Posts Tagged ‘focus’

An argument in the past or wisdom for today?

October 17, 2020

Pentecost 20 – 2020

Matthew 22:15-22

Marian Free

In the name of God in whom we live and move and have our being. Amen.

I don’t need to tell you that religion is not particularly popular in modern Australian life. Too many people are disillusioned by the institutional church. They have been offended by the scandal of child sex abuse, disappointed that the church doesn’t speak directly to their situation or they have found themselves too busy (with more interesting and demanding things) to be engaged with the life of the church. Despite this, many of the basic tenets of the Christian faith remain as core values and beliefs. Underpinning books on self-help, ‘new age’ or spirituality are what you and I would know to be Christian themes. Motivational speakers blithely speak about “new birth” and even “resurrection” apparently completely oblivious to the fact that they are using the narrative that is central to the Christian faith. Magazine articles promote generosity and forgiveness as a basis of healthy living – they too apparently ignorant of the fact that world religions have been promoting such ideals for millennia. 

When I hear and see central elements of the faith being spruiked as if they were completely novel ideas, I try not to become too distressed and defensive. I am very aware that, had the church promoted the gospel more effectively, that it (we) would be more readily seen as a source of wisdom and well-being and that people would look to us and not to these self-proclaimed purveyors of spirituality for meaning, inner peace and yes even success. 

The bible in its entirety and the gospels in particular are full of advice as to how to live a whole and meaningful life. If we pay attention to the central themes that underpin Jesus’ action and his teaching we discover that compassion, forgiveness, detachment, generosity, trust, love, letting go of anxiety, being mindful – are all there, and while it is important to read the story as it is presented, it is also important to ask ourselves what it is saying to us and to our situation. Otherwise the gospels simply become a history lesson or a set of rules to be applied (or to be ignored).

Take for example the gospel readings of the last few weeks (including today’s). Jesus’ debates with the leaders in Jerusalem speak just as forcefully to us as they did to his audience 2000 years ago. In contemporary language Jesus appears to be saying to his opponents: “Be careful that you do not try to take God’s place on the assumption that you can manage things better.” “Don’t be so focused on your position in this society that you fail to hear God’s invitation to be part of God’s future.” “Don’t presume on your membership of the church for salvation, God can include anyone whom God chooses.” “Don’t obsess about things that ultimately don’t matter.” Each of these injunctions are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago. They help us to focus on what is important and not to get too distracted by the minutiae of day to day life or too obsessed by things that ultimately make no difference to our lives in the present – let alone the future.

In today’s gospel, the members of the Jerusalem elite are continuing their attempts to expose Jesus and thereby to diminish his influence among the people. This time it is the disciples of the Pharisees with the Herodians who are sent to ask Jesus a question that they hope will cause him some embarrassment: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” It was a good question. No one liked taxes – not only were they burdensome, they also saw the wealth and produce of the region being pocketed by the Roman occupiers, many of whom lived beyond Palestine and so put nothing back into the community. There was a tax on everything – on the roads, on the catch of fish, on the harvest. As a result, many people were impoverished while others enriched themselves by taking on the role of the despised tax collectors. The Romans and their taxes were deeply resented. 

Jesus’ opponents thought that they had come up with the perfect question. If Jesus advocated not paying taxes, he would be guilty of breaking the law, if on the other hand he encouraged the payment of taxes, he would cause offense to those who hung on his every word. Jesus won’t be so easily caught. He is aware that his opponents are trying once again to trap him. Unlike his opponents, Jesus knows what is important. He knows, as Warren Carter points out that while paying taxes acknowledges Rome’s political power, it does not necessarily affirm Rome’s moral authority to rule. Moral authority belongs to God.[1] That distinction is important. Paying taxes to Rome makes no difference to one’s relationship to God. Jesus’ opponents have allowed themselves to be absorbed by an issue that relates to the Empire and to day-to-day living rather than focusing on the Kingdom of God. They have confused the secular and the profane with the religious and the holy. Being obsessed with detail their minds are closed to the bigger picture. 

The same can be true of us. We can allow ourselves to worry about things that ultimately have no impact on our relationship with God and on our eternal future. Here and elsewhere Jesus is advocating that his followers (and those who would be followers) learn to distinguish the things of God from the things of this world, that they practice detachment from the  distractions and anxieties of the present and that they don’t allow themselves to become preoccupied with issues that do not impact on eternity.

An argument between Jesus and the Pharisees becomes advice for today and urges us to ask ourselves where we place our focus – on the things around us or on God? Where do we look for meaning and inner peace – in the secular or in the divine?

[1] Working Preacher, for Pentecost 20, 2020. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4624

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Who are you??

December 16, 2017

Advent 3 – 2017

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who cannot and will not be contained on constrained by our limited understanding. Amen.

 

Renae [1] and I have had an interesting week. I have been introducing her to people whom I visit. Among other things we discovered that not everyone is clear about the role of a curate or a Deacon. For example, one person asked Renae if she was going to be ordained, and another, despite our protestations to the contrary, continued to believe that Renae was my daughter. At one point this person commented how much Renae looked like me; at which point I realised that it was foolish to argue any longer!

Two of today’s readings are about identity – the identity of the prophetic voice in Isaiah and the identity of John the Witness. In relation to John the Witness, those who came to ask who he was, already had made up some guesses as to who he was. If those whom Rosemary and I visited were not troubled by dementia, a conversation between Rosemary and someone who knows a little about her might go like this:

Your maiden name is Solomon. That’s an unusual name, are you related to Peter Solomon? (No, I’m not.)

Solomon is a Jewish sounding name – do you have a Jewish ancestry? (No not at all!)

I guess that if you are a Deacon that you are expecting to become a priest. (Comment)

(If we already know some details about Renae – that she is a woman, a wife and a mother, that she has a Bachelor degrees in Arts and Theology, we might use our preconceptions and stereotypes about these roles and qualifications to fill out our picture of her. In the end, we might have a reasonable amount of information, but we wouldn’t really know her at all.)

It is all too easy to make mistakes or to draw conclusions about a person’s identity on the basis of very little information. Most of us are guilty of drawing conclusions about someone based on first impressions and most of us at some time, uses stereotypes to categorise someone because it saves time and makes life easier than trying to process a lot of information.

The conversation between the priests and Levites and John bears some similarities to that which I have just had with Renae in that it tries to fill out some very limited details by asking simplistic, stereotypical questions. That John is baptizing people in the river Jordan has become known in Jerusalem. In order to maintain their relationship with the Roman occupiers, the Jewish authorities have some responsibility for keeping the peace. They are keen to know whether John poses a threat to the stability of the region or whether his popularity threatens to unsettle their place and their status among the Jews. In short they want to know if John was simply calling the people to repentance or whether he was using his charisma to de-stabilise Temple worship and the priesthood. Was he stirring up the people to call for change or was he simply urging them to repent and to deepen their relationship with God. The former was dangerous but the latter was harmless.

The authorities didn’t go out to the Jordan themselves; they delegated the task to priests and Levites. John’s interrogators are stumped, they want him to fit into a preexisting category: the anointed one, Elijah or a prophet. John is none of these, but because his interrogators can only see the world through one lens, they ask the same question three times: “Who are you? What then? and Who are you?”

John does not fit into any of their boxes. His responses are all negative. He is not the anointed one, he is not Elijah and he is not the prophet. John knows that in and of himself he is nothing; his role is simply to point the way to someone else. He points to Jesus, to the light, to the one whose sandals he is not worthy to untie. He is a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for another. In the end we only learn what John is not, however his responses have reassured his questioners, they return to Jerusalem confident that he is not going to form a revolutionary movement that will upset the delicate balance of power.

John’s gospel is not interested in John the Baptist. The author of John is more interested in John who bears Witness to Jesus. John the Baptist is the wild man of the Synoptic gospels who preaches repentance, addresses the crowds as vipers and warns that Jesus will come with a winnowing fork in his hand and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. John the Witness is a peaceable, mild-mannered holy man whose spirituality draws people to him and leads them to seek baptism, John the Witness points forward to Jesus. He does not draw attention to himself.

The readings during Advent challenge us to pay attention – to the presence of God in and around us, in people and in creation and in the unexpected surprises in our day. Paying attention demands that we take time to focus, to notice details that would usually escape us and to celebrate God in our lives.

This week we are challenged to pay more attention to people whom we know or whom we think we know. Who are they really? What are their hopes and dreams? We are encouraged to ask ourselves: Do we allow the people around us to really be themselves or do we expect them to conform to our preconceived ideas? Have we boxed them in, restricted them to particular roles or fitted them into pre-existing stereotypes that are limiting and confusing? John didn’t fit the categories into which the priests and Levites tried to place him but so long as he didn’t cause trouble they were content to let him be.

There are no images or types that are able to contain Jesus the Christ. We must be careful to pay attention and try to adjust focus so that when Jesus is right in front of us we will not make the mistake of thinking that he is something or someone else.

This Advent, pay attention, keep awake, be alert. Allow God to stretch and challenge your way of thinking about God. Open yourself to new and different possibilities and experiences of the divine, because only then will you be ready when God in Jesus catches you by surprise.

 

[1] Renae was ordained as a Deacon two weeks ago and has begun working with us as a Curate.

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Taking it seriously

November 11, 2017

Pentecost 23 – 2017

Matthew 25:1-13

Marian Free

In the name of God who has given us everything and to whom we owe everything in return. Amen.

My parents tell a story of my godmother Catherine. Neither Catherine nor her mother had any interest in cooking. Meals at their home generally consisted of meat and salad. On one occasion when my parents were staying with Catherine, my mother was making the dinner. When Catherine offered to help, mum asked her to stir the white sauce. Catherine couldn’t concentrate on the task. As a result the sauce was lumpy and inedible. When my mother asked why she hadn’t kept stirring, Catherine replied: “I didn’t think continuously meant that I had to stir it all the time.” Catherine had no commitment to cooking, so her approach was careless and lackadaisical with the result that the dinner was ruined.

I’m sure that you can think of many situations in which things don’t go as well as they could due to someone’s lack of commitment, their failure to think things through or their casual approach to the task or the event.

This morning’s parable is all about being fully engaged in the task at hand. It is, I think, one of the most confronting of all the parables. The shut door does not sit well with our image of Jesus as loving, forgiving and compassionate and I suspect that we all feel a chill at the possibility of Jesus slamming a door in our face.

It is essential that remember that this is a story not a real event. We don’t have to puzzle over details such as whether the markets would be open in the middle of the night or where exactly the girls were. We just have to take the story at face value. There are ten girls waiting for a bridegroom. Of the ten only five have thought to bring extra oil so that they can be sure to ready to greet the groom when he arrives.

We know very little of the marriage customs of Jesus’ time. Based on the practices of surrounding cultures we can assume that it was the practice of the groom to go to the bride’s home to negotiate the bride-price with the father. As this might involve a certain amount of haggling, the timing of the groom’s return home could not be determined with accuracy. Add to this the fact that the notion of time was quite fluid – “this evening” could mean anytime after sundown. The girls would have had no idea when to expect the groom. The groom was expected after dark as the girls had their lamps with them and their lamps were lit.

Five of the young women had extra oil and five did not. Even so, the reaction of the bridegroom appears to be harsh in the extreme. Five of the girls were foolish and ill prepared, but they were not bad. They had not broken the law or committed even a minor misdemeanour. I think that this is why the parable offends our sense of justice – the punishment does not seem to fit the crime. Surely mere foolishness is not enough to lead to such final and definitive exclusion?

In fact, foolishness is not the problem, neither, despite Matthew’s addition to the parable, is sleep. It is true that the five foolish virgins were not bad but they were thoughtless, careless and unfocussed. Theirs was an important responsibility, but they had not taken it seriously enough. They had one job and one job only – to greet the bridegroom and to lead him to his house, but when he arrived they were nowhere to be seen. Five of the girls had prepared for the eventuality that the groom would be delayed, but five had not. The first five had thought about the role and what it required and the others had not. The five foolish girls did not really have their heart in the task, they had taken their responsibility lightly and in so doing they have in effect shown their true colours and locked themselves out. Their actions (or rather their lack of action) demonstrated that they were only half-hearted about their involvement in the wedding, they were happy to be involved, but not willing to do what it took to take the role seriously.

A number of the parables point in this direction – that is they make it clear that it is not so much that God judges us, but that by our own inaction, our own carelessness or indifference we make it clear that we do not really want to belong. Take for example the parable of the man without the wedding garment: he was happy to come to the wedding but couldn’t be bothered dressing appropriately. The parable of the house on the rock and the house on the sand suggests that it is our decisions and our actions that determine how the future will play out. Whether we are invited in or locked out depends, at least in part, on how much we want to be included, on whether or not we are truly conscious of what a great privilege it is to have been chosen in the first instance.

Being good is not enough on its own. The parable shows that it is possible to be good but not attentive, to be good but not thoughtful, to be good but in some sense to be absent. Today’s reading from Joshua gives us some sense of what is required of us – to revere God and to serve God in sincerity and faithfulness – that is, to give ourselves completely and unreservedly, holding nothing back; not half-heartedly and superficially, distracted by worldly affairs.

Joshua’s challenge to the people of Israel rings out through every generation: “Chose this day whom you will serve” and having chosen: “Revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness – fully committed, totally focussed and completely engaged in our relationship with God – then and only then will we truly know God and know that God truly knows us.

 

 

 

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Paying attention to God

December 1, 2012

Advent 1 2012

Luke 21:25-38

Marian Free

In the name of God who was and is and is to come. Amen.

 When I was a child I remember being fascinated by a story my mother used to tell. It related to a time when she was a young mother. Apparently,  one of her friends who had recently given birth to her first child went off to the hairdressers at her regular time. When the hairdresser asked after the baby the woman realised that she had completely forgotten that she had a baby and had left the at home! Thankfully no damage was done and she never forgot again. She simply hadn’t adjusted to being a mother and presumably the baby was asleep when she was getting ready to leave the house.

Adjusting to a new situation is not always the reason that children get forgotten or neglected. In an interview aired during the week an Australian musician spoke about her father. She reported that he was both wonderful and unconventional. He did things like wake her up in the middle of the night to take her out and he treated her very much as an adult, sharing his passions with her. Those were the good times. There were times however when her father had become so drunk the night before that he couldn’t be woken in the morning to take her to school. It wasn’t that he had forgotten that he was a father, he had let other things in his life take precedence over that responsibility.

Alcohol and drugs do have the power to take over someone’s life to the extent that all other priorities – work, relationships and even children – take second place.  It is also true that it is possible to become so absorbed in something that other things get forgotten.  For example, someone might be having such a good time at a party that they don’t notice the time passing and forget to pick up their child or their spouse at the agreed time. Someone else might be so engrossed in the task that they are doing that they run late for their next appointment or commitment.

There are a number of things that distract us from more important or more central things in our lives – work, play, mind altering substances, anxiety, fear – the list could probably go on and on and of course, the potential distractions would be different for all of us.

Today’s gospel is concerned with distractions. There are three short sayings, all of which focus on Jesus’ coming  again. These are -holding our heads high, paying attention and not allowing our focus to wander.   Jesus describes the cosmic turbulence that will be associated with the coming of the Son of Man. – even the powers of the heavens will be shaken. These events will be terrifying, but Jesus urges his followers not to be anxious – to see the events for what they are. If Jesus is coming, then instead of cowering in fear, they should stand tall, confident that their redemption is near.

There may be dramatic signs of Jesus’ return but Jesus reminds his disciples that they are not to ignore the more subtle signs that he is near – signs as simple as the fig tree putting forth its blossom.  Then Jesus narrows the scene down even further – to a personal level.  He has encouraged his followers to notice the signs in the cosmos and the signs in the world around them. Last he reminds them that they need to look to their own lives and to ensure that there is nothing in the way that they live their lives that could blind them to or to take their attention away from Jesus’ return.

All three sayings deal with the theme of paying attention. The first two with what we need to attend to and the last a warning not to be distracted from these things.

The three themes are different and yet related – different in their focus, but related in their demand that we are alert at all times  to what God has done, what God is doing and what God will do.  The three sayings remind us that Jesus is going to return at a time that will not be of our choosing and that it may or may not come with a clear warning.  For this reason, Jesus says that it is essential that his followers be ready for his coming at any time. That said, Jesus cautions that our capacity to be prepared should not be compromised by fear – which would be a failure to trust God. Our capacity should not be limited by inattentiveness – which would demonstrate that we were not fully aware of God’s presence already in the world. Our capacity to be prepared should not be flawed by distraction or getting absorbed in things that take our focus away from what is important – which would demonstrate the weakness of our relationship with God.

Jesus doesn’t issue these warnings to keep us on our toes, or to have us live in a state of perpetual anxiety about the coming of the end.  Jesus will return as judge. However, to spend all our time and energy worrying and preparing for that day would in fact, be in direct contradiction of Jesus’ intention here. Being ready for Jesus’ return does relate to the future, but our readiness for that return is a task for the present.

It is in the present that we will see the signs of God moving and working among us. It is in the present that we need to hone our ability to recognise God. It is in the present that we need to be careful that we do not allow ourselves to be distracted by things which ultimately take our attention away from the reality of God in our lives. If we pay too much attention to what might or might not happen in the future, if we worry too much about how we will stand up in the judgement, if we become absorbed with trying to work out how to achieve a good outcome, then ironically we will be doing the very things what Jesus is warning against.  That is, instead of looking forward to God’s coming, instead of believing that we are among the redeemed and instead of focusing on Jesus we would actually be focussing on ourselves and living out of fear not joyful expectation – the very thing that Jesus is trying to discourage.

In our faith journey it is so important to find a balance – to be able to so trust in God, to pay sufficient attention to God’s presence in our lives, to be so confident in our relationship with God, that all else – our behaviour in the present and our expectations of the future simply fall into place. To do anything else leads us to rely on ourselves and our self absorption takes our attention away from what God is doing and what God plans to do.

During Advent we focus on Jesus’ coming into the world, Jesus’ presence with us now and Jesus’ coming again. As we reflect on this threefold coming of God among us, we are given the time to ask once again: Do we truly believe that we are redeemed? Do we pay attention to God in the little details of our lives? Do we allow ourselves to be distracted by things that ultimately do not matter?

The future is important, but if we allow it to dominate the present it will be the very distraction that causes us to miss the signs and be weighed down by the worries of this life that we do not raise our heads and recognise that our redemption is near.

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