March 24, 2019

Cate Thorn

Lent 3     Isaiah 55:1-9     Luke 13:1-9

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I know that this season of Lent we’ve had the intention of focussing on how our religious creation texts inform us about our responsibility to care for creation. How they inform our practice in daily life. Given the circumstances of a day in the life of our country Aarif Rasheed is unable to be with us today. It is perhaps not surprising.

In keeping with the notion that texts of faith such as biblical scripture, the Koran, or texts of other faiths, are a point of identity and resource for acting. How are our religious texts, or maybe I mean more broadly, how is our religion a resource for us in these difficult days? It is easy enough for glib phrases to trip off the tongue. Words that surely are the correct ones but somehow seem to slip and slide away. They fail to snag and catch the tearing of us, to be balm to our wounding.

What do we expect of religion, faith?

How does religion make sense? 

Given what’s happening in the world how is divine presence a plausible possibility?

How is it that evil takes root and can thrive in a world of divine creating?

These questions are not new, of course, but maybe they are more urgent for us right now. Those of us sheltered from violence that shatters and takes lives. We who are unaccustomed to the raw face of hatred, to seasoned bigotry enacted. We haven’t developed a deep faith resilience to negotiate such things. And I don’t know we want such experience to be the cause of our doing so. But if we can’t turn and ask these questions of our faith, raise our fists in fear and frustration. If we can’t wail in anger and disbelief that this good God we say we love, this good news we say we proclaim seems insubstantial, inadequate to the task of speaking honestly to a reality unveiled. What use is our faith to us, how does it direct us what to do?

Last Monday evening Helen spoke of the visibility of religious affiliation expressed in clothing, by people of faiths largely other than Christian. Of worship rhythms that required people take leave from school or work to honour their faith commitment. The very visibility that signifies is the one that makes such people targets.

Veils, headwear, covering garments of distinctive origin that carry more meaning than simply garments that clothe the body. Such distinct wear is a visible reminder to others. It also reminds those who wear them that they choose an identity that sets them apart, that makes them different. It claims their priorities are aligned in a way which may run counter to the prevailing or predominating ones in the society around them.

I remember some years ago I purchased a new cell phone from a parallel import provider. Not long after I had set it up it kept unaccountably at random intervals playing music. Or that’s what I thought it was – until I paid attention. I then realised what I was hearing was actually a muezzin call to prayer. The intervals were regular, 5 times a day a call to prayer. As the vicar of a parish it was … interesting. Especially when the call emitted on the occasion a couple of young men of Arabic descent were servicing the photocopier. They did look at me a little oddly. What’s more I couldn’t turn it off or silence it. Even if my phone was on mute it would call out. It transpired the software had been embedded in the phone for they were intended for the Saudi Arabian market.

Stopping to pray that often is interruptive, I discovered. Given my job it was interesting to discover that being called, being reminded to pray regularly is interruptive. What’s more if faithfully praying includes kneeling, full body genuflection it submits you. It reminds you, that you’re not self-created, not a complete, self-contained, self-sufficient unit. Regular and interrupting prayer time changes the power dynamic of your priorities. It centres what’s most important differently. It disrupts what draws your attention. Such regular practice reminds you of your accountability for what you do and to whom you’re accountable. It is a form and practice, a way of enliving faith. It’s not the only way.

What happens to the way we learn of and wrestle with our faith if we don’t put it in front of us so intentionally? With no obvious outward signs we’re less visible to others – which we’re probably comfortable with. But what signifiers do remind us that we are receptacles of the telling? Remind us we’re a living Word known in how we live and act.

Without any, do we come to forget what it is we speak of? Do we, our words become without substance? Uncertain we become uncomfortable, perhaps even reluctant to act in name of faith. We shy away as if embarrassed. If we’ve forfeited habits that make us accountable. If we’ve ceased to make time to engage a divine transforming dialogue partner into our daily living. If we don’t wrangle and wrestle to understand why life so often fails our expectations, what becomes of this thing we call faith? Is it simply a habit of polite ‘doing good?’ How can the word of God be breathed into life through us if God’s become a silent, or largely absent, partner in the relationship?

This Sunday we were to learn from the wisdom of our Muslim brother of faith, he’s unable to be here, I’d like instead to invite Rumi to speak to us:

The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him. 
Someone following him asks, 'Where are you going?
No one is after you.’ Jesus keeps on,
saying nothing, across two more fields. 'Are you
the one who says words over a dead person,
so that he wakes up?’ I am. 'Did you not make
the clay birds fly?' Yes. 'Who then
could possibly cause you to run like this?'

Jesus slows his pace.
I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind, 
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence, it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth
and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing 
happens. They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow. Other diseases are ways 
for mercy to enter, but this non-responding
breeds violence and coldness toward God.
I am fleeing from that.

As little by little air steals water, so praise
is dried up and evaporates with foolish people
who refuse to change. Like cold stone you sit on,
a cynic steals body heat. He doesn't feel
the sun. Jesus wasn't running from actual people.
He was teaching in a new way. [1]

Religious narratives teach us creation is abundant and full of life, beautiful, life sustaining, unique with capacity for adaptation and change. Yet also vulnerable, for the narratives include destruction and death, tell of a fragile balance in the dance of life with death. Humanity, these stories tell, has capacity to know, to name both beauty and despair, to know mortality, to know life as suffering. Humanity participates in creative genius and as agent of suffering and death.

The Christian faith story says God is revealed in human form. One who held up mirror for us to see reflected our image as beloved. Humanity would rather put such God to death than change and grow into the stature of such beloved creation.

We know what life and flourishing is and we know what it is not and we can open ourselves to be changed. Religious narratives tell us transformation deeper than our self-willed determination is possible, as we’re strong enough to be vulnerable. What might that look like?

Last Monday evening we opened the doors of this place for people to come – to be, maybe to pray, to lay stone or light candle, to sit or wander and mingle, to come, to go. Some words were said, some music played or sung. It was a place 600 or more people felt comfortable enough to enter, together to pause for a moment.

Something about this space, a space that does not happen by chance, that made it a sanctuary. A place that held us, leant us courage to face what had made us afraid. To lay down the weight of that fear, to light candle as sign of hope that fear would not have the last word.

It was a palpable experience – such set apart space transforms more deeply than words.

[1] Coleman Barks (trans.) The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition HarperOne: New York 2004, 204.