Posts Tagged ‘injustice’

Knocking on heaven’s door – the persistent widow

October 18, 2025

Pentecost 19 – 2025

Luke 18:1-14

Marian Free

In the name of God whose love is dispassionate and constant. Amen.

I have to confess that over the last ten (is it as long as that?) ten years, I have found myself not only wondering about the state of the world, but also about how to effectively pray for the world. No amount of prayer on my part has changed the current erosion of democracy in the United States, my daily prayer has not ended the war in Ukraine or prevented the devastating loss of life and destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, and my consistent prayer has not created the political will for our governments to act in ways that will save the environment. So yes, there are times in which not only do I despair about the direction in which the world is going, but in which I feel utterly powerless to make a difference and I feel acutely conscious of the ineffectiveness of my prayer in particular and prayer in general. 

Today’s parable, taken in isolation from the text around it, does not provide a solution to my problem – in fact, it seems to place the blame at my feet, to suggest that if only I had prayed long enough, hard enough all would be well. Yet I feel as if I have already battered down the doors of heaven to no avail. No matter how many times I go back, no matter how just I feel my cause to be, it seems as though my prayers, my desperate pleas, continue to go unanswered. Greed and selfishness, and the need for power and control seem to go unchecked, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer, homelessness is increasing as is the number of people unable to access timely healthcare, or enough food for their families (and I could go on) and despite the fact that more people than I are praying God has not yet intervened in any way that would make a substantial difference. 

Yet the parable encourages persistence, the judge eventually responds to the widow’s request – annoyed by her persistence and fearful that she might resort to violence and cause him to lose face[1].

Before we fall into utter despair at the inadequacy of our prayer, we need to have a closer look at the parable. Firstly, and importantly, we must not make the mistake of interpreting the parable as an allegory. The judge (though he is the person with all the power in the parable) does not represent God – which is the exactly the point that Jesus is making. The judge may have no respect for people, but God will hear the cry of his people and God will grant justice. 

God is not aloof, corrupt and obstructionist, ignoring the poor and indifferent to justice. God, unlike the judge, cannot be bullied or forced to do our will by persistence or violence.  There would be no point in God if God was like the judge.

Why then does Jesus tell a parable about persistence? Here, as is often the case, context is important. Our lectionary has moved from the healing of the lepers to the parable on prayer thus omitting an important conversation with the disciples about the coming of the Son of Man.  Jesus, in line with many apocalyptic prophets, paints a picture of a time of great tribulation which will precede the coming of the Son on Man – times perhaps not unlike those we are living through. He suggests that the time before his return will parallel the time before the great flood, that its coming will be as sudden and unexpected as the destruction of Sodom, that those on the housetop must not come down and those in the field must not turn back, that one will be taken and another left and so on.

The wider socio-cultural context is also important. Jesus’ disciples were, by and large poor peasants oppressed by a foreign power which had stripped them of their land, demanded the payment of taxes on the meagre living which they were able to make, and which brutally suppressed any opposition. It would not be at all surprising to discover that the disciples were anxious to know when everything would be put right, when justice would be restored to the land. How easy it would be to fall into despair when day-by-day their prayers for release seem to come to nothing.

It is into this space that Jesus’ tells this parable about persistence. Jesus is not saying that God will miraculously bring justice on earth through our constant nagging or through our belief that we know what justice is.  Jesus is acknowledging that there will be times when it seems that God is absent, when we will feel that our prayers fall on deaf ears, and when it seems that there will never be an end to injustice, war, oppression, poverty or violence. Into that place of despair, Jesus urges us to persist, to maintain our relationship with God despite, not because of, what is happening in the world around us.

This, perhaps explains the final question of this morning’s passage: “When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?” When Jesus returns, will he find those who have hoped against hope, those who have persisted when persistence seemed futile and those who have continued to believe despite God’s apparent powerlessness in the face of humanity’s propensity for evil.

We are to retain our confidence in God’s loving justice, in the face of humanity’s constant efforts to suppress it, we are to maintain our certainty of God’s love, despite its apparent absence in some places of the world and we are to keep the faith, knowing that God is with and for us, despite evidence to the contrary.

Prayer is not about getting what we want. Prayer is a means of holding open the door to God, listening to God’s word, allowing ourselves to be formed in God’s image and maintaining our relationship with God through all the trials and tribulations of our own lives and through all the things we cannot control in the world around us. Prayer reminds us that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God is with us, God loves us, and, in God’stime, not ours, God will bring justice on the earth.

[1] The Greek of Matthew 18:5 suggests that the judge is worried the widow might slap him in the face, or even to beat black and blue.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Luke's gospel | Comments Off on Knocking on heaven’s door – the persistent widow

God is dead – Good Friday

April 19, 2025

God is dead – Good Friday 2025

Marian Free

In the name of God who, in Jesus, identified with humanity to the point of death.  Amen.

“Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” A core component of Christian faith is that Jesus actually dies. Taken to a literal end point, God dies with Jesus on the cross. From three in the afternoon on Friday to sometime during the night on Saturday evening there is an absence – an absence felt physically by Jesus’ friends and disciples. An absence that I believe we are meant to feel in our hearts and in our bones. From that moment on Good Friday when the gospel is read until that moment on Sunday morning when we declare: “Christ is risen”, we are confronted with the harsh reality that Jesus, God among us, was put to death and that for something like 36 hours, Jesus’ lifeless body lay in a tomb. Jesus/God was truly dead.

As we wait – in this time of emptiness – we have an opportunity to experience the absence of God –  in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the prisons where people are tortured and killed because they challenged the authority of the state, in the favelas of Brazil, the townships of South Africa and the slums of Mumbai and in the Congo and the countless other places in which war, civil strife, injustice and poverty shout out that God is dead, that God is impotent to bring about lasting change.

In the dramatization of the gospel on Good Friday we acknowledge our complicity in the death of Jesus. We take the part of the crowd demanding: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” In so doing, we acknowledge our complicity in the death of Jesus/God in the world today. Our collective unwillingness to pay the cost of change that would lead to peace, equity and justice makes us uncomfortable with “revolutionaries” like Jesus, such that we join the cry for their removal – condemning Jesus to his death. Our collective belief that somehow we can solve the dilemmas of the world, pushes God to margins, denies God the ability to act – sends Jesus to the cross. Our focus on our own needs and our belief that collectively we have the tools to solves the world’s problems proclaims that we do not need God – keeps Jesus in the tomb.

During the time between our Good Friday observances and our Easter Day celebrations, we acknowledge that God is powerless in the face of human greed, greed that leads to a desire for power and control, greed that demands an unfair share of the world’s resources, greed that ensures one’s own well-being before the needs of others. We recognise our complicity in the state of the world today and we grieve the ways in which we have disempowered and marginalised God through our action (or more likely through our inaction).

If God is dead, it is because we put God to death. It is a burden we need to carry especially today.

Thank God we know the end of the story. 

May we commit ourselves to resurrection life – ours and that of others – that God’s power and love may be effective in the world and God’s presence shine light into the darkness.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Good Friday | Comments Off on God is dead – Good Friday

Sit down, Shut up, Listen up

July 9, 2022

Pentecost 5 – 2022
Luke 10:25-27
NAIDOC Week
Marian Free

In the name of God who shows no distinction but values all people. Amen.

At the beginning of the year Professor Josh Mylne, the Chair of the planning committee for the International Congress on Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB) tweeted a poster for the upcoming Conference. The poster featured head shots of all the headline speakers and the chairs for the various sessions – over 90 people in total. Professor Mylne, who had been working on the Conference since 2018 was proud of the line-up, especially the diversity that it displayed. As he told the ABC programme Science Friction: “We had one of the best gender balances I’d seen, career-stage diversity with younger and older scientists, so much different science — more than ever before — chairs from all around the world, including for the first time Africa and India.”

The poster had been shown to hundreds of people before it was tweeted, all of whom responded positively. It was not surprising then that Professor Mylne was taken aback when one of the responses to the tweet was: “International, and no Africans.” Professor Mylne had just cycled home and, instead of stopping to think, he quickly replied: “Look harder”, directing the tweeter to the one African face among the 94.” Of course, potential attendees did look harder, and discovered that not only was there only one person from an African nation. While Asia was well-represented and there was a good gender balance, African and South America speakers were notable by their absence. A closer look also revealed that the website for a conference that was to be held in Australia failed to include an acknowledgement of country.

Instead of dampening the fire, Mylne’s response ignited a blazing fire with the eventual result that one of the sponsors withdrew their support and the Conference itself was postponed.

By taking the tweet personally and by responding hastily, Mylne made the sort of mistake that many of us make. Instead of recognising the hurt (and sense of exclusion) behind the critical tweet, Mylne responded defensively which turned the hurt into outrage. His response was interpreted as “disrespectful” and “tokenistic”. The situation was only made worse when an email was sent to one of the critics suggesting that it was up to people of colour to fix the problem.

It would be good to report that a occurence such as this is unusual, that seeing a situation only from one’s own perspective was a rare occurrence in today’s Australia, but sadly the failure to listen carefully is illustrative of a common reaction towards those who are different from ourselves – migrants, refugees and most egregiously our indigenous community. Our best efforts – when they do not include diverse voices – can be experienced as paternalistic and condescending. Our responses to criticism often demonstrate a failure to hear and an unwillingness to adequately address the concerns of those who outside our field of vision. When our failures are drawn to our attention, we too often become defensive instead of being open, and graciously listening and responding to the grievances of those whom we have (deliberately or inadvertently) excluded, patronised, or offended.

Not being heard or having one’s concerns ignored or carelessly dismissed are experiences that our first Nations people know only too well. There have been amply opportunities (particularly in the past 50 years) for white Australians, policy makers and members of industry to respond to the injustices wrought upon indigenous Australians for generations, and yet our responses have been inadequate at best and detrimental at worst.

To mention just a few – despite the apology, children of indigenous families are still being removed in greater numbers than children of other Australians, despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody people of indigenous background are still over represented in our prisons, despite laws protecting sacred sites it was still possible to blow up the Juukan caves in Western Australia, despite commitments by the former Federal Government and the Uluru Statement from the Heart, first Nations people are still waiting to be recognised in our constitution and given a voice in government.

Since colonisation, we have not only forced indigenous people from their land, taken away their culture and their language, removed their children from their care, but we have also failed to listen to their wisdom, to appreciate their history and to value their knowledge of this land.

We cannot say that we have not been told – and told – what the problems are and how they can be solved. I was shocked, for example, when I heard Rachel Perkins deliver the Boyer Lecture of 2019 and hear her raising issues that had been raised by Professor Marcia Langton AO when she gave the Boyer Lecture in 2012. Nothing, it seemed had changed in the seven years between those lectures. It was a sad indictment on our failure to truly hear what was said or, if we had heard, our failure to respond in ways that demonstrated that we had heard and understood.

There will be no discernible change in this nation until we truly listen to the members of the indigenous community, to their rage, their indignation, their sense of injustice, their grief and their grievances, their sense of loss and dispossession and until we recognise their willingness to work with us and understand that they know better than we do, what the solutions for their own people might be.

Of all the meanings of today’s parable of the good Samaritan, the one that speaks to us today is that the outsider, the despised and the oppressed have much to teach us about generosity, inclusion and forgiveness, and about seeing and responding to the needs of those who are different from themselves no matter how badly the other has treated them.

The theme for NAIDOC week this year is Get up! Stand up! Show up!

Perhaps for white Australians it should be: “Sit down! Shut up! Listen up!”

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Indigenous Australians, Luke's gospel | Comments Off on Sit down, Shut up, Listen up

Angry enough to do something?

March 6, 2021

Lent 3 – 2021

John 2:13-22

Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.

On Friday I attended the UN Women’s International Women’s Day lunch. It was an inspiring, if somewhat gruelling experience – especially in the light of recent events. Australian of the Year, Grace Tame was the key speaker. I imagine by now that most of you know at least the outline of her story. Grace is a powerful and direct speaker, and she doesn’t spare her audience the intimate details of her ordeal. Sadly, her story is not unique, but even if you have heard other stories of abuse, you cannot help but be shocked and brought to tears as she recounts the way in which a much older man, a teacher in a position of trust, targeted her at her most vulnerable and manipulated her to the point where she felt utterly unable to refuse his sexual advances. How, in this day and age, could this man’s behaviour – in his office, on school grounds – go unnoticed? Why, in a world sensitised to child sex abuse, did no one notice or think to question what was going on? 

Equally shocking and revelatory was the speech by Dr Kirstin Ferguson who, at the beginning of her presentation provided a dramatic, visual illustration of the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace.  Before she began, Dr Ferguson asked those in attendance (men and women) to stand if they had ever experienced sexual harassment at work. At least two thirds of the room rose to their feet – two thirds of a room filled with professional people. Dr Ferguson went on to tell us that 1,600 hundred women a week, experience some sort of sexual harassment at work. 

Listening to the two women was a salutary and sobering experience.

What does it say about our society that a fifteen-year-old girl can be raped every day at school – in the office of a 58-year-old teacher? Who are we that one woman dies every week at the hands of someone who professes to love her? How is it that our aged care system is so broken that vulnerable older people are over-medicated, mistreated and badly fed? Why is that we cannot assume that our workplaces and schools are safe and nurturing environments? Why can’t we keep our children safe from abuse? 

Something at the very heart of human nature is broken. Countless Royal Commissions and changes to legislation have been powerless to bring about the institutional change that is required so that all people can live and work with dignity. More importantly, no amount of legislation has been able to bring about the personal transformation that is required to build a society in which all the vulnerable are protected and nurtured – not abused or exploited.

In today’s gospel Jesus is angry, very angry. He is angry that the Temple (or at least its forecourt) has been turned into a marketplace. He is angry because he can see the way in which Temple practices exploit the poor, take advantage of the vulnerable and exclude those who cannot take part in the Jewish rituals. 

This event is the most explicit description of Jesus’ anger. It is the moment at which all his frustration and rage reaches boiling point – resulting in his fashioning a whip so that he can drive traders and animals from the Temple and overthrowing tables covered with money. It is the most explicit expression of Jesus’ anger, but it is not the only time that he gets angry.

We know that Jesus got angry at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, at the indifference of the rich towards the poor and at the apathy of the comfortable towards those who were suffering. Jesus got angry when he saw the religious leaders put the law before compassion while congratulating themselves on their own state of righteousness. Jesus got angry at the complacency, self-satisfaction and judgementalism of those who thought themselves better than sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus got angry with those who put burdens on the shoulders of others and who created barriers which prevented them from seeing how much God loved them.  Jesus got angry at the failure of the disciples to understand, at their desire for power and at their belief that they should be rewarded for joining his cause. 

Most importantly, Jesus got angry because the religious institution of his day was broken. Despite John’s call to repentance nothing had changed. Jesus’ contemporaries still believed that the outward practices of sacrifice and ritual were sufficient. Jesus could see that what was really needed was a change of heart, repentance and personal transformation – all of which are much more difficult to achieve than simply presenting a semblance of goodness, observing rituals or consoling oneself with the knowledge that at least one is not as bad as the next person.    

Jesus got angry at injustice and suffering, at pretention and arrogance, at self-serving behaviour and at the refusal to take responsibility for one’s behaviour. Jesus got angry at indifference and inaction. 

Jesus saw a broken world. His grief and angry at what he saw spurred him into action. 

We live in a broken and damaged world, but do we get angry? Do we get angry enough about the exploitation of the poor, the disenfranchised or the refugee? Do we voice our anger loudly enough with regard to people trafficking and slavery? Do we speak out loudly enough against violence towards women or the abuse of children? Do we protest strongly enough about the neglect and abuse of the elderly or the destruction of indigenous sacred sites? Do we rage against injustice, corporate greed and the destruction of the planet? Do we rail against indifference and carelessness? Do we care enough to do something about what we see?

Our world is broken and needs from each of us a change of heart. When will we be angry enough to take action? 

.

 

 

   

. 

 

In the name of God who calls us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.

Equally shocking and revelatory was the speech by Dr Kirstin Ferguson who, at the beginning of her presentation provided a dramatic, visual illustration of the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace.  Before she began, Dr Ferguson asked those in attendance (men and women) to stand if they had ever experienced sexual harassment at work. At least two thirds of the room rose to their feet – two thirds of a room filled with professionals. Dr Ferguson went on to tell us that 1,600 hundred women a week, experience some sort of sexual harassment at work. 

Listening to the two women was a salutary and sobering experience.

\

 

. 

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in John's Gospel, Lent | Comments Off on Angry enough to do something?

Not our our watch?

February 16, 2019

Holy Innocents – 2019

Matthew 2:13-18

Marian Free

In the name of God who uses love, not force to ensure obedience and trust. Amen.

Some of you will have seen the recent movie, “Mary, Queen of Scots”. Mary was the legitimate daughter of James the V of Scotland, but more importantly, she was the great, granddaughter of England’s Henry VII, and, after the childless Elizabeth, she was the legitimate claimant to the English throne. Mary who at only 6 days old was declared Queen of Scotland as a consequence of the death of her father, was sent to France for her education. At eighteen Mary, a Roman Catholic, returned to a Scotland that in her absence had embraced Protestantism and did not welcome a papist Queen..

Her troubles in Scotland were one thing, but it was the fact that Mary was a threat to Elizabeth’s reign and and the fact that her presence might be the catalyst for civil war or war between the two nations, that led her to her imprisonment and finally to her execution. As long as Mary was alive, she could be a focal point for dissent in the realm and beyond, and Elizabeth’s grip on power was weakened as a result.

The history of the British monarchy is littered with stories of intrigue – of people seeking favour with the king (or queen) to increase their wealth or to bolster or secure their power; or of competing heirs to the throne who must be destroyed lest they pursue their claim by force or become figureheads for those who want to depose the crown. As a consequence, the queen (or king) learns that no one can be trusted, that power must be maintained by force and that any and all opposition must be eliminated so that they no longer pose a threat.

Given our own history, it should come as no surprise to us that Herod, whose position is entirely dependent on his relationship with Rome and his ability to maintain control over a people who despise and reject him, should be agitated when he learns from the magi that a king has been born and not only a king, but the legitimate king of the Jews. The child presents a double threat – he could become a focal point for the unrest that was always just below the surface or he could raise an army and make a claim for Herod’s throne. From Herod’s point of view there is only one way to avoid conflict and loss of face (not to mention loss of power). The child has to die. The problem, in this instance, is that Herod has no way of knowing when the child was born, so just to be safe, he kills all the boys who were born in Bethlehem in the two years before the magi’s visit.

There is no external historical proof that Herod did in fact slaughter the children of Bethlehem, but history has demonstrated time and time again that despots deal with threats to their power in only one way – by ruling tyrannically and by ruthlessly crushing any hint of opposition. Those who challenge, resist or protest oppressive and unjust regimes are usually arrested, tortured and killed – not only in the distant past but also in our present time.

News reports tell us in Venezuela today – a country in which inflation is out of control, medicines are impossible to source and food is scarce – the military is sent to into the slums to quell unrest, with violence if necessary. Protesters who are arrested simply disappear. In Turkey in 2016, an attempted coup against the government led to the imprisonment – not of students, and rabble rousers, but of lawyers and judges and military personnel. Anyone who was critical of the government or who was perceived to be a threat, was arrested and imprisoned. According to a CNN report, more than 110,000 people have been incarcerated since – a number that includes 200 top Turkish court officials. Many have been taken into custody despite the fact that there is no evidence that they had any involvement in the coup. The President was not and is not taking any risks.

In any time and place leaders who do not have the support of their people use repressive and violent means to suppress and eradicate opposition. Stalin’s Russia, Hitlers Germany, Apartheid South Africa, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the list goes on and on. Brutal repression of revolt, the silencing of dissidents, and the scapegoating of those who are different is justified by the need to keep law and order and it gains support by the vilification and denigration of those who dare to expose injustice and oppression.

So, is Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents simply a commentary on the abuse of power or – does it have something to say to those of us in twenty first century Australia who have the right to choose who governs us and the freedom to criticise our leaders and to protest decisions that we feel to be unreasonable or unfair?

I suspect that we have to recognise that there is a little bit of Herod in all of us, concern for our own welfare, fear of the unknown and a desire to maintain the status quo and in every age there will be those who abuse their power.

It is important that we do not become complacent. We have to be careful that our silence does not give legitimacy to acts of cruelty and torture, that our need for stability and security does not lead us to shore up unjust systems and oppression governments, that our own need for security and peace does not make us indifferent, or worse, deaf and blind to the legitimate complaints of others and that our desire to protect and preserve what we have does not make us fearful of the claims others might make on us.

In other words, let us be on our guard and let us do all that we can to ensure that the innocent are not slaughtered on our watch.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Holy Innocents, Matthew | Comments Off on Not our our watch?

It’s not fair – the injustice of God

September 23, 2017

Pentecost 16 – 2017

Matthew 20:1-16

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generosity overlooks our faults and opens the gates of heaven to all who believe. Amen.

Imagine this scenario: Ever since you were a small child you had one ambition – to swim at the Olympics. To achieve your goal you got up at 5:00am every morning – summer and winter – and trained for at least an hour before school. After school you would be back at the pool for more training before going home and completing your homework. As you grew older your social life was non-existent. Your friends were all out partying, going to movies and forming relationships, but your life was focused on swimming. Swimming dictated almost every aspect of your life, how much you slept, what you ate, how much you exercised. And it was not only training that took up your time. There were also the competitions – local, state and national – that not only ate into your holidays, but also required you and your family to raise enough money for transport and accommodation.

Never mind, all your hard work and sacrifice has finally paid off. You have made it to the Olympics. You come first in the heats, first in the semi-finals and now you are ready for the finals and, you hope, for gold. The gun sounds, you are off to a good start. You know that you are swimming well, keeping to the plan. You can’t be sure, but it feels like you are ahead of the others in the race. You make the final tumble and put everything you have into the last lap and yes! when you raise your head from the water the swimmer closest to you is only just reaching for the end of the pool. It’s yours! the gold medal that you have worked for most of your life. You are already imagining yourself on the winning podium, wearing the medal and proudly hearing the national anthem fill the stadium.

You get out of the pool grab your towel and head towards the waiting journalists when your daydreams are interrupted by a “special announcement”. “We are pleased to announce that for the first time in the history of the Olympics we are going to recognise the hard work of all the competitors in this event. Everyone is a winner. Everyone will take home a gold medal!” Such largesse is extraordinary and unheard of, but you find it difficult – no impossible – to feel happy for the other competitors. Their gain is your loss. The moment you have dreamed of for so long. All your hard work was for nothing. It’s simply not fair.

Even thought two thousand years have passed, this parable still hits a nerve. We, who live in quite a different time and place, still bristle with indignation – the injustice of it all! Of course this was Jesus’ intention. He wanted his listeners to sit up and take notice. The last will be paid as much as the first. God can do no less.

To understand this parable, we have to go back a few verses to the question asked by the rich young man: “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (19:16) This man mistakenly thinks that he can earn eternity, that if he only meets certain criteria he can be assured of eternal life. The disciples seem to have the same view. Peter says: “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (19:27)

In order to set the record straight, Jesus tells the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. He is hoping to shock us into seeing that it is not a matter of how much we have done compared to others that determines our place in the kingdom. What matters is that we have done something. Whether we have worked all day or only part of the day, the outcome is the same.

There is not a sliding scale. Heaven, (or whatever eternity is) not incremental or fractional – it is all or nothing. A person cannot inherit just a little bit of heaven. Having just a portion of eternity is simply a nonsense. We either inherit eternal life or we do not. And that is just the problem with our human sense of fairness. We want to think that somehow if we have lived a better life than someone else that our reward will be greater. The problem is that there is only one reward, and like the labourers, we either receive it or we do not no matter how much or how little we have ‘worked’.

It might offend our sense of justice that those against whom we measure ourselves will receive the same reward, but what if we think of the situation from the point of view of those whose goodness and holiness far and away exceeds ours? What if we compare ourselves not with those whom we consider to be less worthy, but with those whom we recognise are far more worthy than we will ever be – the Joan of Arcs, the Catherines of Sienna, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Francis’s of Assisi?

Going back to the parable, can you imagine arriving in heaven (thinking that you have lived a life worthy of such a reward) only discover that over to one side are a host of disgruntled saints wondering why on earth you deserve the same reward as them? Can you imagine Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Catherine of Sienna, Francis of Assisi and the myriads of saints and martyrs – instead of being pleased for you – complaining indignantly to God: “He/she has done nothing compared to us and yet you have made them equal to us.”

Suddenly the parable makes sense. There is no sliding scale. There is only eternity and God chooses to give it to whomever God will. If the parable make us indignant, if we bristle with the injustice of it all, then we like those who have worked all day demonstrate that we just don’t get it, we like those who have worked all day haven’t yet realised that God’s generosity works to our advantage.

God is unfair, because will almost certainly reward us (with the saints) with eternity. If God’s unfairness works to our advantage, how dare we begrudge God’s extending that generosity to others?

 

 

 

 

 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Matthew | Comments Off on It’s not fair – the injustice of God

Defeating evil, by submitting to evil

April 4, 2015

Easter – 2015

Marian Free

In the name of God who turns darkness into light, despair into hope and tragedy into victory. Amen.

I don’t think that anyone would dispute that we live in a world that is full of inequity, injustice, oppression and cruelty. By accident of birth, most of us have escaped the horrors that abound in nations too many to name. In this country we have a democratically elected government and sufficient wealth that our children do not die of hunger or of preventable disease. Few of us have had to flee our homes because we are terrified by relentless bombing or the approach of an enemy that is known for its cruelty. Our children are not at risk of being killed or kidnapped simply because we choose to educate them. It is very unlikely that we will be sent to prison (or worse, ‘disappeared’) because we challenge government policies or laws or expose corruption or injustice. Our labour laws ensure that the vulnerable cannot be exploited and our poor are not so desperate that they risk life and limb eking out a living from rubbish dumps nor would they sell their daughters into prostitution or their children into slavery.

The awful reality now, as in every previous generation, is that all over the world innocent people suffer and die in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Impossible as it is for most of us to imagine, an over-riding desire for wealth, status and power drives some people (even groups of people) to exploit, oppress or silence others.

These are not easy issues to contend with. When we think about the unspeakable suffering that is inflicted on some people in order to gratify the needs of others, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. We can’t even begin to grasp the horror that is the daily existence of millions of people throughout the world and we feel both impotent and ill-equipped to do anything to change things. We are frozen by indecision and do little or nothing.

One of the things that is different about Jesus is that he faced evil head on, he determined that evil would not have the final word, that violence, injustice and oppression could be both confronted and defeated. Jesus refused to play by the rules of his enemies. He understood that it is impossible to defeat evil with evil and that violence only leads to violence. By refusing to resist arrest, by accepting the false accusations, by submitting to the taunting, by enduring the flogging and by accepting the cross, Jesus proved that in the final analysis, violence and evil are powerless to destroy goodness and life. For good triumphs over evil not through violence or war, not through oppression or force, not by resistance or compulsion.

Jesus defeats evil by submitting to the power of evil. By freely accepting his fate, Jesus made it clear that the powers of this world in fact had no power over him. By choosing to relinquish his right to defend himself, Jesus demonstrated how ineffectual his opponents really were. By refusing to fight for his life, Jesus made it clear that those who sought his death had not power over him. Throughout his trial and even on the cross, Jesus remains in control – his enemies might take his life, but they cannot destroy him.

The resurrection is proof positive that by submitting to death, Jesus has frustrated the powers of this world and shown how impotent they are. Injustice and cruelty do not have the final word, their victory is limited, temporary. Jesus refused to be bound by worldly values that give success, influence and possessions priority. He was prepared to lose everything, even life itself rather than lose his integrity and play the game the way his enemies played.

It is all too obvious, that Jesus’ victory over evil and death was not the final solution. As we have seen for millions of innocent people the world continues to be a place of horror and suffering. That said the resurrection is a powerful demonstration that while evil might persist in the world, it does not ultimately have the power to enslave us.

We have a choice. We can choose to resist evil. We can make the decision not to be governed by the forces that control this world. We can resolve to live by kingdom values – seeking above all the well-being of others and our own self-aggrandisement. We can play by different rules and in so doing expose the failings and the evils of the rules that govern behaviours that result in exploitation, injustice and oppression. We can cling on to power, possessions and status, or we can give it all away for the ultimate goal of life for all in the present, and life eternal in the future. Jesus’ victory is our victory, if only we chose to share it.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Easter | Comments Off on Defeating evil, by submitting to evil