Posts Tagged ‘exposure’

Crazy, unexpected, risky vocations

December 17, 2016

Advent 4 – 2016

Matthew 1:18-25

Marian Free

In the name of God who sometimes asks us to do the improbable and the seemingly impossible. Amen.

Most of you will know of the Australian singer Jimmy Barnes. For many years, Barnes was known as much for his drug and alcohol-fueled excesses as he was for his music. It is easy to be critical and to lay the blame for his wild behavior on the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but when you know something of his story, you will recognize that he was running as fast as he could from his horrendous childhood and using alcohol and drugs to dull the memories and the pain.

Barnes has recently published an autobiography[1]. A promotional interview on the ABC gave a superficial insight to the horror and despair of Barnes’s childhood: the book reveals the real horror and the trauma of his early years. His father was a drinker. This meant that more often than not the family had no money for food, let alone clothes and other necessities and because his father drank, his parents constantly fought. When Jimmy was nine years old, his mother decided she had had enough. One morning she simply wasn’t there. Things went from bad to worse. The house fell into disrepair and the children ran wild – no food, no clothes, no bedding, no peace.

Two years later his mother returned with Reg and took the children to live with her.

Barnes’s story is compelling, but today I am more interested in Reg. Let me read to you the section that tells how Reg came into the family’s life.

“It seemed that the Child Welfare Agency had approached my mum and told her that we were going to be taken as wards of the state unless she could provide a safe home for us. So she must have been checking up on us.

Mum told us later that she had been sitting in a work friend’s house, crying about the situation when Reg Barnes walked in and asked: “What’s the trouble love?” He called everybody ‘love’. His mum and dad did the same.

She told him her story. I need to find mysel’ a husband and I need to find a home for me and ma six kids. And I need tae dae it quick or they’ll put the kids in a home.”

“Why did you leave them?”

“I had to run away because my husband was a bad drunk and now they’re being neglected by their father.”

“No worries love” he said, just like that. “ I’ll marry you.”

“Someone has to save those poor kids.”

He hadn’t met us at this point, but he didn’t give it another thought.”

Apparently, up until that point, Reg was going to be a priest, but he gave that up to take on a woman he barely knew and six children whom he had never met and who had been neglected and abandoned.

“No worries love, I’ll marry you.”

In my mind, this is the most extraordinary story – that a man would take on the care of another man’s children sight unseen. That he would provide a home and security simply to ensure that they were not taken into care. That he would marry their mother even though he didn’t know, let alone love her. Reg had no idea what trauma the children had suffered nor how easy or difficult parenting might be. He simply saw a need and stepped into the breach.

Joseph’s story is not too dissimilar – though according to Matthew – he had the help of an angel. All the same, he had to accept that the woman who was betrothed to him was expecting a child that was not his. The other “man” in this picture might have been God but Joseph would still have had to accept that his oldest son had not been fathered by him. He would have realised that the child would have none of his family characteristics – physical or otherwise – and he would have had no idea what to expect of the child. Who would know how a child of God would turn out! Presumably this was not how Joseph had imagined his life.

Joseph has already shown his compassion and tolerance by determining not to expose Mary to shame, so perhaps it was a small step to reverse his decision and “take” Mary to be his wife. We will never know. What we do know is that Joseph laid himself open to misunderstanding, shame and ridicule in order to respond to God’s call. He faced the uncertainty of not knowing what lay ahead and when the child was born he accepted the demands that Jesus’ true father placed on Jesus.

Vocations can take many forms and we are truly blessed if we feel that what we are doing with our lives is a God-given vocation. Whether it is cutting other people’s hair or delivering their children, building bridges or being an aid worker in Somalia, knowing that we are exactly where we are meant to be provides us with confidence and satisfaction. Responding to God’s call on our lives can sometimes mean being and doing the very best that we can with what God has given us. But, sometimes, randomly and completely out-of-the blue, God asks us to do crazy, unexpected things, things that might make us look foolish in the eyes of others, things that might involve taking risks, things that do not sit easily with the culture in which we find ourselves. This might involve confronting unjust governments or legal systems, taking the part of someone whom society has rejected, giving voice to the voiceless or giving a home to the homeless. It might mean risking censure and being misunderstood and it can be unsettling and disturbing, but if God is behind it, the results will be astounding.

Like Joseph, we can be sure that if God calls us to do something – however unusual or strange– that it will be for the furthering of God’s kingdom and that if, like Joseph we put to one side our fears, our questions and our doubts, God will ensure that God’s will is achieved through us, no matter how unlikely that might seem.

 

 

[1] Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Boy

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Exposed for all to see

August 29, 2015

Pentecost 14 – 2015

Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

Marian Free

 

Lord our God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, we ask you to cleanse us from all hypocrisy, to unite us to our fellow men and women by the bonds of peace and love, and to confirm us in holiness now and forever. Amen.

Last week we looked – in a rather light-hearted way – at a number of the reasons people give for not inviting others to church. As I reflected on some of those reasons, it occurred to me that not one of us mentioned that the church was perceived as hypocritical. In the latter half of the last century if not before, the accusation of hypocrisy was often leveled at the church and used to justify non-attendance. If the subject of church attendance was raised, we were as likely as not to be told: “I don’t go to church, the church is full of hypocrites”. Those who made the accusation felt that the lives of churchgoers did not match the values and morals that they proclaimed to uphold. To be fair, this statement was made in an age in which the church had set itself up as the moral guardian of society at large and not only did many people feel burdened by the sometimes harsh demands placed on them, but on more than one occasion the church or its members had spectacularly fallen from grace. Issues such as fraud, adultery and underage sex all made front-page headlines and demonstrated that even members of the church were unable to achieve the high standards that they set for others.

The reputation of the church was seriously eroded long before the more recent revelations of the prevalence of child sex abuse in the church and its agencies.

It has been a long time since I have heard the hypocrisy of the church used as a reason for someone not to come to worship or as a justification for abandoning the faith. The reason for this is simple. Over the last decade or so the human frailty of the church has been laid bare for all to see. In the light of catastrophic failures such as child sex abuse it has become impossible for the church to continue to claim the high moral ground and difficult for us to impose on others standards of behaviour that we ourselves cannot consistently achieve. Collectively, we have been forced to concede that we cannot always live out what we preach.

I don’t know about you, but I find this new situation strangely liberating. It means is that we no longer have to pretend. Instead of trying to present a perfect face to the world, we can now be honest about our brokenness and frailty. Instead of standing apart from (dare I say above) society as a whole, we can admit our common humanity. Instead of constantly striving to be what we are not, we can finally relax and let people see us as we really are – imperfect, struggling human beings, set apart only by virtue of our belief in the God revealed by Jesus Christ.

While the exterior of the church may be tarnished and our failures laid bare for all to see, we have been set free from the unnecessary burden of pretence. Now that there is no longer anything left to hide, now that it is impossible to pretend that we are something that we are not, we can concentrate on our true vocation – being in a relationship with the God who accepts us as we are, frees us from guilt and fear and challenges us to strive for wholeness and peace – for ourselves and for others.

Our gospel this morning warns us against giving priority to rules in the belief that somehow we can achieve a degree of godliness simply by our own efforts. It is a reminder that it is what we try to be, not what we pretend to be that really matters. Authentic living, the gospel suggests, means that we should not elevate our public image at the expense of an honest and authentic engagement with and identification with the world at large.

These are lessons that for today’s church have been hard-won but, thanks to the failures of the past, it is much clearer now that the church (the Christian faith) is less about codes of behaviour and more about love, less about being good and more about being with God, less about judgement and more about forgiveness, less about guilt and more about acceptance, less about anxiety and more about confidence, less about exclusion and more about inclusion and most importantly that it is less about putting on a face and more about being real.

We come to church, not because we believe that we are better than everyone else, but because we know that we are not. We come to church as we are – broken and lost – knowing that we are assured of a welcome from the God who forgives the sinner, seeks the lost, embraces the prodigal, lifts the fallen and who longs to heal, forgive and restore a humanity that has lost its way.

This is what we (the church) have to offer the world – not a false image of perfection, but an assurance that God who loved us enough to die for us, is waiting with outstretched arms until each of us finds our way home.

 

As Rowan Williams said in his enthronement sermon: “The one great purpose of the Church’s existence is to share that bread of life, to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus and to be channels for his free, unanxious, utterly demanding, grown-up love. The Church exists to pass on the promise of Jesus – You can live in the presence of God without fear; you can receive from God’s fullness and set others free from fear and guilt.”

 

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Gloria revisited – authenticity exposed

January 31, 2015

Epiphany 4 – 2015

Mark 1:21-28

Marian Free

In the name of God who gives us freedom to stay as we are or to grow into the fullness of life. Amen.

In a different lifetime, I studied Psychology at the University of Queensland. One of my subjects was Counselling Psychology. The course introduced us to the wide variety of techniques and theories that were in vogue at the time. During one of the lectures we were shown a video of three different therapies. The client, Gloria was a real person who was to be rewarded for her participation by being allowed to choose one of the three to be her therapist. The film had such an impact that a Google search shows that the film is still being used and that as recently as 2013 Counselling tutors and others were uploading the video on their blogs.

Of the three techniques explored, by far the most direct and confrontational was that of Fritz Perls, who with his wife developed Gestalt Therapy. This form of therapy aimed to try to get hold of what was obvious, to focus on the surface, the present moment, rather all the client to retreat into the past or worry about the future. The role of the therapist was, among other things, to identify game playing and to assist the client to be authentic.

Perls’ session with Gloria was fascinating. Throughout the half hour he continually drew attention to what Gloria was doing – that fact that she smiled even though she said she was anxious, that she was swinging her feet, rolling her arms and so on. Gloria’s reaction to this was to resist. She became angry and frustrated. Instead of backing off, the therapist kept focusing on her and how she was reacting. Time after time he called her on her attempts to hide her real feelings and time after time he accused her of being phony. Gloria became very uncomfortable, at times fighting back angrily and telling the therapist not only what she thought of him, but how she thought he should behave, how he should treat her. Perls was not deterred. Instead, he encouraged Gloria to express herself, pointing out that it was when she let fly, that she was more truly herself than when she was putting on a face in order to hide her true feelings, or to protect herself from hurt.

Gloria did not appreciate being accused of being a phony, but it was very clear that she did not want Perls to see that she was vulnerable and anxious. It was equally obvious that she did not want to admit that it was her very refusal to be authentic that was the source of the problem that had brought her to therapy. She would have preferred the therapist to be more paternal rather than confronting and challenging her.

Whenever Perls challenged Gloria to recognise that she was putting on an act, Gloria reacted strongly. She didn’t like being seen for who she really was, she didn’t want to believe that she was phony and she didn’t like being exposed. She admitted that it was easier to retreat into her corner where she felt safe and secure. There was a sense that in some way she would rather stay as she was than to do the hard work that it would take to achieve her goal.

In the first century there was nothing like medical science as we know it and certainly nothing like therapy. The explanation for illness or disability of any kind tended to be that it was the result of sin or of demon possession. In today’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when he is confronted by an unclean spirit who calls out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” To our twenty first century ears, it seems like an odd reaction – especially given what we know of Jesus. Why would someone who was sick or possessed repel Jesus? Why would someone who was suffering think that Jesus had come to destroy and not help him?

Gloria’s story gives us some clues to the man’s reaction to Jesus. The unclean spirit apparently sensed that Jesus saw straight through him. Knowing his that his weaknesses were exposed, he like our modern day Gloria, came out fighting. The man did not want to be helped by Jesus if it meant that his vulnerabilities and weaknesses had first of all to be identified and exposed. He would rather remain bound by his afflictions than let anyone – especially not Jesus – see who he really was.

Like Gloria and the man with the unclean spirit, many of us try to conceal the aspects of ourselves that we are afraid will expose us to ridicule or disdain. We cover up our vulnerabilities and weaknesses because we worry that people would think less of us if they knew who we really were. Some of us would rather live with pain and discomfort than admit that we need help. We don’t want others to think that we can’t cope or that our families are less than perfect. We hide our uncertainties so that others can’t accuse us of being weak or indecisive.

All this deceit and self-deception is exhausting and futile. In the end, the only person whom we deceive is our self. We waste so much time pretending, when we could be expending that time living.

The gospel assures us that God loves us as and where we are, that we have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Jesus came to offer wholeness and healing, to give to each and everyone of us the opportunity to live life to the full, unfettered by anxiety, timidity or fear and unconcerned by what others might think.

In the end, we can’t hide from God, so why would we hide from ourselves? God wants to work in our lives. Jesus wants us to experience his dynamic, healing presence in our lives, but we have to want to be changed. We have r allow the Holy Spirit to work in and with us to radically transform and empower us and to bring us to wholeness and peace.

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