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Sacrifice or example – the widow’s mite

November 6, 2021

Pentecost 24 – 2021
Mark 12:38-44
Marian Free

In the name of God who asks only that we love, with heart, soul, mind and strength. Amen.

Some time ago one of my friends read a book titled The Five Languages of Love. She found it utterly enlightening and somewhat liberating. She was frustrated that her husband, on his day off, would mow the lawn because she thought that if he loved her, he would want to spend the day doing things with her. What she hadn’t understood was that in his mind, mowing the lawn was his way of showing his love for her. Love is complex and sometimes complicated. Neediness or possessiveness are sometimes confused as love with devasting effects. On the other hand, selflessness may not be an expression of a healthy relationship. Love is best when it is freely given, out of a strong sense of self.

This morning’s gospel is one with which we are all very familiar. The widow and her two small coins make a good Sunday school lesson and provide excellent material for a sermon on stewardship. However, as we have been observing over the past few weeks, taking a superficial view of any one gospel story is to miss its real meaning. In this case the generosity of the widow is important, but the context of this account reveals that there is a lot more going on in today’s reading than a story of a widow giving two small coins to the Temple treasury.

A clue to deeper meaning of the story lies in the verses that immediately precede Jesus’ observation about the widow’s behaviour. Here, Jesus has launched an apparently unprovoked attack on the arrogance, social ambition, and avarice of scribes who abuse the poor – specifically the widows for whom they had a special duty of care and who were particularly vulnerable. “Beware of the (attention seeking) scribes,” Jesus says, “they are not who they appear to be.” It is specifically these scribes whom Jesus is condemning. A little earlier Jesus had cause to compliment another scribe with whom he had been engaged in debate as to which commandment was the greatest. Jesus’ asserted that the first commandment was: “‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” To which the scribe responded: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus commends and affirms this scribe and tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God.

There are scribes and there are scribes and apparently not all scribes are deserving of censure. The shallowness and worldliness of the status-seeking scribes is vastly different from the sincerity and wisdom of the questioning scribe who understood that love of God is the heart of the law and that that love is all-consuming; a love that demands all of one’s being, not just a part of it; a love that cannot be represented by the superficial offering of sacrifices in the Temple or by making a show with long prayers. Jesus’ scathing attack on the posturing of the scribes who devour the houses of widows (instead of providing for them as is demanded in the law) is brought into sharp relief by the widow who contributes her two small coins to the treasury.

Given the context, and the juxtaposition between the scribe who recognises love of God as the most important and those who seek status and recognition, it is possible to argue that the account of the widow is less about her self-sacrifice and more about her loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength. That this might be the case is supported by the Greek text. In the NRSV, the version of the Bible that we are use, we read that the woman gave “all that she had to live on”. This phrase translates the Greek word “βιος” or life (think biology). In other words, it is probably more accurate to say that, “she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole life.”

When we make this pericope only about the widow’s sacrifice, we risk adding insult to injury by further disempowering her. Jesus makes it clear that she is in very straightened circumstances – a situation that may well have been caused by self-seeking scribes who had taken payment for legal services (though that was forbidden), or who had mismanaged her estate or who had taken advantage of her situation in other ways. Despite this it seems, the widow is still her own person, a person of faith and integrity, a person in control of her own destiny who can choose to give her whole life and who understands (as did the scribe who engaged Jesus in debate), that love of God – with heart, soul, mind and strength – the giving of one’s whole self, is of much greater value than any amount of “burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

The widow’s self-giving came from the heart and stood in stark contrast with the scribes whose focus was on appearances and with the wealthy who gave to the Temple what they could easily afford. Jesus’ compares the widow’s behaviour with that of the wealthy and of the scribes not to diminish or pity her nor to draw attention to her poverty, but to lift her up as an example of faith and faithfulness, as a model of one who knows exactly what it is to keep the first commandment and who does so willingly and whole-heartedly.

We are all called to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Nothing less will do.

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Let the past inform the present and future

July 12, 2021

NAIDOC WEEK – 2021 (Pentecost 7)
Mark 6:14-29
Marian Free
In the name of God who created humankind in God’s own image and who cherishes each one of us as children of God. Amen.

The history of St Augustine’s church Restless Hearts which is in the process of being published, begins: “Sometimes it is so hard to believe how close we are, even today, to penal stations and missionary priests, Aboriginal skirmishes and interminable journeys on horseback through unchartered eucalypt forest.” It was as recently as 1823 that Thomas Pamphlett, along with three other ticket-of-leave men set out to cut cedar in Illawarra. They were caught in a storm which blew them north where they were wrecked on Moreton Island. As the book continues: “After various hardships, mitigated by help from Aboriginals, the emancipists crossed to the mainland, and, believing themselves to be south of Sydney they sought a northward route homewards. Aboriginals again helped them with food and directions, and they soon chanced upon a large river (the Brisbane). Too wide to cross, they followed its banks upwards almost to the present site of Goodna, and finding a canoe, they crossed the stream and returned along the opposite bank, again living with Aboriginals for some weeks”.

Soon after, a settlement began at Eagle Farm and in 1829 and a Patrick Logan established a farm with maize, potatoes and some cattle (on what is now the Royal Queensland Golf Club). Eagle Farm was also the site of a Women’s Prison which, as it was built on swamp land and therefore and ideal breeding spot for malaria bearing mosquitoes’. Despite this the site remained until the penal colony was closed in 1842.

Charles Fraser, the Colonial Botanist from 1821 to 1831, visited the Moreton Bay settlement in 1828. He ‘found a native cemetery represented by hollow logs filled with the bones of blacks (sic) of all sizes at the mouth of Breakfast Creek.’ Initially the new settlers and the indigenous Australians, lived together – if somewhat uncomfortably. A penal surgeon noted in 1836 that: “in the first years of the penal settlement there was a substantial population of local Aborigines in the area, their numbers depending on the season.” He also wrote of the long road between Brisbane and Eagle Farm passing through ‘the fishing ground of a tribe of aboriginal natives; at seasons of the year they are very dangerous and troublesome.’

It was when the Women’s Prison closed and the land was opened up to white settlers who used it for mixed farming – citrus fruit, dairying, cattle-grazing and small crops – that it became harder for the original inhabitants to live side-by-side with the newcomers. Tensions arose over the use of land. The destruction of crops was followed by attacks on the local indigenous by the colonists. Yet, as late as 1848, a Charles Phillips arrived in Hamilton as a small boy. He recalls that he was friendly with the Aborigines, ‘especially the Bribie Island tribe which frequented the Hamilton and Eagle Farm areas and had their camps there.’

Despite Phillip’s positive memories, tensions continued as Hendricksen notes: “between 1856 and 1867, there was continual harassment and counter-harassment, raids and robberies by Aboriginal groups, and punitive attacks by settlers including the burning of camping grounds. Such was the sense of injustice felt by the original inhabitants that Dalinkua – an Aboriginal leader and delegate – published his ‘indictments’, in the Moreton Bay Courier in 1858/9. He wrote:
“That indictment, which we are forced to bring against our white brothers … we charge them with having disregarded the command of the Great Father, and being unfaithful to the trust reposed in them; insomuch as they leave us and our people, whom they find stripped of land where our fathers hunted on, and driven off naked and wounded, diseased and destitute, to pine away and perish; while their government, like the priest in the parable, passes us by on one side, and their church, Levite-like, passes us on the other, neither of them taking any notice of our utter helplessness! Leaving us, perhaps, until some good Samaritan, of another creed and another nation, pass this way, and supply us with what is needful, both for this life and that which is to come …. But, surely, our white brothers, in their wisdom, could devise means whereby our wants could be met …. …. Christians, you are here in this land by the inscrutable Providence of God! Have you brought your religion with you? Is not its precept ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?’ If so, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’ Governed by this law you can no longer disregard the well-being of your fellow creatures. Your brotherhood must develop itself more, if ye belong to Him who does not wish that any of His ‘little ones’ perish.’”

Evidently, the church was present in the colony almost from its inception. As early as 1838 Anglican services were held in the area by The Rev’d Handt (a Lutheran!) and in May 1896 the first St Augustine’s Church in Hamilton was dedicated – only 73 years after Pamphlett found himself here and only 38 years after Dalinkua published his indictments. Though to us, it might feel like the distance past, in historical terms, colonisation of this area is recent history. The change in the landscape, its population and its use has been extraordinary in that time. Our indigenous brothers and sisters carry inter-generational trauma of all that has happened in the past two hundred years of white settlement of Moreton Bay – dispossession, massacres, stolen wages and decimation as a result of smallpox and other diseases introduced by white settlers; not to mention alcoholism, child removal.

As the note in the Pew Bulletin says, NAIDOC week invites us to embrace First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia’s national heritage and equally respect the culture and values of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders as they do the cultures and values of all Australians. We can begin by trying to learn the rich history of the first peoples of the land on which we stand and endeavouring to reconnect with our brothers and sisters whose forbears walked this country for countless generations before us. May the indictments of Dalinkua not be applied to us.

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Demonising others

May 15, 2021

Easter 6 – 2021

John 15:9-17 (1 John 5:1-12)

Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God who created us, Jesus who redeemed us and the Spirit who enlivens us. Amen.

There are a number of fault lines in the Anglican Church today – some theological and some ethical or practical. Under the heading of “theological differences” we could include the theology of substitutionary atonement and the headship of men (over women). In the ethical or practical arena are issues such as the ordination of women as priests and the acceptance all people are beloved by God regardless of their sexuality. With regard to substitutionary atonement, at issue is whether we believe that Jesus died instead of us (which suggests that God demands a bloody sacrificial death in order for us to be restored to a relationship with God) or whether Jesus’ death is a consequence of Jesus’ integrity and of his obedience to God.[1] Support (or not) for gay marriage has driven a deeper wedge between the two positions. Some on the more conservative side of the debate have effectively split from the more liberal side, as is evidenced by their refusal to attend the Lambeth Conference and their establishment of a rival gathering – GAFCON.

Such significant differences between members of the Christian community are far from new but go back to the very origins of the Christian church. As early as the letters of Paul there were differences of opinion in regard to whether or not non-Jewish converts would have to be circumcised and whether those who believed in Jesus could eat meat sacrificed to idols. Paul’s letters to the Galatians, the Corinthians and the Romans are all an attempt to work through the differences and to keep the various communities together. 

The situation referred to in the letters attributed to John[2] is polemical. It is clear that there has been a major split in the community, and some have “gone out”. This situation explains the strong language used against those with different views – they are ‘deceivers’ antichrists, false prophets, who speak by the Spirit of error.’  Their desertion makes it clear – at least according to the author – that they did not belong to the community, for if they did they would have remained (2:19). “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us.” Members who remained as part of the community were urged to have nothing to do with them.

Our only evidence for the situation in the community is the letters. From them, it appears that the nature of Jesus is at the heart of the dispute. Those to whom the letter is written (the remainers) believe that Jesus was fully human. Those who have left the community do not[3]. The break-away group deny that Jesus is the Christ or that he was sent by God. The letter-writer accuses them of failing to love their brothers and sisters and suggests that this is evidence that they do not love God. He also alleges that they love the world and its attractions. 

The author of the letter is drawing a clear line between those who believe that Jesus came in the flesh and those who do not. He uses strong language for those who have left the community because he is anxious to protect what he believes to be the truth[4].

Such strong language – ‘deceivers’, ‘antichrists’ – stands in strong contrast with the language of the gospel and Jesus’ command to love. It is a clue that the gospel and the letters do not share an author and that the letters are written at a later date when the Christian community was beginning to feel the strain of differences of opinion regarding the nature of Jesus. 

Both the gospel and the letters have found their way into our scriptures and as a consequence we are challenged to consider how we deal with the tensions between them. Do we use the example of the first letter of John to disparage and demonise those whose understanding of the gospel differs from that of our own or do we stress the gospel message of love for all who claim to be disciples of Jesus? Do we arrogantly insist that our interpretation of scripture is the only valid one, or do we try to understand and accommodate difference?

It is a difficult issue, especially when those on either side of a debate believe that their interpretation of scripture is true and leads to salvation and that any other way of understanding leads to the path of destruction at worst and at best leads good people into error. Yet, Jesus commands us to love, even to the point of laying down our lives for our friends (members of the community). In the final analysis, we are all human. No one of us can claim to speak with the voice of God. Instead of slandering and abusing those who are different, may we learn to listen, struggle to understand, value difference and, above all endeavour to love all our sisters and brothers in Christ.

[1] Cf Philippians 2:1-11

[2] We attribute authorship to John because of the similarity between the letters, the Gospel named John and the Book of Revelation. (Of these, the only one that names the author is the Book of Revelation which begins “John to the seven churches in Asia” Rev 1:4). 

[3] It is possible that what we are seeing here is the emergence of what was later called a heresy. Docetism held that Jesus only appeared to have come in the flesh.

[4] (We do not how the ‘secessionists’ spoke about those who chose to stay. Nor do we know how the dispute ended. What we do know is that in 395CE at Nicea, a Council of Bishops declared that Jesus was both fully human and fully God, putting to rest any notion that Jesus had not come in the flesh.)

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So that others might live

April 24, 2021

Easter 4 – 2021

John 10:11-18

Marian Free

In the name of God who holds nothing back, but who will give God’s life that we might have life in abundance. Amen.

“I think about them every day.” Most of you will have heard the Federal member for Braddon, Gavin Pearce speaking on the topic of veteran suicides and of the recently announced Royal Commission. What stood out for me as I listened was his feeling of responsibility for those who had taken their lives and his own sense of failure that he had been unable to prevent those deaths. In an interview with Fran Kelly on Radio National he was asked whether the Royal Commission would bring up difficult emotions and memories for himself. The member for Braddon said that he felt that he had dealt with his own experiences of service. He then went on to say: “It is very difficult to articulate the amount of responsibility that we had. I was a warrant officer and those diggers under my watch, under my command – they were like my kids. I knew them and I remember one particular time you know a young bloke took his life under my watch and I went to the funeral parlour with the funeral director, and I was dressing this kid in his polyester uniform, and I remember – I’ll never forget it Fran – getting there and telling that kid I was sorry. As he laid in his coffin, I was sorry that I didn’t see it and there is a lot of leaders out there – mates in the chain of command – that responsibility that we have for our soldiers I can’t articulate how strongly I think – I think about them every day and I genuinely want what is best for our veteran community.”

Today’s gospel for the fourth Sunday of Easter – Good Shepherd Sunday – speaks to the responsibility that a leader has for those whom he or she leads – the responsibility to keep them safe from predators and the willingness to give one’s life in order to ensure their well-being. In chapter ten of John’s gospel Jesus claims to be both the gate for the sheepfold and the good shepherd. Our reading today focusses on the latter – the good Shepherd or good leader. The description of the Shepherd has two sections and each is headed by the same declaration: “I am the good shepherd” and each section insists that whether protecting or gathering the sheep, the role of the good shepherd is the same – if required – to lay down their life for the sheep. In other words, the chief responsibility of shepherds or of those who are called to lead is to value the life of those whom they are called to serve more than they do their own lives. Leadership, shepherding is all about the welfare of those whom one is called to lead (or perhaps more aptly to serve.)

In a world in which personal achievement is glorified and in which competition is the norm, self-sacrifice or putting others before oneself is often seen as weakness or at least as the lack of ambition. In every aspect of life, we are rewarded for doing better than others. If we excel above our contemporaries we are paid more, given better opportunities and accorded more respect. From the time we enter school we are measured against our peers and encouraged to work for grades that will put us ahead of the crowd. More recently social media has become a battle ground for one-upmanship. It is easy to fall into the trap of measuring our success by the number of likes our posts have received compared to those of others and even now people from all walks of life are identified by the number of followers they have on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other platform.

And yet despite the pressure to be the best, to lord it over others there are still countless people in all walks of life who value service to others, those who make sacrifices of their time and income to build a more equitable world and those give themselves and even their lives for the well-being and safety of others.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  In his life and in his teaching, Jesus modeled servant leadership. He did not take advantage of his position of authority but valued and affirmed his followers and  ultimately gave himself for them. As the gospel points out and as Gavin Pearce articulated so well, with authority and leadership come the responsibility to nurture and protect those for whom we have a duty of care, to try to put them first and ourselves last.

In the end, as Pearce suggests, it is impossible to protect those within our care from all harm, but we can do and must do what we can to minimise the risk. We can look out for our mates, we can place their welfare before our own and we can learn from our mistakes. We can try to emulate Jesus and be good shepherds.

During Eastertide as we celebrate the resurrection, so we affirm our confidence that God who raised Jesus from the dead, can bring life from death and victory from defeat, none of which would have been possible had not Jesus willingly gone to the cross for us, given his life for us.

On this 106th ANZAC Day we give thanks to all those who were willing to lay down their lives so that we might live in peace and freedom, we remember those who survived battle only to be overcome by their return to civilian life and we pray that we might learn from their deaths so that ultimately we might wring good from evil and life from death and their deaths will not have been in vain.

Christ is risen. Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

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Order and chaos

August 29, 2020

Pentecost 13 – 2020

Matthew 16:16-21

Marian Free

In the name of God who shatters our certainly and our preconceptions and who continually reforms us in God’s image. Amen.

In his daily reflections over the past three weeks, Richard Rohr has been examining the theme of Order, Disorder and Reorder.[1] He writes: ‘It seems quite clear that we grow by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder, to an enlightened Reorder or resurrection. This is the universal pattern that connects and solidifies our relationships with everything around us.’ Rohr argues that this pattern is found in all the world religions. In Christianity this pattern is expressed/lived out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus or in Paul’s confidence that “in Christ everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17) or that we must be “transformed by the renewal of our minds” (Rom 12:2). 

It is impossible to live in a world in which everything is constantly changing, in which our footing never seems secure. We all need some stability and consistency if we are to develop trust and confidence, if we are to build a sense of self and to grow. Thankfully a great many of us have that experience as children and adolescents. The problem is that a sense of order and security can be so comfortable that some of us never want to leave it. A few people stay in a state of perpetual childhood, terrified of facing the real world. Others put up strong defences to protect them from hurtful or damaging experiences. Still others rigidly hold on to “truths” learned when they were young even though all the evidence proves them to be lies. By surrounding themselves with a safety net, many people avoid pain, but they also deny themselves the opportunity to grow and to experience the richness that life has to offer – love/loss, achievement/failure, order/chaos and so on.

In a spiritual sense as well, holding on to the past can be both stultifying and life-denying. A reliance on order and security can lead to an over-dependence on self or on worldly things such as wealth, recognition or power. It is only when that sense is unsettled or disturbed that that dependence can be broken, and (ideally) a person is forced to turn once again to God and to those things that really matter – the things of the kingdom. In the same way a failure to more from the simplistic teachings of our Sunday School days leaves us ill-equipped to face the complexities of the world. (How many people have lost their faith because the image of God brought over from their childhood failed them as adults?)

I have found these past three weeks of reflections particularly useful for two reasons. One is that they have nicely complemented my reflections on the gospel readings for those weeks and the second is that of course, the pattern of Order, Disorder and Reorder perfectly fits the current situation in which certainty and security have been stripped from all of us. Thanks to COVID few of us have control over our lives in the way that we used to and many of us are wondering what the future will look like. None of us know how, let alone when, the virus will leave us. In this situation – brought upon us by external circumstances that affect the whole world – not many have the capacity or the tools to predict, let alone determine our futures.

It is perhaps not surprising that the movement from order through disorder to reordering is reflected in our gospel readings for this same period. After all the theme of life, death and resurrection lies at the heart of the gospels. 

On August 16 we heard once again the account of the Canaanite woman who changed Jesus’ mind. She challenged Jesus’ long-held convictions of right and wrong, about who belongs and who does not. Jesus’ inherited beliefs were challenged, shattered and replaced. Through this process Jesus’ understanding that his ministry was only for the house of Israel was torn apart and replaced by a view that the gospel was for all people. 

Last week Peter, in response to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” responds that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. However, today’s gospel makes it quite clear that despite his declaration, he has no idea what this really means. His understanding of “the Christ” has been determined by the teachings of the synagogue and the community in which he lived. Even though he was the first disciple to be called and has been a part of Jesus’ inner-circle, Peter’s views and expectations have not been shattered to the point at which he is able to relinquish the past and envision a new sort of future. As we can see, the idea that the Christ might suffer is completely abhorrent to Peter – so much so that he tries to dissuade Jesus from this trajectory.  (In fact, Peter’s determination that things stay the way that they have always been is tenacious. His thinking will not change until he is completely unmade by his denial of Jesus.)

Life does not always run smooth. Its ups and downs will, if we let them, build us into people of compassion, wisdom and resilience. 

Jesus does not promise us that discipleship will spare us from trouble, pain or sorrow. Just the opposite. Jesus asks his disciples to give up everything that until now has given their lives meaning – family, occupation, reputation and he tells them that they must take up their cross if they are to follow him. In return he offers them only the hope of a kingdom that they cannot see and which they do not as yet understand. 

As disciples of Christ, we are challenged to place our trust not in the comfort, security and safety of the values of this world, but to open ourselves to the abundant love of God and to trust that in following Jesus we will be enriched and rewarded in ways far beyond our ability to comprehend.

At this time, we can (and often will) look back to the ways things have been, but the lesson of the gospels is that our lives will be far more productive if we can let go of the past and make our first tentative steps into whatever it is that the future will be. 

[1] You can sign up for the daily meditations on the CAC website.

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Not dancing or mourning

July 4, 2020

Pentecost 5 – 2020

Matthew 11:16-19,25-30

Marian Free

In the name of God who defies all our expectations. Amen.

In February 2006 a woman at a University bus stop in Brisbane was left face down in her own vomit for 5 ½ hours. Delmae Barton, an internationally renowned opera singer had been on her way to work when she had a stroke and a mild heart attack. For five and half hours she lay in 35 degree heat while people walked around and past her and even sat in the bus-stop beside her. Not one of up to a thousand commuters or one of several bus drivers thought to call an ambulance and not one person stopped to offer help. Finally, two Japanese men stopped and asked if she needed help and offered her a glass of water.

Delmae was well-dressed and was on her way to a university job which in most circumstances would have given her respect and status on campus, if not in the broader community. She was well-educated, well-travelled and well-regarded, and she was left to die in broad daylight, in a public place frequented by many people. It seems unbelievable, until you realise that Delmae is aboriginal and that the colour of her skin led people to assume that she was drunk – apparently a good enough reason not to offer assistance or even to ask if she was OK. 

Like most university campuses, this one is off the beaten track. There was no reason to think that anyone would be there unless they were related to the university – whether students or staff – but it seems that no one stopped to think of that. Those who chose not to assist Delmae were blinded by their prejudices and their stereotypical images of first nation people. They could not imagine that the person lying in front of them was a university lecturer. They were unable to see her as a fellow human being, let alone as a woman of stature in Australian society. 

The colour of Delmae’s skin led passers-by to make assumptions about her condition and those assumptions freed them from any sense of responsibility towards her.

Expectations and stereotypes are not limited to people of different races or cultures. We are all guilty of categorising those who are different from ourselves and of placing realistic and unrealistic expectations on groups of people. Stereotypes free us from thinking and allow us to make broad generalisations that may or may not fit anyone in a particular group, let alone each individual person. 

Stereotypes simplify our lives and are useful when they help us to understand people and cultures that are different from ourselves, but they also confine and limit those people to specific roles and behaviours and can prevent us from seeing each person as an individual in their own right and from understanding that for every person who fits the stereotype there is another who does not. 

It is this all too human tendency to classify and stereotype that Jesus is challenging in today’s gospel. “This generation”, presumably Jesus’ fellow countrymen and women, seem unable to recognise either John the Baptist or Jesus for who they are – people sent by God, whether prophet or anointed one. John’s austerity is associated with demon possession and Jesus’ more relaxed behaviour leads him to be called a glutton. Both have been characterised, demonised and rejected on the basis of one aspect of their behaviour – their attitude to food and drink. Neither, it appears fit their generation’s expectation of a saviour – whatever that was. 

In all likelihood, Jesus’ contemporaries would have had great difficulty identifying him. As the parable suggests they would not have recognised Jesus as God’s anointed if he had been less like them and they didn’t recognise Jesus because he was too much like one of them. John was too different for them to relate to and Jesus was too ordinary to be seen as someone extraordinary.

Jesus is making is clear that he is in a lose-lose situation. No matter how he behaves, no matter what he does, he will not meet the expectations of his contemporaries. Even Jesus’ followers will need the benefit of hindsight to see that Jesus’ teaching and actions were consistent with God’s promises. 

You and I can trawl through the scriptures and locate all the references relating to how God will work or will be revealed in the world and we will not be able to pin them down to one or even two possibilities. This is because God refuses to be categorised or restricted. The very nature of God is that God cannot be pinned down or confined by human imaginations. No matter how creative or free-thinking we are, God will always beyond our horizons. We will catch glimpses of God’s presence from time to time, but never be able to fully grasp the enormity or the awesomeness of God. 

Jesus’ condemnation of his generation is a warning to us – a reminder that our understanding is always limited and that however much we think we know there is always more to know. We cannot afford to be complacent, nor can we afford to stop exploring and searching – for this is a journey that has no end point except death. God will always be just beyond our reach until we are finally face-to- face. Until that time our task to retain an openness to God’s presence in the most unlikely people and places. Through prayer and contemplation, we must let go of our stereotypes and expectations and allow God to be God and not who or what we think God to be. Or else we will play the flute and be disappointed that God does not dance, or wail and be frustrated that God does not mourn and we will miss the fact that God has been right there in front of us all the time.

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One God

June 6, 2020

Trinity Sunday – 2020
Matthew 28:16-20

Marian Free

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

There is a wonderful scene in a movie adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. The story is set in Mexico in the 1930’s in a time when Catholicism was banned. An unorthodox priest and the socialist police officer who captures him forge an odd friendship and each in different ways is redeemed. One day over lunch the lieutenant challenges the priest to explain the Trinity. There are three bottles of wine in the basket and, from memory, the priest explains that the wine in the bottles is the same wine even though it is in different bottles. The next morning, when the priest awakes, he is overcome with guilt because the bottle he designated as the Holy Spirit was the one from which the two had drunk thus implying that the Spirit was somehow lesser.

Today we celebrate one of the key feast days of the Church – Trinity Sunday – and yet it is not announced with the colour of Pentecost, the excitement of Easter or the wonder of Christmas. How many of you are present today because you are fired up by the Trinity? Too often in fact the subject matter is skirted over, ignored, or, as my father used to bemoan, simplified to the point of heresy.

The problem is, that when it comes to the Trinity, most of us feel awkward and inarticulate, not up to the task of expressing what we are told (or what we know) to be true. Without necessarily understanding, some of us are able to intuit the threeness of the Godhead, others accept the idea that God is three and God is one because that is their faith, and others come up with poor analogies that don’t really do justice to the concept but in general most of us are aware that we can’t adequately put what we think and feel into words. This is distressing because the Trinitarian nature of the Christian God is what sets us apart from other religions and gives us the richness of understanding God as community. It is sad reflection on who we are because we assert that God is one and God is three and yet most of us find ourselves in a position where we simply cannot explain the Trinity to the curious or defend it against the sceptical.

In the last four years I have had the good fortune to stumble on two books that have helped me to really make sense of the Trinity. When I read The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr , I experienced a clarity that had eluded me until then. As the poem with which the book begins says in part:
“One is Alone
Self-Centred
Not love
Two is at best
Face-to Face
but never community
Three Face-to-Face-to-Face
Community,
love for the Other and for the Other’s love
A fourth is created
Ever-loved and loving” .
God as community invites each one of us to be a part of that community. Extraordinary as it seems, if God is community, we are included in the divine energy that is God.

This year I came across the book, The Trinity, how not to be a heretic by Professor Stephen Bullivant from St Mary’s University London. I highly recommend it . Bullivant expresses his grief that the Trinity, the central doctrine of the Christian faith, is one that no one (catechists, priests, pastors, Sunday School teachers, theology students, online evangelists) ever talks about. It is, he says, passed over in silence and ignored as something that Christians supposedly cannot, and are not meant to understand (loc 127).

Yet, “the doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God” or from “philosophical thinking” but rather “out of the effort to digest real historical experiences” (Joseph Ratzinger, quoted loc 383). In other words, the Trinity is a concept that tries to capture the fact that the early Christians experienced God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and used the terms interchangeably and unselfconsciously, without in any way splitting God into three. For example, at Jesus’ baptism God and the Holy Spirit are also present. In the Gospel of John Jesus claims that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father, and that he (or the Father) will send the Spirit. In chapter 8 of Romans Paul refers to the Father, Lord (or Jesus) and the Holy Spirit in such a way that it is clear that he thinks of them as one and the same .

While the Trinity is a unique Christian doctrine, and while it is important that we should not read the Christian experience back into the Old Testament, it can be argued that the Old Testament revelation of God is not singular. Within the very first chapter, God refers to Godself in the plural: “Let us make humankind in our own image” (Gen 1:26). In chapter 18 of Genesis the Lord appears to Abraham in the form of three men, but Abraham addresses them in the singular, “My Lord”. In the Book of Proverbs Wisdom is both separate from God and yet is God and throughout the Old Testament there are references to the Spirit. God is experienced as Lord, as Wisdom and as Spirit without any hint that there are three Gods.

The Trinity then is not a complicated formula devised by theologians or philosophers in their ivory towers, but a word that sums up the lived experience of the early Christians, captures the ways in which God was known in the Old Testament and expresses our own intuition of who and what God is.

Bullivant suggests that the doctrine of the Trinity very simply boils down to three, core Christian convictions:
“1. There is only one God,
2. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is each God,
3. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the same.”

So, it is not that hard. When you are challenged, or when you want to share your faith in the Trinity you simply have to explain your experience which is corresponds with that of the early believers and which echoes the experience of the Old Testament writers – that is:
“1. There is only one God,
2. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is each God,
3. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the same.”

Have a wonderful Trinity Sunday and may the Trinity be the God whom you unselfconsciously and confidently know and proclaim.

 

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God’s prayer for us

May 23, 2020

Easter 7 – 2020

John 17:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God who holds us in prayer. Amen.

In life, and particularly in ministry, we have the privilege to meet some amazing people – people who challenge, confront and support us in our faith journey. Such encounters are very often humbling especially if we take the opportunity to be open to the lessons provided or to the care that is expressed in such meetings. The examples are myriad, but today I would like to share a couple that pick up the theme of today’s gospel – prayer. 

Many years ago, before I was ordained, I attended Parish planning days. On these occasions we were often divided into small groups to consider, among other things, the ways in which we practiced our faith. Anglicans are not very good at sharing such things, so it was extraordinary to be in a situation in which congregation members were willing to confide in each other. On not one, but two separate occasions, in two different parishes, I found myself in groups with women who were in their seventies or eighties (in other words with women whom I only knew as the elderly members of the congregation). I was deeply moved (and chastened) to hear that they rose at 4:00am in the morning so that they could pray without interruption. I was, and still am, struck by their discipline and by the importance that they placed on their faith and their prayer life.  (And on mornings such as this when it is only 12 degrees at 8:00am I am overawed by their resilience!)

I confess that I have not adopted their practice, but all these years later their rigor and discipline continue to call me to account. From time to time I find myself comparing my prayer life to theirs and being challenged to pray more and to pray more regularly.

A quite different, but equally humbling story relates to my first incumbency. During that time, I had the joy of meeting Ruby. Ruby was beautiful and wise and was only eight years old. She was the granddaughter of a parishioner. Her mother was an addict and her grandmother had to maintain a fine (non-judgmental) line in order to retain her contact with her granddaughter. I was fond of Ruby and concerned for her and her situation. So it was that I was completely blown away when her grandmother informed me that Ruby had set up a little altar in her bedroom and even more astounded to learn that, among other things, Ruby said a prayer for me every day!  It is impossible to tell you how moved I was by that knowledge. Knowing that Ruby was praying for me filled me with an overwhelming sense of being loved and held and supported. Whenever I felt underappreciated or overworked, I remembered Ruby’s prayers and regained my sense of perspective. 

John chapter 17 concludes Jesus’ farewell speech. In this section he moves from instruction and encouragement to prayer – not for himself, but for those who are close to him and by extension for those who will come to faith through them. In the face of his impending death Jesus expresses a sense of completion. Despite what lies ahead, Jesus is not anxious for himself. He knows that his relationship with God is clear and is assured. He sees his death as his glorification (or perhaps a confirmation of the glory that was his from the beginning). Jesus’ death might mark the end of his earthly ministry, but Jesus knows that that in itself was only a brief interruption to the existence that he has shared from the beginning with God and to which death will restore him.  

Jesus’ anxiety is not for himself or for his future, but for his disciples – those who have come to faith in him (and therefore to faith in God). Their earthly lives, which have been dramatically changed by their relationship with Jesus, will have to continue in the world without his physical presence to protect and defend them. Knowing that their faith in him has placed them in danger, Jesus prays for them, committing them to God’s care and protection. 

Interestingly, Jesus does not break off his conversation with the disciples in order to pray. He does not separate himself from them or adopt a pious stance (head bowed; hands clasped). He does not feel the need to go to the Temple to pray.  Instead he remains where he is, at the dinner table, surrounded – we must assume – by the empty plates, the cups and the leftovers. Jesus’ prayer – the only prayer recorded in John’s gospel takes place in the presence of his disciples who must surely notice that he is no longer addressing them, but God. This means that they can hear everything he says and the tone in which he says it. 

Because Jesus prays in their presence, the disciples are first-hand witnesses of Jesus’ love for them, his confidence in them, his desire that God should protect them from  harm and his firm belief that because they know him, they know God and that such knowledge is the key to eternal life. Jesus’ prayer assures the disciples that they already belong to God and that they share with Jesus his unity with God. I wonder how the disciples felt – not only to know that Jesus was praying for them, but to overhear the words of that prayer – to know that through Jesus’ prayer they were held and loved and supported – no matter what that future might hold.

Verse 20 tells us that Jesus’ prayer encompasses those who believe in him through the words of the disciples. Twenty centuries later, through the gospel we can eavesdrop on Jesus praying for us – not in private but for all the world to hear. We are so used to hoping that God will hear our prayer that perhaps we do not pay enough attention to God’s prayer for us.

Jesus is always overturning the tables, forcing us to rethink our ways of seeing the world, opening our hearts and minds to new possibilities. What does it mean that God is praying for us, for you?

How does it change your relationship to prayer, to God? 

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Life not death

May 9, 2020

Easter 5 – 2020
John 14:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who empowers and directs our lives. Amen.

As is the case with much of John’s gospel, today’s passage is complex and is filled with a number of different ideas that cannot be adequately dealt with in one sermon. The passage is the beginning of Jesus’ farewell speech, spoken after Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples and after Judas had been exposed as the one who would hand Jesus over to the authorities and who had gone off into the night. In the previous verses Jesus had announced that he would be with the disciples only a little longer and he had told them that they would not be able to follow him. In response, Peter had brashly said that he would follow Jesus even if it meant laying down his life for him. In reply Jesus had said that not only was Peter’s an empty promise, but that before daybreak, he would deny Jesus three times.

In our passage then, Jesus was addressing disciples who were confused, anxious and perhaps even frightened. Nothing made sense to them. Jesus appeared to be speaking in riddles. He had said that they could not follow him, but now he was saying: “You know the way”. Jesus has not given them a road map but has suggested that their relationship with him was all the direction that they needed. In essence, Jesus was saying, that if the disciples had found him, then they had already found the Father, that is they had already reached their destination. This relationship – with Jesus and therefore with the Father – Jesus had gone on to explain, was not passive but active. If the disciples had grasped the unity of Jesus and the Father, not only would they know the way, but they would enter into that relationship. In turn, their relationship with the Father through the Son, would empower them not only to do the works that Jesus had done, but even greater works! It was no wonder that the disciples were overwhelmed.

The first 6 verses of this chapter are regularly chosen as the reading for a funeral. Those who are grieving find comfort and reassurance in the knowledge that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. However, if we leave it there and don’t explore the wider context, we miss the point of this and the subsequent passages. That is to say Jesus might have announced his departure and reassured the disciples of his return, but he is not preparing his disciples for death. He is equipping them for life. Jesus’ death will not be the end of the disciples’ life together, it will herald a new chapter in the life of the community, a life, we will discover that is enlivened and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 14 begins what is known as Jesus’ ‘farewell speech’. A farewell speech was a well-known literary genre in the Old Testament and in the Graeco-Roman world. It “highlighted the speaker’s impending death, care of those remaining, the regulation of discipleship, thanks to the gods, an accounting for his life, consolation to an inner-circles of followers, didactic speeches and political and philosophical testaments” . There was a great deal of variation in content and expression. For example, Deuteronomy in its entirety is Moses’ farewell speech. He recounts the escape from Egypt; reminds the Israelites of their covenant relationship with Yahweh, the responsibilities that that entails and the consequences of failing to live up to Yahweh’s expectations. In Genesis the final chapters record Jacob’s farewell speech to his sons which takes the form of a blessing for each one of them.

In John’s gospel Jesus’ farewell speech prepares his disciples for the future. He tells them that he is going away, promises that he will send the Holy Spirit, encourages them to love one another (to the point of death) and to be strong in the face of opposition. Jesus’ words were not intended to provide comfort for the dying or the grieving but instruction for the living. It is Jesus who is dying, not those to whom he is speaking. He does not want the disciples to put their lives on hold waiting for his return or for their own deaths. Rather his expectation is that their relationship with him – and by extension with the Father – will ensure that even in his absence they will continue to do what he has done and to do much more besides.

Jesus begins his speech with the words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled”, words that he repeats towards the end of the chapter. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus’ words could not be any more pertinent in today’s climate. In recent weeks we, and the community around us have lived with uncertainty, anxiety and perhaps even with fear of death or the loss of a loved. Even now, as the restrictions are being lifted, we do not have a clear road map of the way ahead or of what the world will look like. Some things will never be the same and we will not know the true cost to the community for some years.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Faith in Jesus enables us to face the present with resilience, confidence and even, dare I say, a sense of wonder as to what this time of seclusion might have had to teach us and the church of which we are a part. As we begin to come out of isolation to a future that is as yet unknown, we do well to remember that Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life” and that in fellowship with him we can and will face whatever it is that life has to throw at us.

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Putting meaning into the abyss

May 2, 2020

Easter 4 – 2020

Good Shepherd Sunday John 10:1-10

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who gave us life and encourages to live it abundantly. Amen.

In 2001, Richard Holloway (the former Primate of the church of Scotland) spoke at the Grafton Festival of Philosophy, Science and Theology. At that point he had retired and was not attending church. He had become disillusioned with the Anglican church and disturbed by its certainties and its steadfast refusal to include gay and lesbian Christians. His lecture took the form of a series of reflections on life, death and faith. Towards the end he said: “Faith for me is now romantic defiance against meaninglessness. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, I choose to live as though it did. And the philosopher of this faith as romantic defiance is the great passionate Castilian Miguel de Unamuno, in the tragic sense of life a magnificent romantic quixotic book, and something that Unamuno wrote and I’d love stencilled on my tombstone: ‘Man is perishing that may be, but if it is nothingness that awaits us, then let us so live that it will be an unjust fate.’ If it is abyss, if we come from the abyss, if we go to the abyss, if the abyss is what it means, then let us so live that we will put meaning into that abyss. That’s to live by faith.

How then are we to live? What is the end of it? I think we’re to live in a state of permanent, expectant uncertainty, and we’re to celebrate it. Even if faith doesn’t mean anything, I choose to live as though it did. If it is abyss, let us so live that we will put meaning into that abyss – to live by faith.”[1]

Even if faith doesn’t mean anything, let us so live that we will put meaning into that abyss. What a confronting and astounding statement. So many people believe that the purpose of faith is to attain entry into heaven that it would be difficult for them to comprehend living a life of faith that did not have eternal life as its end goal. Yet Holloway suggests that even without that hope, even if there is nothing at the end of life but an empty abyss, we should still live by faith. Whatever he believes, he is convinced that there is something about faith (in our case, and his, the Christian faith) that makes sense of life in the present and makes life worth living. He is confident that the practice of faith makes a difference to life in the here and now whether or not there is a life to be lived in the future.

Even though in 2001 Holloway had an uneasy relationship with the church and with the faith that it represented, he was still able to say that given a choice he would not live his life in any other way. Unfortunately Holloway doesn’t not expand on this idea, but I would suggest that the gifts that faith has to offer of strength in the face of difficulty, of hope in the face of despair, peace in the face of tumult, joy in the midst of sorrow, and steadiness in the midst of uncertainty are gifts that few would willingly give up (whether they believed or not). I would claim that the practices of faith – forgiveness, humility and generosity – are not to be discarded lightly because they enrich and ennoble our lives in the present regardless of their impact on our future.

It is even possible to argue the reverse – that faith lived only with an eye on the future can be stultifying and unfulfilling. If we believe and live faithful lives only because we are afraid of the consequences of not doing so we will fail to reap the benefits of grasping the life faith offers in the present.

Jesus’ promise of life is both for the present and for the future. Images of resurrection are applicable to the surmounting of difficulties and setbacks in the present as much as they apply to the rewards of eternal life.

In today’s gospel Jesus says: “I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.” It is not just that faith in Jesus is life-giving, it is abundantly life giving. Jesus’ gifts are not half-hearted but generous and overflowing (water to wine, bread to feed 5,000, death so that we might live). More than that, in John’s gospel Jesus claims to be water, bread, light and life – all of which are necessities for life in the present (in the future there will be no need for water, bread, light or even life as we know it).

This suggests that people of faith are not to live timidly and cautiously, but boldly and confidently, they are not to avoid danger and hurt but to grasp every opportunity to live a life that is rich and full and they should not to live in fear of disapproval, but in expectation of the abundance of God’s provisions.

Holloway’s doubt may not sit comfortably with me, but questions about the existence of God or the possibility of heaven do not throw me into a spin because for me a life of faith is so rich and meaningful that as Holloway says: “If it is abyss, let us so live that we will put meaning into that abyss – to live by faith.”

Our faith holds out a future hope, but it is a hope that should fill our present with confidence, joy and courage and enable us to live in “a state of permanent, expectant uncertainty.” In today’s world could we ask for better advice or, as those who believe, set a better example?

 

 

[1] ABC Encounter Programme, Sunday 23 December 2001 7:10AM

 

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