Posts Tagged ‘Humanity’

Embracing humanity

January 7, 2023

Jesus’ Baptism
Matthew 3:13-17
Marian Free

In the name of God who embraces our full humanity and in so doing allows us to embrace our own. Amen.

In a public lecture in 2010 Aidan Kavanagh gave an imaginative description of a fourth century baptism. Full admission to the Christian faith was taken very seriously at that time. Catechumens would have spent four years in preparation, during which time they would have had to leave the church before the Eucharistic prayer as receiving communion was a privilege of initiates. Easter, the time of resurrection was considered to be the most appropriate time for candidates to die to their old, lives and to rise to the new. During the season of Lent the whole church would have joined the baptism candidates in fasting and prayer and the baptisms (full immersion) would have taken place at dawn after the all-night Easter Vigil .

Over the centuries baptism has been understood in a number of ways, has taken various forms and has been regarded with various degrees of rigor. In the New Testament, John’s baptism of repentance was that of full immersion because Jesus ‘comes up from the water’, however there is little evidence that this continued to be the practice of the early community. Apart from the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26f) no one seems to be asked to meet at a body of water in order to be baptised. Nor, at that time, was there a lengthy period of preparation – those who asked to be baptised were simply baptised. (In fact, some people were not even asked. Think of the guard who takes Peter to his home and who is baptised with all his family – Acts 16:34).

As the church became institutionalised, baptism became the prerogative of the bishop. When the church became sufficiently large that the bishop could not be present in a timely way, baptism was delegated to the deacons. These baptisms were confirmed whenever the bishop came to the town. Apparently by the fourth century baptism was taken very seriously as Kavanagh’s story indicates. Over the centuries however, baptism seems to have taken on a kind of colonising function. The church wanted everyone to be a Christian and in a Christian Empire baptism became the norm. At some stage the theology of original sin ensured that new parents were terrified that children who were not baptised went straight to hell. (This was one way to ensure that the population was ‘Christian’, but it did not require those who, through baptism, joined the faith, had any preparation or any commitment to the faith.)

During the 1970’s there was a movement away from this more cavalier approach to baptism and church membership. Church attendance had slipped and some of the more serious- minded people were concerned that the children whose parents had no connection should not be baptised unless the parents underwent a period of training and began to attend church. Unfortunately, this led to a time of great hurt and confusion as parents who believed that baptism was an important gift that they could give their child felt judged and excluded.

Jesus’ baptism was very different from any of our modern norms, and it raises more questions than it answers. There is no prior evidence of baptism in the traditions and rituals of Israel. So what was John the Baptist doing and how was it understood by those who came to him to be baptised?.) What drove John and why did he feel that the people needed to repent? How did John recognise Jesus as ‘the one more powerful’?

We don’t have conclusive answers to any of these questions and we certainly cannot answer the one that lies at the heart of the account: “Why did Jesus come to be baptised? Surely he did not need to repent.” This is a question that exercises the mind of the author of Matthew. Of all the gospel writers, he and he alone has John question Jesus’ need to be baptised. Matthew’s Jesus responds that he needs to be baptised “to fulfill all righteousness.” However, that raises questions of its own.

Our problem with Jesus’ baptism seems to lie in our need to believe that, as it says in Hebrews, Jesus was ‘without sin.’ A Jesus who was ‘without sin’ would have had no need to repent so the argument goes. This makes Jesus’ baptism some kind of random requirement that God has imposed.

A more useful view is to remind ourselves of Jesus’ full humanity. That is to say, if Jesus was fully human then he must have shared at least some human imperfections. Indeed, the gospels do not gloss over the fact that Jesus gets angry, is afraid and allows the crowds and even the disciples to frustrate him.

Taking this into account, Jesus’ baptism by John is a reminder of Jesus’ full humanity. Jesus didn’t stand outside the human experience as some sort of perfect entity, rather he embraced our condition in its entirety. When Jesus came to John to be baptised he had not yet begun his mission. He was not at that point, Jesus the teacher and miracle worker, but Jesus a peasant from Galilee. Up until this moment, Jesus had done nothing remarkable, nothing that would suggest to those around him that he was anyone special. There was nothing about him that had made him stand out from his peers, nothing that suggested that he was anything out of the ordinary, nothing that had led others to declare him a perfectly, godly human being. (When he preached at Nazareth, he was remembered simply as one of the lads of the village – one who now was putting on airs.) He was thirty years old and had done nothing remarkable.

Seen in this light, it is possible to argue that Jesus came to be baptised because he had reached a point in his life when he was ready to fully submit to God’s will and ready to completely align his life with that of God, to take up the mantle of his call. Jesus “repented” in the true sense of the word – he turned his life around. Jesus’ mission was inaugurated by his voluntary submission to God in baptism and his willingness to allow his life – from that point on to be determined by God – whatever that might mean and wherever it might lead.

Jesus’ fully human baptism reminds us that Jesus is not some superhuman being who cannot identify with our human frailty. Jesus’ ownership of his humanity in baptism gives us permission to embrace our own imperfect humanity. Most importantly Jesus’ complete identification with us in baptism, challenges us to accept and to grow into the divinity that resides within each of us.

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Wholly whole, holy whole

March 5, 2022

Lent 1 – 2022a
Luke 4:1-13
Marian Free

In the name of God in whose image we are made and in whose eyes we are beloved. Amen.

Just when you think that a section of scripture has nothing more to reveal, the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to new insights. So it was as I prepared once again to find some words to say about Jesus’ time in the wilderness and about his battle with the devil.

In the course of my reading around the subject, it occurred to me that the heart of the account of Jesus’s temptations is less an example of the strength and more an exploration of the Incarnation – what it means for Jesus to be both fully divine and fully human. That Jesus is both human and divine is hinted at in the verse immediately prior to this account. Unlike Matthew, who begins his gospel with Jesus’ genealogy, Luke places it after his baptism and before his temptation. Further, whereas Matthew goes back to Abraham – the father of the Israelites, Luke takes Jesus’ origins all the way back to God. In 3:38 we read: “son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God”. In other words, Luke is making it quite clear that Jesus is the offspring of the first human and of God.

As such, the account of Jesus in the wilderness is as much a lesson on the nature of Jesus as it is about temptation. If we avoid the temptation to see that Jesus’ encounter with the devil is only about temptation, we can allow ourselves to consider what it is about Jesus’ nature that informs our understanding of human nature. That is if, as we believe, Jesus was fully human, filled with the Holy Spirit what can we do in the power of the Holy Spirit – with which we have all been gifted at our baptism? Instead of talking about will power, about resisting temptation what if we,Iike Jesus were willing and able to dig deeply into the divine power that dwells within us. If, rather than trying to ‘be strong’ in the face of temptation we were to rely on a deep knowledge of scripture that was informed by a deep trust in and an intimate relationship with God? What if, instead of trying to face the world alone, we faced the world and all its attendant difficulties in the power of our godly nature.

As Athanasius tells us: “Jesus became human that we might become gods.” Jesus’ Incarnation is intended to reveal to us our true selves – bearers of the divine in human flesh. What distinguishes Jesus from us is that in Jesus the divine and the human are fully integrated. His human nature did not make him less divine and his divine nature did not make him less human. One aspect of his nature does not negate or overshadow the other and neither does one despise and distrust the other, but both – human and divine -are integral to Jesus’ wholeness/holiness. Jesus the human was really hungry and after 40 days without food or company was probably weak and vulnerable, if not a tad grumpy. Jesus did not abandon or suppress his humanity in the desert. He accepted the frailty associated with being human but he didn’t allow that frailty to overwhelm him or to disappoint him. He holds his dual nature together in a way that many of us do not.

Jesus’ response to the devil is one of confidence and strength. He has not rejected and nor does he despise his physical needs or his earthly desires. He feels no shame at being hungry enough to want to make bread from stones. He is not weighed down by guilt at the thought that he has considered taking a short cut to glory. He is does not want to hide the fact that for a moment he wanted to test God’s love for him. And because he has not created a division between the two aspects of his being he can draw on the spiritual at the same time as he is recognising and accepting the human.

Jesus’ victory, if we can call it that, in the desert is not the final word. It is not as if having overcome these temptations he has subdued his human nature once and for all allowing his divine nature to be the face that the world sees. Luke makes it clear that Jesus’ humanity has not been “overcome” or “abandoned”. Not only does he not have the last word but the devil has only : “left him till an opportune time.” It is not over. Jesus is still human and there will be times when that is more obvious than at others (when he overturns the tables in the temple, when he gets tired or exasperated, when he weeps at the tomb of Lazarus, when he relaxes and allows Mary to wipe his feet with her hair). Jesus will agonize in the garden and cry out in despair from the cross. His humanity is evident until the very end.

Our problem is that we have difficulty acknowledging the divinity that is our birth right and, if we do, we waste a. great deal of time trying to separate the two parts of ourselves – suppressing and rejecting the human while not really believing in the divine. We tend to idealise the spiritual and demonize the physical to the extent that we simply cannot accept that both are equally a part of us, that both reveal something about our God-given nature. Temptation, we believe, is something that happens to our unholy human selves and therefore it is our unholy selves that we enlist to resist and fight temptation. We try to subdue what comes naturally and when we fail we further demonise our human nature thereby driving an even bigger wedge between our two natures. In rejecting one part of who we are, we unwittingly reject both.

What Jesus demonstrates both in his encounter with the devil and in his life as a whole is that our divine nature does not have to be split off from our human nature. We don’t have to reject our fleshly, messy humanness in order to be spiritual, holy or divine. We don’t have to change ourselves or mold ourselves the sort of ideal person we have convinced ourselves that God wants or expects us to be. There is no need to sever or, at the very least bury those parts of ourselves that we are afraid that God will find unacceptable for when we do we demonstrate that we despise and reject what God has created, we reveal our lack of faith in God’s boundless love for us and we make it impossible for us to be fully integrated human beings created in the image of God.

In Jesus, God became one of us, demonstrating once and for all, that God does not despise human nature, reject its frailties or feel the need to suppress its physical, emotional and psychological desires and that being human does not make one any less godly. In Jesus, God shows us how the holy and “unholy” can be one as indeed they were intended to be. Through Jesus God challenges us to connect with the ground of our being, the source of life and love and to become wholly whole, holy whole.

This Lent, can we do this – free ourselves from fear, accept who we are and allow the divine within us to make us whole and holy?

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Why baptism?

January 8, 2022

The Baptism of Jesus – 2022
Luke 3:15-22
Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us to be the people we were created to be. Amen.

I believe that I have mentioned previously that Jesus’ baptism was problematic for the gospel writers. Matthew and Luke both provide additions/alterations to Mark’s text in order to try to explain why Jesus – who was sinless – would need baptism for the forgiveness of sins and both Luke and John go to the trouble of distancing Jesus and John the Baptist .

One of the problems for us, as for the gospel writers is, that with the exception of the account of Jesus in the Temple, recorded only by Luke, we have no details from the time of Jesus’ birth until he bursts on the scene in connection with John the Baptist. Later, non-canonical, writers tried to fill in the gap. They provided us with extraordinary (if not always edifying) stories of Jesus’ childhood in writings like Proto-James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in order to demonstrate that the trajectory hinted at in Jesus’ birth, continued throughout his childhood – that the divinity that became evident in Jesus’ ministry was obvious from his childhood. For example, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas depicts the child Jesus as someone who not only heals and raises from the dead, but who also strikes down (dead) those who disagree with or provoke him!

Such stories only serve to emphasise the difficulty of Jesus suddenly appearing as an adult and beginning his public ministry after his baptism “of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” by John the Baptist. Why, we wonder, would Jesus need forgiveness? Of what would he need to repent? These are questioned that taxed Matthew, Luke and John and which continue to puzzle us.

In Luke’s account, Jesus only appears after questions have been raised as to whether or not John is the anointed one, and after John has been imprisoned. In this way, Jesus is neatly removed from John (perhaps to dispel any idea that Jesus was John’s disciple or a part of the movement surrounding John the Baptist). Jesus has been baptised (we are not told by whom) and is praying when the Spirit descends on him in a bodily form like a dove. Luke omits the dramatic tearing of the heavens that characterise Mark and Matthew though the words from heaven are the same as in Mark: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased .” These words are a composite quote from the Old Testament: Psalm 2:7 in which a voice from heaven was seen as a reference to messianic sonship; three references from the Book of Genesis in which “beloved son” occurs in relation to the binding of Isaac (Gen 22:2,12,16); and Isaiah 42:1, the beginning of the first Servant Song in which God says: “with you I am well pleased”. The presence of the Spirit and the words from heaven announce – at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry – his relationship with God and God’s affirmation of his status and mission.

But why baptism? In particular, why baptism for the “forgiveness of sins”? John Kavanagh SJ provides a compelling explanation. He reminds us that Jesus came, not just to reveal God to us, but to reveal to us what it really means to be human. In order to do this, Kavanagh argues Jesus had to fully identify with the human condition including its tendency to sin. Kavanagh states that: “We misunderstand this because we misunderstand our humanity as well as our sin .” He continues: “Not only is he (Jesus) truly God. He is truly human. And he is truly human precisely because he does not sin. All of our sin is nothing other than the rejection of the truth of our humanity.”

This is the critical point and one which is overlooked. “All of our sin is nothing other than the rejection of the truth of our humanity” – our God-created, God-given humanity. Only taking on the human form – with all its frailty, its propensity to go its own way – only by fully identifying with humankind, is Jesus able to “reverse our sinful rejection of our creatureliness”; to redeem and restore humanity to what it was created to be.

You see, even though we know that we are created by God in the image of God too many of us reject or resist our humanity. We don’t like our bodies, our actions, or our thoughts. We build up barriers between ourselves and others (even God) to protect ourselves from exposure or hurt. We continually split ourselves in two – that which we like (the good?) and that which we do not like (the bad?). We separate our human nature from our divine nature and in so doing we not only become riven in two, but worse, we demonstrate our complete lack of faith in our creator who, having made humankind in God’s own image, looked at what God had made and declared that: “indeed, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Our rejection of ourselves is our rejection of God – of our God given humanity. Our rejection of our humanity leads to our rejection of our divinity and this, Kavanagh argues is sin. In identifying with our “sin” – that is in fully taking on our humanity – in “repenting” (and not rejecting) -and by being baptised, Jesus in his own person reunites our divided humanity and restores our divinity.
So much damage has been done to the Christian faith by our failure to understand the true nature of sin and therefor the true nature of our redemption. If only we could allow ourselves to see ourselves as God sees us and allow God through Jesus to make us whole, then perhaps we would all hear the words from heaven: “You are my beloved child, with you I am well-pleased.”

Jesus has done the hard work, we need only to apply to ourselves the results of his repentance and baptism.

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Authenticity

March 9, 2019

Lent 1 – 2019

Luke 4:1-15

Marian Free

In the name of God who, in Jesus, became totally vulnerable and totally accessible. Amen.

For a while there was a trend among writers and journalists to write searingly honest accounts about parenthood. Articles and columns were written, and books published by new parents, mostly mothers, who took it upon themselves to debunk the myths around parenthood. As I remember most of the authors were people who came to parenting later in life. They had established careers, bought homes and developed reasonably comfortable lifestyles and patterns of existence. None seemed to expect the enormous disruption that a new born child would bring. They had been led to believe all the positives – the flood of love that threatens to overwhelm you and the delights of watching as your child reveals her personality. They had bought “sales talk” of being able to establish a routine, the ability to work around baby’s naptime and the notion that if you do everything right your beautiful baby will fit right into your lifestyle!

When confronted with the reality of babies who don’t settle, whose crying interrupts dinner with friends and who refuse to settle into any sort of fixed pattern, such writers discover that their lives are completely upended and that, among other things, continuing their writing is near impossible. As a consequence of their surprise and unpreparedness they put pen to paper to share their experience and to prepare any other unsuspecting parents-to-be.

(At least this is how I imagine the events that lead to the articles.)

In some way the authors of these biographies felt that their families, their friends and society at large had undersold the difficulties of child-rearing, had put on a positive face despite the difficulties they themselves had confronted and had created an image that a baby would only enrich one’s life and that any down-sides were easily managed if only one used the right techniques.

I can understand how such false views are perpetrated and, if I am honest, I can own my own part in creating an image of trouble-free parenting. As a first (and second) time mother I attended my local playgroup with a number of my peers. Topics of conversation included sleeping through the night, potty training, and other riveting topics. In that situation, in which everyone else seemed to be succeeding at parenting, I found it difficult to admit that my elder child was not yet toilet trained and that my younger child screamed for two hours after every feed, no matter what I did. In that situation, observers could have been excused for believing that I was coping with motherhood and that my children were behaving in the same way as the other children in the group. Of course, unknown to me, there may have been another mother in my group who had difficulties of her own. If I had had the courage to be vulnerable and imperfect, I would have given her permission to acknowledge her own frustrations and concerns.

In the poem “Ash Wednesday” T.S. Elliot prays:

“Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood”

“Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.” Elliot recognises that self-deceit, self-delusion is an impediment to authentic relationships. Deception leads to hurt, mistrust, confusion and even anger. As long as we endeavour to hide our real selves and our real experiences, no one will trust us with theirweaknesses and we build a society based not on the truth, but on a collective myth which results in everyone is trying to be someone whom they are not.

Honesty and authenticity inspire trust, allow others to be vulnerable and create relationships which give permission for each person be open and transparent about their own struggles and imperfections. In situations of trust we can share with each other our difficulties in parenting, our anxieties in the work place or even the violence of our spouses. The world would be a better place if we broke down the images of perfection that we try to create and, by being vulnerable ourselves, make a space in which others can own their imperfections.

When we feel that we have to put on a face, when we are tempted to create a positive image of ourselves or to “be strong” in the face of adversity, we do well to remember that Jesus was open to his weaknesses. After forty days of isolation and fasting all kinds of ideas came to him. After all, he was the Son of God! There was nothing that he could not do! He could turn stones into bread, jump off a cliff with no fear that he would come to harm OR he could use his God-given power to rule the world! Whether we attribute these ideas to an external power (Satan) or to Jesus’ own thought processes, they tell us that Jesus was open to temptation and, though he resisted, he was not so perfect that such ideas did not occur to him. He was vulnerable either to Satan’s influence, or to his own desire for recognition or power. That the story of the temptations is recorded, tells us that Jesus had made it known. Jesus was not afraid to let others know that he too had moments of vulnerability and weakness.

It was Jesus’ humanity that made Jesus so easy to relate to – he got tired, he was frustrated with the disciples’ lack of understanding and he was infuriated by the practices of the Pharisees. In turn the disciples felt free to be themselves – confused, foolish and seeking to be first.

Jesus’ relationship with the disciples and theirs with him was authentic and real. Jesus was fully himself as were the disciples. Neither thought less of the other for having human failings and fears, doubts and confusions.

“Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.” Self-deceit not only damages and limits our relationships with one another, it also restricts our personal development and constrains our spiritual growth. As long as we delude ourselves as to who and what we are, we make it impossible to have a relationship with God that is meaningful and real, impossible to learn from our mistakes and impossible to realise our full potential.

This Lent, may we have the courage to relinquish our fear of being exposed, may we trust God and those around us with our true selves and create relationships with God and with one another that are honest and real, life-giving and life-sustaining and in so doing grow into our true selves and enable others to do the same.

 

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Jesus – truly one with us

December 29, 2018

Christmas 1 – 2018

Luke 2: 41-51

Marian Free

In the name of God whose human existence was real and gritty, not superficial and sanitized. Amen.

Prior to the 1960’s there were no such things as shopping malls in Queensland. All the department stores were in the central city so, when it came to Christmas shopping, it was to the city that my mother took us so that we could spend our pocket money on gifts for each other. On one such occasion – I think I was about five years old – I became separated from my mother. I have no recollection of being anxious or frightened. What I do remember, is that when my mother found me, I was safely ensconced on a trestle table that was being used by a group of women to sell Christmas craft. Then, as now, society in general took it upon itself to take responsibility for children in such situations. The primary goal being to care for the child and to reunite the child with his or her parents as expeditiously as possible..

There are societies, those of the New Guinea highlands and our own indigenous culture for example, in which children are the responsibility of all the members of the community. Mothers can let their children roam free confident that everyone will see it as their responsibility to keep the children safe. The sort of ownership and personal responsibility that we feel for our children would be unknown. I’ve been told of an Australian family who, having come to Townsville from Darwin for a funeral, arrived home without one of their children. Instead of being mortified that a child had been left behind, or angry that the child had stayed behind, this family was utterly confident that the child was safe, would be well-looked after and would rejoin them at the next opportunity. (Thankfully, The Department of Children’s Services understood that this was a cultural practice and took no action against the family whose child was reunited with them as soon as it was feasible.)

It is against this sort of background that we have to read the account of Jesus in the Temple. Mary and Joseph were not careless parents who had failed to check on their child’s whereabouts when they left Jerusalem. No doubt they had travelled from Nazareth with a group of friends and relations to attend the feast. When it was time to return home, they would have simply trusted Jesus to have joined the group when everyone was ready to leave – after all he was nearly a man. They would have assumed that he was with cousins or friends whose parents would have treated him as one of their own. In this context there was no need for them to look for their son until the evening when, presumably, he would have joined his immediate family for dinner. Only then did they begin to worry.

Luke, at least in the beginning of the Jesus’ story, does not allow us to forget that this is an account of a real human situation. Jesus belongs to a real family that has the same hopes and dreams, the same flaws, the same irritations and the same anxieties. It is intriguing that across the four gospels we have only one story of Jesus’ childhood and it is the story of a rebellious teenager, or at the very least, of a young man testing his limits – letting his parents know that he is now an adult who can make his own decisions and that he has a vocation to fulfill in which they have no part. His stinging response to Mary’s anxious reproach is to wonder why his parents did not expect him to be in h

‘his Father’s house’. It is the sort of exchange that might occur in any modern household with teenage children.

Later accounts of Jesus’ birth like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas could not cope with such a messy, earthy, ordinary human start to Jesus’ life. For example, in some accounts, just prior to Jesus’ birth, time stands still, midwives appear apparently out of nowhere, the cave is unnaturally lit – by both the child and by Mary’s face. Mary experiences no birth pangs and the child is born completely clean. The birth does not affect Mary’s virginity and the hand of the skeptical midwife withers. In the History of Joseph the Carpenter, the family are taken into the home of a brigand. There, Jesus is bathed and his bath water bubbles up into a foam. The brigand’s wife keeps the foam and uses it to heal the sick and the dying. As a result the family become rich. In these later accounts not only is Jesus’ birth attended with miracles, the escape to Egypt is facilitated by the miracle of a spider’s web and the young Jesus performs miracles and even strikes dead a child who offends him! These later writers could not bear to think that the child Jesus was any less powerful, capable or wise than the adult Jesus.

The absence of somewhere to stay, the insalubrious surroundings of a stable, the visit of the shepherds and the teenager stretching his wings in the Temple are all reminders that we should not isolate Jesus from his very human beginnings or elevate him to the position of a superhuman being. Luke’s Gospel could not spell it out more clearly – Jesus is fully human, fully immersed in the messiness of human existence, susceptible to the same desires as any other human being and subject to some of the same fears. Luke brings Jesus down to earth, reminds us that in Jesus God fully immersed godself in the mundaneness of human existence and that despite being God, Jesus was not insulated from the reality of being one of us.

Jesus/God knows what it is to be one of us and shows us that it is possible for us, mere human beings, to become as he is. We just have to believe that this frail human body with all it’s complexities and this weak, indecisive mind is capable of great and extraordinary things. One of the messages of Christmas is that Jesus became one of us so that we could become one with him. Let us celebrate our human existence and try to live it to it’s full, divine potential.

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God doesn’t not lose faith with us

April 8, 2017

Lent 6 – Palm Sunday, 2017

Matthew 26:14-27:66

Marian Free

In the name of God, who overlooks our faults and who restores us again and again so that we can take our part in the story. Amen.

In the latest issue of Liturgy News David Kirchhoffer reflects on the nature of sainthood. He reminds us that sainthood is not a matter of one-size fits all and that there is no simple definition that incorporates the diversity among those whom his tradition elevates to the status of saint or martyr[1]. “They all have stories, “ he comments, “their own all-too-human stories. Among the saints there are emperors and paupers, young and old, ascetics and hedonists, masters and slaves, colonizers and colonized, reformers and conservatives, and certainly more than one who, by today’s standards, probably experienced some sort of psychological disorder.” David’s point is that rather than being “shown up” by the saints, we actually find ourselves in very good company. The people who are deemed to be most holy by the church are as human and as flawed as the rest of us. Rather than making us feel inadequate and unworthy, the lives of the saints remind us that they are not so very different from us and that our faltering efforts to be holy and faithful are in fact good enough.

If we are in any doubt as to God’s ability to overlook our deficiencies, we need look no further than this morning’s gospel, which among other things is a tale of the whole world’s being at cross purposes with God. It is not only the chief priests and elders and the Roman authorities who try to destroy Jesus and his mission. It is those in Jesus’ immediate circle – his disciples and friends – who hand him over to the authorities, misunderstand their role, sleep when Jesus most needs their support, desert him, deny him and leave him alone to face trial and death.

Of course, not all of the characters in this account are numbered among the saints, but twelve of the those in the drama are Jesus’ most intimate friends, those with whom he has shared the highs and lows of his mission, those whom he has authorized to preach and teach and heal and those whom he has prepared to continue on his work after he has gone. These are the men with whom Jesus has chosen to spend what may be his last night on earth, those with whom he will share the most significant evening on the Jewish calendar. Without exception each of the twelve will let Jesus down before the night is out and yet Jesus refuses to condemn them or to exclude even Judas from the company.

Judas, who, even before the preparations for the dinner had begun, had received thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to the authorities. Judas who, when Jesus announces at the meal that one of the disciples will hand him over, reveals what it is that sets him apart from the other disciples[2]. Whereas the eleven address Jesus as “Lord”, Judas addresses Jesus only as“Rabbi” (teacher). Jesus knows that it is Judas who will hand him over to the authorities and yet when he says: “Take eat, this is my body”, he places the bread in Judas’ hands. When he says: “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sins,” Judas is not excluded from the covenant or from the promise of forgiveness.

Jesus knows that despite Peter’s protestations to the contrary, Peter will deny him – not once but three times. Even so Peter too is given the bread and the wine – Jesus’ body and Jesus’ blood. Of the eleven who remain with Jesus after the meal, not one will find the strength to stay awake with Jesus even though Jesus has shared with them that he is “grieved unto death”. Still, on this, his last night on earth, Jesus will share with them his very self and he will do so lovingly, not reproachfully, with grace and not with disappointment. Jesus knows their limitations. Before it comes to pass he knows how each will respond to the events of the night but he does not abandon them as they will abandon him.

Of these twelve, men who made promises that they failed to keep, all but Judas are included among the saints. Far from being ideals of holiness, courage and piety they are revealed as men who have feet of clay, who put their own safety before their loyalty to Jesus and who flee at the first sign of danger. They have said that they would die with Jesus but they cannot even stay awake, let alone accompany him on the journey to the cross.

Betrayal, abandonment and even opposition are the tools that God uses to turn arrest, false accusations, torture and death into something extraordinary and marvelous – Jesus’ resurrection, the defeat of death. Even though by human standards the disciples have failed not only as disciples but also as friends, they are not censured, punished or rejected. After the resurrection, it is as if God had not even noticed their cowardice, their desire for self-preservation and their failure to keep their word. Instead of condemning them for their lack of loyalty and their abandonment of Jesus, God not only restores and elevates them and gives to them the task of taking up what Jesus has been forced to leave off – preaching the good news of the kingdom.

As God overlooked the flaws and inadequacies of the disciples so too God will overlook our weaknesses, our lack of self-confidence and our tentative efforts to serve.

Though we lose faith in God, God will never lose faith in us, but will raise us up time and time again so that we too will have our place in God’s on-going story.

 

[1] Liturgy News is a publication of the Roman Catholic of Brisbane.

[2] I am indebted to Judith Jones whose commentary on the gospel was challenging and insightful. http://www.workingpreacher.or

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According to Mark

January 24, 2015

Epiphany 3 – 2015

Mark 1:14-20

Marian Free

In the name of God who will never, ever abandon us. Amen.

It is generally accepted that Mark’s gospel was the first of the four gospels to be written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark account as the model of their own records of the life of Jesus. The author of Mark is writing at the time of the Jewish War – that is some time in the late sixties or the early seventies, around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Up until this time the central message of the faith (as is attested by the letters of Paul) had been the death and resurrection of Jesus. Now, those who knew the earthly Jesus have died. There was a need to flesh out the Passion story, to provide the context surrounding Jesus’ execution and to explain to a new generation why the Christ, the Son of God had to die. Jesus’ death and resurrection, though powerful events were no longer enough on their own. They needed to be balanced with stories that illustrated the extraordinary nature of the earthly Jesus. Jesus’ beginning, his teaching and his miracles were important elements in bringing the story to life for future generations.

At the same time it was becoming clear that those who believed in Jesus could expect to suffer. Even if those for whom the gospel was written were not themselves experiencing suffering or persecution themselves, they would have been aware of the plight of believers in Jerusalem and of the persecution of Christians in Rome by Emperor Nero. Members of Mark’s community not only had to come to an understanding of Jesus’ suffering, but they also had to learn that as disciples, they would share in that suffering.

The first gospel is the most honest of the gospels. By that I mean that in Mark’s gospel we see the characters as they really are – nothing is hidden from our gaze. The author doesn’t gloss over either the humanity of Jesus or the foolishness of the disciples.

In Mark’s gospel we meet a Jesus who, among other things, doesn’t know everything (13:32), who can’t do miracles for those who don’t believe (6:5), who at times does not seem to know the will of God and who allows a gentile who is a woman to change his mind (7:24-30). This Jesus expresses every human emotion – pity anger, sadness, wonder, compassion, indignation, love and anguish. His humanity is as evident as the divinity that is stressed from the very first sentence and repeated throughout.

If Jesus’ humanity is evident, the ignorance and fear of those who follow him, is equally clear. Mark’s picture of the disciples is far from flattering. They let Jesus down, they fail to understand, they try to persuade Jesus from his course and at the end they betray and desert him. The disciple’s frailty is particularly obvious when Jesus predicts his suffering and resurrection. In each of the three instances, the disciples’ reaction shows their complete lack of comprehension. On the first occasion, Peter rebukes Jesus, the second is followed by a discussion between the disciples as to who is the greatest and after the third prediction James and John ask Jesus if they can sit at his right and at his left in his kingdom. Unable to accept that the Christ must suffer, they demonstrate their complete lack of understanding by correcting Jesus, by changing the topic and by trying to regain control of things. Their response shows that they can only understand the kingdom in human terms.

According to Mark, Jesus is fallible and the disciples are anything but models for those who come after. (Matthew and Luke rehabilitate both Jesus and the disciples. In Matthew, then Luke and finally John, Jesus becomes more and more like God and the disciples become both wiser and braver.) Of course, there is method in Mark’s apparent madness. Mark is not interested in presenting either Jesus or the disciples as perfect. His purpose is to emphasise what God has done for us in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ humanity provides the vehicle through which Mark can reveal God’s grace and dependability. The frailty and fearfulness of the disciples reminds readers that it is what God does and not what they do that matters in the end.

This gospel is not a tale of triumph but an account of frailty and suffering. The gospel takes a circuitous and difficult route from the announcement of Jesus as God’s Son in verse 1 to Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross. “My God, my God why have you abandoned me?” It is only at the end that everything comes together. After the crucifixion – the apparent failure of Jesus’ mission – it becomes clear that God has been there all along. God’s presence in the rolling away of the stone and God’s messenger in the tomb announcing the resurrection are evidence that despite appearances to the contrary, God did not abandon Jesus. Jesus’ trust and confidence in God has been vindicated by his resurrection. The report that Jesus has gone before the disciples to Galilee is proof that though the disciples had denied and abandoned Jesus, Jesus has not abandoned them.

This year we will be travelling together through the Gospel of Mark, which was written not only for disciples at the end of the first century, but also for those of us in the twenty first century. We will hear how Mark moves the story along, we will see how from the moment he begins his ministry Jesus is always accompanied by those whom he chose to be his disciples, we will understand that the conflict that is evident from the beginning will characterize Jesus’ ministry and lead to his death, and we will be reminded that despite his cry of agony from the cross, God did not abandon him and God will never abandon us.

Faith in Jesus does not guarantee a life of ease. Following Jesus does not lead to perfection. Belief does not always equal understanding. There will be times of pain and suffering in our lives, there will be times when we are only too aware of our imperfections and there will be times when we simply do not understand what God is doing or where God has gone. At such times we can turn once again to Mark’s gospel and remember that whatever life has to throw at us, God will never, ever abandon us and however often we let him down Jesus will never, ever give up on us.

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Humanity exposed

July 14, 2012

Pentecost 7

Mark 6:14-end

Marian Free

In the name of God our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.

The past few decades have revealed in vivid detail how violent the world is and how precarious, for many, is their hold on life. This week on You Tube a video was posted of a woman being executed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Wednesday a young man cried before the International Court as he told the story of the last time he saw his Bosnian father. Throughout the world people flee from violence to an uncertain future. In refugee camps around the world, women are routinely raped and not only by those whom they might consider their enemies. Women and children are trafficked as sex slaves even in Australia. In Syria today, Libya yesterday, autocratic rulers and their followers who are trying to hold on to power violently suppress any opposition to their rule.

Modern methods of communication mean that we receive news (especially bad news) almost immediately. Remember the video of the young protester shot in Egypt. Another person who was present took a film on their mobile phone and within minutes the world knew what had happened.

My point is this, a person would be hard pressed not to know that there are many really shocking things taking place every day and that innocent people -simply because of the countries into which they are born – are experiencing what to us is unimaginable violence and cruelty often on a daily basis.

It is not as if the world has changed, but our knowledge of the world has expanded to the point where it is impossible to ignore what goes on around us.

This is the context in which we read the account of the death of John the Baptist. Palestine of the first century was no more unstable or violent than many countries are today. Rulers like Herod, whose hold on power was to some extent dependent on the whim of Rome, were under some pressure to maintain order. Not only that, but there would be other opportunists like himself ready to take his place if the situation arose. For that reason, opposition had to be quickly dispensed. So, if someone like John was perceived as disturbing the peace then he (like say, Aung San Suu Kyi) would need to be neutralized by placing him under arrest. The execution of John  (or Aung San) would have been a more permanent solution, the death of John of Aung San might have incited their followers to cause unrest so arrest was the safer option.

Herod’s hold on power might have been precarious, but spare a thought for his wife, who like many women throughout history found herself in a situation that was extremely precarious and which – especially as her power and influence had been ill-gained – could only be maintained by devious or violent measures. If you read the second book of Chronicles you will hear the story Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, who set out to slaughter all the Royal household of Judah in order to gain the throne and to assure herself of some sort of security. You don’t need to go that far back to be reminded that women often had no say in their future, but were wedded off to whomever might provide greater stability for their fathers. Some of these women achieved security for themselves and for their children by means that we would consider immoral, conniving or brutal.

The position of Herod’s wife was not at all secure, and her daughter’s less so. Having abandoned her husband for Herod, – possibly lured by his greater power and wealth – she would be aware that relationships were tenuous and that there was no guarantee that she would remain in Herod’s favour. Further, having achieved Herod’s favour in a way that some considered immoral, it is understandable that she might have been all the more determined to ensure that she gained the respect of those around her. Her daughter, who is not the daughter of Herod, is equally vulnerable. No wonder then that the mother is anxious to rid herself of a man who is troubling her husband’s conscience and threatening her position. No wonder that her daughter seeks her advice and is willing to act on it.

I always find it extraordinary that the Gospels have such an extended account of such a gruesome story. Some other events are mentioned only in passing, but here we have the details of the dinner, the dance, the promise, the request and its completion. The same is true of other grusomes stories in the Bible. I think for example of the Levite’s concubine whom, we are told was cut into twelve pieces, or of the rape of Tamar, or the destruction of the tribe of Bethlehem. (Those OT stories are only the internal stories, not ones about Israel’s enemies!)  They are hardly edifying, not the sort of story that would enhance one’s faith or deepen one’s spirituality. However, they are important stories, not least because they reveal the ugliness of human nature and the depths to which some people will sink.

If nothing else, these accounts make us aware of the complexity of the human heart and help us to think about the nature of our own thoughts, our own petty jealousies, our own need to protect the roles that make us feel worthwhile and important or our desire to hurt or destroy those things or people who threaten us or who threaten our comfortable existence.

We live in a world which is becoming increasingly polarized. Religious conflict between those who hold the same faith and those of different faiths is increasing in some parts of the world. In other parts of the world there is suspicion that different faith groups are planning to “take over”.  Even before the GFC there was an increasing gap between the very rich and the very poor. Now we are starting to see a gap between those who are employed and those who are not. In such an environment, the baser side of human nature tends to be exposed as people compete for resources and power and those with resources do whatever it takes to protect them.

The ugly stories of our scriptures remind us that, while we might not like to admit it, we share with the rest of humanity a potential for evil as well as for good. Our scriptures don’t gloss over the difficult and uncomfortable, but expose both the best and the worst of human nature. This helps us to be honest and realistic with ourselves, to know of what we are capable, to recognise and confront the ugly parts of ourselves, and to identify and strengthen all that is good. It is important always to have an unblinkered view of ourselves for only then will we have the will to open about our frailty, willing to grow and change and cautious about judging the world.

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