of “good life”? Is it kingdom life or is it national security and our culture holding sway?

They are downcast. We can feel downcast about the state of our world. Despondent, wondering if hope belongs at all in our lifetime. The prophet says, look up. There are new horizons to be seen. Your God is God for all humanity and not just for the insider group. Therefore, there is a bigger picture in which the transformation of faith involves the transformation of our whole society. Not just our little corner, us living good lives, but God changing the ways of the world through us – and many others.

Our task shining light for all and sundry is to embody God's hope. Through welcoming, including, receiving others as people with gifts to share however strange they (the people and/or the gifts) may seem to us.

Think of it this way: trust God to be at work in all sorts of different people, not obviously “godly” perhaps even sceptical or anti. What we can do as ones who do acknowledge God the giver of life is accept them as genuine contributers to God's kingdom way.

Can you think of recent examples of people you have met, or comments you've heard in the public arena, that have been genuine gifts for making a difference? Contributions, even though small, which need to be affirmed to encourage more “God work” in our wider society.

To be a light in everyday terms mean highlighting the hopeful and therefore helping keep despondency from taking over.

Matthew 2:1-12 These travellers: what drove them to journey?

Put yourself in the place of the travellers in the story here.  What must have been their thoughts, their hopes, their fears as they began this incredible journey? As they ended it?

Have you ever known yourself called on such a pilgrimage? What was its outcome?  How were you changed?

What compelled these travellers to take the journey in the first place? To risk fortunes and reputations, be nearly thwarted, and their lives threatened, by a paranoid ruler. We can imagine they had dreams and nightmares about it for the rest of their lives.

So what stirred in them to drive them to risk so much? What deep yearning was it?

What they were doing was in fact living their life's work to its natural conclusion, their life's work as scholars of the stars. It was probably not what they signed up for at the start, to go on a journey such as this. But they did it. They let their calling lead them beyond imaginings.

Our first calling is simply to be who we were made to be. Then we are to keep eyes and ears and hearts open to where our calling happens to lead us.

So this story is not just for entertainment, a nice tale about some wise men and a baby. In addition to this underlying message of following our calling, the story has two key things for us to note.

First these people are from the East. The good news is for all people regardless of origins or nationality. The message of post-exile Isaiah has to be repeated again and again, because human nature forgets and we revert to concern for well-being and blessing for our own group. Epiphany – the name for this event in the church calendar, meaning manifesting or bringing to light spiritual reality – declares an end to the idea of national or exclusive gods. As with the Canaanites' Baal, or YHWH “the Lord” when seen as exclusive to the chosen people, or the god of thoughtless patriotism, the god of cultural superiority, the god of accumulated wealth, the god of ability and success.

The good news of our God is for all humanity, indeed all the cosmos. If some are described as “others” it doesn't work as good news. And especially if it doesn't work for the least, then it isn't good news.

Secondly, these people are star-gazers. Star trekkers, barrier breakers. Going where no-one would sensibly set off and go.

Can we follow so determinedly the leads that we sense the spirit giving us? Can we follow and also break barriers as we go where we are lead by the Star, by the Spirit, by the serendipity of new insights?

The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke

The story is an addition and expansion of the account of the Biblical Magi, recounted in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.  It tells about a "fourth" wise man (assuming the tradition that the Magi numbered three to be true), a priest of the Magi named Artaban. Like the other Magi, he sees signs in the heavens proclaiming that a King had been born among the Jews. Like them, he sets out to see the newborn ruler, carrying treasures to give as gifts to the child - a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl of great price. However, he stops along the way to help a dying man, which makes him late to meet with the caravan of the other three wise men. Since he missed the caravan, and he can't cross the desert with only a horse, he is forced to sell one of his treasures in order to buy the camels and supplies necessary for the trip. He then commences his journey but arrives in Bethlehem too late to see the child, whose parents have fled to Egypt. He saves the life of a child at the price of another of his treasures. He then travels to Egypt and to many other countries, searching for Jesus for many years and performing acts of charity along the way. After thirty-three years, Artaban is still a pilgrim, and a seeker after light. Artaban arrives in Jerusalem just in time for the crucifixion of Jesus. He spends his last treasure, the pearl, to ransom a young woman from being sold into slavery. He is then struck in the temple by a falling roof tile and is about to die, having failed in his quest to find Jesus, but having done much good through charitable works. A voice tells him "Verily I say unto thee, Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me."(Matthew 25:40) He dies in a calm radiance of wonder and joy. His treasures were accepted, and the Other Wise Man found his King.

11 January 2015

Washed in the Holy Spirit

Jewish mystic, the Baal Shem Tov, who compared atheists to "a deaf man who for the first time comes upon a violinist playing in the town square while the townspeople, moved by the lilt and rhythm of his playing, dance in joy. Unable to hear the music, he concludes they are all mad".

Genesis 1:1-5

Mark 1:4-11

Did Jesus need to repent? Unless the gesture is an empty one, apparently he did. John had been announcing a coming new order; his baptism prepared people for new ways of living and behaving. Jesus is the focus of that new order. His baptism was a sign of renouncing the old order. His act of repentance signaled a break with the structures and values in society by which people are oppressed, and with the prevailing moral, religious, and political order.

Peter B Price, Sojourners

Baptism in the Holy Spirit: a topic to get reactions surely.

But let's look at it in terms of what the Bible talks about.

Baptise means simply wash. John the Washer was renowned for washing people in the Jordan River. And he did it as a sign of turning back to the good and the true and washing away all that goes against it.

John was helping people to wash away the old ways of living and behaving. With that done,in principle a person could become who they were meant to be.

Now for Jesus, what follows is a voice that names the person he is meant to be, the person he is. And then a third step: the heavens part. Now we're really into the new stuff.

At the River Jordan, if anything is going to be parted, it's the idea of the waters parting that would first come to mind. Go back to the beginning, as in our first reading, and the parting of the waters from the land is fundamental to life getting under way. When matter meets spirit, when the formless void feels the wind of the creator spirit, creation begins.

Then there was the parting of the waters when Moses strikes the Red Sea with his staff. Escape from Egypt. The beginning of the journey to life with freedom.

Later it's specifically the Jordan, which was sure to have been the biblical connection the crowds who came to John had in mind. Elijah parted the waters when he touched them with his mantle (2 Kings 2) – as did Elisha a few verses later, proof of his receiving his mentor's power. Maybe John is the new Elijah, they think. Maybe he will lead them to the Messiah.

But it is not waters that part in Mark 1, but the heavens. And through the gap, down from the sky, comes a dove. Another water connection? Could well be. Third century bishop Gregory Thaumaturgus saw Jesus here as “the new Noah … the good pilot of nature which is in shipwreck.”

Mmmm. We could do with a good pilot in our context: nature, humanity, and the planet rather like a ship in trouble.

So there's a set of three signs and three phase or steps for us to learn from. The first phase is being washed of old ways and behaviours. But we don't just stop at that, because we realise that getting rid of the old needs also a clear direction for the new. Step two – the second sign for Jesus of the voice naming him beloved – is identity. Naming, getting a sense of who we are and who we are meant to be. Our potential, our gifts, our true nature, in God's eyes. And then step three – the third sign – the guiding spirit brings the new ways and behaviours to live more and more from this time on.

This picture of the heavens parting is a poetic way of imagining the boundary, the liminal space between the physical world we see and touch and what lies deeper – the “more than meets the eye”. It's a thin place where ordinary material reality is touched by spiritual energy. And the dove is the symbol that carries this energy through, so to speak. A symbol of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit as Christian faith names it.

People come to John to be washed clean of the old: Jesus will give them an even more important washing. Soaking them with the Holy Spirit, which powers their new way of living.

An interesting thing about the Holy Spirit in Mark's gospel: we usually think of the Holy Spirit as an event or experience that came at a point later, after Jesus' death; something to receive in one magic moment, on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem or in the locked room at the end of that day which began with the Empty Tomb. But that's Luke and John respectively and they were written later than Mark.

For Mark the Holy Spirit starts right away. Here at the Baptism.

Jesus is plunged down into the river, eyes and airway closed. He comes up and breathes in the air. In his breath comes the Spirit and it becomes part of him, of how he lives and breathes from now on.

I heard a woman speak about going back to her home in Pines Beach: it had been filled with smoke and it was going to be a while before they got rid of the smell. I also read about experiences in South Australia. The smoke of a bush fire, something intangible, you can't quite grasp it, but it gets into every part of us, making our eyes run, seeping into the houses of our lives even though we shut the doors and windows. (Andrew Prior) It's like something was in the air.

The Holy Spirit is like that. Something's in the air. From this point on in Mark, the Holy Spirit is with Jesus and in Jesus, and it soaks in and around those he meets.

It's his ministry of God's good news that does it. That's baptising in the Spirit. He visits the sick and lifts people up. He sits and eats with those who are poor and different and ostracised. He helps heal them by loving and accepting them. He helps those who are bogged down and gets them moving again. He feeds with bread and with words of freedom and love. He gives himself, and so helps restore people to life.

Being baptised in the Holy Spirit is being immersed in this way of living and being.

It is something we can do. Simply by loving and accepting people as best we can, the Holy Spirit's power is there with us. By definition you might say.

Being out in the Spirit smoke also helps. That is, going back again and again to the stories of Jesus and letting them give direction to our own stories.

Being out in the smoke by being where Jesus is.  

18 January 2015 

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening

In the background is a text from 1 Samuel. Chapter 3 is the story of the little boy Samuel, who hears a voice in the night calling him, thinks it's Eli the priest, but in fact it is God. God-who-calls-us.

God is still speaking, although it hadn't seemed like that. Things were in a mess. Eli's sons were a disgrace to their family profession of priesthood and Eli was doing nothing about it, which was also part of the disgrace. But he was raising the boy Samuel, who had been dedicated to the temple by his mother Hannah, following the miracle of his conception after so long waiting.

Eli's faith and perception are a mixed bag. He assumed Hannah was drunk when she was praying with such heart and soul, longing for a child. He knows immediately that the voice Samuel hears is the Lord's and guides him wisely in how to respond.

“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

So it's likely not that the voice is not speaking, but that it is not being heard in the midst of the noise of what we think is real life.

Now an interesting thing about biblical language, Hebrew, and the Aramaic that was behind the Greek words used in the New Testament is this: words like “hear” and “see” carry an extra dimension from how western culture language usually understands them.

When you hear, you don't just hear and think about it. To hear means to act in response. That's when the word “obey” fits better than just “hear”.

When you see, you don't just see and stay a spectator, interested or otherwise. To see means to follow up on what you see. To do something in response.

With that in mind, listen for what you hear in the gospel reading. And what people see.

John 1:43-51

The Bible is better read meditatively than doctrinally. Gaze, be drawn in, and, once in, look, listen, feel. Not inspect for beliefs and directives set out in it, as if it were a rule book.

Be present to it. And therefore present to the Presence it evokes.

The Christian life is the practice of becoming conscious of this at the heart of living. Again and again becoming aware of living and breathing a presence that is more than ourselves or the things around us. This awareness is to be part of everything we do, but that can be hard when we're up to our ears in doing. So it helps to practise.

Reading scripture is a way to to practise this practice, as we ponder what we hear and see, in a Hebrew sense of those words. What does our hearing and sight trigger us to do in response?

Being found by Jesus (and remember Psalm 139, about the Presence who finds us and knows us), Philip responds to these words “follow me” that he hears. He goes and finds another person and tells him about Jesus. Nathaniel hears what's said and responds with cynicism. Now he doesn't just think it, as the Western approach to language gives a space to do – you can hear and not do anything. He speaks it. Response. And Philip hears and responds to that: “Come and see”.

There's a wonderful line in the text from 1 Samuel. God will speak a new thing, at which “the two ears of everyone that hears it will tingle” (1 Samuel 3:11).

Ears tingle, eyes brighten up: that's what is happening as each person is captivated by what they see and what they hear. The words spoken – the Word – is something almost physical, picking people up and drawing them in to the fold of new disciples. An indication of the physicality of words for ancient Semitic peoples is their habit of ducking when a curse was sent their way. Again we see this different understanding of what it means to speak and hear, to look and see. It engages us. Or it can engage us if we let ourselves be drawn into the connectedness of how human living really is. Let go our Western culture's separate unit idea and let ourselves be affected by what we see and hear. And do something in response.

Every time the lectionary pops in on John's gospel we need to remember that the author of this book was a mystic, with a purpose of drawing us in to the mystery of Christ. What it's about whenever we read a passage from John is nothing I can lay out in plain language for you. It's not theory like that. It's experience. And in the experience we learn. We discover things about ourselves, who we are and who we are called to be – our theme through Epiphany. What life, what way of living, is this relationship with Jesus leading me into?

It depends who we are, and it depends what comes to light when we tune in to this relationship, connect ourselves back with life as relational. Today's encounter with Nathaniel shows one key quality for Christian living, what kind of person it is important to be. So, if nothing more – though I am sure there is more, in what you are hearing and sensing regarding yourself – let's learn from Nathaniel.

The really important quality is this: Nathaniel is identified as “truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

Even though being an Israelite means you are a descendant of Israel = Jacob, one of the great deceivers of all time, you are not doomed by your genes. That's one way of reading that, valid and helpful I am sure, for us.

But it's the actual quality that is in primary focus: to be without deceit. This is a very important practice to practise as people who want to be disciples of Christ. True, we don't save ourselves by doing right – the message is, God loves us unconditionally. But we do become better and better disciples by practising the ways of good and right living. And this quality in Nathaniel is at the core:

Love is a choice – not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretence or guile.

Carter Heyward

The Greek word used in the text refers literally to fish bait. To beguile, to deceive, is like trapping another person with fish bait. Fish bait really is treachery. In contrast we need to have integrity and clarity of consciousness, exactly what Psalm 139 encourages and, if you can sit comfortably with that Psalm, then those qualities fit. Not to deceive is to care about others. To be a person of compassion. Christ-like.

Let's use Nathaniel as an example and keep practising the choice to be present to others without pretence or guile.

It needs on-going practice, a life-time's worth.

25 January 2015

Mark 1:14-20         Go Fishing

Two things happen in the reading. Jesus announces the Kingdom and he calls disciples.

Discipleship is intimately connected with the Kingdom.

But what is this “kingdom”? We don't talk about kingdoms now, or even reigns. What word could we use that is relevant to now? Whatever we use, it needs to work as both a noun and a verb, that is, it encompasses a region but also points to what to do. Also it is total, all or nothing, not a choice or an occasional variation from the norm. And it's crunch time: it changes the state of affairs, and that can be good, but it also can be bad – if you're fine with how things stand.

So what could be the equivalent in our time? Kingdom change – what change? One suggestion is “culture”. We don't talk about kingdoms or reigns, but we do talk about culture – the overriding, overruling arena we live in and pattern of our behaviour. Culture enmeshes usand effectively determines our thoughts and actions. We can be completely unconscious of it, thinking it is just the way the world is, but people from outside, from another cultural context, can see its characteristics.

So we live embedded in the culture that surrounds us and controls us to large extent. Jesus comes announcing God's culture, and calling people to join that. To be enmeshed instead in God's ways, to let them determine thoughts and actions.

Cultural tourism is a big thing nowadays: visiting other cultures and getting a taste of their environment and what their people do. It could be a temptation to do that in relation to God's culture, to visit, to dabble even in the Kingdom of God as it's traditionally called. Taking a holiday from regular life, with its pressures and commitments, we could go to this other land and enjoy its atmosphere, appreciate the lives of those who do make it their home, feel while we are there that we could be changed by this, but then go home again to the ways of before.

Thinking we can really get in to God's ways in this limited way is like trying to understanding another people without getting inside their lives; in particular, without learning their language and living in accordance with their practices.

Jesus is saying: don't be a tourist to God's culture. Learn the language, learn the practices, be a disciple.

In this episode from Mark's gospel, the change of culture called for by Jesus is signified by a change of fishing. A bit about fishing in first century Israel/Palestine could help at this point. To fish then was not to operate as a free enterprise individual, or even as a family owned business, within an open market. It was to be part of a complex web of economic relationships, controlled by an elite and by the state. It meant being enmeshed in the imperial culture of the time along with its taxation system.

The first disciples were called out of that, to no longer have their place in that system and no longer be at home in the culture and the economy. Called out of fishing for fish to become enmeshed and at home in God's culture and economy where they would fish for people.

What were they expecting from “God's Kingdom” as Jesus called it? They would know straight away that it involved change and turning around – the word that's been translated into English as “repent”. And good news, which had to be a challenge to the usual “good news” that the Empire culture talked about – Caesar's rule of enforced peace and prosperity if you toe the line and happen to be among the winners.

What's more, fishing had associations in scripture that we don't naturally make. There's Jonah, but that's when a fish did the fishing, or rather the human catching. Jonah didn't want to follow through with what God's culture of justice was asking of him. God's life for all, not just Jonah's own kind. He did not want to speak the hard word that might bring change and therefore make the people right with God, because it was Ninevah and he rated them as a bad lot, full stop. But God's compassion won through in the end: God's justice and God's compassion – the two go together.

And there were prophets who spoke of fish, in particular fish hooks. Here's a powerful image from Amos that has stuck firmly in my mind since we study Amos at Knox:

Amos 4:1-3

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan
   who are on Mount Samaria,
who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
   who say to their husbands, ‘Bring something to drink!’
The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:
   The time is surely coming upon you,
when they shall take you away with hooks,
   even the last of you with fish-hooks.
Through breaches in the wall you shall leave,
   each one straight ahead;
   and you shall be flung out into Harmon,

says the Lord. 

That's the wealthy, women as signifying the elite among whom women need do no labour, who have what they want, and have it because of injustice inflicted on others.

The hooking of fish refers to judgement on the rich and powerful. That's what those fisherfolk Jesus spoke to would understand. That's what the first readers of Mark's gospel would also be thinking of. Put bluntly, those invited to "fish" will be joining the struggle against the powerful and privileged who oppress the poor and weak. (Peter Price)

So to fish for people is to hook the injustice that is embedded in the culture around us, and open up for people the alternative culture – God's. To be able to be fishers of people involves learning this alternative culture. Apprenticed to the master, believing him – turn around and believe the good news – and therefore able to hear his voice over top of the voice of the dominating culture.

These disciples become a new fishing community, a community which we continue even now.