Posts Tagged ‘joy’

Ash Wednesday – Lent

February 17, 2026

As I write this, I am conscious that my calendar announces that today is the beginning of Ramadan, the time of fasting observed by Muslims. From today practicing Muslims will not consume food or drink between sunrise and sunset. This may mean rising at 4am for breakfast and then eating and drinking nothing until 8pm. I know this because my visit to Israel in 2015 coincided with Ramadan. In Old Jerusalem a canon was fired to indicate the beginning of and the end of the fast and the empty streets in the Palestinian districts filled with food carts only. after 8pm. Ramadan and its concluding celebration of Eid are now well-known in the Western world. The ABC news site has even published recipes for Ramadan. In my childhood, newspapers and magazines would. have featured recipes for Lent. Today Ash Wednesday and Lent do not even warrant a mention on my calendar!

Image of smoke from canon. Jerusalem 2015

Culturally Lent has become irrelevant and in the churches we seem to have lost the sense of solidarity that came with giving something up for Lent. This is due in part to the increasing secularisation of our society, but also relates to a more relaxed attitude in the church and the trivialising of the practice by making it a test of will-power rather than a freedom to focus on God and not on oneself.

I don’t have a solution, just a sense of grief that the traditions which enriched our faith and which were evident to the culture around us seem to have lost their place and we haven’t yet found something which unites us as followers of Christ.

The purpose of fasting is to pare down our lives to what is essential such that we can pay attention to God’s provision and can fully appreciate what we do have. We try to give up those things that prevent us from focussing on God. This might include meal plans that are less extravagant and easier to prepare – freeing us from the distraction that food can be in our lives. Equally, it might be useful to give up the self-absorption that reveals itself in resentment, self-pity, envy, ingratitude. If instead we practice gratitude and forgiveness, joy in other’s successes, we will (over time), rid ourselves of the negativity and bitterness that cause us to look inward rather than outward into the world and into God’s creation. We will make room for God and the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – will be evident in our lives and be visible to the world.

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Jesus’ coming – joyful anticipation or fearful expectation?

December 2, 2023

Advent 1 – 2023

Mark 13:24-37

(Is 64:1-9, Ps 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Cor 1:1-9)

In the name of God, whose coming we celebrate with joy and whose return we anticipate with trepidation. Amen.

Though it is hard to avoid the fact that the rest of the world is already celebrating Christmas, I continue to love the season of Advent. For me it represents a time of quiet anticipation – a time to focus on the real meaning of Christmas – the gentle in-breaking into our world of God’s chosen one, the vulnerability of God in the infant Jesus, and the courage of Mary and Joseph. It is, for me, a time of wonder and joy, as I ponder the gradual unfolding of the story.

So it is that I am often taken aback by the violence and threat that lie in the gospel set for today, the first Sunday of Advent. We find no quiet waiting in Mark 13. There is no sense of hopeful expectancy. Instead, we are presented with a picture of God’s sudden and terrible explosion into the world.  An eruption that is accompanied by the destruction not only of the earth, but of the cosmos. The sun will be darkened, and the stars will fall from heaven. Without any warning all of the powers of heaven will be shaken. Keep awake, we are warned – for you do not know when the time will come: “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow or at dawn.” There is no room here for peaceful contemplation on the birth of Christ. Instead, we are placed on edge, forced in a state of constant alertness in which we worry about what it means to keep awake. We are left wondering if we have to live in a state of constant vigilance (never truly living in the present) – always looking over our shoulder for God to surprise us, always straining ahead, always worrying about our every action just in case God should burst in and find us wanting?  

Of course, it would be utterly exhausting live in a state of constant anxiety, to be always on the lookout for something negative to happen, always terrified that we would be caught out. So – what to do? What are we to make of the warnings in Mark’s gospel and how do they inform our observation of the season of Advent?

The answer lies, I believe exactly in the tension – the tension between the unobtrusiveness of Jesus’ first coming and the unmistakable disruption of his coming again; the tension between Christ’s coming as an infant and Christ’s coming again as judge of all; the tension between the powerlessness of the baby and the ultimate power of the Creator of the Universe. Advent –  with its focus on beginnings and endings – highlights the tension between the God who loved us enough to become one of us and the God who will one day ask us to give an account for our lives, the tension between trusting in God’s mercy and not taking it for granted, the tension between knowing God’s love and not taking advantage of that love and the tension between knowing that though our salvation has been won, we still have a responsibility for our salvation..

Advent provides us with a time to look back and to look forward, a time to remember all that God has done for us and a time to ask ourselves what our response to God’s love has been and whether or not we would be pleased to see God now. 

The warning to ‘keep awake’ is not so much to keep us in a state of hypervigilance, but rather a timely reminder that we should not get too comfortable, not to fall into complacency. It is a warning against the assumption that a happy ending awaits us all, just because God has entered into history. 

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Learning to live in this in between time, coping with the tension between God’s breaking into the world, and God’s breaking the world apart, teaches us to live with uncertainty, with the “not-knowing” – not knowing the mind of God, not knowing when Christ will return, not knowing exactly how we measure up. Living with the tension between the times keeps us open to what God has to say to us in the present and what God might be doing in our lives right now. In this in-between time, expecting God to appear at any moment, keeps us alert and expectant, enabling us to see the ways in which God is always breaking into the present. Keeping awake ensures that we do not miss any opportunity and ensures that we are prepared for anything that God might reveal or that God might do.

In two thousand years, the sky hasn’t fallen in, the cosmos hasn’t been dramatically. It is difficult to believe in the second coming, to maintain the sense of urgency that pervades this morning’s gospel and yet, we need the message of Mark 13 even more than the church for whom it was written. 

At this time of year, it is easy to get caught up in the sentimentality of Christmas – the stars and angels, the shepherds and wise ones, the hope, joy, comfort and promise of the visible signs of God’s love. The evangelist knew only too well how easy it is to get comfortable, to see the return of Christ as a distant, even unlikely possibility. He knew too, that his own generation had been caught by surprise, had failed to see in the infant in a manger and in itinerant preacher, the one sent by God to save the world. So, with words of dire warning, Mark urges his readers not to get too comfortable, not to assume that because Jesus had not returned that they could start to relax, but to so order their lives that Christ could come at any time and we would be ready.

In this season as we prepare for both our Christian and our secular Christmas, let us be filled with joyful anticipation as we await the birth of Christ and some trepidation, as we expect his coming again.

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“Socks or the Cinema?”

October 8, 2022

Pentecost 18 – 2022
Luke 17:11-19
Marian Free

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

When we downsized, I gave away most of my library knowing that should I need to refer to any of my books, they would almost certainly be easily accessible in digital form. Failing that I would find them at the College Library. There are some books though, that I find impossible to give away. These are usually books with deep wisdom or insight, books that have enriched my life and to which I return again and again. I am particularly careful with such books and if I lose them I will search everywhere until I can replace them. One such book was recommended to me when I was still in theological college. Poor in Spirit – Modern Parables of the Reign of God by Charles Lepetit . It is probably irreplaceable.

Poor in Spirit contains fifty stories which recall encounters that have changed the lives of their writers. Some are set in a western urban setting, but most tell of experiences in third world countries, of people who according to Lepetit : “are hungry, marginalised, handicapped. They make a living by working too hard. They all have one thing in common: that of the heart.” The stories tell of generosity to a stranger, being blessed by a beggar and of receiving a gift from another, of praising God with an empty stomach and nothing to feed the children. Above all the stories tell of joy and gratitude and of the grace and hope that can coexist with the most dire poverty and in the most desperate of situations.

One story, “Socks or the Cinema?” comes from North Africa and was shared by Lisa. She begins: “They found him one morning lying by his bike under a leaden August sky. Death must have come suddenly. It was him alright in his usual blue work trousers, shirt, grey woollen cap and orthopaedic shoes. He had been struck by leprosy and cruelly. Most of each foot and all ten fingers were gone. It was torture for him to walk. His face was disfigured, but an extraordinary smile transfigured it. Yet those same eyes had stared at leprosy face to face. At the most terrible moment of the disease our friend had tried to drown himself. ‘But even the sea didn’t want me, and I was washed up on the beach.’

“Our friend would wear stumps of his hands raw, filling his customer’s bags with charcoal. He said: ‘Hunger is a terrible thing. Once I had no work, and nothing to eat. At last I said to myself: ‘I will just have to start begging.’ I had never learned how. I sat by someone’s door and tried to think what to call out, but all that came out was a cry because I began to weep aloud. I left in a hurry and walked all night. Then I saw a freshly baked loaf of bread that someone had forgotten on top of a little wall. I understood that God was watching over me.”

“One day he announced that he had a guest, someone with the same disease who cuts grass for sheep and sells it at the market. ‘Yesterday he returned with three beautiful coins. He had found them on the pavement.’ ‘What shall we do with them he asked?’ We thought about it. Then I said to him, ‘It is true that you need new socks. But this money here, we haven’t earned it. God has given it to us. Why don’t we go to the cinema? One needs a change of scene sometimes.’
“’So we went to the cinema, and we had a very nice evening.’”

My heart is always warmed by the extravagance and simple joy of the visit to the cinema – of the ability, from a position of desperation, to be able to show gratitude for an unexpected gift and to use that gift to bring joy and to be lifted out of one’s situation even for a few hours.

Luke’s account of the ten lepers provides few details, but those that are included are tantalising. Jesus is between Galilee and Samaria – in a sort of no man’s land. The ten leprous men also exist in an in-between place. They are separated from home, family, and community and from any means of earning an income. Their presence causes fear, even revulsion and if, like the man in our story they have leprosy proper, not another skin disease, their bodies may be slowly rotting, and their lives may be lives of constant pain.

One imagines that the situation may be even worse for the Samaritan – why else would he find himself among a group of Jews here on the edge of nowhere? Unlike the Jews he would not be welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. Is it because he is the most marginalised of the ten that he returns? Is it because his people have no Temple that he must worship God where he finds him – in Jesus? We will never know. What we do know is that nine did what Jesus said, and went to the Temple and one, the outsider, came back gave thanks.

Much as we don’t like to admit it, typically, we are the insiders. For most of us everyday life is not a constant struggle and while the system is far from perfect, we at least know that there is some sort of safety net if the ground is pulled from under us.

I imagine that few of us know the sort of poverty experienced by those who comb through the refuse dumps outside of Manilla, those who are forced to beg on the streets of India, or those who are so desperate to feed their families that they will sell their daughters (or indenture themselves) into slavery. Many of us take for granted that we are housed, clothed and fed. In this country we are rarely confronted by the horrific conditions in which a majority of this earth’s population lives.
I suspect that if we had even the smallest idea of how the other half lives that nearly every moment of everyday, we would, like the leper, want to praise God with a loud voice and to prostrate ourselves at the feet of Jesus.

For what are you grateful and how often have you thanked God today?

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Blessed are the poor – so much we have to learn

January 28, 2017

Epiphany 4 – 2017

Matthew 5:1-12

Marian Free

In the name of God on whom, if we dare, we can totally rely. Amen.

Some years ago, I acquired a book titled Poor in Spirit – Modern Parables of the Reign of God. Compiled by Charles Lepetit[1], it consists of a number of stories written by people living and working alongside the poor who inhabit the slums in many parts of the world. Lepetit is a member of the Little Brothers of Jesus. He says of himself: “I have lived in slums, I have known hunger, I have been in jail (oh not for long). I am an invalid. So I am at home with my brothers and sisters the poor.” The book is a compilation of true stories – stories that have been shared with him by those who are also poor, but who in his words, “share one poverty in common: that of the heart. They do not know the treasure they bear.”

Many of the story-tellers are members of religious orders. Some tell their own stories and others stories of the people whose lives have touched their own. The authors are identified only by their Christian name and by the country from which they write. So Catherine writes from Black Africa, Martin from Northern Europe, Roger from Central America, Olive from South of the Sahara, Larry from India and Nancy from North America. I wish I could share the whole book with you, the stories are powerful and confronting and challenge Western values and our dependence on material possessions.

One of my favorite stories is written by Lisa. It concerns a man who has been cruelly affected by leprosy. Most of his feet and all ten fingers were gone. Even his face was affected, but as Lisa tells it, when he smiled his whole face was transformed. Life was so hard that he had at one time tried to drown himself, “but even the sea didn’t want me,” he says. The leper made a living selling charcoal wearing his stumps raw from filling his customers’ baskets. Somehow, despite his extreme poverty, he maintains his dignity and his home as described by Liza is an oasis in the midst of a busy and noisy city. He has friend, who also has leprosy who cuts grass for sheep and sells it at the market. The two friends share what they have earned each day. One day his friend returned home with “three beautiful coins” that he had found on the pavement – an unexpected windfall in their barren lives. What to do with them? After some thought our friend says: “It is true that you need socks. But this money, we have haven’t earned it. God has given it to us. Why don’t we go to the cinema? One needs a change of scene sometimes.” “So we went to the cinema, and we had a very nice time.”

What touches me in this story is that these two had not allowed themselves to be so overwhelmed and ground down by their poverty that they could see that God might want them to have some joy and pleasure in their lives. Given the choice between the practical (socks) and the impractical (cinema) they had chosen something that would bring some happiness into their bleak and mundane existence.

A second story and one that never fails to move me is told by Dan from North Africa. Dan is stuck in a small town that he’d never seen before. He had spent a whole day trying to get a visa and faced the prospect of doing the same the following day! He says somewhat sarcastically that a “spiritual” reaction drove him to drown his frustration in a café. He was neither an Arab nor a local so needless to say he was the focus of a certain amount of interest. Dan found a seat opposite someone who didn’t look any happier than he was. No sooner had he sat down when his anger spilled out and he shared the story of his day. Ahmed (for that was the name of his companion) returned the favour. Ahmed had no work and was delaying going to home to tell his wife. They shared a few drinks when Ahmed asked Dan where he was spending the night. “Haven’t a clue”, Dan replied. “Then come to my place!”

Ahmed took Dan to a neighbouring suburb. There on top of a pile of rubbish was a little shack. This was Ahmed’s home. Inside the rickety door was a single room – not a stick of furniture graced it. Fourteen pairs of eyes greeted Dan – Ahmed’s wife, his parents-in-law and eleven children! They sat on the floor and after a while Ahmed’s wife produced a “mountain of rice on a copper plate – almost certainly their only valuable possession”. After a quick meal, and numerous cups of tea they stretched out on the floor and slept. In the morning Dan left to try again to get a visa, promising to stop by before he left. Another day wasted! Dan decided to take the bus and take his chances on getting a visa later.

True to his promise he makes a quick visit to see the family before he goes. As he leaves, a parcel is pressed into his hands. It happens so quickly and he is in so much of a hurry that he doesn’t even think about it until he is safely on the bus and here I have to use Dan’s own words: “Ah, yes. The parcel. I opened it discreetly, as my neighbours were looking at me. Actually my mind was still mostly on my visa. Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. I was going to cry, for a good half hour, completely overwhelmed by what I found in the parcel. I didn’t care now what the other passengers might think.

There in my lap was the copper plate from which we’d eaten the rice. And a little rubber camel .. the kid’s only toy.”

Blessed are the poor – who teach us to find joy in life and who, without a thought for themselves will give everything they have.

 

[1] Lepetit, Charles. Poor in Spirit: Modern Parables of the Reign of God. Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1989.

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Breaking boundaries, flouting convention

June 11, 2016

Pentecost 4 – 2016

Luke 7:36-50

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who breaks down boundaries, flouts convention and welcomes sinners. Amen.

 Imagine this – you have gathered for worship at your local, traditional Anglican Church. The priest (Jane) has just announced the first hymn when the usually sedate, dignified curate (Maurice) bursts in, robe awry, and runs down the aisle shouting: “ I’ve got it! I’ve got it! I now understand! God loves me, God REALLY loves me! I’m not perfect, but God loves ALL of me! Can you believe it? It’s so amazing, so wonderful. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. God loves me, God really, really loves me. Here take this,” he says as he thrusts bags of money into the priest’s hands. “I can’t think of any way to say ‘thank you’ except by giving all my savings to God. Take it, take it all, use it for whatever you think. God loves me, God really loves me.”

During this rant, you (and possibly everyone else) were almost certainly squirming in your pew. Perhaps it was your voice that the priest overheard saying: “Why doesn’t she just stop him. Can’t she see he is overwrought? Surely she knows that his behaviour is totally inappropriate. Anglicans in this place are more constrained, more reserved. No one will come to church if this gets out.”

Imagine your surprise when the priest not only lets the curate finish his speech, but takes him by the hand and says: “I am so happy for you. Come and take your place beside me. Help me to share this good news with everyone.” Your surprise turns to indignation when the priest singles you out: “(Your name here) do you begrudge Maurice this joy? Have you never experienced the marvel of God’s love? Do you not know what it is to be truly loved and forgiven or do you think that you are so special that God can’t help but love you? Maurice knows that he has nothing to deserve God’s love, that is why he is so overwhelmed. I wish that you could share his humility, because only then could you share his joy.”

It is hard to imagine the scene in this morning’s gospel. We have become so inured to the woman’s extravagant, beautiful act of love that we often fail to see how scandalous and socially inappropriate it was and is. Simon, the Pharisee was simply voicing what any respectable person would have thought in that situation. The woman has broken a number of social and religious laws, and in Simon’s home. No wonder he is offended. In first century no woman would have been invited out for a meal, no man would have touched a woman, let alone allowed her to touch him in such an intimate way. Any such contact would make the man ritually unclean and unfit to fulfill his religious duties. What is more, it appears by the fact that the woman’s hair is loose, that she is not even a respectable woman, but a woman of the streets.

By allowing himself to be touched by such a woman, Jesus also is crossing all kinds of boundaries and is himself guilty of causing offense. Even by today’s less rigid standards, if an unknown woman gate-crashed a party and started wiping the feet of the guest of honour, it would send shock waves through the room. The guests would not know where to look, they would squirm in discomfort and wish her anywhere but there. Most of them would quietly hope that Jesus would say something to make her stop.

Instead of chastising the woman, Jesus tells a parable that indirectly condemns his critics. It is their self-righteousness, their rule-bound lives, he implies that, rather than freeing them to experience God’s loving forgiveness, actually imprison them in their own smugness. Those who criticise Jesus and the woman are so busy “being good” and conforming to the expectations of those around them that they have failed to see that their very self-assurance is a vanity that contradicts their sense of goodness.

The woman on the other hand, knows her short-comings all too well. She knows that according to the standards of the church and the standards of society she falls far short of expectations, but somehow, (and we are not told how), she has grasped what the others in the room have yet to grasp – that God loves her utterly and unconditionally. She is aware that she has nothing to deserve God’s outpouring of love and yet she knows that it is hers. The experience is simply overwhelming – a mixture of joy and awe. She feels that she has to respond and so she does, in the only way available to her. She takes the most expensive possession that she has and seeks Jesus out. Weeping with gratitude and joy she collapses at Jesus’ feet, bathing them with her tears, wiping them with her hair and finally anointing them with ointment. She doesn’t care what other people think. Her only concern is to let Jesus know how overawed she is by his gift of love and acceptance.

Those of us who are cradle Anglicans may not have had the sort of experience that brought this woman to her knees. Not all of us have had the sort of conversion experience that led Paul to understand that despite his past actions, God could not only forgive and love him, but use him to build the church. Our experiences may be less intense – the quiet, deep gratitude that a loved one has pulled through surgery, the elation at the safe birth of a child, the thankfulness that God has brought us through a time of trial or tragedy – but they are no less real.

We may not have experienced for ourselves the intensity of this woman’s love, but hopefully in our journey of faith we have learned that what sets us apart is not that we are better than anyone else, that we are more law-abiding, or that we do more good works. What sets us apart is that, despite our imperfections and despite the fact that we have done nothing to deserve it God loves us.

God loves us unreservedly and unconditionally and will continue to love us for all eternity and even if we were to give everything that we have, we would never be able to repay God for the tremendous, awesome, underserved gift of that love.

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Feeding on Christ

August 15, 2015

Pentecost 12 – 2015

John 6:51-58

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who gives us life in abundance and desires that we share that life with the world. Amen. 

Most of you will have gathered by now that I experience a degree of frustration with regard to the focus on church growth and in particular the time spent in worrying why congregations are declining and the time and money spent on programmes designed to turn the decline around. My concern is that the navel-gazing of the past fifty years has achieved little and has caused us to become inward-looking rather than outward-focussed and that we are more anxious about the survival of the institution of the church than we are with the transmission of the gospel.

I am confident that God will survive with or without the church and will find new ways to make Godself known with or without our assistance. That said, thriving faith communities would ensure that for generations to come, that there will be a place or at least a group to whom people can come to hear the good news, to find spiritual refreshment and to be restored and made whole.

It was interesting therefore to attend the Arnott lecture two weeks ago and to be reminded by Bishop Stephen Cottrell that there are people in the wider community who are yearning for some spiritual connection, who have spiritual thirst that they are longing quench, a hunger they are desperate to satisfy and who are searching for answers in a world that can be isolating, confusing and even hostile.

Last week’s Clergy Conference focussed on Church Growth, but while its proponents did at times seem to be promoting growth for the sake of growth, they too expressed the belief that there are many non-church-goers who are seeking nourishment for their souls, an experience of life that is more satisfying than the material and superficial and a relationship with the utterly other.

The church as a community of faith is in an ideal position to satisfy this longing for meaning, search for depth and hunger for spiritual connection. So why is it that we are in decline? Why is it that those who are seeking turn to other faiths, explore other paths or simply give up the search? Is it because those who are looking for a connection with the sacred do not find it in the church? Is it because it is no longer evident that the church is the place in which spirituality is fed and nurtured? Is it because we have become so comfortable in our faith that we no longer make the effort to work on and to strengthen our relationship with God?

One of the speakers at the Clergy Conference challenged us to ask this question of ourselves and of our congregations: “Where are you with God?” “Where are you with God?” By this he means, “How is your relationship with God?” Are you conscious of the presence of God in your life? Do you nurture your relationship with God through regular prayer, reading God’s word or practicing some form of spiritual discipline? Is your spiritual life sufficiently full and rich that it spills over to enrich and enhance the lives of those around you? In other words are we feeding our own spiritual lives such that we have plenty with which to feed others?

In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds his listeners that he is the bread of life and he challenges them to feed on him, to so take him into themselves, into their lives, that they become a part of him and they of him.

If we really want to turn the church around perhaps we should stop looking for external reasons for the decline in numbers and begin looking at ourselves and the way we practice of our faith. We will have to stop looking back to the golden era of our past, stop believing that the faith is somehow passed on by osmosis or hoping that the right programme, the right youth leader or the ideal priest will turn things around.

The health of the church as a whole is the responsibility of every member of the church. That means that each of us needs to ask ourselves what we are doing about our own spiritual health; to question whether we are really feeding on the bread of life, continually re-fuelling our faith, allowing our relationship with Jesus to be constantly re-energised and enlivened and remind ourselves on a regular basis not only of what we believe, but of the benefits of being in a relationship with the living God.

Are we day by day allowing ourselves to abide in Jesus and allowing Jesus to abide in us?

I believe that the church will grow because we are energised by our faith, because the joy we experience is palpable, because we demonstrate in our own lives God’s unconditional love and because our experience of Jesus as the bread of life fills our longing for meaning and inspires us to share that meaning with those in our community who hunger and thirst for something more.

As you come to the altar this morning, as you take into your very selves the life-giving presence of Jesus, allow yourselves to be changed and transformed by the bread of life, let the Spirit of God burn within you and the creative energy of God inspire you. May our lives overflow with the knowledge and love of God – the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier – such that we cannot help but bring healing to those who are broken, provide direction to those who have lost their way and be a beacon of hope in a world that sometimes seems devoid of meaning.

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