Posts Tagged ‘trauma’

See what large stones! Trusting in the temple or trusting in God.

November 16, 2024

Pentecost 26 – 2024

Mark. 13:1-8

Marian Free

In the name of God in whom we trust. Amen.

One only has to read/watch the news to see the catastrophic state of the world: the unimaginable devastation and loss of life from the floods in Valencia and the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, the disorder and civil unrest in Haiti, the drug-fuelled violence in Mexico, the displacement of people in the Sudan, Burma and elsewhere, the increasing polarisation between people of the same nation and background and between people who confess the same faith, and the exaggerated rhetoric and personal attacks around differing political views and cultural values – even in countries like our own. 

It is difficult at times not to fall into despair. It is tempting to look at the state of the world, to ask “what is going on?”, to wonder what the future might hold and to ponder where God might be in all this upheaval. Are all these disturbances a sign of more to come (as the changes in climate seem to threaten)? Are we witnessing the end of life as we have known it OR is this really the beginning of the end of the world?

It is human nature to want to make sense of calamity[1]. Collectively, we want to give meaning to the death of a child, the destruction of our home, a life-threatening illness – to any unexpected tragedy or calamity. So great is our need to give meaning to something that has no meaning that we fall into the trap of making up trite, often pious explanations for such events. We are anxious find explanations that cover up our feelings of inadequacy, our inability to find the right words to say, or which to help us to avoid facing the trauma of the inexplicable. 

I’m sure that you know what I mean. You may even have used phrases yourself. “God wanted another angel”, “They are in a better place,” “This will make you stronger” and so on. There are any number of such sayings that have entered our vocabulary to be trotted out when we have nothing better to say.  Sadly, by failing to honestly acknowledge someone’s pain, by not facing the trauma head on, we often increase a person’s sense of isolation and grief. Instead of providing comfort, we reveal our own failure to understand and our unwillingness to engage.  When say these things to ourselves, we withhold permission from ourselves to express our heartache, to sit with our grief until such time as the healing process can begin.

Today’s gospel forms the beginning of what is known as the “Little Apocalypse”, the description of things to come. Very often these are taken to be sign of the end – in fact that language implies that that is what Jesus is saying.

I want to suggest that Jesus’ meaning is much broader and much more related to the present (at whatever time in history that present might be). 

Scholars believe that Mark’s gospel was written to and for a community under threat. It written to reassure believers that their experience is not out of the ordinary, that in fact it was to be expected as a consequence of following Jesus. The gospel is a reminder that 

following Jesus is not a protection against the world’s ills. Faith in Jesus is not some or of amulet that will protect believers from harm. Believers will face the same travails and encounter the same losses as anyone who does not believe.

In our reading this morning the disciples look at the Temple which appears to have been built to withstand any threat. It was by all accounts a magnificent structure, built of huge stones, some of which were fifty feet long and eight foot high and thousands of tonnes in weight. To the disciples – Galileans all – the Temple must have seemed indestructible[2]. At the same time, despite all that Jesus has tried to teach them – about his suffering, about their taking up the cross – they still seem to hold the belief that Jesus has come to Jerusalem to confront the Romans, to restore Temple worship by removing the corrupt priests.

It is possible that for most if not all of the disciples are visiting Jerusalem for the first time. As followers of Jesus, they experienced his triumphal entry into the city and now they can sit and admire the Temple – the meeting place between YHWH and God’s people. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 

Jesus’ response would have been entirely unexpected. instead of joining in their wonder, Jesus announces the destruction of the Temple. “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” The Temple is not as indestructible as they think. Like everything else on earth, it is ephemeral and temporary, subject to destruction and decay.

This is too much for them to comprehend. The disciples need details, they need to make meaning out of what Jesus has said, they want to be able to prepare for such a catastrophic event. So they ask: “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” It is then that Jesus begins to tell them of all the things that might happen. These, as I have suggested, are not so much signs of the end as Jesus providing a corrective – don’t look for signs even the angels in heaven do not know the time (13:32). Understand (Jesus seems to be saying) that worldly existence is precarious, humans are susceptible to variations in the weather, human bodies are vulnerable to disease and deterioration, and human nature tends towards competitiveness and selfishness. Peace and prosperity, health and fitness are not a given, but a privilege enjoyed by a few.  There are no simple, trite answers to trauma.

Our faith does not protect us from wars, earthquakes, famines, from hardship, poor health, or frailty. What faith does at its best is determine how we react to setbacks, traumas, and loss. What matters is not so much that we are able to interpret the times, but how we respond to what is going on around us. 

As people of faith, we cannot cut ourselves from the realities of human existence, but we can learn to live in the present, accepting what is rather than looking back to an idealized past or striving for an unrealistic future.[3] As people of faith, we are to learn to  place ourselves, our loved ones and the world in entirely in the hands of God, believing – sometimes against all evidence to the contrary, that all things will work for good. In this way, and this way alone, we will be ready for whatever is to come because we will already have placed our trust in things eternal, things that will last.

 Jesus’ comments about the destruction of the Temple are less about the timing of the end, and more a corrective of the disciples’ belief that Jesus has come to overthrow the leaders of Rome and of the Temple. They are a reminder not to look back to an idealised past or forward to an unrealistic future, but to live fully in the present, with all the good and bad that comes with that and to trust that God is with us through it all. 

[1] When my parent’s home was completely covered by flood waters in 1974, my father wandered round in a daze half-jokingly asking why God had asked him to build an ark!

[2] All that remains today are the Temple steps (see photo)

[3] It is important to note that non- resistance does not equal passive acceptance. If we can change things, if by the way we live and the way we act we can make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others, then we should do so.

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Change and disruption

November 13, 2021

 

Pentecost 25 – 2021

Mark 13:1-11

Marian Free

 

In the name of the God of our past, present and future. Amen.

Given that that the Bible was written by men in a patriarchal world, a world in which men and women had clearly defined roles and in which pregnancy and childbirth would have been entirely the province of women, it is extraordinary that there are more than a few occasions on which images of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering are used for God and for the journey of faith. Sometimes they are used to describe God’s intimate love and care. They evoke God’s promises – the barren woman will bear seven-fold (Is 54), God’s love – I took them up in my arms (Hos 11), God’s comfort – as a mother comforts her child, God’s compassion – can a mother forget her nursing child and God’s protection – I will be as a bear robbed of her cubs (2 Sam 17).

 

At other times, as today, the pain and the violence of childbirth is used to bring to mind the trauma and disruption that can precede change. This is exemplified in the Song of Hannah (echoed in the Song of Mary) that speaks of upheaval – the bows of the mighty are broken, the powerful are brought down, the poor are raised from the dust and the lowly are lifted up.

 

In our scene from this morning’s gospel the disciples were no doubt expecting Jesus to join them in their admiration of the Temple – after all it was the centre of their faith, the place in which sacrifices were offered to God and to which faithful Jews came for the major festivals of their faith. They must have been completely taken aback by Jesus’ response that not one stone would remain upon another. It would have been completely impossible for them to imagine that within decades of Jesus’ death a new expression of their ancient faith would have been brought to birth and that many of the things that they now considered sacred would not only have been destroyed but would have lost their meaning. How could they conceive that the anointed one, the one for whom they had waited for so long would be the cause of a deep rupture between all that they had known and the future that he was initiating?

 

 

Many of us like the disciples resist change. When everything is going smoothly it is difficult to imagine that there can be any benefit in letting of of the comfortable and familiar. Worse, as our reading suggests, change can be violent and destructive and there are times when the old must be destroyed to allow room for the new to emerge. It can be difficult to see new possibilities while the old structures and the old ways of doing things remain in place and it is often only with hindsight that we can see the benefits that accrued from what had appeared to be a catastrophic event. (Who, for example, would have imagined that a rag-tag bunch of foolish and non-comprehending disciples would have transformed not only their faith, but the whole world along with it? Who could have predicted that anything good could have come out of a pandemic? Yet a bunch of uneducated men and women spread the gospel to the world. And the pandemic has shown us how we can connect without being face-to-face.)

Today’s gospel is a timely reminder that nothing lasts for ever and that even the greatest of edifices can fall. It is also a caution against holding too tightly to the past and of failing to be open to the opportunities offered by the future. 

We are, all of us, on the threshold of change, myself to a future that is not yet fleshed out and you to the adventure of a new period of ministry. It will not be the sort of catastrophic change that our gospel refers to and it will be experienced differently by all of us. At the same time, the future is full of potential and I am confident that any trepidation that we might feel will be more than balanced by a sense of anticipation and excitement as to what that future might hold.

You will have forgotten the disruption that occurred when I (the first woman to have the cure of this Parish) burst on the scene and I am certain that you now take for granted the many changes that have occurred over the last 14 years. There will be a great many things that you will remember as always having been here, or always having been done in a particular way. That will not be true. This is not the Parish I came to 14 years ago. Stalwarts have gone to God and many new faces have joined us. New groups have formed and some have fallen by the wayside. There have been subtle changes to the way we do liturgy and there have been numerous physical changes to both the church and grounds and now we take it for granted that this is how it should be.

That doesn’t mean that this is how it should stay. In the past few weeks, I have become increasingly convinced that the Holy Spirit is present in the timing of this handover, that this is absolutely the right time for another person to take the Parish on the next stage of your journey and that God has wonderful things in store for all of us.

We, like the disciples, are on a journey of discovery, always on the move, always trying to be open to the Spirit and the will of God. No one knows where the road will take us, but we continually leave the past and present behind us to step out in faith, following Jesus, confident that we will  be asked to do more than we are capable of and that we will never be abandoned to face the journey alone.

 

May God bless us all in whatever lies ahead.

 

 

 

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Open to God’s abundant love

November 14, 2020

Pentecost 24-2020

Matthew 25:14-30 (notes from Stradbroke Island)

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generous love is poured out on all who would receive it. Amen.

Gallery owner, international art dealer and philanthropist Tim Olsen has this week released his memoir – Son of a Brush. Tim is the son of one of Australia’s most well-known and respected artists John Olsen. As he tells it, Tim had a chaotic and emotionally deprived childhood. The family spent Tim’s early years in Europe before moving to an artist’s commune to the north of Melbourne. Dunmoochin was, Tim writes, ‘a bacchanalian free love cult’. Sexual experimentation was encouraged. Tim witnessed scenes that no seven year old should be exposed to and he was very aware of the distress that his father’s sexual adventures caused his mother. But it was not just life at home that was unsettling. Tim was bullied and abused by the local children. On one occasion a group of eight children, including a young girl, knocked him to the ground and urinated on his face. Tim credits this heinous act as the reason why, throughout his life, he has struggled to trust friendships and intimacy.

His turmoil didn’t end when the family left Dumoochin for Sydney two years later. Tim was sent to boarding school. When he graduated at 18 his parent’s marriage had reached breaking point and his father left his mother for the woman with whom he’d been having an affair. (Tim heard about the subsequent marriage through a friend who had been invited to the wedding – though he had not. When John married his fourth wife, Tim and his sister were banned from visiting.) Tim went on to be a hugely successful art dealer, corporate advisor and consultant, but nothing could fill the deep void inside. His first marriage failed and despite a second marriage and the birth of his son, Tim’s private life spiraled into a self-destructive pattern of over-eating and alcohol abuse. At one point he even considered taking his life.

Tim is on the way onto recovery thanks to his wife and to friends who kept him strong, but his story is a reminder that abuse and neglect leave people traumatized and untrusting, unable to form intimate relationships and often trapped in negative and destructive behaviour which reinforces their belief that they are not good enough or that there is nothing about them that is loveable.

That rather long introduction is an attempt to answer the question as to why the third slave in today’s parable hides the money that is entrusted to him. His experience of life has left him fearful untrusting and lacking in any self-confidence. His primary concern on being given the vast amount of money is to keep it safe. He does what He does what most people did to keep valuables safe from thieves and invaders – he buries it. After all, he has been given no instructions, perhaps it’s a trick x yet another ruse to expose his inadequacies. (‘Better be safe’, he might have thought.)

As I have said before, Matthew’s version of this parable often gets conflated with Luke’s version and both no doubt have been changed in the retelling. At the heart of the parable is generosity. The amounts given to each servant are impossibly large – millions of dollars. Instead of focusing on the punishment of the third servant perhaps our focus should be on the generosity of the giver and our willingness (or inability) to be gracious recipients of that generosity.

If we have not known unconditional love and trust, it can be almost impossible to feel loved and trusted, impossible to love and trust others. Some people (presumably illustrated by the third servant) close in on themselves fearing that if they open themselves to ‘love’ they will only be hurt and abused. Unable to accept that they might be loveable, they cannot even see God as a God who loves without condition. They feel that they must constantly be on the alert for abuse and that they must try to please others (including God). They feel that love, if love is to be had at all, has to be earned and that others (including God) are always on the lookout to find reasons not to love them.

The parable is not so much a parable about a harsh and unforgiving God, but about a God who pours out abundant love, and it tries to explain why not everyone is able to receive that love. It is written for those of us who know God’s love, whose lives have not been barren and filled with disappointment and is a reminder to always trust God and to be open to God’s love. Those who through trauma and fear lock themselves out of God’ love will never know the rewards and blessings of same. I believe though, that the gospels as a whole (think the lost sheep, the prodigal son) tell us that God will leave no one behind and that those who have been traumatized and denigrated and unloved, will one day open their wounds to the ministrations of God’s love and will be made whole. Then they too will see that the gifts of God (the talents) will grow in ways that they can not begin to conceive.

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When bad things happen to good people

October 3, 2015

Pentecost 19 – 2015

The Book of Job (or why bad things happen to good people)

Marian Free

In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

I’d like to begin today with two stories, one true, the other fictional, both traumatic. You may remember that some twenty to twenty five years ago there was an horrific accident on Brisbane’s bayside. It was Easter Day, a mother and her three children were returning home having attended church. A drunk driver ploughed into their car and all three children were killed. As you might expect the Parish Priest visited the mother in hospital but after a while he began to feel that his visits were not having any effect on the bleakness that had descended on her. He appealed to the Bishop for help. The Bishop (who related the story) visited the woman in hospital.

When he visited he asked: “What is the most painful thing?” The woman responded by waving weakly in the direction of the drawers beside her. The Bishop opened the drawer and discovered that it was full of sympathy cards. They contained sentimental, pseudo-religious statements such as: “Your children are in a better place.” “Your children are with the angels.” “What,” the woman asked, “was so wrong with me, that God had to take my children to a better place?”

A similar story is recorded in the movie: “Down the Rabbit Hole”. The plot of the movie centres on the experience of a couple whose four year old son and only child has run through an open gate onto the road and been killed by a passing vehicle. As happens, the child’s parents cope with the grief in different ways and each one struggles to come to terms with their partner’s reaction and coping mechanism. At one point the couple join a support group for grieving parents. One evening, as the group were discussing their different stories, a well-meaning group member says: “God just wanted another angel.” The mother storms out saying angrily: “Why couldn’t God just make another angel, why did he need my son?”

These stories illustrate our failure to face death and tragedy head on, our need to find reasons why bad things happen, and our tendency – in the face of awkwardness and embarrassment – to resort to simplistic explanations, using pietistic, “God language” or some other evasive technique that, under a pretext of caring tries to cover over or avoid the pain. The stories illustrate too, the way in which our clumsiness and evasion add to rather than diminish the pain.

This is no less true of Christians than it is of the general community. Despite our belief that even Jesus suffered and died, we do not always have the language or skills that would help us adequately address the suffering of another person.

The Book of Job tries in part to answer the question[1]: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” or “Why does God allow bad things to happen?” Job, as we have heard, has been sorely tested. Everything has been taken away from him. All the things that gave him status in the community – his livestock, his children – all gone and for no apparent reason. Even his health has gone and we find him sitting among the ashes, scraping his sores with a potsherd. Luckily for Job he has three good friends – Zophar, Bildad and Eliphaz – who come to comfort him in his distress. Unfortunately, like many of us, they are at a loss as to what to say, so they resort to the simplistic and the trite. Together they look for explanations as to why Job is in the situation in which he finds himself.

If you have time, I suggest that you read the Book of Job in its entirety or at least the first eleven chapters and the last five chapters. The middle tends to be repetitive. For chapter after chapter the three friends seek to explain away his suffering, primarily by suggesting that Job has behaved in ways that deserve to be punished. The friends say such unhelpful things as: “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?” or “How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” or “Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.”

Time and again, Job responds by protesting his innocence. He is sure that he has not behaved in a way to offend God and that his suffering has no rational explanation.

Finally, or so the story goes, God can stand it no longer. God cannot bear to listen to the four friends. As we will hear in a few weeks time, God explodes and in words dripping with sarcasm attacks Job from out of the whirlwind: ““Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” On and on God goes, challenging Job to demonstrate his wisdom, his ability to understand and therefore his right to speak for God. Finally Job (in what I imagine is a very small voice) responds: “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

As Job realises in the end, none of us can read God’s mind, none of us have any real idea why the world is as it is. What we do know is that life can seem haphazard, that the world is full of both the good and the bad and that we have no control over the weather or the movement of the continental plates. We know that accidents do happen, that disease can hit at any time and that at the moment none of us is immune from the process of aging. When we are confronted with suffering, whether it is ours – or that of another, we should not try to explain it away or to make excuses for God. Instead we need to accept that there are times when we will not have the answers, when we are simply unable to comprehend why it is that bad things happen to good people and why some suffer their whole lives and some seem to suffer hardly at all.

When faced with unbearable suffering or distress in our own lives or that of others, surely it is better to admit that we simply do not have all the answers, that there are aspects of this life that are beyond our comprehension and that there are some things that we will not understand this side of eternity?

When tragedy hits and lives are turned upside down we have to remember that even though God doesn’t intervene as we would like, that God in Jesus knows just what it is like to experience suffering and pain, rejection and torture. When our lives seem to fall apart, when nothing seems to make any sense, it is important to remember that God is with us – supporting, encouraging and strengthening us until such time as the troubles pass and the world is put to rights again.

[1] It is important to remember that Job is a story or fable. It is also important to note that in this story “Satan” is not associated with evil but is one of the angels in heaven. He is “the accuser”, the “devil’s advocate”, the one appointed to present an opposing view.

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