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Getting out of God’s way – John 14:6

May 6, 2023

Easter 5 – 2023
John 14:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who is as close as breath and yet always just beyond our reach. Amen.

I often say that Jesus did us a great disservice by not writing down his teachings or his philosophy of religion. Jesus left it open for his followers to develop their own theology and, in the case of the gospel writers, to draw up their own individual version of events. It is possible that Christianity would be more united had Jesus been more definitive or produced something in writing . There would be less confusion as to what he said and did and no need for the early church to make sense of Jesus’ death and resurrection, because Jesus would have spelled out the meaning of everything before he died. In other words, to avoid confusion, misunderstanding and division, Jesus could have made it clear that he was promoting a new religion. He could have produced a fully formed theology of the Christian faith, written a creed and provided outlines of liturgical and ecclesiastical practice so that no one need be in any doubt as to what the church should believe and what it should do.

Having said that, I suspect that Jesus’ creation of uncertainty was actually a deliberate attempt to free humanity from a need to lock God (and faith) into a rigid set of principles and behaviours. Jesus does not set anything in stone, because Jesus wants us to rely less on ourselves and more on God; to grasp that our salvation is dependent not on anything that we can do, but on what God in Jesus has done for us; and to understand that God cannot be bought, bargained with or reduced to human categories.

He wants those who follow him to avoid the trap that the Pharisees seem to have fallen into – the trap of desiring certainty, of believing that they know and understand God, and of thinking that they can stay on the right side of God if only they follow this rule or another. Jesus hopes that those who come after him will follow his example of openness to God and his willingness to trust God blindly rather than to think that we can bind God to our will.

I find the Jesus of John’s gospel is perhaps the most frustrating, obscure, and contradictory. To give just one example, in verse 13:33 Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot come”, then only 8 verses later he says: “You know the way to the place where I am going” and “where I am you may be also” (14:4, 3). Both cannot be true, so we are forced to live with the tension of not knowing for sure.

Jesus seems to be deliberately keeping his disciples (and therefore us) deliberately on edge, ensuring that we don’t try to lock God into one way of being or another. He knows our desire for security, but he want us to understand that our relationship with God is less a matter of holding on, but rather a matter of letting go, less a matter of living within rigid and narrow guidelines and more a matter of grasping the expansiveness and openness of God.

As Meister Eckart says: “God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.” God is already there, in the depths of our being. That should be the only certainty, the only security that we need. Our task, over our lifetimes, is not to seek assurance but to accept that we already have it; not to seek God in words and deeds, but to discover that God is already present in our lives and to know that we can abandon ourselves to God’s presence. The task of spirituality is not to pray more, read more, do more, just the opposite, it is to let go, to trust, and to follow Jesus to the cross so that all that is false and illusory in our lives can be stripped away and we are left with only what is pure and true – the Spirit within.

Letting go, is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive which is why we resist it and why Jesus insists on it and why Jesus models it in his own life.

So, by a roundabout route, we come at last to today’s gospel, the beginning of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples. The scene takes place after Jesus’ final dinner with his friends. The disciples are confused and afraid. Their world has been turned upside down. If they had thought that things would remain the same, they were sadly mistaken. In just a short period of time, Jesus has broken social convention and washed their feet. He has revealed that he is about to be handed over by one of his own, and Judas has gone out into the night to do who knows what. If that were not enough to unsettle and confuse his friends, Jesus has told them that he is going away and that where is he going they cannot come.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It is clear that Jesus knows that his disciples need some reassurance, but it is also obvious that Jesus is not going to accede to their need for direction by providing them with a guidebook or roadmap. As close as Jesus will get to giving them directions is to say: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the way, the truth and the life”, tells us nothing about what to do, what to believe and how to behave.

We will only find the way if we allow ourselves to be led by Jesus (not by our conceptions of Jesus). We will only know the truth if we let go of all those things we hold to be true and seek only God and God’s truth. We will only truly know life if we allow ourselves to abandon this life and to accept the life that Jesus offers.

In faith, we can only let go– not hold on, only empty ourselves – not try to fill ourselves, only get out of God’s way and let God be God in us.

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Christianity that is bland and unchallenging – a sermon for St George

April 21, 2023

Easter 3 – 2023
(Celebrating St George at Maleny)
Matthew 28:8-15a
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earthmaker, Painbearer, Lifegiver.

How often have you been threatened with death as a consequence of your believing in the risen Christ? In nearly seventy years of life and 27 years in the ordained ministry, I have only been threatened once. It was 1998, Martin Bryant had recently massacred 35 people and injured 18 others. Our then Archbishop, had asked all Parishes to encourage their parishioners to sign a petition calling for gun reform. On the appropriate Sunday, I duly made the announcement – naively thinking that my fellow Christians would have no objections to such a petition. That afternoon, I received a most abusive phone call from a Parishioner who threatened to shoot me if I ever stepped inside his fence. The event left me startled but, so long as I kept my distance, I was not in danger.

It is difficult in our time and place to imagine the Christian faith being so intimidating that the ruling powers would want to destroy it or to persecute, imprison or kill believers, or that our neighbours would shun and harass us. For the most part, Christianity in Australia has been so benign and inoffensive that at least in the last decades few people seem to take much notice of what we do or think. There is little, if anything, to distinguish us from any other member of society. By and large we blend in. Only occasionally do we collectively challenge government policy and even then, I am not sure that anyone thinks we are relevant enough or powerful enough to be a danger to authorities.

As long ago as the fourth century, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and the church became so entwined with the government and the surrounding culture, that it has been difficult to draw a clear boundary between societal values and Christian values ever since. To be fair, in the intervening centuries the church has had a significant impact in areas related to social justice – the building of hospitals, the abolition of slavery, the improvement of conditions in prisons and universal franchise (at least for non-indigenous women). In this nation, the support of the churches played an important role in ensuring the passage of the 1967 referendum. While some of these actions caused antagonism and disquiet, few unsettled the government or society sufficiently that supporters of these causes were thrown in jail let alone executed.

The situation was very different in the first three centuries of the common era. Then, as often as not, Christians were considered a threat to the well-being and the status quo of the societies in which they found themselves. This should not surprise us. Before there was a church, there was Jesus – a person who presented such a challenge to the political and religious leaders of his day that he was put to death; a person whose influence, and teaching were so radical and unsettling that he had to be silenced; a person who was considered such a risk to the stability of the state, that even his death did not ensure that the establishment felt secure. That is why the authorities posted a guard at Jesus’ tomb and why, when the tomb was found empty, the priests and elders paid the guards to lie.

For the first three hundred years after Jesus’ death, those who believed in Jesus had an uneasy relationship with the communities in which they found themselves. In the worst-case scenarios, they experienced persecution, but by and large this took the form of local, sporadic harassment and exclusion from the social life of the community. State sanctioned persecution occurred briefly under Decian and Valerian, but it was the Emperor Diocletian who was responsible for the most sustained and bloodiest persecution (nine years from 303-312). It was his goal to return Rome to the golden age – a time before novel religions, specifically Christianity, had begun to emerge. Diocletian surrounded himself with opponents of Christianity, tried to purge the army of Christians, rescinded the legal rights of Christians, and tried to force believers to adopt local religious practices.

It was in this environment that George lived. As is the case of many saints, we know little about George and what we do know is shrouded in myth. One tradition has that he was born in the late third century Turkey to a noble Christian family, another that he was born in Greece and moved to Palestine when his father died. We know he did become a soldier and officer in the Roman army. However, when Diocletian demanded that he renounce his Christian faith (along all other members of the army), George refused and, as a consequence, was tortured and decapitated.

Veneration of George was well established by the fifth century, but he really came to prominence during the crusades at which time he became a model of chivalry. In 1350 King Edward III made him the patron saint of England in . According to Ian Mortimer: “St. George stands for the courage to face adversity in order to defend the innocent. The triumph of good over evil, through courage. …The king who adopted him might be almost forgotten today, but for centuries Saint George represented the idea of courageous leadership and, with it, the unifying popular will to be governed well and protected .”

It was not long after Diocletian that Constantine, anxious to unite the Empire under one banner, made Christianity the official faith of the Empire. Since that time, church and state, church and society have become so intertwined, that sometimes it is difficult to draw a clear boundary between culture and faith or to determine which influences which. There have since then been times when the church has been at the forefront of social change, but at least as often, proponents of the faith have been just happy to support the status quo as to challenge it.

Jesus was feared because he sided with and therefore empowered the marginalised and dispossessed, thus threatening the existing power structures. Christians like George were persecuted and killed, because they stood apart from the structures of power that held up the Empire and threatened to undo them.

Those of us who claim to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and who claim George as one of our own, should perhaps ask ourselves why it is that we are not held in awe, why we don’t challenge and unsettle the establishment and why our lives are so bland that we are not in danger of losing them.

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Blessed are those who believe without seeing??

April 15, 2023

Easter 2 – 2023
John 20: 19-31
Marian Free

In the name of God who reveals Godself to us in many and various ways. Amen.

In the seventies and eighties, a popular saying among Christian educators was: “God has no grandchildren.” By that, it was meant that every generation had to come to know Jesus for themselves, that faith had to be owned by someone and not imposed on them. This seems to have been a key element of the Billy Graham and other evangelistic crusades, which always concluded with a challenge to those present to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour. Faith that was learned was seen as no substitute for a personal commitment to Jesus.

Billy Graham, and others like him, engaged in emotive and sometimes guilt inducing tirades in order to expose what to them was a superficial experience or expression of faith. As a result, many people did come to a genuine and lasting belief in Jesus. Others, who were simply caught up in the emotional hype fell away if they were not given support and encouragement or if they had no foundation on which to build. In the more conservative Anglican church of my youth, well-meaning adults in the congregations tried to convince us of the validity of the Christian faith, by telling us about the miracles that had occurred in their own lives as a result of faith. (Miracles were no substitute for relationship.)

There are of course, many, many ways that churches (and cults) endeavour to share what they believe and to convince outsiders to believe and to remain committed. In some instances, the threat of punishment or hell is used as a means of making drawing people in and keeping them there. Another method is to create sense of belonging to attract the lost and lonely. Belonging is seductive and the threat of exclusion ensures that those who have joined choose to stay.

“Belief” that is based on fear is not faith. It is certainly not a faith that is grounded in the knowledge of and relationship with the living Christ. But how does one come to know the risen Jesus? How, more than 2,000 years since the first Easter and in a world that is vastly different, can we share our conviction that Jesus is alive?

The early church had an advantage that we do not. Many of those who believed had seen the risen Jesus for themselves. Their conviction that Jesus was alive and the enthusiasm and life that was generated by that experience was like a magnet, drawing others into the orbit of their belief and enabling them to experience the risen Lord for themselves. Unlike us, the first disciples had the advantage that they could build on a common belief in the Hebrew scriptures and the promises and expectations contained within. Even so, their conviction that Jesus was raised was so compelling that they drew into the emerging faith those who not only did not know the earthly Jesus, but also those with no background in the Jewish faith.

Today’s gospel is often used to suggest that those who believe in Jesus without knowing or seeing him for themselves are more blessed than those first-generation believers who had the advantage of seeing the risen Jesus. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29). These words have the weight of judgement or compulsion behind them and seem designed to encourage arrogance on the one hand and insecurity on the other. They do not sound like the words of Jesus. My suspicion is that these words belong to the generation of the gospel writers – a third generation church which was facing the same situation that we face – sharing the faith with those who have not and cannot meet the resurrected Jesus.

The words attributed to Jesus here are at odds with the rest of the account of Jesus’ appearance, which has at its heart knowing, seeing and experiencing for oneself that Jesus is alive. Until verse 29, there is no suggestion that the disciples need to have faith in the abstract idea of Jesus’ resurrection. As the gospels tell the story, it was only as Jesus’ followers came to see Jesus for themselves that they were convinced that he was alive. On the morning of that first day of the week, Mary Magdalene encountered and spoke with the risen Jesus. It was only later, when Jesus appeared among the disciples and showed them his wounds that they too rejoiced in their risen Lord. Finally, Jesus, instead of demanding that Thomas believe without seeing, appeared especially for him.

A personal encounter with the risen Lord convinced the disciples that he was alive, and being convinced that he was alive, they shared their conviction with any who would listen, drawing them into an experience of the risen Christ.

Centuries later people are still coming to faith through an encounter with the risen Lord because the resurrection is not a past event but a living reality. If Jesus has risen, then Jesus is alive, and if Jesus is alive, then it is possible for every succeeding generation to meet the risen Lord for themselves.

How we encounter the risen Lord differs from person to person. It may be the result of a dramatic encounter, or it may be the gradual realisation that one has absorbed and accepted for oneself the faith learnt as a child. It may take the form of a quiet assurance that Jesus is present in one’s life, or it may be an intellectual assent to the Gospels. Today’s gospel does not lay down a hard and fast rule, but allows that some will need to see, and that others will believe without seeing.

The first disciples could not help but share their experience. Successive generations have become more and more cautious. But others will only know what we know if we can share our passion or if we live in such a way that those around us can see that our lives are enriched and enlivened by our relationship with the risen Christ – by (among other things) our enthusiasm for life, our desire to make the world a better place, our steadfastness and calm in times of grief and trauma and our quiet presence.

How did you come to know the risen Christ? How does your life reveal that Christ is risen?

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The resurrection – an event without witnesses

April 8, 2023

Easter Day – 2023
Matthew 28:1-8
Marian Free

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the final scene of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, a translucent figure (Jesus) rises from the slab in the tomb and walks out of view. It is a somewhat anti-climatic end to a movie that had been dominated by violence and drama. But how else I wonder, could Gibson have portrayed the resurrection? Unlike the empty tomb, which by all accounts was witnessed by a number of disciples, there were no witnesses to the resurrection. Indeed, on close inspection, the gospel accounts are tantalisingly unhelpful when it comes to details about the actual resurrection. No matter which gospel we read, the story is the same – by the time the women had reached the tomb, Jesus had already risen from the dead and left the (still sealed) tomb, unnoticed by anyone.

If Gibson’s depiction of the resurrection is a little disappointing, so too are the gospel accounts, which are very short on drama and which in fact, do not even mention the actual resurrection. More astounding, according to the gospels, Jesus did not hang around to see if anyone would come. In the briefest account of events, that of Mark, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary find to their surprise that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb (answering their question as to who would move it). A young man seated in the tomb tells them that Jesus has been raised and shows them where he had been lying. Jesus himself does not appear. According to Luke, the women came to the tomb only to find it open, and the body gone. Angels tell the women that Jesus is risen, but Jesus himself does not appear to anyone at all until later in the day. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb and sees that the stone has been rolled away. She runs to report to the others that Jesus body has been moved. Later, after Peter and John have confirmed that the tomb is empty, Jesus appears to Mary.

Of all the accounts, that of Matthew is the most dramatic. When the two Marys arrive at the tomb an earthquake signals the appearance of an angel who moves the stone to reveal an empty tomb. As in Mark, the angel informs the women Jesus has already risen and shows them where Jesus had lain. Jesus, who is not at the tomb, meets the women as they make their way to report to the disciples that Jesus has risen. The disciples themselves will not see Jesus until they make their way from Jerusalem back to Galilee. Even then, Jesus will not hang around, but having given his disciples their final instructions, he will ascend into heaven.

All we know for certain then is that sometime between the crucifixion and the morning after the Sabbath, Jesus rose from the dead and had left the tomb – leaving the stone in place. In other words, the most extraordinary claim of our faith – resurrection of Jesus – took place without fanfare and without an audience. We don’t know what happened or how it happened. We only know that Jesus’ disciples know that he has risen because he appeared to them – after he had first appeared to the women.

Gibson’s understated depiction of the resurrection is true to the gospel accounts of the event. The resurrection was not, as we might have expected it to be, an earth shattering, ground-breaking event – just the opposite. It occurred quietly and unobtrusively and without a single witness.

What a waste of an opportunity! Imagine the capital that could have been made by a very public, explosive event! Imagine If Jesus had chosen to stay in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was, after all, still filled with the pilgrims that had swelled its population for the Passover. What better place to announce Jesus’ victory over death, his triumph over his enemies? What better occasion to prove his detractors wrong? Why would he not use this opportunity to proclaim that he is indeed the Christ – the one sent by God? Why make the journey to the relative obscurity of Galilee and why, when there, does he only reveal himself to his disciples?

Why indeed? Because this is the whole point of the gospel. As we should know by now, Jesus was not an attention getter. In fact, the story of Jesus’ ministry ends as it began, with Jesus’ absolute refusal to be tempted to behave in any way that would attract acclaim, power, or glory. As with the earthly Jesus, so with the risen Jesus. He does not want to attract followers who are only interested in the hype – the miracles and the extra-ordinary. The risen Jesus, as was the earthly Jesus, is looking for followers who are there for the long haul, who will stick by him through thick and thin – followers who will take up their cross and follow him, followers who will not fall by the wayside when the going gets tough, followers who understand that faith is about relationship with Jesus and with the one true God, not about a life that is shielded from struggle and suffering.

We forget this at our peril.

Faith is not a series of dramatic, life-changing events, but a relationship based on the quiet assurance that Christ is alive and is as present to us as he was to his disciples. This is the message that we have to share – not that an all-powerful God will miraculously free us from all minor irritations and all serious inconveniences, but that God, in the risen Jesus is a constant presence with us – a source of peace, hope and strength. A God who may not prevent our suffering but will come alongside us in our distress. A God who does not seek power, and glory for their own sake, but who was prepared to abandon heaven, to show us how much we are loved.

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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We see God through the cross or not at all

May 13, 2022

Easter 5 – 2022
John 13:31-35
Marian Free

In the name of God who confronts and overturns the values and expectations of the world and opens our eyes to new possibilities, new ways of being. Amen.

A couple of weeks ago I shared the reflections of Scott Hoetze that there are really very few accounts of the resurrection – hardly enough to account for the forty days between Easter Day and Ascension Day. That may be why our Lectionary only spends three of the seven Sundays of Easter focussed on the gospel accounts of the resurrection – there are simply not very many! Last week, Easter 4, used the gospel reading from John chapter 10 which took us back to the middle of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The next two weeks will begin to focus on the Holy Spirit which leads us to Pentecost. This morning we are looking at a small section of chapter 13 which, in turn, is a very small part of Jesus’ discourse during the Last Supper.

I’m not entirely sure if it is still the case but when I began to study the gospel of John scholars were in general agreement that Jesus’ farewell speech – the five chapters from John 13-17 represented Jesus’ post-resurrection teaching. That is, these chapters refer to what Jesus revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead which would mean that today’s gospel, and that of the next two weeks do fit neatly into the post-Easter resurrection experiences. Certainly, this view would appear to make sense of Jesus’ use of the past tense in today’s gospel in which he declares: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him”. A post-resurrection Jesus would indeed have been glorified.

However, seen in context, Jesus makes that statement after Judas has “gone out” to betray him. Associating Jesus’ glorification with Judas’ betrayal does not immediately make sense unless we understand John’s use of the word “glory” and the way in which it subverts both the honour/shame culture of the 1st century Mediterranean and the power structures of the Roman Empire. Like Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, John makes it clear that the cross is central to redemption – not so much as sacrifice, but as a deliberate act – challenging conventional wisdom and forcing believers to re-evaluate their ideas about God. According to Paul, the cross undermines smugness and self-satisfaction. It is a reminder of the unfathomable nature of God and of our limited ability to understand God. Both John and Paul face head on the apparent absurdity of worshipping a crucified man, demonstrating how something – apparently shameful and senseless – is in fact God’s way of redeeming the world.

John doesn’t focus on the contradiction of the cross as does Paul. Instead, he shows how the cross is the pivotal event in the story, the moment at which Jesus is glorified and at which his purpose is accomplished (19:30). The significance of the cross in this gospel is evident almost from the beginning when, in conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus makes the claim that: “the Son of Man must be lifted up” (code in John for the crucifixion), “(so) that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (3:14). (This is in contrast to Moses’ lifting up the snake in the desert which gave life to those who looked at it, but which did not give eternal life.) Jesus further asserts that the Jews will “realise that I am he” when they have lifted up the Son of Man (8:28) and that when he (Jesus) is lifted up he will “draw all people to himself” (12:32). Finally, when Jesus is praying in the garden before his arrest, he prays that the Father may glorify him that he in turn may glorify God (17:1-5). Glory and cross are inextricably linked in this gospel.

From the outset, the author of John makes it clear that Jesus’ glorification – the point at which people will recognise him for who he is, and the point at which all people will be drawn to him – occurs on the cross and not at the resurrection. The act of self-sacrifice and shame is given more weight here than is the triumphalism of the resurrection. It is the unexpected that is important. God does not behave in the way that we expect God to behave. God’s anointed (Jesus) did not enter the world to the sound of trumpets and his early life was so insignificant that it was not considered worth recording. Jesus did not impose his will on others or lord it over them, but acted as a servant to them, he didn’t lead nations or armies but unobtrusively shared the message of God’s love.

In John’s gospel, Jesus’ glorification occurs on the cross not in the resurrection because it is here that Jesus shows most clearly what God’s love for the world looks like and it is through the cross that the blinkers will be removed from our eyes so that we may be freed to see God – unfettered by our preconceptions.

Over the centuries we have sanitised the scandal of the cross – to the point where it has almost lost its meaning. We have become so used to it as a symbol that adorns our churches and hangs around our necks that we can overlook the horror and shame, the ugliness and the brutality, and the violence and bloodiness that it represents. In so doing we deny its power to undermine our preconceived notions of who and what God is and how it is that God acts in the world. We refuse to allow the cross to defy our cosy and comfortable relationship with God and we reject its purpose which is to confound and startle us.

Jesus can announce his glorification in connection with Judas’ betrayal precisely because he is clear sighted about his role, about his relationship with God and about God’s action in the world.

Jesus, through John, wants us to know that we see God through the cross or not at all.

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Christ active in the world

May 7, 2022

Easter 4 – 2022 (Good Shepherd Sunday)
John 10:22-30
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

During the week I came across an interesting article titled: “Local carpenter spreads disinformation”. The piece imagined a newspaper article written around the time of Jesus that was seeking to discredit him and to stem the damage created by the misinformation that he was spreading. It suggested that readers head to their local synagogues to check their facts. While the article was written ‘tongue in cheek’ it does address a significant question – If a radical, disreputable person begins (convincingly) to teach things that are contradictory to the current position of the church how can the ordinary person determine what is true? This is a particularly difficult issue when the boundaries between synagogue/church and society are blurred, and when societal conventions get confused with church tradition and vice versa. It can be hard in such circumstances to determine what is culturally determined and what is determined by religious tradition.

A case in point is the debate around the ordination of women. As long ago as 1917 the Lambeth Conference affirmed that there were no theological objections to the ordination of women (which implies that there were discussions around this issue well before that time). It took another sixty years of fiercely argued debate before the first women were ordained (illegally in the United States) and legally in New Zealand and elsewhere. In Australia it was to take more than seventy years before women were made priests in 1992. People do not like change, and they certainly do not like their long-cherished ideas to be challenged. A great deal of the argument against ordaining women was irrational, based as much on societal norms as it was on theological or biblical teaching.

Congregations who had only recently allowed women to be on Parish Council, or even to act as Sides people, simply could not envisage a woman in the Sanctuary, let alone a woman as a Presider and Preacher. Faithful churchgoers were afraid that the church that they loved would be irrevocably changed if women were ordained and they resisted fiercely. (A live and contemporary issue that will be debated at this General Synod is the place of LGBTQI+ community within our churches, and in particular whether blessings of civl marriages can be conducted by our clergy.)

We can sympathise then, with the people in today’s gospel. To them Jesus was unsettling and unconventional. He was challenging accepted ways of interpreting the scriptures and he was questioning the religious establishment. He was suggesting that just because something had always been done in a particular way, it did not need to be that way forever. He demonstrated in word and deed that some things – intended to be liberating – had, over time become restrictive and even destructive.

If it took the Anglican Church 60-100 years to make up its mind about the ordination of women, it is hardly surprising that three years were not nearly enough time for Jesus’ contemporaries to adjust to his teaching! For all his miraculous acts Jesus was, to all intents and purposes, a troublemaker and a lawbreaker. He might have given sight to the man born blind, but he did so on the Sabbath showing no regard for the law or scriptures! That Jesus was divisive is indicated by the verses just prior to today’s gospel. “The Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, ‘He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?’ Others were saying, ‘These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?’”

Jesus has truly put the cat among the pigeons. Some among the crowds have a sense that he is someone out of the ordinary, but others find him disturbing – dangerous even. It is no wonder that they plead with him to put them out of their misery, to give them some certainty. “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly,” they beg.

It is human nature to want certainty, just as it is human nature to resist change. It is relatively easy to believe static things like scriptures, history and tradition. It is much more difficult to discern if and how God is working in the present. If only we could be sure that God was speaking, that God was endorsing change!

The crowds in today’s gospel want assurance. Despite everything they have seen and heard, they cannot allow themselves to submit to belief. They want Jesus to lay to rest all their questions and fears. But this is something that Jesus cannot do. He can’t force them to believe; a word from him will not automatically quell all their anxieties and doubts. They need to come halfway, they need to be sufficiently open to God’s presence in the world that they identify Jesus. Faith (knowing) is as much a choice, an act of will as it is a passive capitulation.

As Chelsea Harmon points out “belonging” in this passage is an action. Jesus’ sheep do not belong simply because they are somehow special, predestined to belong; “their belonging is an active belonging: hearing, following, being known (i.e., having experiences of Jesus), and being given eternal life.” Faith is not one-sided – as if God’s almighty power captures and pens the gullible and easily led. Faith is an active engagement with the living Christ who continues to erupt into our lives and expects that we will be able to discern the signs by hearing, following and allowing ourselves to experience the risen Jesus now.

This short but obscure gospel is filled with meaning. It is not about who is in and who is out as some might assume, rather it is about being open to God’s working in the present even if it is strange and new, even if the one preaching change doesn’t fit our expectations and asks us to change what we think and how we behave.

Christ is risen! Christ is active in the world today. May our belonging to the shepherd be an active belonging so that habit, suspicion, and tradition do not keep us from seeing what new thing Christ is doing in the world today. May our active belonging and openness to the risen Christ give us a willingness to follow wherever Christ is leading us however new and strange that may seem.

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Looking for God in all the wrong places

April 30, 2022

Easter 3 – 2022
John 21:1-19
Marian Free

In the name of God who is made known as much in the still, small voice as in the mighty thunderclap. Amen.

It is so easy to overlook the little things.

It is easy to measure how much someone loves us by the grand gestures – extravagant gifts, beautiful flowers, heroic acts, romantic dinners, and overt displays of affection – rather than by the little, everyday signs of love – the washing of dishes, the cup of tea at just the right time, the taking over the childcare when one is frazzled. Some young people brought up on fairy stories (in the good old days) or on TV soap operas (more likely today) tend to get a very distorted view of love and of relationships. To create the right amount of drama and to heighten the tension in TV shows, displays of love and of disappointing behaviours are vastly exaggerated. This can lead the less worldly and more vulnerable to develop very unrealistic views about what it means to be loved and what constitutes an ideal relationship. Partners who do not match what is an impossible ideal are nagged and criticized in the hope that they can be molded into shape. Alternately they are discarded for not meeting expectations. The problem with this quest for a perfect lover is the failure to see is what is in front of them, the treasure that they already have – loyalty, acceptance, consideration and dependability.

As the song says: “They are looking in all the wrong places.”

It could be said that the same is true of our relationship with God. There are so many instances of God’s dramatic intervention in the world, or God’s appearances to the prophets and other historical figures of faith, that we come to expect that this is how we will know God’s presence. God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, spoke to the people of Israel from the cloud, provided Isaiah with a heavenly vision and spoke to Jesus in a voice that sounded like thunder. It is easy to draw the conclusion that is how we will recognise God in the world. So too with Jesus. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, spoke with such authority that crowds followed him everywhere. If only Jesus’ presence could be so obvious in our lives!

Indeed, given the extraordinary character of Jesus’ life and the attention that he attracted, it is puzzling that Jesus’ continued presence is not more dramatic. From the start, the encounters between the risen Christ and the disciples (not to mention the wider public) were disappointing. Surely the resurrection was an event that Jesus could (and should) have capitalized on! Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims who had gathered for the Passover and who would have heard of the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. This would seem to be Jesus’ opportunity to prove once and for all that he was sent by God and that his message came from God. Jesus could perhaps have indulged in a little: “I told you so” to all the sceptics. He could have confronted the religious and political leaders with both the futility of their actions but also with their ignorance and blindness. Could he not at least have appeared to the crowds so that they would not need to be convinced that he was alive? If nothing else, surely Jesus could have continued the good work of healing and preaching.

What a waste of an opportunity! How much simpler everything would have been if only there was more evidence that Jesus had been raised from the dead, if the religious and political leaders had come to faith, if those who howled for his crucifixion had been convinced of their error! Then again, perhaps this is what the resurrection appearances are all about. Jesus did not make a song and dance about the resurrection, because as in life, so in life after death, Jesus was not a stunt man. Jesus never was looking for millions of followers (his response to the tempter in the desert tells us that). Jesus’ goal was to open the eyes of the people of Israel. His role was to confront and undermine false theologies of the church leaders and to challenge the institution that seemed to be separating the people from a personal relationship with God and demanding that they adhere to codes of behaviour that did not reflect the unconditional love of God.

It is perhaps for this reason that Jesus did not make a song and dance about the resurrection and the gospel writers, who could have embellished the story, do not do so.

In Mark Jesus appears to the women at the tomb, but they say nothing to anyone because they are afraid, and we are left with silence. Matthew has a little more detail. Again, the women meet Jesus, but this time they do tell the disciples. Jesus also appears to the disciples. As instructed, the disciples go to Galilee where Jesus meets them and commissions them to make disciples and to baptise. Luke’s account includes a meeting with two disciples on their way home from Jerusalem. In this gospel, Jesus takes the two through the scriptures so that they are able to understand all that has happened. Then appears to the disciples gathered in Jerusalem (to whom he also explains the scriptures). Finally, the disciples are present when Jesus ascends into heaven.

If, as Luke tells us, Jesus hangs around for 40 days before his ascension, then there is very little evidence that he did anything at all during that time.

This is what makes the events in today’s gospel so distinctive. It gives us a glimpse into what Jesus might have been doing and why no one thought to record it. Breakfast on the beach is so mundane and so ordinary that it barely rates a mention. Is this what Jesus has been up to? enjoying simple, everyday moments with the disciples while he still can?

Perhaps this is the point. The risen Christ, the Christ whom we know, is to be found in the everyday. We, you and I, will come across Jesus in unexpected places and at unexpected times. We may meet Jesus in dramatic and momentous times in our lives, but mostly we will find Jesus in the everyday – inviting us to breakfast, supporting us through grief and trauma and bringing joy through the love of a spouse, a friend or a child. Miracles may and will burst through into our lives, but what we need to know is that day in, day out, Jesus is with us. All we need to do is pay attention and recognise his presence here and now in the mundane incidents of our existence.

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God whispers our name

April 16, 2022

Easter Day -2022
John 20:1-18
Marian Free

In the name of God who meets us where we are and who whispers our name. Amen.

I usually embrace Easter with great enthusiasm and confidence. ‘Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!’ I joyfully proclaim with all the Church. Powerful stories of that call and response fuel my assurance in the power of the resurrection.

This year I find myself more hesitant. How to proclaim that new life starts now when atrocities are being perpetrated in and against Ukraine (an endeavour encouraged by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church), when the people of Sri Lanka are facing unprecedented shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies, when the people who can least afford it have been devastated by flood – here, in South Africa and in South Sudan, when there is a housing crisis in this nation because no one government (of any political party) has the will to fix it and when, on a daily basis, we are squandering the opportunity to save our planet before it is too, too late. Is there even a glimmer of hope in the world today that points to the resurrection?

Of course there is or I would not be here today. Against all evidence to the contrary, I continue to believe that God does shine a light in the darkness and can turn death to life. I see it in the extraordinary generosity of ordinary people of Poland and elsewhere who are welcoming Ukrainian refugees into their homes : ‘for as long as it takes”; in the selfless work of volunteers, churches and charitable organisations who have rallied to bring some relief to the victims of the floods, in the voices that continue to call for a more humane response to the refugees who reach our shores, in the companies that are investing in clean energy and in the countless ‘ordinary’ people who, in a variety of ways make a difference in the world around them.

I am impatient though. I am exhausted by the suffering that I see in the world, frustrated by the unwillingness of people to live in peace and harmony, angry that voters – here and elsewhere – want largely to protect their interests and wealth, rather than to create a society that ensures that all have access to housing, education, and healthcare.

I want the tomb of grief and anguish to burst open to reveal a more just and compassionate world. I want God to step in and push the Russian forces back. I want politicians who seek to create an equitable future (which might be more popular than they seem to think). I want to see a humankind that reflects its creation in the image of God. More than ever, I want this year, to proclaim that “Christ is risen!” that there are signs of new life in the world, that there is evidence that God, working through us, is bringing about change here and now.

So it was that I found the following reflection by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann helpful. She speaks about Dadirri – Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness and writes:

“What I want to talk about is a…special quality of my people. I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like … “contemplation”… We cannot hurry the river. We have to move with its current and understand its ways… We wait on God, too. His time is the right time. We wait for him to make his Word clear to us. We don’t worry. We know that in time and in the spirit of dadirri (that deep listening and quiet stillness) his way will be clear… All persons matter. All of us belong…

“’The time for re-birth is now,’ said the Holy Father to us. Jesus comes to fulfil, not to destroy. If our culture is alive and strong and respected, it will grow. It will not die. And our spirit will not die. And I believe that the spirit of dadirri that we have to offer will blossom and grow, not just within ourselves, but in our whole nation.’”

“We cannot hurry the river”, Miriam says as she reminds me to wait on God. With the indigenous people of this land, I will have to learn to be patient, to remember that while Jesus remained in the tomb for only three days, there are millions in this world (including indigenous Australians) for whom the experience of the tomb lasts for months, years, if not a lifetime.

On Friday I spoke of God nailed to the cross – naked, bruised and bleeding – who stands with suffering humanity, deeply immersed in the horrors and tragedies of this world, willing us to let go of all that separates us from each other and from God.

That same God, the risen Christ, greets us in the garden in the midst of our desolation and grief and whispers our name – “Mary” (Marian, John, Sarah, Robert – insert your own name) – and reminds us that God is with us now – whatever our circumstances – as the one who knows what it is to suffer and as the one who wants to draw us (and the whole world) into newness of life. This is message I will take away this Easter – Christ risen from the dead is with us and with the world in all our life’s experiences. That is the resurrection hope.

There will be moments of transformation, there will be dramatic and wondrous signs of new life after tragedy, there will be resurrection moments when tragedy turns a corner to hope, but above all there will be those barely noticed whisperings: ‘Insert your name’ as Jesus joins us where we are and reminds us that maybe not now, but sometime, we will smile again. In the meantime – “Christ is risen” and the risen Christ is with us through all of life’s experiences the exhilarating and the devastating.

Those whispers will be our everyday moments of resurrection.

“Christ is risen!” “Christ is risen indeed! Allellua!”

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Our story is part of THE story

April 17, 2021

Easter 3 – 2021

Luke 24:36b-48

Marian Free

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The danger of certainty

April 10, 2021

Easter 3 – 2021

John 20:19-31

Marian Free

In the name of God “whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.” Amen.

Hymn 453 in Together in Song begins:

We limit not the truth of God
  to our poor reach of mind,
by notions of our day and sect,
  crude, partial and confined.
No, let a new and better hope
  within our hearts be stirred:
the Lord hath yet more light and truth
  to break forth from His Word.

“The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word”. As the hymn suggests, if we believe that we know all that there is to know about God or think that God’s self-revelation ended with Jesus we are limiting the truth of God to our imperfect capacity to see and to understand. If we approach our scriptures in a glib and superficial way, we are almost certain to draw the wrong conclusions. And if we see scripture only as a collection of proof texts, we will be guilty of using the bible to reinforce our own preconceptions and we will miss the depth and complexity that lies within scripture as a whole. 

An example of the latter can be found in a common interpretation of today’s gospel. There are 13 verses in our reading which are themselves part of a wider context – including Jesus’ resurrection appearances, the entire gospel of John and scripture as a whole. Despite this the focus has almost invariably been on two short phrases: “Do not doubt but believe,” and “blessed are those that not having seen me believe.” Read together, and separated from their context, these two quotes imply that doubt is incompatible with faith and that Jesus is indirectly censuring Thomas for doubting that he had risen.

Isolating these phrases from their setting leads us to ignore the fact that Jesus does not condemn Thomas but makes an appearance especially for him. It overlooks the fact that having seen Jesus, it is only Thomas among the disciples who proclaims Jesus as: “my Lord and my God.” Detaching these phrases from the gospel as a whole means that we forget that Thomas alone promises to follow Jesus even unto death. It also means that we pay no heed to the faithlessness of all the disciples who abandoned Jesus at the first hint of trouble and who now, two weeks after the resurrection are still hiding in terror. Without the benefit of the other gospels, we fail to realise that Thomas is not the only disciple who finds it hard to believe that Jesus is risen. 

Doubt is not limited to Thomas but is a consistent theme throughout the bible. Many of the people whom we consider to be heroes of the faith had moments (even years) when their faith in God wavered or failed. Abraham and Sarah are remembered for their courageous faith, but together they doubted that God would keep God’s promise to give them a son. Moses did not have confidence that God would enable him to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Jeremiah wondered at times if God had abandoned him and the Israelites as a whole constantly doubted that God had their best interests at heart. Job doubted God’s fairness and the Psalmist doubted when God appeared to be silent. Doubt it seems is a constant companion of faith. 

It is certainty, not doubt, that is the opposite of faith. Certainty has all the appearance of faith and yet it leaves no room for God. Instead, it assumes that it is possible to know everything that there is to know about God. Rather than being evidence of a strong faith, certainty is an indication of arrogance and independence. It is a sign of belief in what one knows rather than a conviction in what one does not know. A sense of certainty creates a feeling of security which blinds a person to the unexpected actions and revelations of God. Those who choose certainty over uncertainty have overlooked the fact that God is full of surprises. 

God simply does not behave the way we want (or hope) that God will act. No one expected that God would enter human history. No one believed that God’s anointed would be born in humble circumstances rather than in a palace. No one thought that the salvation of Israel would be brought about by the crucifixion of an itinerant preacher from Nazareth. God is simply not predictable, because we do not have the mind of God. 

Certainty may be comforting and reassuring, but it can also be deceptive, sending us down blind alleys and providing us with a false sense of security. It can also be a deterrent for those who are coming to faith but who have questions of their own. Certainty implies that we have all the answers when, unless we are God we do not. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an answer as to why an infant is still born, or why the good die young and the evil sometimes prosper. I don’t know why we live on a planet that is so unstable that hundreds of thousands can die in a tsunami or why humans are so volatile that hundreds of thousands more are forced to abandon their homes for refugee camps.  But I do believe that my uncertainty in the face of unanswerable questions frees others to ask questions of their own.

So, you see, I believe that doubt or uncertainty is an integral part of faith. Uncertainty provides a space in which we can learn and grow, forever deepening our relationship with a God who is ultimately unknowable. Doubt opens us to the possibility that God might reveal Godself in a new and unexpected ways. Without a certain amount of incredulity there is no faith, only a self-centred assurance of one’s own truth. I prefer to live with ambiguity, filled with a sense of wonder and awe in a God whom I can never fully know and who will continue to surprise and delight me. 

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