December 28, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Christmas 1     Isaiah 61:10-62:3     Luke 2:22-40

Three Kings came riding from far away,


Melchior and Caspar and Balthazar;


Three Wise Men out of the East were they,


And they traveled by night and they slept by day,

For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star…

Henry Wadsorth Longfellow

The exotic entrance of the mysterious Magi adds colour and class to the manger scene. Our imaginations are fired. We love to conceive the wise ones, adorned in sparkly splendour, riding the hills on humps, then alighting to offer their obscure gifts to the wee babe.

Have you ever wondered why they were called “wise”? You don’t hear, for example, about the wise shepherds, or wise angels, or the wise Mary or Joseph? Why are the Magi considered to have a monopoly on wise?

By faith they were Zoroastrians – worshippers of the god of light, Ahura Mazda. They believed that every great person had a guiding light in heavens, which appeared as a star; and the greater the person, the brighter the star. So when they supposedly saw this great star out west, it’s no wonder they went looking.

Being religious is no guarantee of being wise. Indeed often religion can bring its own form of ignorance. Faith, however, is about risk. These Zoroastrians dropped whatever they were doing and ventured forth across the borders of race, culture, and religion. That took great courage.

Maybe that’s why they were called ‘wise’.

By culture and race they were Iraqi or Iranian. They probably would have been incarcerated for a couple of years if they’d come knocking at New Zealand’s door, especially when they told their story. “You followed a star?... yeah right.” Foreigners are often the subject of fear, suspicion, and hostility. It was no different in Jesus’ day.

Stars are not like neon-lit helicopters hovering a couple of kilometres above the ground. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.1 light years away. So, the notion of the star stopping over the Bethlehem stable is an intuitive notion at best. It is a hunch, a feeling. The Magi’s quest was not so much about eying a star in the sky, but rather seeing with the inner eye, the eye of imagination, mystery, and wonder. It was about trusting their feelings.

Maybe that’s why they were called ‘wise’.

There is no indication in the Bible that the Magi were converts to Judaism or Christianity. They were strangers to the culture and religion of Jesus was foreign to them. Yet they were generously prepared to acknowledge that God, that extraordinary and mystifying presence, could exist outside their borders. They realized they didn’t have a monopoly on God. There was more, beyond their reach, beyond their horizons.

Maybe that’s why they were called ‘wise’.

Every religion, like every culture, has a strong conservative element. It wants to keep things as they are, stable and predictable. God is co-opted as the one who provides stability and predictability. God becomes a parochial deity, captured like air in a balloon, and blown to the size of people’s expectations.

Yet right at the beginning of the Jesus story we have these Magi who come from outside, deliver their gifts, and return to the outside never to be heard of again. They come and go. The balloon of self-imposed theological and cultural isolation is popped.

This would be the story of Jesus’ life – crossing borders of class, race, and gender to be with people who were different and despised. Pricking the consciences, egos, and closed minds of those about him. Is it any wonder that the Church created the Magi story after encountering Jesus?

The Magi almost blew it. They went looking for a newborn king in a palace. Logical I suppose. “Excuse me Mr Herod Sir, great wondrous bloated brute that you are. We’re looking for a baby king. Had any kids you know of lately? No? Oh. Are there any other kings around here? No? Oh. Do we like out heads attached to our necks? Hmmm. Yes. Would you excuse us a moment please?

Apart from the obvious comedy there is also a lesson about wisdom. Contrary to popular opinion, the wise do make mistakes. They do blow it. The difference however between the wise and the rest, is that the wise keep going. They don’t let discouragement deflate them. Confusing power with wisdom, as the Magi did, is a common mistake. Yet they kept going, kept opening themselves to the unexpected, kept pushing on...

Maybe that’s why they were called ‘wise’.

Compare the Magi, for a moment, with the shepherd story. The shepherds are told everything. An extremely talkative angel encounters them on a hillside, and gives them all the details: where the child is, how to get there, and who will be there. When the shepherds arrive at the manger, the angel appears again to verify the place [This is it guys! That’s a baby]. And when the shepherds return home they are guided by a whole gang of serenading angels.

So these shepherds have no doubts, no questions, no problems, no persecutors, and no mystery. They didn’t have to seek information. It was handed to them: faith on a plate.

This is not, by and large, our experience. The easy-come, easy-go shepherds are not for us. Our experience is more like the struggling Magi. We, like them, are searchers. We have difficulty with the large questions of life. We are harassed by our modern Herods who seek to destroy our children and our souls with consumerism, greed, and indifference. We worry about terrorism, AIDS, death, poverty, and war. Yes, we too would like heavenly messengers and divine assurances such as the shepherds got, but the fact is that we experience neither. No, no doubt about it, it’s the Magi – the struggling band crossing a hot desert without a cold beer in sight – that resonate with us. They’re our kind of people. The kind who struggle with their faith.

The bottom line is that the Magi were searchers and so are we. Maybe that’s why they were called ‘wise’.

December 25, 2008

Clay Nelson

Christmas Day

I have to confess, it’s tricky preaching at Christmas. There are a number of reasons. It is impossible to say anything new about it, so I no longer try. Preparing a Christmas sermon when I still have shopping to do is stressful. I also fear sounding as trite as a sentimental Christmas card. But mostly because I think there is an expectation by the church that I put on the armour of righteousness and go fight the battle for Christmas waving the banner, “Put Christ back in Christmas.” But in this is a war I’m a pacifist.

There are plenty of preachers, however, who do take up the standard. You will know them by their insistence that Jesus is the reason for the season while chastising those in their congregations who come only once a year to hear about him. They will rant about consumerism and the commercialisation of Christmas, as if boosting the economy wasn’t the modern reason for the season. They even go so far as “dissing” Santa. These soldiers for Christ view the culture as a threat to the true spirit of Christmas. But I do wonder if the true spirit of Christmas really requires bashing others for not celebrating it the way we do?

I got a reminder of this mentality first hand recently. St Matthew’s is blessed to be the pro bono client of a major advertising firm. Their gift to us is to create the billboards displayed throughout the year outside the church on Hobson Street. These billboards are intended to be provocative yet fun. The most successful ones take the Mickey out of religion, turning pre-conceived notions about what Christianity is on their head. A little self-mocking and a dash of irreverence are important ingredients to this enterprise.

Most of the time the creative team behind them is quite successful but the Christmas billboard is always challenging for them. This team of young adults are not “into” religion, yet they assume that because we are a church we are at war with the secular culture over Christmas. Every year I have to reject a number of their ideas because they mock the fun aspects of Christmas the culture infuses into the holiday. They forget the most important piece of their brief: If most ministers would be happy to put their idea up in front their church, it doesn’t belong in front of St Matthew’s. This year they wanted to put up heresy – a billboard denying Santa’s reality. I said no way, put up the one from a few years ago instead with Santa and two elves sitting in the back pew of St Matthew’s. We are an inclusive church; Santa is especially welcome here.

This year’s battle of the Christmas billboard caused me to reflect more deeply on why I’m put off by the battle for Christmas. At some level I feel that I am being asked to be an accomplice in the domestication of Christmas by the powerful. Except for the first 300 years of the church’s history, when Christmas as a holiday didn’t exist yet, the church has been intimately a part of the power structure. After becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church began domesticating Jesus out of its own self-interest. The preacher of the Beatitudes was way too radical for the newly respectable church. They began transforming him from a rebel who opposed social injustice in the here and now into a sweet Jesus who promoted justice, but only in the next life and then only for those who submitted docilely to its authority. Domesticated, he became a useful tool for keeping the rabble in line. If the church was willing to domesticate Jesus for the sake of power, I don’t have to ask, would it have any qualms about domesticating Christmas? I think not. At some deep level I know intuitively that if I aid and abet their efforts I am somehow undermining Jesus’ vision.

An American historian, Stephen Nissenbaum, has validated my intuition in his history of Christmas, The Battle for Christmas.

Nissenbaum’s thesis is that throughout history Christmas has been at the centre of a class struggle.

For thousands of years in its pre-Christian phase the holidays around the Winter Solstice were celebrations of the harvest. Saturnalia was one such celebration, a week-long feast in honour of the God of agriculture and harvest, Saturn. This was serious party-time, with plenty of food and drink being available to all. Even slaves were given time off. But what made it spiritually important is that it was a time to invert the social hierarchy, masters were expected to share their wealth with, and even wait on, their servants. It was time when the world was turned upside down.

Around the fifth century the church, now being respectable, began trying to Christianise these “pagan excesses.” I can hear the bishops now protecting the entrenched the social order: “It is all well and good for people to let off a little steam now and then. Keeps the peasants manageable, but inverting the social order sounds a little too much like the Beatitudes. If it catches on it could be a problem. Let’s diffuse it by attaching a new holy day, Christmas, to their festival. Celebrating the birth of God in a humble manger captures the inversion of the social order idea but spiritualises it without having to live it.” The bishops however didn’t succeed. Remembering Jesus birth instead of giving thanks for the harvest did catch on, but did little to dampen excessive celebrating in the centuries that followed. Nor did it stop the inversion of the social order.

By the Middle Ages the inversion had become personified. Each Christmas the peasantry would draw lots to be the Master of Misrule. The title was highly sought for the Master could turn ordinary rules on their head for his appointed time. He was given full licence to do as he desired, and lead others down the same merry path of dalliance and delight. Boundaries were tested and social hierarchy inverted as the poor made demands on the rich. Wren boys, wassailing, carolling are all very old traditions that included plenty of drink, naughty escapades, and aggressive begging – it was not just a case of the rich giving alms to the poor, but the poor demanding gifts.

To those wishing to celebrate Jesus’ birth in a pious manner, this was an abomination, but they were never in the majority, so they never manage to control how the holiday was celebrated. The old traditions were too deeply rooted in popular culture and in the human psyche, and the Church never succeeded in significantly changing them.

So the midwinter revelry and the Christian holy day continued to live uneasily side by side, sometimes openly clashing – with bishops banning pagan practices like the use of evergreens. With the Reformation the battle was intensified; celebrations were even outlawed for a time. Cromwell had Parliament make the holiday illegal, as it was “papist and pagan”. Christmas, declared the reformed Church, was corrupted: a holiday of misbehaviours. The sixteenth-century bishop Hugh Latimer, puts it most succinctly: "Men dishonour Christ more in the twelve days of Christmas, than in all the twelve months besides.”

This attitude travelled with the Puritans to America, who also suppressed Christmas, even forbidding it in New England. However, the Master of Misrule made the journey on the Mayflower too. Colonial Christmas was carnival time, with public displays of eating and drunkenness. Wassailing continued – meaning lower-class workers, mainly men, would lay siege to the homes of the well-off, demanding free drink and food. Some church doors opened in the hope of bringing order to the Yuletide chaos, but to no avail: religion again failed to dampen the public’s desire to party on or to give the poor power over the holiday.

But where the church failed to control Christmas, the emerging middle class in America and England succeeded. They weren’t so concerned about Christianising Christmas as making it respectable and non-threatening to middle and upper classes. Through the likes of Washington Irving and Clement Moore, who wrote ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas,’ a new Christmas was literally invented. They did it by using Santa instead of Jesus to change it. It takes place in the house, and does not involve opening the doors if you are rich. It excludes the outside world. Instead of centring on the poor and lower classes it focused on children, in a structural way it replicated old patterns: people in authority still give gifts to their inferiors; not along the lines of class but within the family. In the 19th century, children would have spent their time hanging around with the servants, and really belonged on the bottom of the social scale. There is a duplication of the old structure, no longer rich to poor, but still powerful to powerless. Psychologically this seems to have satisfied the old need without the threat of opening one’s doors to the riff-raff.

Irving and Moore were not alone in their efforts to shape a new festival more in tune with the industrial era. The emergence of a middle-class and wage earners produced a new type of society in Victorian England. The new middle classes brought the Christmas tree in to their sitting rooms in the nineteenth century, it signalled an effort to shape a new kind of ordered, disciplined and above all respectable holiday. The ruling classes could no longer afford to have their servants taking December off to drink and be merry, but wanted them to show up sober and deferential to work every day of every month, and especially on Christmas to serve dinner. And so Boxing Day was born. However while both made strides to contain and change the holiday, it was the Americans who saw its potential to modern capitalism.

As you could not give children what you gave beggars – they already eat your best food! – you had to go shopping, and spend. Christmas created a new consumer society—the Christmas present was born. The essence of the Christmas present is that it cannot be a necessity. When you are giving inside the family it needs to be something special, a luxury item. This was the way the consumer economy got created. Even in times of depression we feel we must buy something nice, some luxury for our own dear ones. The only people we still give necessities to at Christmas to are the poor!

I wonder what the undomesticated Jesus would think of Christmas as it now is. I think there are parts of it he would like very much. He certainly would be at all the parties. He would look forward to having a few drinks around the barbie with his family and mates on Christmas Day. I think he would approve of Santa and a culture that focuses on giving generously. I’m sure he would enjoy singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as much as Silent Night. I’m certain he wouldn’t restrict the guest list to his birthday party only to Christians. As someone who welcomed children to come unto him, he would have no problem with the focus of Christmas being on children. I don’t even think he would have a problem with the commercialisation as it benefits society economically, making fewer people poor. I do think he would have misgivings about Christmas becoming respectable to middle class mores. I do think he would have a problem with his being used by the church to take the fun out of Christmas or to bash those who don’t dance to the church’s tune. And I believe with all my heart he would be most concerned that we have lost a lot of the emphasis on empowering the poor and powerless. For Jesus, that would be the reason for the season.

December 24, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Christmas Eve

Jesus liked surprises. He never though had a Christmas stocking, or a Christmas tree, or even a Christmas dinner. This is to be expected given that Jesus was Jewish and Christmas hadn’t evolved. But he did give and receive gifts, and he did like surprises.

Most of his stories contained a surprise. The Prodigal Son has the surprise of a father who though deeply insulted by his sons continues to love and include them. The Good Samaritan has the surprise of the rescuing hero being a reviled outsider. The story of the Canaanite woman rebuking Jesus has the surprise of a male being bested and thus belittled by a woman. The story of feeding the 5,000 has the surprise of a young child having the faith that initiates the event.

All the surprises challenge the cultural assumptions of the audience – assumptions like wrongdoers should be punished, foreigners are not to be trusted, men are superior to women, and children don’t have real faith. Such assumptions, explicitly or implicitly, persist even today.

Each story also contains a gift. The gift of a father’s embrace, the gift of a stranger’s hand, the gift of a woman’s courage, and the gift of a boy’s costly generosity. These were all expensive gifts. Yet none can be bought at a department store, and none would fit easily into a Christmas stocking.

It was not unexpected then that when writers 50 or so years after Jesus’ death constructed two evocative narratives purportedly describing his birth they consistently included the themes of surprise and gift.

It was a surprise that the mother was a peasant not a princess. It was a surprise he was born in a barn not a palace. It was a surprise that he was a refugee in his early years. It was a surprise that his first visitors were thieving shepherds and not the ministers and minions of a royal household. It was a surprise that astrologers from the East paid him homage when their race and religion were not welcome.

These surprises all point to the gift of the adult Jesus who would be a peasant, familiar with poverty and oppression, and critical of the amassing of power and wealth. They point to the gift of the adult Jesus who would welcome and include the sanctimonious and the criminal, the familiar and the foreign, and those of his faith and those deemed heretical. They point to the gift of the adult Jesus who honoured nuisances and nobodies, the lowest and the least, as manifestations of God among us.

Of course the historical accuracy of these birth narratives - angels, a virgin conceiving, exotic visitors, et al – is highly suspect. Their truth is not in the literal events, but in the messages they convey. We need to just enjoy these stories as creative theological constructions and listen for the truths within.

The earliest writer in the Christian Scriptures, Paul, understood Jesus to be the very ‘image of God’. Paul gives his birth narrative in one short phrase: ‘[Jesus] came in the form of a slave’ .

It was not unusual or unexpected that God would be in a human form. There is plenty of historical evidence in Greco-Roman times of God being in such a form. That form was the emperor – like Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, or Nero. That form was adult, male, militarily powerful, and rich. Such a God was a penetrating conqueror, demanding submission and tribute. In return that God offered a stable social order - a ladder of privilege, class, and gender distinction. At the bottom of the ladder were slaves.

Two political and spiritual tectonic plates were grinding against each other in the second half of the 1st century. One was the gospel of Caesar – male power, a stratified society, offering what it called ‘peace and salvation’ [code for a stable status quo]. The other was the gospel of Jesus – a freedom for those on the lower rungs, equality and mutuality among all, offering what it called ‘peace and salvation’ [code for freedom and justice for the marginalized].

They each offered different visions of good news. Paul’s Jesus as ‘slave’ lampoons how millions within the Roman Empire took it for granted that somebody with the form of God should act. The form of God being a slave was foolishness in their eyes, but to Paul it was God’s wisdom.

From the parables and stories about the adult Jesus, and with the insights of early theologians like Paul, the Church created the Christmas stories. At every turn there is a surprise.

Maybe the biggest surprise and gift at Christmas was that God was seen as incarnated in a baby. Babies are unknown quantities. They mess when you don’t want mess. They cry when you want to sleep. They change your life. We don’t know what they will be like when they grow up – we don’t know whether they will be handsome, intelligent, considerate, wise, or spiritual. That’s why the Romans believed God was incarnated in adult emperors, offering power, might, and certainty. The Christian God, on the other hand, who is here in a baby, was seen as a playful giggling God, undisciplined, and weak. With this God there is vulnerability and uncertainty.

Given this legacy of surprise and gift we need to ask how God might be for us today. Is our experience of God that which challenges the elitist assumptions of society, the ladders of success and honour, and lampoons them? Is our experience that God sides with despised and the destitute when markets plunge and there isn’t enough to share? Is our experience that God surprises us when we least expect it – broadening our mind to be more generous, more accepting, and more loving towards all people everywhere.

A parent’s heartfelt hug is a Christmas present, especially when he or she ignores the wounds previously inflicted on their pride. A stranger’s smile and assistance is a Christmas present, especially when the foreigner is ignoring or over-riding their fear of rejection. A woman’s bravery in the face of disapproval is a Christmas present – one can get bloodied trying to crack glass ceilings. A boy’s gift, given knowing that he would suffer its loss, is a Christmas present. Often such small powerful gifts like these lie close at hand, waiting wrapped up within those who are already part of our lives and within ourselves.

When you or I give a little, or smile a little, or speak up a little, or care a little, or help a little something happens. We release into the matrix of our community a little bit of God. We give a gift. This gift mingles with other such gifts. Giving begets giving. Grace begets grace. Hope begets hope. And we express this magical and mysterious experience by using the metaphor that Christ has been born again among us this Christmas.

December 21, 2008

Sir Paul Reeves

St Thomas’ Day     Habakkuk 2:1-4     John 20:24-29

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned and then executed by the Nazis said “a prison cell in which one waits, hopes and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside is not a bad picture of Advent.

Advent points to what God does in the shape of a baby born to a struggling young couple on the run and to the surprising discovery of God’s presence, when we least expect it, among the joy and pain of living. It also means waiting. Habakkuk gives us the Picture of the prophet at his watch post, stationing himself on the rampart, watching to see what God will say to him. It’s not a popular message.

In today’s busy world Advent does not get much of a look in. People are not prepared to wait. Yet there is a certain wistfulness, an echo that things need not be like this. In the midst of the tinsel and the celebrations and the staff parties it’s almost as if people are saying, “I don’t believe in God but I sure miss him.”

So hard edged, realistic hope that combines with a sense of trust and expectancy is in short supply. It worries me that in November our vote at the election was determined as much by our fears as by our hopes. Tapu Misa wrote in the NZ Herald of growing opposition to policies that benefit the poor, cynicism about welfare and support for more aggressive controls of an underclass perceived to be disorderly, drug prone, violent, dangerous and Polynesian and living in South Auckland.

She also pointed out that half of those in our prisons are mentally distressed and around half have alcohol or drug addictions. To Tapu Misa this suggested that health and social support had failed rather than these people were inherently bad.

I live in the leafy suburb of Remuera where householders build high fences and install security gates. There seems to be a need to feel safe by locking the world out. Nobody plays on the streets any more. And yet one of the principals of a finance company that crashed in a spectacular fashion and who is now facing charges in the court, lives half a mile away. The sad truth is violence takes many forms.

It’s too easy and it’s dangerous to categorise people as either bad or mad. I am a patron of the Mental Health Foundation, which over the past thirty years has made us confront divisive stereotypes born out of ignorance and fear. In a recent publication they quoted Sir Nathaniel Lee who said, “they called me mad and I called them mad and damn them they outvoted me.”

Some of us, idealistically perhaps, prefer to believe in what we call the common good. Progress comes when citizens realise that what is good for their neighbours must ultimately be good for them as well, when difference and diversity are seen not as sources of division and distrust but of strength and inspiration. Christians live by trust, hope, grace. We take risks and the road of faith leads through uncertainty. Rabbi Lionel Blue says that many think, “that the more religious you are, the more you should say no to people. But life is already difficult enough and religion is there to help people solve problems, not to make things more difficult.”

We should not get hung up on the issue of what religion is or is not. Even though I get frustrated sometimes, I love the liturgy and worshipping together but I don’t rate well on personal prayer and devotion. My spirituality such as it is comes through study and trying to be compassionate. My wife will tell you how sell I score in that regard. We get fixated and worried about belief but it’s not where I place my energy. I always regard the creed as a poem, not a legal document, a meditation on the mystery of God born out of the controversies of the early church. The essence of religious experience is showing compassion towards other living creatures, sharing our differences lovingly and developing our relationship with God.

It is compassion that will bring you to what we call a state of transcendence by dethroning you from the centre of your world and putting another in your place. That sounds like the common good, which I believe, we must all seek.

But if I think about it, I’m sure that meet God as a dear friend. That does not sound very profound, it may be an inadequate description but it works for me. Spirituality is not an easy word because it seems to describe something technical done by experts or an experience way out of our grasp.

Well here is the real test. Whatever is important to you, as you try to live faithfully, you must decide whether it is genuine and changes you for the better. Ask yourself does it make you kinder, does it make you more generous and does it help you learn more about yourself? If it does, then go for it.

Today we give thanks to God for Saint Thomas the patron saint of the vibrant community that once worshipped in Freeman’s Bay. We also have a thurible to dedicate to the memory of Douglas Miller, Vicar of St. Thomas’ and his wife Eleanor.

Douglas once told me that a certain bishop said, “Miller I can’t understand your mind.” Douglas replied, “I would be surprised if you could.” Douglas was a man of faith and great scholarship but for a moment let’s ponder on Thomas, one of the twelve. Doubting Thomas we call him because he was not around when Jesus reappeared to the other disciples after his resurrection.

Thomas wanted physical proof before he could believe this far fetched story. But Thomas was really better than that. When Jesus reappeared saying, “Peace be with you” and held out his hands, Thomas’ response was not to tick the box labelled “now I see,” but to express his faith, “My Lord and my God.” Doubt led to faith.

Contrast Thomas with Tarore the young girl asleep with a copy of Luke’s Gospel under her pillow when she was killed by a warring party near Matamata in 1836. It was an incident that persuaded Maori to ask for missionaries to live among them in Otaki and tell them of the God they read about in the book found under the girl’s pillow. Tarore’s grave is in a farmer’s field and to visit it is a moving experience. People put flowers on the grave and if they were like us they would pray for the health of our nation and the Maori people. It is Tarore’s innocence and trust which is at the heart of her faith that is so powerful even today.

Faith may seem simple but can also be complicated because it arises out of who we are. We can all feel a kinship with the doubting Thomas and with the unsuspecting Tarore.

Spiritually we are all like rivers, connected to our source and our destination as we travel through the world. The sense of trust that the entire journey is held in God’s hands runs deep within us.

In the words of Joy Cowley,

Life is like a river that flows towards the sea and deep inside my mind, 


the call of love grows stronger as I leave each day behind…


We’re moving with the current of this unseen mystery…


And I have questions to ask you my friend.

Where does the sea begin?


Where does the river end?

December 14, 2008

Clay Nelson

Advent 3     Isaiah 61:1-11     John 1:6-28

Each Sunday with another candle lit, Advent moves relentlessly towards the Feast of the Incarnation. First hope, then peace; today joy as we light the rose candle. Tradition calls this Gaudete Sunday, which translated means Rejoicing Sunday. We are rejoicing that the one we have been waiting for is no longer off in the distance or in the unknown future awaiting a return engagement. This Sunday John the Baptiser hints mysteriously that among us now stands one whom we do not know but who is the one we have been waiting for. The author of the Fourth Gospel uses John to validate his theological idea that the divine word has become flesh in Jesus Christ. It is a radical, if not scandalous, up-is-down notion. Radical because it transformed how humanity views itself. A view in which are the seeds of empathy, democracy and social justice.

Furthering this upside down notion we get, as Glynn put it last week, another sprig of Isaiah – only this time it’s more like a branch. Our lesson from Hebrew Scriptures contains the passage Jesus reads in the synagogue to inaugurate his ministry according to Luke:

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”

Listening to the Baptiser and Isaiah, I feel a little like Alice falling through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland. She was convinced that she had fallen right through the earth and was destined to come out where people would be upside down. The world is definitely upside down when God is no longer only beyond us, but discovered within and between us. The world is definitely upside down when the world’s rejects are found not to be the cursed of God but the ones through whom God shows us new possibilities for abundant life. The impossible is now not only possible but plausible.

Having our world turned topsy-turvy sometimes is exhilarating like unexpectedly falling in love or winning the Lotto, but more often it feels less than positive, kind of like the way the world is feeling now as global markets melt down or how most feel when a parent or partner dies. But either way it is disorienting.

Alice called such reversals Antipathies. She wasn’t sure that was the right word, but she was on target when it came to identifying the way we feel when our world is turned upside down.

When she finally landed at the bottom of the rabbit hole, Alice discovered she had to change to enter a new world.

The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals, a world where the captives are freed, where the hungry are filled and where the rich are sent away empty. But to enter the mysterious new world that lies before us, like Alice, we need to change.

No! Not change, we shudder. Deliver us from change. Why can’t things stay the way they are? Things may not be perfect, but at least I understand who I am in the midst of my adversity. Besides I have Christmas to give me a diversion from life’s challenges. Parties, pretty lights, Christmas carols; retail therapy all allow me to escape the ways the world and I are still oppressed, bound, and imprisoned. I’d rather use Christmas to escape not change.

Yet thanks to John and Isaiah we find ourselves at the bottom of this damn rabbit hole and the only way to move on is to change. What has to change is not who we are but how we see ourselves.

Like Isaiah and Jesus, Advent invites us to understand that the Spirit of God is upon us as well. Both the word Messiah and Christ mean anointed. When we were baptised we were anointed with oil as a metaphorical acknowledgment that part of what it means to be human is to be part of the divine order--part of and connected to something greater than ourselves. That is ultimately the message behind the Christmas story.

When it fully sinks in, that no less than Jesus, we are God’s anointed, it still seems inconceivable. Our first reaction may be like John the Baptist denying we are the one and pointing to someone else. But such denial is to avoid our unmistakable calling. We are not only the ones in need of abundant life, we are the ones anointed to bring it into being. That may sound like good news on the face of it, but is it? Doesn’t it mean seeing ourselves in a brand new light, which might be quite different from how we have grown comfortable seeing ourselves?

If the spirit of God is upon us, can we still excuse not living fully because life has dealt us some admittedly harsh blows? Can we still give in to despair or simply mark time when our hopes and expectations have not been met? Can we hide from our status of being anointed in addiction and obsession? Can we excuse our denial because life is unfair? Can God’s anointed really be victims?

If the spirit of God is upon us, can we use feeling powerless to avoid bringing good news to the dispossessed and broken-hearted? It is such a useful excuse and very plausible. How is little ol’ me going to stop the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and their minions? Global warming, terrorism, war, genocide, disease, famine, family violence, poverty, racism, homophobia; homelessness are too great for one person to impact we argue. Yet, if we really are awaiting the birth of the Word of God as a baby in a manger, how can we really believe that? While the church has distorted his message and perpetrated many horrors over the centuries in his name that does not change the fact that an itinerant preacher in the backwater of the Roman Empire changed the world for the better simply by how he was present in it. Living as if powerless denies not only our own capacity, but the work of Jesus, Paul, a whole lot of saints we know about and a whole lot we don’t. Would we really want to stick to our claim of powerlessness were we face-to-face with Gandhi, Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King? Can God’s anointed really be powerless?

If the spirit of God is upon us, how can we avoid loving wastefully in a world desperate for it? How can we not embrace those in need, those who are despised; those who are vulnerable? Perhaps the answer is we feel unworthy to love or be loved so deeply. Perhaps we are so aware of our own failings and frailties we feel no one would want our unconditional love? Yet, what makes us believe anyone has fewer failings and frailties than we do? How arrogant is it to believe we screw up more than anyone else? Do we really believe our capacity to fail is more powerful than the spirit that is upon us? Can God’s anointed really be unworthy?

Rejoicing Sunday is in our face challenging our self-image; telling us it is time to turn it around. Being anointed is our calling. Sure, we didn’t fully choose it any more than we chose our personal DNA or family of origin. But it is what it is. We really can’t escape it in victimhood, powerlessness, or unworthiness. If we embrace being God’s anointed we discover we are already capable of changing our circumstances and making the world look a little more like God’s domain.

There is one more hurdle to pass once we quit denying who we are and of what we are capable, and that might be shame or embarrassment that we have taken so long to get it, especially those of us with more than a few years under our belt. We might begin thinking of all the times we might have made a difference for others or ourselves if we had not been in denial of our true nature and calling. Let me suggest that such thinking does not move us on. It disengages us from a world crying out for our good news. The transformation we are being offered does not change the past that has brought us to this point, it only changes the present and the future where that which we call God is one step ahead of us.

This upside down Sunday prepares us to receive the Christmas gift of new possibilities by wiping our slates clean. Songwriter Carrie Newcomer captures the power of lives wiped clean in these simple lyrics:

The empty page

The open book

Redemption everywhere I look.

With the spirit of God upon us we are free to be born anew in a stable on Christmas Day. Let us rejoice and welcoming our transformation. And then move on with Alice into the Wonderland of God’s domain.

December 7, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Advent 2     Isaiah 40:1-11     Mark 1:1-8

John the Baptist believed that an avenging warrior messiah would come from the clouds with blade and fire to smite the Romans and establish the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t share that belief. He didn’t believe in swords and fire and descending saviours. Rather he believed God’s domain was among us already, if only we had eyes to see. In the first century after Jesus’ death however the Church rekindled the message of John the Baptist and developed an end-time theology whereby Jesus would ‘come again’, descending in glory and power to rule the world.

This morning I want to look at who John the Baptist was and what was his message, and explain the differences between John and Jesus. I also want to make some comments about how the Church in time elevated John’s vision and God, at the expense of Jesus’.

John had an avenging God, an axe wielding forester who slashed and burned. This God had two categories, good and bad, and it was up to us to choose and choose quickly, for ‘the Saviour’ was coming.

How do oppressed people, like the 1st century Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine, react to overwhelming cultural, political and military domination? One way is simply to fight and lose, fight and lose, and fight and lose again. And many did. Each insurrection in Palestine was led by a messianic claimant, blending the religious, cultural and political hopes.

Another way was apocalyptic prophets. They simply announced the end was nigh for the Romans and a heavenly messiah with a heavy sword would shortly make mincemeat of the invaders. Such prophets often formed large movements. John was one such prophet.

The references to the Jordan and to the wilderness are not references to water and desert. Rather they are pointers to the historical and political works and words of Moses and Joshua. They are about crossing over the Jordan from the wilderness and taking by conquest the Promised Land. John and others of his ilk were proposing a similar conquest or re-conquest of Israel.

John’s strategy was different from other apocalyptic prophets. He was forming a giant system of sanctified individuals, a huge web of end-time expectations, a network of ticking time bombs of resistance all over the Jewish homeland. These individuals were to wait until the shining avenger arrived, and then they would join his army. Herod Antipas killed John for being a political threat rather than for upsetting his family.

Jesus was a disciple of John. He joined the John movement, and then later left it taking with him some of John’s adherents. The Christian tradition has long been uncomfortable about this. The ideas of John being superior, as a master is to a disciple, and Jesus repenting of his sins in John’s baptism, were disdainful. The Christian authors rewrote the script trying to make John’s prophesies point to Jesus and his baptism an anointing by God.

Yet it doesn’t work. Any Sunday School graduate can read John’s prophesies and see the dissonance with Jesus’ mission and ministry. Whoever John was prophesying about it certainly wasn’t Jesus.

At this Advent time of year the tradition serves up John the Baptist, with a sprig of Isaiah on the side, as part of a ‘get-ready-the-King-is-coming’ platter. The valleys and hills being filled and brought low are references to imperial road works, preparation before an army comes to town. The imagery is full of war, kings, and conquering.

It is a stark contrast to that which is served up on Christmas day: a baby, born illegitimate in a barn. He was a peasant. No royal robes or crown adorned his head. No army, angelic or other, waited in the wings. As St Paul says ‘he came in the form of a slave’ [1]. And that has been very difficult for the Church with all its aspirations for power and glory to swallow.

Realizing that Jesus didn’t fit John’s expectations, or the expectations of many in the nascent Church [2], a ‘second coming’ theology was developed. Mark and Matthew were influenced by the fear and politics of the 60s culminating in the Romans destroying the Jerusalem Temple in 70. In the midst of the turmoil they encouraged their fellow disciples with the hope that Jesus would literally come again. But this time he wouldn’t come as a suffering slave but as a conquering king. They still wanted the physical kingdom restored to Israel and for the disciples to be seated at King Jesus’ right or left controlling admission and favours.

Second coming theology is still unfortunately alive and well. Taken literally the ‘coming again in glorious majesty’ sentiments are pious platitudes, more reflective of John’s theology than Jesus’. Taken metaphorically, as the well-known Advent hymns do, to refer to the triumph of Jesus’ vision they fail to use that vision’s non-hierarchal language and concepts. We would be better off without this theology.

John was baptizing in the wilderness, inviting people to repent and prepare themselves for the Coming One whom they would join in the slaughter of the foreign overlords. Jesus however did not follow where John led. Jesus did not want to wait for a future kingdom but enter a present one here and now.

God’s domain for Jesus was something already present. It was also something to be celebrated because it embraced everyone – Jew, gentile, slave, free, male, female… Circumcision, kosher and Sabbath observance were extraneous. Everyone had equal and immediate access to God, anywhere and anytime. The brokerage system, having to go through priests and temples to get admission to and favours from God, was obsolete.

This Jesus had nothing to say about himself, other than he had no permanent address, and no respect on his home patch. He did not ask his disciples to convert the world and establish a church. He did not believe the world was going to end in the near future, unlike John the Baptist. Jesus apparently did not even call on people to repent, and he did not practice baptism. [3]

For Jesus God’s domain was not a royal or political kingdom such as the Israelites had under David and Solomon. God’s domain was not an apocalyptic creation with an external saviour. God’s domain was not something at the end of time when the bad would be punished, the good rewarded, and the saviour would rule. Rather God’s domain was a set of relationships between people, and between people and God. These relationships were political, social, and spiritual. I use the word ‘domain’ purposefully for kingdom presupposes a king and there wasn’t one in Jesus’ vision. Instead this was a domain of nuisances and nobodies, a domain of reversals and surprises, a domain of grace.

Jesus was not directly critical of John the Baptist and the apocalyptic visions of Ezekiel and Daniel. He just developed and exhibited an alternate reality. The parable of the Good Samaritan is one example. Not only does Jesus portray priests and Levites in a bad light he elevates to fame a despised half-breed, a social and religious other, the Samaritan. For the marginalized, those who identify with the man in the ditch, help does come. That is a miracle in itself. That it comes from a surprising and unexpected source, the Samaritan, is more amazing still. This is the essence of God’s domain.

There is no super saviour descending with a sword, there is only the tainted Samaritan. There are no streets of gold and subsidiary thrones for male apostles, there is only unexpected help for those in the ditch of life. There is no burning of bad guys, wailing and gnashing of teeth, while the good guys feast up large. There is only the risky grace of breaking bread and breaking boundaries of class, race, gender, and power. This is God’s domain if only we could open our eyes to see it and our hearts, priorities, and wallets to live it.

[1] Philippians 2:7

[2] Acts 1:6b

[3] P.41-42 Funk, Robert Honest To Jesus

Further reading: Crossan, J. D. A Revolutionary Biography and Funk ibid.

November 23, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Christ the King? Sunday     Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24     Matthew 25:31-46

If there is one thing that every scholar agrees on about Jesus it is this: he was no king, had no pretensions to kingship, and would have been absolutely dumbfounded and dismayed by the Church’s regal elevation of him in the centuries after his death.

‘Christ the King’ is stirring stuff in Handel’s Alleluia Chorus, but it hardly fits with the gospel picture of Jesus the man who wouldn’t be king. Instead of singing “King of Kings, Lord of Lords”, it would be much more accurate to sing ‘Rebel of rebels, misfit of misfits’.

In the centuries following his death, Jesus’ followers attached a number of honorifics to his name and then weaved those titles into the gospels. Jesus became ‘Son of God’, ‘Son of Man’, ‘Prince of Peace’, ‘Lord’, ‘Light of the World’, and ‘Word of God’ to name just a few. None of these names were used by Jesus or about him during his lifetime. They are attempts to translate the meaning of his life into the Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures and to address theological issues in the late 1st and early to mid 2nd centuries.

What we can piece together of the historical Jesus tells us that he lived and preached an antithetical vision fundamentally opposed to the accumulation of power, wealth, and privilege symbolized by monarchy. Jesus was a social deviant, a religious reformer, and a political rebel.

His social deviancy centred around two counter-cultural practices. Firstly he challenged the patriarchal family system. This system entrenched biological privilege [the basis of any class system] and male privilege. He did this by creating a new extended ‘family’ which included lepers, tax collectors, women, children, enemies, and even priests and Pharisees. The clean and unclean, the righteous and unrighteous, the polluted and the pure were all in this new ‘family’. Not that Jesus was seen as a supporter of the family, quite the opposite: he was seen as its destroyer. The patriarchal family was the social glue that held society together.

His other practice was that he refused to build up a patron/client relationship with the populace. Normally a religious leader and healer would establish a base of operations and be the patron to those who sought assistance from him. The disciples would be the brokers. As a US president is located in the White House and has a number of minions whom normal people have to go through in order to have an audience, so it was with a first century patron and their clientele. This system made sure the patron’s power would grow and the clientele would always be dependent.

Instead Jesus was deliberately itinerant. He kept moving so his power and others’ dependency did not grow. Healings came free. His vision was that people did not need a brokered relationship in order to relate to God or to each other. His vision was radically egalitarian.

Of course this social deviancy of Jesus’ was after a few decades ‘corrected’ by the Church. Christianity was refashioned to be supportive of ruling classes, class structure, and male heads. Christianity instituted bishops and priests to be brokers and control people’s relationships with one another and with God.

Jesus was also a religious reformer. His religiously promiscuous dining practice was both visionary and confrontational. The encouragement for anyone to come in off the streets to his table breached the purity codes that were deemed essential for personal holiness. What food you ate, who you touched or were in close proximity with, who you spoke to, was believed to affect not just your health and social standing but also your relationship with God. To dine with say a woman was to lower you to her inferior spiritual status. It was similar with a leper, or child, or tax collector. Jesus was challenging the rules about holiness.

Likewise Jesus challenged the rules around Sabbath practice and the role of the Temple. Jesus was a free spirit who deliberately flouted the boundaries of his faith.

Jesus parables are full of parties and celebration. He had a confidence in God and God’s affection and goodness. He didn’t see himself as the go-between for people to get to God. He had confidence that everyone could access the Divine like he did, and have a personal relationship with God.

In this way he challenged the sin/forgiveness system. People didn’t have to buy or beg forgiveness. Rather they had to forgive others and forgive themselves. To experience forgiveness they had to freely give it. They didn’t need to go through religious hoops, sacrifice pigeons or lambs, fast and use sackcloth, keep saying sorry, build holy shrines, put money in the plate, or do good works. There wasn’t a God waiting to punishment them.

Jesus thus undercut the theology, economics, and power of a religious system that divided people and places into holy and unholy, privileged and plebeian. By word and deed he broke the boundaries. No wonder they wanted to break him.

Of course in time the Church reconstructed a system of boundaries in order to give its elite power over people’s lives. Holiness once again required that we bend our heads to the heavenly, earthly and religious Lords, respect their palaces and temples of power, associate only with our peers, party only when approved, and feel unforgiven and pay for it. Holiness required control.

Lastly, Jesus was a political rebel. He was born at a time when the Roman Empire had subjugated Palestine, and in a region whose spirit refused to be subjugated. The Empire was brutal. Sepphoris, the town 7 km down the road from Nazareth, was razed in 4 BCE and its inhabitants enslaved. Any dissent or unrest was ruthlessly suppressed. Despite this there was a variety of protest – from armed gangs and resistance movements, to refusing to pay tax or plant seed.

Jesus was a covert rebel. He first withdrew his consent-to-be-ruled from the usurpers of power and counselled others to be the same. He pointed out how the system of imperial domination afflicted the poor. He was militantly non-violent. Jesus’ Kingdom of God was a vision for how this world would run if God, not Caesar, sat on an imperial throne. Jesus had a utopian dream in which both material and spiritual goods, political and religious resources, economic and heavenly favours were equally available to all without interference from intermediaries. The well-known and well-misunderstood maxim ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’ is an example of his political teaching. Far from it being a division of property or responsibility, every Jew knew that the whole land of Israel belonged to God even if Caesar thought an idolatrous coin belonged to him.

The imperial overlords executed Jesus. Romans and the Roman Procurator were not the lackeys of the Jewish religious authorities. The Romans killed for one reason only: to eliminate dissent and keep ‘the peace’. The Jewish authorities had their own methods of killing people. Crucifixion was Roman. The reason Jesus was killed was the incendiary remarks made and actions taken regarding the Temple during the Passover season. He symbolically negated all that it stood for. The peasant riots of past Passovers had been brutally suppressed and their leaders executed. So it was with the provocative prophet Jesus. It was no accident, misunderstanding, or priestly plot.

When the Gospels were written some 40 or more years after Jesus’ death the authors were concerned to not invite the ire of Rome. They tried to dress up Jesus message in politically neutral colours. When the Church cuddles up to the powerful it is very convenient to disguise Jesus’ politics and paint him as an other-worldly spiritual leader concerned about individual piety and family values. ‘His kingdom is not of this world’ they say, and quietly mutter, ‘and long may it be that way’. Elevating this egalitarian political rebel to spiritual kingship in heaven has maintained the power of the kings of this earth.

There is a very sober quote from Eusebius describing the assembling of the bishops for the Council of Nicaea in 325. This Council would produce a creed that ignored the ministry, vision, and challenge of Jesus. He writes:

“Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor’s companions at table… One might have thought that a picture of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth…”

The table of Jesus was now all male, all bishops, politically neutered, reclining with all the best wishes and weaponry of the Empire.

Further reading:

For an easy guide to the historical Jesus try:

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/robotwisdom.htm

Crossan, J. D. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography [especially chapters 2-5]

Crossan, J. D. Who Killed Jesus? [especially chapter 1]

Funk, R. Honest to Jesus [especially chapter 11 and the epilogue]

Borg, M. The Heart of Christianity

Horsley, R. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence

Myers, C. Binding the Strong Man [especially p.444-7]

November 16, 2008

Clay Nelson

Clay preached the following sermon as the guest preacher at the Auckland Unitarian Church.

I have a confession to make. I am the world’s worst dinner guest. Contrary to commonly accepted etiquette, I welcome any opportunity to talk about religion and politics, even in polite society. As I am passionate about both requiring little encouragement to voice my opinion, the host and hostess by the end of the evening are happy to see the back of me. Their horror is magnified if they are National blue or Republican red. I am uncompromisingly progressive in my politics, which is a direct result of my equally progressive theology. I may believe strongly in the separation of church and state, but religion and politics not only go hand in hand, they are inextricably woven together.

So for someone like me the last two years has been as close to heaven on earth as one could imagine. Obsessive would be a kind way of describing my attention to every aspect and nuance of the American campaign trail. The Huffington Post threatened to charge me rent, accusing me of living on their website. The cause of such obsession was the first truly progressive candidate in forty years to have a shot at getting elected in spite of being black.

While Obama was my choice since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic Convention, reading his books and observing how he conducted himself and his campaign only deepened my commitment and my amazement. My amazement was that the McCain-Palin ticket had any support at all. I was even more amazed that they got 46% of the vote. My amazement led me to ask, “Why isn’t everyone a progressive?”

A progressive’s world would be at peace recognising that all creation is an interconnected web. Nations would work together to resolve issues of disease, poverty, terrorism and global warming. The basic needs of food, housing, health care, access to education and freedom for all would be universal goals. Governments would serve and protect, yet be accountable to the people. What could be more reasonable?

While Barack Obama ran as a progressive, which made my heart glad, he didn’t win because he was one. It was more a case of being the only viable alternative to the total failure of Bush administration policies. And in spite of how disastrous those policies were, McCain might still have won if the financial markets had not gone into meltdown. Hope and “Change we can believe in” might not have been enough to put him over the top without fear of lost jobs and retirement accounts.

My hunch is that the actual number of political progressives is still quite small, just as the number of religious progressives is. Exit polls do tell us that Obama did get the overwhelming support of that latter group. Among those voters who attend church weekly, when asked how they interpret the Bible, only 17% of Obama’s most religious voters believe “The Bible is the literal word of God,” compared to 58% of McCain’s religious voters.

While struggling to answer the question of why more of us aren’t progressive, I was made aware of a book by George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. The book, entitled The Political Mind: Why you can't understand 21st-century American politics with an 18th-century brain, attempts to give us some answers to this question and offers an approach for making more progressives.

In reading reviews by other linguists and neuro-scientists his ideas are not widely held, but that does not mean his work is not thought-provoking. At least I, not being either a linguist or cognitive scientist, found it so.

Let me summarise some of his ideas from his work:

If you believe in the 18th century Enlightenment view of the mind – that reason is conscious, literal, logical, unemotional, disembodied, universal, and functions to serve our interests – you will look and act wimpy. You will think that all you need to do is give people the facts and the figures, and they will reach the right conclusion. You will think that all you need to do is point out where their interests lie, and they will act politically to maximize them… [But if you believe this you are] dead wrong. You will be ignoring the cognitive unconscious; you will not be stating your deepest values; you will be suppressing legitimate emotions; you will be accepting the other side’s frames as if they were neutral; you will be cowering with fear at what they might call you [you know, the “L” word]; you will be refusing to frame the facts so that they can be appreciated. In a word, you – and all the other progressives who believe in Enlightenment reason – will be wimpy. Conservatives operate under no such restraints and consciously or intuitively have a much better idea of how brains and minds work. That’s why they have been more effective.

What they understand is the power metaphors play in our thinking. For example, from the beginning, Judeo-Christianity has made use of a primary metaphor – pastoralism – which most of us have never thought to question: pastoralism, with its images of sunlight, grassy fields, happy sheep, and a watchful, protective shepherd. We still use the word “pastor” and “pastoral duties” to describe our religious leaders and their roles in shepherding their “flocks.” Traditional religions still speak of the Lord as “my shepherd” who “maketh me lie down in green pastures” and “leadeth me beside the still waters.” They still speak of Jesus as “the sacrificial lamb” and “the lamb of God.” They cite the gospel of John, where Jesus himself told the disciples to “feed my lambs” and “take care of my sheep.” And they know that when Jesus said this, he wasn’t referring to literal animals.

But have you ever pondered this metaphor as a metaphor? I certainly have, especially because I’ve always thought sheep were incredibly stupid. Lately I’ve read that they’re not really as dumb as I thought, that they rank in intelligence just below the pig and are about even with cattle. Even so, though, sheep are timid, nervous, and easily frightened. They’re also defenceless against predators, except for a highly-developed instinct for running away.

Given this information about actual sheep, how well does the image of sheep and shepherds work for you as a religious metaphor? It apparently worked very well in Biblical times, when so many people were shepherds, and when everyone else in the culture depended on sheep for their milk, meat, and wool, but what about today? How would our understanding of God and Jesus be altered if we substituted, for sheep, the similar image of cattle or goats? “I’ve been washed in the blood of the calf,” we might pray. Or, “the Lord is my goatherd; I shall not want.” I don’t mean to sound frivolous (well, maybe I do), but my point here is that the pastoral metaphor is clearly outworn as an accurate one for modern people. And yet – this would be George Lakoff’s point – it’s so much a part of our brains that we hardly notice, much less question its accuracy.

This is true of any number of other unquestioned metaphors common in human language. As just one of hundreds of examples, consider the metaphor he uses to explain moral accounting. “He paid his debt to society,” we say; “I’m going to make you pay for that”; “You owe me”; “I’m in your debt”; and on and on. When we use phrases like this, we don’t consciously think about money. The metaphor is unconscious; it’s imprinted in our brains. The implications of that are profound in religion – and they’re even more profound in the world of politics. To illustrate this, I want to concentrate in this sermon on three metaphors in particular. The first is the metaphor of the nation as a family. The second is the metaphor of a left-to-right scale in the political spectrum. And the third is the metaphor of war. How has our unconscious acceptance and use of these three common metaphors hurt us as religious and political progressives, and how can understanding that help us?

So let’s tackle these one at a time. First, there’s the metaphor of the nation (or the governing institution) as a family. Russians speak of Mother Russia; Germans speak of the Fatherland; American’s speak of the Founding Fathers and of George Washington as the Father of the Country. Catholics call their priests “Father.” Christian Science is governed by the Mother Church. When we go to war we say that we are sending our sons and daughters, even when we don’t mean our literal children. After 9/11, Congress created the Office of Homeland Security to protect the national family. You call this building, this religious institution, your “church home.” As progressives, you feel “at home” here.

Much more significantly, though, for both religion and politics, we unconsciously assume two different models, two different versions of what the ideal family should be. Whether we’re talking of how best to raise children or about what kind of government we want, conservatives and progressives have two very different models in mind – one big reason why we have such trouble communicating, because each model is largely unconscious on both sides.

What are the two different models? For conservatives it’s the Strict Father model; for progressives it’s the Nurturing Parent model.

If the Strict Father model of family is branded into your brain, you value and advocate authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment. You see the Father of the family as its moral leader, and as the authority who must be obeyed. You need a Strict Father to teach you the difference between right and wrong, and you learn this through discipline and punishment. When you grow up, you’re then ready to enter the marketplace as an independent person, and to oversee your own Strict Father family unit.

Now it all falls into place. Now we see why conservatives focus so much on authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment. A Strict Father has earned, and deserves, his authority – and so, in this model, do the corporate bosses who make all that money. Competition builds character; beating out your competitor is a sign that you have good character, that you merit what you’ve won. This model is also why political conservatives are so often fundamentalist Christians as well. God himself is a Strict Father. Obey him, and you’ll go to heaven; disobey him, and you’ll go to hell. Of course, if you say, “I’ve been bad, I’m so sorry,” and mean it, he’ll give you a second chance – but only if from now on you bend to his absolute authority. You’ve been “born again” into the Strict Father family of the religious conservative.

Think, too, of the implications, in a Strict Father family, of gay marriage, or of abortion, or even of women in the professions. You can’t have gay people or career women in such a family because distinct gender roles are too important. And you can’t be pro-choice because that’s disobeying the male prerogative, both familial and divine, to be the decider.

But there’s another model for the ideal family, the Nurturing Parent model. If this model is branded into your brain, a good family, to you, is one that includes two equally responsible parents (it doesn’t matter what gender) or one parent, female or male. Either way, the parental role is to nurture the children and to raise them to nurture others. There is discipline, yes, but it’s administered in an atmosphere of mutual respect, and that means that restitution is preferred over punishment. A Nurturing Parent’s primary goals are instilling empathy, providing protection, and facilitating empowerment.

And of course progressive political views mirror these same Nurturing Parent values: empathy, protection, empowerment, and community. In this model, the proper role of both the church and the government as to protect and empathise, not to exert authority and dispense punishment.

Once we become aware of these two different family models, what can we learn from them? One thing, at least: that as progressives we should be talking more than we are about our moral worldview – about caring, about hope, about being responsible. As progressives, we should be aware of recent neurological studies that tell us that the human capacity for empathy seems to be hard-wired into the normal brain. And when we propose our progressive ideas, we should realize that the more we can arouse the empathic response, the more support we will gain. We’re talking about morality here, Lakoff writes, “about whose moral system will rule.”

This isn’t as easy as it sounds, and here’s just one example. All of us, progressives no less than anyone else, have an easily frightened child deep inside. So when McCain challenged Barack Obama’s readiness to be President on the grounds that he lacks experience, it triggers a collective (and largely unconscious) fear: the fear that, in the face of a national crisis, we need a Strict Father who’ll know what to do and who’ll protect us from harm. What’s essential, therefore, is to bring this to consciousness and to recognize it for the deeply rooted wish that it is: the wish to be safe, whatever the cost. Knowing this, we can go on to reiterate and re-emphasize the values progressives hold dear: equality, freedom, and empathy.

The second metaphor I want to consider today is, according to Lakoff, both an inaccurate and a dangerous one: the metaphor of a left-to-right scale on the religious and political spectrum. In that conservative ideas are touted as “mainstream” ideas, and progressive ideas are maligned as “liberal” or “leftist,” the left-to-right metaphor “empowers conservatives and marginalizes progressives.” There’s no such thing as a mainstream population with a unified worldview! People are actually conservative in some ways and liberal in others, depending on the issue. You might be conservative on family values and gun control, for example, but progressive on the importance of protecting the environment. You might be socially liberal but fiscally conservative. One problem with the metaphor is that it assumes a consistent worldview that puts each of us in a fixed place on a scale, with a “centre” between two “extremes.” And if you’re on the fictional left of that fictional centre, you’re labelled a leftist extremist.

Similarly, we can’t assume some solid, “orthodox” centre or mainstream when we speak about religion – a centre that puts religious progressives on the left and agnostics and atheists on the farthest, most radical fringes. Yet that image is in people’s brains. “My job,” Lakoff writes, “is to make you think twice about it, and then stop using it. If you can. But it won’t be easy. Overcoming misleading metaphors that are physically present in your brain never is.”

And finally we turn to the metaphorical image of war.

“The War on Terror,” Lakoff points out, is a perfect example of how a dishonest and ruinous notion can take root at times of national trauma – because trauma of any kind alters brain synapses more easily and radically than usual – and then be repeated so often that it’s in the brain forever after and won’t disappear. I was hardly aware, until I read Lakoff’s book, that for the first few hours after the towers fell on 9/11, the Bush administration described the attack as a “crime.” Had America stuck to this idea – that terrorists are criminals – they could have used international crime-fighting technique, as Britain has done with considerable success. If they’d stuck to this language, Iraqis themselves might have seen the attackers as criminals instead of as noble soldiers. However, the Bush administration almost immediately substituted a consciously-chosen war metaphor for it original criminal one. Now, instead of a being seen as the criminal act that it was, the attack was deliberately re-framed, for political reasons, as an act of war.

Actual wars, Lakoff writes, are fought against physical armies of other nations. But terror is an emotional state. Since you can’t defeat it on a battlefield or sit down at a treaty table with it, “war on terror” therefore means a war that will never end. The very word “war” activates a fear-response in the brain that in turn activates a conservative worldview: that of a powerful Father who uses domination and strength to make sure we’re “secure.” And of course “war on terror” is a metaphor intentionally chosen to provoke just such a response and to cut off objections. Progressives fell into the trap just like everyone else., and so when people who represented by views argued against giving the president total authority, we made ourselves vulnerable to labels like “defeatist,” “unpatriotic,” and even “treasonous.” The metaphor put us completely on the defensive, always the weaker position.

The “war on terror” metaphor has succeeded on the domestic front, too. It has returned Bush to the White House, gotten right-wing judges appointed, disemboweled social programs, despoiled the environment, robbed Americans of their constitutional protections, sucked the economy dry, and used taxpayer money to further enrich corporations. 

Yet how many politicians or political commentators can you name who have ever criticized the war-on-terror metaphor as a metaphor? John Edwards came closest in 2007, when he confronted Conservatives about their framing of terrorism as a war. “The war on terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe,” Edwards said. “It’s a bumper sticker, not a plan. It has damaged our alliances and weakened our standing in the world. As a political ‘frame,’ it’s been used to justify everything from the Iraq war to Guantanamo to illegal spying on the American people. It’s even been used by this White House as a partisan weapon to bludgeon their political opponents… But the worst thing about this slogan is that it hasn’t worked to defeat terrorism. The so-called ‘war’ has created even more terrorism, as we have seen so tragically in Iraq.”

The worst of it is that the war metaphor is still intensely alive and politically powerful. “We are still removing our shoes at airports,” writes Lakoff, and pouring out bottled water. We’re still hearing “War on Terror” from every Republican politician up to and including John McCain. “What conservatives did was to use language, ideas, images, and symbols repeatedly to activate the conservative mode of thought and inhibit the progressive mode of thought in individuals who had both,” he goes on. We can’t just erase such ideas. But we can employ the same tactics: using progressive language, ideas, images, and symbols, repeatedly, to activate progressive modes of thought and inhibit conservative ones in those who have both. And, just as important, we can initiate a discussion of the war metaphor as a metaphor, one that’s deliberately designed to arouse fear and to cement conservatives’ power.

Is there anything else we can do? Lakoff has quite a list. First, we can still do all the tried-and-true, practical things: write letters, contribute to causes, volunteer to work for candidates, talk to our neighbours and friends. But we need to do more. Lakoff has a dream of “Congress, the citizenry, and the press rising up and shouting, “Wait a minute! [The ‘war on terror’] is a metaphor that doesn’t fit! You don’t go to war on an inappropriate metaphor!”

Further, we need to insist on discussing any policy’s empathic consequences. How will it affect us? How will it affect others? Will it make us more, or less, free? How does it affect nature – is it sustaining, or harmful? How will it affect life in the future? “What, if anything, makes it beautiful, healthful, enjoyable, fulfilling?”

Let me conclude with five guidelines from Lakoff to buoy you up in this effort.

* Remember that an idea introduced under conditions of trauma, then repeated again and again, is in our synapses forever.

* Remember the need to repeat things yourself, to say them not once but over and over. “Brains change,” Lakoff says, only “when ideas are repeatedly activated.”

* Remember that if you’re not careful, you’ll fall back into conservative framing traps. We must be like Barack Obama in his response to Wolf Blitzer when, during the 2007 presidential debate, Blitzer told the candidates to raise their hands if they believed that English should be the official language of the U.S. “This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us,” Obama replied. “When we get distracted by those kind of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people.”

* Remember not to assume that others share our definitions of words like freedom, equality, fairness, and opportunity; all these words come in conservative and progressive packages. We must work to keep the progressive version of each concept uppermost during discussions.

This is something we failed to do last week in New Zealand. While I believe America still has a long way to go to become a progressive nation, I believe New Zealand already is one, in spite of the last election. A country that was first in the world to give women the vote, resisted apartheid during the Springbok Tour, has attempted to make restitution to the Maori for past abuses, has stood up to American militarism, has given civil rights to the gay and lesbian community, seeks to provide quality health care to all its citizens, provides a safety net to its most vulnerable citizens, maintains a military suitable only for peace-keeping, makes education widely available to all, has taken steps to protect children against parental abuse and has even provided protection to prostitutes may not be as progressive as the Netherlands (we can’t smoke dope legally yet), but by American standards, is pretty bloody progressive. However, those who resist such a progressive world have made headway in recent years by reframing our country as a “nanny state.” It is the patriarchal strict parent saying we are feminine and weak. The last election is a warning that if we want to continue to be a progressive nation we must pay attention to such metaphors in both politics and religion. They are dangerous to our well-being.

St Matthew’s and the Auckland Unitarian Church are a pretty small slice of religious New Zealand, which is small anyway, but our progressive views are a public voice of support for those seeking to overcome their fears to be the empathetic beings we are hardwired to be. They may not know it but they count on us, to quote Abraham Lincoln, “to speak to the better angels of our nature.”

November 9, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 26     Matthew 25:1-13

I am happy to be here this morning. If things had gone differently in the US this week it could’ve been otherwise. Instead of feeling like an anvil has been removed from my chest, I might be instead in a psychiatric ward on suicide watch or, more likely, in the back of my closet in a foetal position sucking my thumb. The only good thing about that is I wouldn’t have been alone. Looking at footage of people around the world celebrating the 4th of November, Barack Obama isn’t just America’s new president. It would’ve been a crowded ward or closet if the change we were waiting for had been not this time.

However, as happy as I am, I wish I wasn’t the preacher this morning because I’ve drawn another of Matthew’s (quote) parables (unquote) to preach on. With the world a very different place than it was last week, it is a little difficult to get excited about ten virgins worrying about a first century energy crisis while waiting for the same bridegroom. In such times, how irrelevant can the Gospel be? When was the last time anyone here lit an oil lamp? For that matter when was the last time you went to a wedding that had even one virgin? Frankly, it sounds a little like the beginning of a bad joke: “Ten virgins walk into a bar…”

There are other problems with Matthew’s parable. First, unlike some of his others where he at least bases the story on one Jesus might have told, Jesus never told this one nor would he have ever told it. It was not his style. Matthew is obsessed with the end times and all the wonderful divine wrath and judgment that come with it. He portrays Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet carrying a placard on street corners telling people to repent. But Jesus was into the fierce urgency of now not later. The kingdom of heaven is at hand was more his style. Carpe diem was his battle cry. Grab it. It is here for the taking. Matthew and some in the early church seemed to think he was speaking of a worldly kingdom, and since the Romans were still occupying their land a generation after Jesus’ death, they had to choose between Jesus being wrong or put a spin on his words. Matthew chooses to spin like right-wing Fox News, attributing the parable of the ten virgins to him. In truth it was either Matthew’s own literary invention or he appropriated it from the common folklore of the region. Its purpose was to reassure his readers, anxious for freedom from oppression, God’s kingdom was coming.

There are other reasons we know Jesus didn’t tell this parable. His were WAY better. He used humour, exaggeration and paradox. Think camels going through the eye of a needle. Matthew’s is mundane, unimaginative and moralistic. His message of “being prepared is a virtue” is hardly groundbreaking and headline grabbing. Every Boy Scout knows that.

But the most important reason Jesus had nothing to do with this parable is that it is a story that applauds building barriers. Matthew’s story creates insiders and outsiders. The closed door to the unwise virgins is a definitive boundary. Jesus’ whole ministry was about breaking down social and religious boundaries, not creating them. He was about “good” Samaritans and welcoming back errant children with fatted calves. He wasn’t into dividing people into paddocks of sheep or goats (one of Matthew’s favourite past-times). This parable is an illustration of Matthew’s gospel not Jesus’ vision of God’s realm.

If Jesus were to edit Matthew he would start by tossing this parable or better yet he would use it as a foil to tell a better one. He might begin this way, “You have heard from Matthew that I think the kingdom of heaven is worth waiting for, but that is old thinking used to control and manipulate you with fear and shame. Shame that you might not be worthy and fear that you will miss out if you don’t do as you are told.

But I tell you the kingdom of heaven is exactly the opposite. Once there was a skinny black man who was half white who felt called to be president in a land that feared his colour and foreign name. But because he had been blessed with big ears and a golden tongue, he decided to give it a go anyway.

His was the most powerful country in the world, but followers of Matthew ruled it. They used bigotry and even religion to divide the people against one another. Hatred and fear flourished in the land. They became a warlike people and built an empire despised around the world in the name of their God, greed. And darkness was on the face of the earth and the people despaired.

Using his big ears to listen before opening his mouth, he let loose his golden tongue to light a small lamp. He asked the people to hope. Hope because as bad as it is it could change. It could change because we are all accountable for the way things are. If we change, the world changes. “We are the change we seek,” he suggested. It was a small, but audacious lamp but others began lighting their small lamp as well. And if some were out of oil, others shared theirs and the darkness was pushed back, powerless against it.

The Mattheans tried to extinguish the lamps by asking, “What kind of change is he offering? Be afraid, change is scary.” In their desire to cling to power, they did not notice that the people were growing less afraid, less angry; less divided and more compassionate, more respectful, more peaceful; more hopeful. So the unthinkable happened. They lost.

And the skinny black man with big ears and a golden tongue, in accepting the presidency, told the Mattheans, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand and always has been, you just have to light your lamp to see it.” He then added with a wry but kind smile, “I will be your president too.”

November 2, 2008

Denise Kelsall

All Saints’ Day     Rev 7:9-17     Matt 5:1-12

A long time ago I cut a pithy saying out of a newspaper. I can’t recall the exact words but the central message was that we are shaped by our attitudes. It said that we are 90% attitude and 10% talent and that people who succeed in life have an abundance of the right attitude.

Talent, beauty, strength, brilliance – all take a back seat to attitude in the way our lives develop.

Since then I have read and heard all sorts of similar takes on how to live and be from spiritual teachers and business gurus in expensive books, to Dear Marge columns in weekly magazines that cost just a few dollars. They all reinforce the notion that the vision for our life is determined by our attitudes, – how we face our own lives, our relationships, our problems and worries, how we see the world, how we see and experience the ultimate mystery that we call God. Everything is directed and coloured by our attitudes. As the famous saying goes ‘two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud and the other saw stars.’

You can call it the ‘power of positive thinking’ or ‘living in the now’ or perhaps the ‘power of prayer,’ maybe transcendental meditation does it for you - whatever method or practice we employ or discover works for us is usually informed by a desire to achieve the best and most harmonious lives for ourselves and those we love.

However, often I feel we are not even aware of our attitudes. Originally they are shaped by our environment, particularly our families and communities and later our peers. As we grow, break away and forge deeper and hopefully wider relationships with others outside our childhood gamut we continue to carry and morph these formative attitudes that have shaped us. Sometimes they are so injurious to seem to be insurmountable and here at St Matthews we often see this in devastated lives that bring people to the City Mission. This can be especially hard as often people have wretched and cruel lives through no fault of their own, and tragically are unable to dream or attempt anything different.

In today’s gospel from Matthew we listened to the Beatitudes or blessings. These Blessings begin the Sermon on the Mount which runs from chapter five to chapter seven. It is these two chapters that made Mahatma Gandhi a lover of Jesus – a Christian alongside being a Hindu and more from within his varied spiritual background. Gandhi narrates in his autobiography that on reading the Bible he plodded through the Old Testament without the “least interest or understanding.” But when he reached the Sermon on the Mount it went straight to his heart. For Gandhi it was the whole of Christianity wrapped up and is what endeared Jesus to him.

Crucially it was the moral or ethical teachings it contained that resonated with him. Abstract theological concepts like the Trinity or the atonement do not feature in these central teachings of Jesus – they are practical rather than dogmatic, about right conduct rather than belief.

The beatitudes are universal and although ostensibly addressed to a Jewish audience of the disadvantaged, the oppressed and wounded they contain profound wisdom that applies to all people everywhere of whatever persuasion. They are indeed a recipe of how to live a good and joyful life, and a life directed towards the God of all life that all people carry within.

The language can seem somewhat outdated. When I think of blessing the poor in spirit I think of humility which is about unpretentiousness and being utterly human alongside the next person. ‘There for the grace of God go I” we might say. Humility that brings deep thankfulness for small things, for unexpected generosity, for the unasked care of others, for the wonder of this planet, for the mystery of consciousness, for the gifts of love and trust in spite of pain, treachery and loss that often dog our lives. The kingdom of heaven rests in that openness and trust.

Blessed are those who mourn speaks of our inner awareness of how we betray and hurt ourselves and those we love through rash unexamined actions and words that we wish had never been uttered. It is about how our hearts hurt and cry and the comfort and strength we can find if we seek and rest in the God within.

Meek has craven connotations; gentle is a much better word. Blessed are the gentle, the peaceful and the kind. If the world returns to us what we are then the gentle will be peace for themselves and for others. The hostility of the world will not touch their core.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is about goodness and intensely wanting honesty and integrity to mark one’s life. If we want these things and hold them fast in our hearts then we will live them and they become part of us.

Blessed are the merciful. This is about compassion and forbearance. It is about recognizing that we all fail and make mistakes, and suffer for it. About not pointing the finger in haste and recognizing the truth in the old Indian saying of not judging till we have ‘walked a mile in his or her shoes.’ This demands a generous spirit and silence.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. For me this is the crux of these verses and speaks of attitudes and motives. As we prayed in our prayer for the day it concerns sincerity of heart, a longing for goodness, and a wholeness that comes with an integration of our outer and inner worlds. We have to take time, to still our busy minds and lives to hear the ‘still small voice’ where the God who dwells within is allowed to claim our consciousness and to give us insight. Only then do we, as the verse says, hear and see the ground of our being which is divine. Only then are we whole. Without this our lives are lived on the surface and we risk the opposite of wholeness – the tyranny of a divided self racing hither and thither without rest.

As the Sufi’s say “You yourself are the veil that stands between you and God.”

Blessed are the peacemakers, the reconcilers who bring us closer and help us to see the God in each other, and blessed are those who suffer for goodness and love as they remain whole and find the kingdom of heaven within.

Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday. I’m not sure I know what this means in real terms, but to hazard a guess I think it is about all those people who, over eons of time, have journeyed through life in the pursuit of finding a way to their own true sense of or union with the divine. Perhaps some embodied and consciously lived more of the beatitudes than us, and then perhaps not. But it holds that in choosing a spiritual path these universal blessings of Jesus ask for ways of being and attitudes that ennoble, enrich and deepen our humanity, making possible our hopes and dreams for ourselves and those who surround us. All of us, all people, saints in the making, all the world over.

October 26, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 24     
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
     Matthew 22:34-46

Artists over the centuries have had a grand time with heaven. Usually there are lots of white fluffy clouds, cherubic figurines in Greco-Roman garb, and a male God, aged and chubby, lounging about. As a 14 year old once remarked: “Who’d want to live there!!?”

Our liberal Anglican tradition has shied away from being too specific about the after-life. Rather we have said that just as in life we are in God, so in death. Heaven is where God is. And God is everywhere, even here. In other words the tradition is somewhat agnostic about life after death – acknowledging that there is no certainty about it. Yet, it also affirms that God breaks the boundaries of normal and may break this one too.

The Bible is fuzzy on the specifics of what happens after death. Rather the writers paint verbal pictures of what it might be like.

Revelations 21, for example, describes a heavenly city, Jerusalem the Golden, walled with wonderful gates of precious stones. The streets are made of gold. The yellow brick road captures our imagination. There is something quite decadent about walking on wealth. The gates are always open. All are welcome to come or go.

For the poor and impoverished this vision of the after-life was very appealing. There was welcome and wealth. They might have imagined that this was God’s justice, making up for all their earthly hardships.

Another picture is John 14:2 “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Heaven is envisioned as a huge hotel. There is room there for everyone, and everyone has a room. God cares for each individual person, providing them with their own suite. It also allows for diversity – we don’t all have to fit, be squeezed, into the same room. Physically, spiritually, and sexually we can be different, we can be ourselves.

For those who are homeless, who have never had a room of their own, who have been pushed about by government policies and sardined into the schemes of others… such a vision of space and respect has great appeal. Again they might have thought that God was making up for their earthly sufferings and giving them happiness they hadn’t previously known.

A third biblical picture of heaven is of a party. Isaiah 25: “On this mountain [God] will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines... and [God] will swallow up death and wipe away the tears.” This is a celebration. God has saved the people and now they are partying. Here the wealth is evident in the food and its abundance. Here all peoples are welcome, akin to the hotel picture. Here, unlike the former two pictures, there are people connecting with other people. Here food for the stomach and soul are shared.

There are other pictures of heaven presented in the Bible: the throne room, singing, white robes, judgement, and angels. The point is that the Bible doesn’t have one view of heaven as if someone had been to a literal place and taken snapshots. Instead the Bible includes different and various pictures in order to implicitly criticise the validity of any one picture. It is saying that the “dwelling” of God is bigger than our ideas of it, the canvas bigger than what we can possibly paint.

The vision of heaven as hope for the impoverished, homeless, and hungry has had an appeal down through the ages. Yet the vision was always broader than physical needs. As in Revelations 21, John 14, and Isaiah 25 it included welcome, individual respect and space, and connection with others. Happiness required more than the money, housing, and food.

The academic discipline called the School of Positive Psychology agrees with this. They have done numerous studies searching for the ingredients of happiness and have come up with three staples.

The first is that which caters for our body, appetites, and feelings of wellbeing. This is family, friends, relationships, money, cars, holidays, parties, sport, wine, overseas travel, good food, and coffee. It is the sensation of hearing beautiful music or skiing down a mountain. It is also the sensation of being loved and valued.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that this is all there is to happiness. ‘With wealth, health, relationships, and opportunities anyone and everyone will be happy.’ Well, they are certainly ingredients but not the whole cake.

The second staple of happiness is altruism. By that I mean being a part of something and contributing to something beyond our individual or familial needs. It is about doing something for the good of others and being part of something bigger than ourselves. In those slightly antiquated words like ‘service’ and ‘charity’ there is an important ingredient in our quest to find meaning and happiness. When we give, when we do something for others, when we nurture the wellspring of generosity within us, we nurture our own soul.

The third staple of happiness is purpose. The person who has a goal and the drive to fulfil it experiences another particular type of happiness. That purpose might be to create a supportive family, or build a house, or achieve in sport, or develop a project, or discover a cure. It is achievement focussed. Of course when a person has multiple goals, as many of us do, then frequently the time demands of the goals conflict – like being successful at work and successful at parenting. There is also the necessity and art of continually setting new goals and finding new purpose, such as around the time of retirement from paid work.

When purpose becomes purely the creation of wealth, and wealth is purely for personal enjoyment, then the potential for happiness is reduced. Happiness requires us to have or find meaning that is more than the satisfaction of our appetites.

The proponents of positive psychology say that we need all three ingredients in order to be happy. We need good feelings, to give to others, and to have purpose. This is why religions – which seek to do all three – are important in society.

It is also why discipline and self-restraint are important. Popular TV shows usually promote self-gratification. It’s all about body, booty, and babes. Yet happiness requires the discipline of giving your resources to a cause much bigger than ourselves and the discipline of focussing on a purpose. To feed the world we need to constrain our appetites.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote in reference to Western Society ‘one almost never sees voluntary restraint… Left without electric power for a few hours only all of a sudden crowds of citizens start looting and creating havoc. [This indicates] a social system quite unstable and unhealthy.’

In the political life of our nation it is timely to contemplate upon these things. ‘What can the Government give me?’ is not the only question. Nor is the question ‘What can I give to others?’ There are also questions about what is our communal purpose, what might we offer the world, and what might we have to do differently – even give up – in order to achieve it? I listen for what any politician or party might be saying about these important questions of vision, meaning, and ultimately happiness.

The biblical visions of heavenly happiness; of having a home, income, and food; of having respect, space, and connection with each other; continue to inform our vision of earthly happiness. Yet these need to be placed alongside the life of Jesus. For in him we see a life filled with friendship and fellowship, with generosity and self-giving, and with purpose and its discipline.

To the 14 year old who disdains the idea of a cloudy, white, heavenly after-life I offer the meaning, variety, and well-being of a Jesus-life for the now and any hereafter.

October 19, 2008

Barry Gosper

St Luke’s Day

I would like to share something of my spiritual and theological journey this morning in relation to the scripture reading from Luke 4:14-21. In particular the quote from Isaiah 61 where Jesus says “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

It’s interesting to note that Jesus chose both Galilee and the local synagogue to commence his teaching. Galilee was an area north of Palestine. The name itself means circle. It was called this because it was encircled by a diverse range of cultures and nationalities. As a result of this it had a progressive reputation amongst the more conservative parts of Palestine. The population at the time of Jesus was similar to that of New Zealand today. The Galileans themselves were the Highlanders of Palestine. As a group of people they enjoyed change and were always ready to follow innovative leaders.

This is the land in which Jesus started his ministry. He began in the synagogue. The synagogue was the real centre of religious life in Palestine. Although there was only one Temple, the law stated that wherever there were ten Jewish families there must be a synagogue. The Temple was designed for sacrifice; the synagogue for teaching. The synagogue service combined three different aspects. The worship part in which prayer was offered, the reading of the scriptures which was translated from the original Hebrew into either Aramaic or Greek and the teaching part which was shared by members of the congregation. It was here that Jesus took the opportunity to express the intention of his ministry.

The scripture passage talks about how Jesus was praised by everyone. The event took place prior to the controversy later associated with his radical teaching. However, once Jesus started to imply that God had favour for the Gentiles as well as the Jews he met plenty of opposition within the congregation and ended up having to leave town to avoid being inflicted with some serious physical harm.

Although the people had welcomed some of the new teaching of Jesus, which they had given him praise for, they weren’t ready to accept or tolerate some of the extremes of this teaching. Jesus seemed to be implying that the concept of God’s love was for everyone. And not only love for everyone, but an unconditional love which did not favor or exclude. What a thought!

When I think about my own past, there was a time when I would have been clearly in the same camp as this angry congregation which confronted Jesus about his extreme and somewhat inclusive teaching. My conservative Christian background taught me very clearly that the Christian message was primarily for those who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. It was for those who were prepared to renounce the evils of their sinful nature to embrace the purity and holiness of God. This could only be gained from following the explicit teachings of Jesus. However, I have now come to appreciate that the interpretation of these teachings of Jesus were very selective. My church clearly believed that they could only be interpreted through the eyes of an Armenian, Wesleyan theology.

When I look at this passage of Scripture today I see it through different eyes. I think one interpretation of it could be that the good news to the poor is about social justice and giving a voice to those who have been excluded and condemned by the religious conservatives. To proclaim release to the captives could be about freeing up the restrictions placed upon spiritual belief by the so called authorities within the wider church. Recovery of sight to the blind might be about opening our eyes to the truths of the gospel message rather than the contrived separatist notions of Evangelical Christians. And to let the oppressed go free, could be about giving people permission to explore their own spiritual pathway without the confines of having to adhere to or believe the dogma and doctrine of any particular religious authority.

When did this theological journey start to change for me? I think it has been over a period of years. However, there have been some significant events in my life that created opportunities for a shift in thinking. One of these took place at the start of this new millennium. Our church leadership had concerns about the continuing decline in attendance and membership of our churches throughout the country. As a result of this Patricia and I were given the opportunity from our leadership to establish and develop a new church centre as a strategy of growth. We were exited about this prospect and our vision was that this new church would be a place of safety for those who wanted to explore the whole concept of faith and God within an open environment. It would be place that would allow us to engage with the surrounding community without sensing the need to convert people to our way of thinking or believing. Our leadership had allocated a large budget to this venture and it appeared that we had their permission to explore different ways of doing and being church. These were exiting times for us.

As part of my preparation for embarking on this new venture I had been going to a professional supervisor who was in the process of exploring different and more creative ways of delivering her service. She had grown up in a fairly conservative Christian home, her father the local minister of a Methodist church. However, over the years she had grown tired of what she perceived as the shallowness of Christian thinking and had moved away from organised religion to explore her own spiritual pathway. When I met her she was about to embark on a different way of doing supervision. Her concept was to invite three separate groups of people, from a diverse range of professional backgrounds, to be involved in a combination of individual and group supervision.

Each group was made up of six people and her idea was that we would meet with her once a month for individual professional supervision and once a month for group supervision. The six people involved in my group included two psychologists, a university lecturer, a natural health provider, a massage therapist and myself. I was the only minister and the only person involved in any form of organized religion. In fact, the others in the group hadn’t had much formal or social contact with church clergy before.

I must confess that initially, I saw this as a golden opportunity to share my interpretation of the gospel message to these non-churched professionals. Although I enjoyed the company and open discussion with my fellow group members, I would often feel the need to enlighten them to the truths of the Christian gospel. However, during the following months, I began to appreciate the diverse range of spiritual journeys experienced and expressed by these interesting and gifted people. What had been a form of tolerance of other faith journeys for me became an appreciation and acceptance of other ways of thinking and being.

As a group we would spend two or three weekends a year staying at a place called Castle Hill on the West Coast of the South Island. It was a beautiful location surrounded by mountains, streams and native bush. Together, and individually we discovered many ways of experiencing God in this magnificent environment. This overall enriching experience was an invaluable aspect my preparation for someone about to explore a new concept of church.

Throughout the four years Patricia and I were involved in this new church development, my theological thinking changed a great deal. I no longer placed much importance on the concept of sin, or non-believer, or in fact, on the whole notion of salvation as interpreted by my church leadership. This, I believe, was one of the contributing factors in my leadership loosing some confidence in my ability to carry out this project in a way that would suit their expectations. Over time our funding for the project was dramatically reduced to a stage that made it almost impossible to resource. The end result was closure of the venture after a relatively short space of time.

However, despite this major disappointment, my theological journey didn’t stop. I had only just begun. It was to further develop when we came to Auckland. After running a local church and community centre in West Auckland we transferred to the Bridge Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Centre in Mt Eden. A part of my responsibility here was to help set up a new Rehabilitation Centre in Manukau. This included establishing contacts with other agencies and groups within the South Auckland community. One of the outcomes from discussions within these community groups was to identify the need to establish a place where people from various backgrounds, particularly those in recovery from alcohol and drugs, could meet to explore the whole concept of spirituality and faith. This was the place where my new understanding of Luke 4:18 was to flourish: the poor... the captives... the blind and the oppressed were responding to an interpretation of the reported words of Jesus that began to heal the wounds of their childhood church battering.

Like other groups of people within the community, many of the clients we were working with in the Bridge Programme had harmful experiences of organised religion and church. They weren’t opposed to the concept of a God, just opposed to those people who claimed exclusive ownership of God. As I had responsibility for leading and teaching the Spirituality component of the Bridge Programme at Manukau I saw this as a great opportunity to again explore and develop a different concept of church. The Mt Eden Bridge Centre had been running a Recovery Church for a number of years which gave us some idea of a starting point for this venture.

Our vision for the new church was that it would be a place where people could come along and explore the idea of a God and faith without getting bogged down with doctrine and dogma. We promoted the idea that this church would be a place where you could belong before you believed.

A number of clients who had recently completed the programme, helped me create such an environment. The worship style was fairly contemporary and the theological teaching quite open-ended. It didn’t take long for the church to grow as people found it to be a safe place to explore God and spirituality, without having to adhere to any particular form of Christian doctrine. I enjoyed being involved, and appreciated the freedom I felt in developing such an open church. However, the strategy of the leadership within the church began to focus more on getting people saved and converted to a more conservative form of Christianity.

Although this new recovery church continued to grow, I started to feel more restrained in my exploration and development of a more liberal theology.

In this regard, one of the crunch points for me was to attend a spiritual retreat arranged by our church for leaders currently involved in social work activities. The retreat involved a week’s teaching relating to the writings and theology of a Bible scholar who lived and practiced his ministry in the late 1800’s in England and the USA. I found the teaching to be outdated and irrelevant to today’s context. One of the only redeeming features of the week was the opportunity each of the attendees had to share something of their own spiritual journeys. I found these sharing times interesting and encouraging.

When it came to my turn to share I didn’t hold back any of my progressive thinking in relation to faith and my experience of God outside of the context of an Armenian Wesleyan theology. Although I had a real sense of freedom about sharing my theological journey I sensed that the leadership within the organization felt very uncomfortable with my liberal views. Again, I think there was a growing lack of confidence from the movement’s leadership in my ability to carry out my responsibilities within an appropriate theological context. The end result for Patricia and I was an offer from the leadership to lead a small local church and centre in a remote setting on the West Coast of the South Island. Out of harms way! Although some aspects of this offer were a little tempting for me, it just wasn’t practical or appropriate for us as a family to accept the appointment. So we resigned from this stage of our journey.

During the months prior to our resignation I had been reading a number of books from such writers as John Spong, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Lloyd Geering and other heretical scholars and teachers. These people, along with my increased involvement at St Matthew's, have contributed to my progressive theological journey, which is still in process. I think that it would be fair to say that I have become increasingly comfortable with the uncomfortableness of uncertainty. As the words in our liturgy describe, we leave behind the certainties of the past.

In Marcus Borg’s book entitled ‘The Heart of Christianity’ he talks about two forms of Christianity today. Firstly, he describes what he calls an earlier paradigm of thinking which has been shared by most Christians in Western culture. This form of Christianity views the Bible as the unique revelation of God, emphasizes its literal meaning, and sees Christian life as centred in believing now for the sake of salvation later – believing in God, the Bible, and Jesus as the way to heaven. Christianity is seen as the only true religion. Borg then describes what he calls the ‘emerging paradigm’ of Christian thinking which is the product of Christianity’s encounter with the modern and postmodern world, including science, historical scholarship, religious pluralism, and cultural diversity.

Like Marcus Borg, the earlier way of thinking and believing no longer works for me. It’s time to move on and to share a gospel message that demonstrates love and encourages hope. For me, the words of Jesus in Luke 4:18 give new meaning to the idea of bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, giving recovery of sight to the blind and letting the oppressed go free. I think that any organization that calls itself a church, but attempts to prohibit our progress in this journey of faith, needs to re-evaluate the true meaning of church. I look forward to moving on in my faith journey in this sacred and inclusive environment of free spiritual exploration. In the words of Marcus Borg’s wife, Marianne, I am a ‘lover of faith, seeking a faith to love.’ (Borg, M. 2003)

Borg, M. (2003) The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a life of faith. New York: Harpers

October 12, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 22     Matthew 22:1-14

In recounting his own spiritual journey Barack Obama describes his mother’s scepticism about religion: “For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb or piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.” [The Audacity of Hope, p 203].

When I listen to Matthew’s version of the parable of the wedding banquet, I can appreciate her view. Matthew has Jesus telling about a king who prepares a lavish wedding feast for his son, but the guests don’t show up. Miffed, he sends his soldiers to kill them. He then invites the hoi poloi off the streets. However, one shows up dressed inappropriately. When challenged by the king about why, he remains silent. The king responds by having him unceremoniously tossed from the party into the outer darkness where he is expected to weep and gnash his teeth. This Matthew says is the kingdom of heaven.

In the US many restaurants have a sign on the front door: “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” Matthew’s parable posts a similar sign on the pearly gates: “No shirt, no shoes, no salvation.” It certainly doesn’t sound heavenly to me.

This parable an example of all that is wrong with religion. Because I can’t remember ever hearing a good sermon on it I went online to see if I had just been unlucky. After reading half a dozen more, I had to stop. I was having trouble controlling my gag-reflex. I wish I could assure you that this sermon will turn the tide, but I fear as I grow older I’m becoming more like McCain – grumpier and crankier about the institution I’ve devoted my life too. I see in this parable the seeds of my church’s demise.

But I’m using language too loosely. This parable really isn’t a parable. It is an allegory. Jesus didn’t tell allegories, but Matthew loved them. What’s the difference? For Jesus a parable is an extended metaphor. It is a short narrative usually raising a single spiritual point. It is intended to be less an answer than an intriguing glimpse of a hidden reality. His parables are often surprising and paradoxical. He tells them to break us out of our preconceived and life-sapping notions. Matthew, on the other hand, had a theological axe to grind. For him a good allegory slightly veiled was a useful rhetorical device to argue his point. An allegory uses a fictional story to represent a specific situation, with the intention of arguing a moral to the story. It is intended to tell us how to think and behave, while a parable opens up our thinking that we might creatively pursue abundant life.

Matthew’s allegory of the wedding banquet is fictionalising a real conflict going on while he is writing his Gospel. Jews who were following the radical teachings of the Nazarene were increasingly suspect by the orthodox. To their way of thinking Jesus’ followers were undermining the social structure by challenging the purity laws. They were threatening the neighbourhood by being open to receiving Gentiles. The result was the Nazarenes were being cast out of the synagogues and condemned as heretics. Matthew was one of those Nazarene’s. He responds to rejection by castigating his fellow Jews (planting the seeds of the church’s later anti-Semitism), and claiming the outcast Nazarenes are the new Israel.

In his allegory of the wedding banquet those who reject the invitation of the king are the Jews. The king, in case you missed it, is God and the bridegroom’s Jesus. The servants that he sends to convince them to come are the prophets and finally Jesus, who in an earlier allegory we heard last week is the cornerstone the builders rejected. When the king destroys the Jews he is destroying Jerusalem. The B-guest list who are subsequently invited to the feast are those the purity laws excluded, the poor. The invitation itself is God’s grace offered the undeserving, the good and the bad alike. It is less clear who is the unfortunate guest tossed for bad fashion sense. If he represents the poor, Matthew does not explain how he was supposed to get a black tie for the event. But most scholars suggest that the guest is an allegorical figure for those who after receiving God’s grace are judged as not living a life reflective of the kingdom. For Matthew it is all about being saved and there are no second chances. Those who don’t accept Jesus are killed. Those who accept him but don’t wear a cloak of righteousness are tossed into hell. Matthew was quite fond of describing Hell as involving lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. He was also big on judgment.

Down through the centuries the church has shown a fondness for this allegory. God as judge and king are favoured metaphors of the divine and the church has only been too happy to serve as God’s fashion police. Matthew has been used to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, burning heretics and, less dramatically, excommunication.

As the sermons I scanned online will attest many preachers are still fond of the allegory as well. They wax poetic about God’s grace offered to everyone, but then with relish turn their attention to those who are not convinced by their rhetoric. They pronounce judgment with as much zeal as Matthew’s King-Judge God. The only difference between Matthew and them is that the fashions have changed. The cloak of righteousness now belongs to those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb and proclaim Jesus as Lord and Saviour. They are not too concerned about what is beneath the cloak. A Sarah Palin gets to stay at the party no matter how vile and racist her campaign remarks. A Barack Obama gets tossed no matter how “Christian” he “claims” to be because he does not condemn people of other faiths or lifestyles the Palin Christians find objectionable.

Is there any wonder that Christianity is losing its appeal in developed countries? Using Jesus to bash and judge just doesn’t draw the numbers it once did.

Two years ago at the Diocesan Synod a strategic plan for growing the Anglican Church in Auckland was proposed and passed. It is a startling document that focuses on what the diocese must do to respond to the anticipated population growth in the area. It cites projections that the area will grow by 400,000 over the next 20 years.

The document reassures us that people will still need the Gospel. In words that sound more like someone whistling past the graveyard, it asserts bravely, “We should not expect its demise or failure.” The reason we should be confident is that we have various resources, property, money, experience and our traditions. Lastly, we have good intentions and are capable of being intentional. How should we be intentional? Buy land, train more clergy (yeah right, just what we need), close or merge underperforming congregations, partner with other Tikanga or denominations; coach parishes in trouble in the latest church growth methods are amongst the suggestions. If we do all that, it says without irony, we might get 1.5% or 6000 of that 400,000 who are coming to Auckland.

This pathetic goal is the fruit of Matthew’s allegory. The Gospel has gotten lost in judgment. I would have more hope for diocesan growth if at least somewhere in its 30 pages it suggested we had to rediscover the Gospel message of love and acceptance and develop ministries that offered it to all 400,000 newcomers whether or not they ever sit in an Anglican pew. I don’t base that opinion on my bleeding heart liberal views but on a statistic that is not in the report. While St Matthew’s doesn’t have the biggest budget in the diocese and comes nowhere close to having the largest Sunday attendance, no Anglican parish comes close to us in the number of weddings or, more importantly, baptisms we celebrate annually. There is only one reason. We have no preconditions to being married or baptised. All are welcome, just as all are welcome at Communion. Maybe there is something to our focus on inclusive grace rather than righteous judgment. Allegorically speaking, we seek to be one of Jesus’ parables; not one of Matthew’s allegories.

We justify our position on Jesus’ parable of the banquet that Matthew has reshaped. There are two other existing versions of the parable, one in Luke and one in the Gospel of Thomas. Theirs are quite different from Matthew’s. Less allegorical they focus on the point that the heavenly banquet table is open to all without condition.

There is also a third version no one wrote down – the one Jesus told. By comparing the three, scholars believe we can begin to uncover what might have been in Jesus’ original parable. In his there would have been no king; he’s only in Matthew’s. Those who refused to come would not have been killed. That’s only in Matthew’s. No one would’ve been tossed. Again, that unfortunate guest only goes to Matthew’s banquet. What would have remained is simply this, people are free to choose to come to the party or not, but all are invited to share in abundant life, especially those who society rejects. So, if Jesus had included in his parable the guest without black tie, he would’ve welcomed him to the banquet table, contrary to Matthew. That is a message worth proclaiming and building a church upon. Maybe even Obama’s mama might attend such a church.

October 5, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 22     Exodus 20:1-20     Matthew 21:33-46

Spring 2008 has been a disturbing time from the global to the local. And it continues to be. We are warned of dire global shockwaves if a financial meltdown is allowed to happen in America. Even an obscene bail-out does not reduce the fury or the apprehension over such blatant greed and misuse of power. Locally we witness sheer goodness being rewarded with an ignominious, pointless and tragic death in the street. One stab is all it took.

Our anxieties rise as we consider the supposed fall out and we discuss and condemn an economic system gone ballistic or should I say bankrupt. The spectre of the Great Depression of the 1930’s is invoked and we remember our parents speaking of it with grave and sombre voices.

We wonder if we would rush to help someone in distress anymore and we worry about a society where random acts of murder are becoming more commonplace. It could so easily have been a member of our own family – someone we love. What are we to make of it all?

We have just listened to the 10 commandments – ancient edicts given so a people can live together and flourish. ‘Given that the people may believe, walk in them and be blessed thereby’ as one commentator puts it. Belief in God is primary and personal – upon which all else hinges.

The first four commandments are about our obligations to God and the second six are about our obligations to our neighbour. Mostly they continue to underpin our 21st century relationships, our society and culture just as they did then. In all the commandments love is the overriding motive - directed in a way that prohibits those things that warp or destroy love. They apply to all areas of life and fall into three main categories. These are the moral which appeals to our individual hearts and minds, the civic – how we live together equably and administer justice, and third is religious – how we live our relationship with God and how this underpins all life.

The two commandments that speak to the local and global events expressed are those that enjoin us not to murder and not to covet. Murder is the most extreme contempt for the sanctity of life. Covetousness is a deep craving for that which does not belong to a person and surfaces in acts of murder. It underpins the insatiable greed which led to the current financial crisis in America.

Underscoring both events is gross limitless and psychotic self-interest. Both are about death – the death of goodness, the death of love, the death of God.

Our world is wildly diverse, crazy and wonderful, and increasingly shrill and worrisome. Bombarded as we are with media and the restless immediacy it brings, issues get lost and we roll over as the next one appears on the horizon. We live our lives as well as possible and we try to have a good time. But sometimes things happen that cause enough shock and dismay to make us stop and think longer and more deeply as these two events have.

We are presented with a society become shallow, based upon accumulation and greed and the fallout from that – murder in the streets maybe. That’s not new – it has happened since time immemorial, but in today’s world it is much more lethal. It also rejects God.

Post-modernity and the way in which everything is made relative to this or to that, has, in a way, made mush of us all – we also can become shallow by diminishing our own Christian faith, in our desire to include other faiths. We have largely assumed a bystander’s point of view in matters other than ecclesial and personal much of the time. We don’t actually assert much other than our desire for peace and love. We don’t really hustle for justice or scream for truth, or tell people they need God in their lives.

Over these last couple of weeks, alongside being a pluralist hands-off liberal or progressive Christian, I have moved towards thinking that I must strongly profess the goodness and truth of my own faith perspective and be vigilant in what I perceive as public debate from that standpoint. As many people have asserted, Christian fundamentalism (by that phrase I mean those who understand the Bible as literal truth and believe the world is divided into the saved and the damned) has dominated the Christian airwaves for too long. We cannot be passive any longer. The world needs all the help it can get and we really say very little.

On the bright side, however, I must admit to being surprised and pleased when I heard on BBC radio that Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of York both strongly condemned the repugnant and deathly greed in America that led to the virtual collapse of the market.

But, they didn’t say we need God or any such thing did they, and that’s because God and anything spiritual has been sort of privatized. Most rational good Christian people are reticent about what makes their world turn, and in the wake of our modern world God has got lost for the vast majority. And perhaps – perhaps this loss of God has taken away an anchor that held things in check. That kept people ethical and concerned. That pricked our consciences when we let things slide. That held us true to a credo, a person, a spiritually inspired hope that we could believe in.

On a personal level and as a single woman some rather hilarious experiences have happened to me since becoming a Priest. There I am looking sharp at a party and this guy and I get chatting and we laugh over common points of interest and everything is hunky-dory. Then I casually mention I am a priest and – all of a sudden he starts talking about moral issues and gets all righteous about things … amazing! But I also realize that his perspective on Christianity is the old-school control/fear/judgement/hell stuff that our more fundamentalist brethren tend to promote. So instead of yawning next time I am going to give him or her a blast.

What am I going to blast them with? I guess I shall talk about what are experiential realities for me. I need God. I’m not sure whether God needs me or even what God is really. But I know that I have an inward space, a relationship with something infinitely mysterious and greater than me that draws me to truth and love and justice and all those bedrock values that make life good and worth living.

To return to the commandments I also know that I have awful weaknesses and ugly bits too – and often I glimpse them in my family history. Our sentence for the day reiterates this when it says we will be punished for the iniquity of the parents and so on – reflecting the legacy we all receive in our different ways from within our families. I suffer hugely when I do something mean and regret dogs my footsteps for days. As our prayer states – this is a function of love.

The commandments all turn on the first. “I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods but me.” To me this asks us to look towards something infinitely greater than we are, something quite cosmic that rests in goodness and love and mutuality. It asks us to turn inwards to find the space and time for the God who inexplicably dwells within. Without that life can indeed become shallow, and desire twists and snakes into greed – the greed of men who amass sordid fortunes on the turn of a wheel, who trade in death.

When we lose sight of the first commandment the rest become merely rules and rules are, as some wits like to say, ‘made to be broken.’ And in doing so we break ourselves, our families, our societies and our world. That is the message of the commandments.

October 5, 2008

Clay Nelson

125th Anniversary of the SPCA     A Service of Thanksgiving and Blessing

Welcome, welcome, welcome especially to our furry, woolly, feathered and scaly friends who make this annual service so lively. And I want to reassure any wolves, moose or caribou in the congregation, that while I’m an American, you are perfectly safe. I am neither from Alaska nor a Republican.

And welcome also to those of you who love them enough to bring them to a special service of thanksgiving and blessing. A service of thanksgiving for the 125 years the Auckland SPCA has devoted to their care and protection, sadly from humans, and a service of blessing to thank our animal friends for the many ways they enrich our lives.

For instance we could hardly describe ourselves as human without them. She works like a dog. He eats like a pig while she eats like a bird. Trying to lead a congregation is like herding cats, because we don' t want to be "a pack of lemmings" or even a flock of sheep. Those who annoy us get our goat. The incompliant are stubborn as a mule or just bull-headed. The fearful are timid as a mouse. We lionise the brave. Those who evade responsibility are slippery as an eel. A-type personalities are busy as bees. The clever are cunning as a fox. The meek are cowed, the rambunctious horse around and only the dogged ferret out the truth. Without them, even Jesus could not have advised his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Aside from providing useful metaphors for our human nature, we all know we couldn’t survive without our non-human friends. They provided covering for our fragile skins, food for our empty bellies, bones for tools, oil for light, free labour for our fields and farms, and subjects for scientific experiments that have benefited you and me.

While humans aren’t always the sharpest tack in the box of animal species, 20,000 years ago we figured out how useful they could be. Dogs we discovered could be useful in hunting. Seven thousand to 9000 years ago we learned to keep livestock and dogs were useful in protecting them. We began breeding them to improve on their usefulness beyond hunting and guarding. For instance the poodle was bred to find valuable truffles buried in the ground for the royal dinner table. Poodles were apparently much easier to manage than wild boars who are equally adept at finding them.

Thinking about the usefulness of animals, I began to wonder about who was using whom. This occurred to me because whatever else I am, I am a boy with a dog.

Not just any dog: His name is Zorro. As a puppy he had a black mask, which has faded with age. But his swashbuckling nature has not. He is somewhat famous in Auckland because he rides on my back as I commute to the church over the Harbour Bridge on my Vespa. He has logged 25,000 kilometres with his ears flying and tongue hanging. Countless tourists, one photojournalist and two motorcycle cops have snapped his picture. When he arrives each morning he is eager to greet his workmates and to assume his duties of checking out all who visit St Matthew’s. I confess though that today is not his favourite day of the year. He is a little overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of so many non-humans invading his territory. While St Matthew’s prides itself on its inclusiveness, Zorro is not convinced.

Zorro and I have known each other since he was one week old. While his is a rare breed from Madagascar, he’s a Yank from Santa Barbara. You can tell by his accent.

He began training me from the moment his eyes opened. I didn’t fully appreciate that fact until I took him to obedience school as a yearling because of his stubborn nature. I was surprised to learn that the school was not for him. It was for me so I could communicate with him better. He has been patient with me these seven years since and I am getting more obedient every day.

He has been a wonderful mentor over these years, teaching me more than I have time to share this morning. But let me offer one instance.

While the Bible puts humankind in charge of the animal kingdom that is really only wishful thinking on our part. In truth there is much more mutuality than the Bible suggests. Zorro has taught me that animals don’t exist for our exploitation. He reminds me daily that they are here for us and we are here for them.

When Zorro was only weeks old I suffered a painful neck injury that nearly immobilised me and made it impossible to sleep. Zorro never left my side, welded to my hip. Today I remember his comfort more than the pain. Seven years later calcification in his neck pinched nerves making it difficult for him to walk. Remembering his love, compassion and faithfulness, I sought to return it in his time of need. I hope he, too, remembers the comfort more than the pain.

Throughout our relationship there have been many experiences that have blurred the lines of who is master and who is pet. As a result Zorro and I are neither. We are companions.

I suspect animals always understood this but we are just catching on. Besides leading the blind, companion dogs are everywhere. They let the deaf know when the phone or door bell ring, dispense love to the elderly in rest homes, aid the healing process by visiting the sick in hospitals, reassure children learning to read, and protect us from ourselves on the streets as K-9 cops working hand and paw with their human partners.

While this part of my learning is typical of any boy and his dog story, I would like to take it to another level. Zorro has patiently taught me that one of us is not dominant over or more important than the other. In doing so he has trained me to be more sensitive to and respectful of all creation not just because it is the nice thing to do or politically correct but because it is essential to the well-being, if not survival, of human and animal alike. Creation, he reminds me, is a web in which we are all inter-connected. It is in that connection I experience whatever it is I mean by God.

Sometimes I think that he sees his task as teaching me to be a better human being. It is because of him I care about the treatment of animals raised to feed me. I now buy range-free meat and dairy. It is because of him I eat less meat. It is because of him I squish fewer bugs. It is because of him I support politicians committed to protecting the environment. It is because of him I treat others of my species better than I might otherwise. He has taught me well that we are all companions on the way. Because of that I consider myself blessed. Look around and know you are as well.

September 28, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 20

There are some theological ideas and doctrines that we think are plainly wrong. They don't fit with our experience of God and life. We often find Christians who hold to such ideas difficult to converse with, although we try to be understanding and tolerant.

Then there are some theological ideas and doctrines that over time prove to be plainly silly. They are examples of ancient ‘common sense’ or metaphors wrapped in God language that now in hindsight and with greater scientific knowledge make no sense.

And then there are some theological ideas and doctrines that are just plainly dangerous. Like asbestos they need to carefully extricated from all teaching and preaching and destroyed. Tolerance is not an option. Hell is one such doctrine.

We can laugh about hell, sell pizzas on the strength of it, but the sad fact is that it’s beyond a joke. There is a significant and horrific history in the Church of imprisonment and torture premised on the supposed existence of hell. Bishops palaces, like Lambeth, had their own torturer and torture chamber. They believed that by threat or the administration of pain someone who was deemed heretical – and all the current and most of the past clergy of St Matthew’s would be included – could not only be made to recant but would have their spiritual wellbeing and post-life prospects improved. By inflicting pain in this life the torment of hell in the next life might be avoided.

The logic of such cruelty was that in order for us to be good and holy there had to be a deterrent. As God has a torture chamber called hell to scare us into prayer, so the Church also is justified in inflicting pain. It is an anti-gospel of coercion and violence.

If you think this logic belongs back in Tudor England or in the dark recesses of medieval Europe then read in the latest Taonga the views of a leading New Zealand evangelical Anglican, the Revd Dr Peter Carrell. I quote, “All those who are not saved from their sin… are headed for hell.” And again he writes, “If it did not exist, hell as a place of punishment would be invented.”

Dr Carrell seems to understand hell as essential for three reasons: Firstly, ‘our response to the Gospel matters’. Meaning, I suppose, that if we choose not to accept it we will get smacked over by God’s horny assistants. Secondly, ‘God’s justice is real’. Meaning, I suppose, that justice requires offenders to be slowly roasted in the hell-fire. Lastly, he argues that without the motivation to avoid hell the need to preach and share the Good News in Jesus would be diminished. ‘Hell underlines urgency’. Meaning, I suppose, that people wouldn’t share their relationship with Jesus without a good dose of fear.

Hell is premised upon a God of reward and punishment, a God who is modeled on a feudal king with throne, court, and dungeon. When the feudal-king-God is blended with the intimate loving-parent-God that Jesus favoured problems arise.

Humanity is always in a childlike position with this reward-and-punishment deity. The relationship is marked by servitude not friendship. A behavioral modification approach, albeit modified from ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’, might be considered suitable for younger children in this reward-and-punishment parenting style but not for an adult’s relationship to his or her parent. It is hoped an adult relates his or her parents in an adult-to-adult way without threats, coercion, guilt, judgement, and punishment. Friends don’t threaten each other.

A second problem with this reward and punishment God is that instilling fear and threatening eternal torture are not what most parents and child welfare agencies consider good or appropriate parenting methods. Parents don’t send their children to eternal torment no matter what they’ve done. As the Scripture says, ‘Would a parent give their child a snake?’ [Luke 11:11] Rather parents want their children to flourish, to grow up psychologically strong without fear and threats, and in time to relate to them as friends. Of course fear has its own consequences including ill-health, dysfunction, and insecurity.

There is a quote attributed to Orlando Bloom, “How can you be in hell if you are in my heart?” It is central to the Gospel that the God-in-Jesus loves everyone unconditionally and holds all humanity in his/her heart. If this loving-parent-God has any integrity then there can’t be anyone in hell and neither can it exist.

But it gets worse. Hell also portrays God as a bully. It says, ‘If you don’t behave then God who is bigger and stronger and always right will use his boys with the pitchforks to physically and psychologically work you over. It’s for your own good of course. So, come to Church, raise your voices, pray… or suffer the consequences. There’s nothing like a good threat or toasting to assist your spiritual growth.’ Yeah, right.

So, the first foundational theological doctrine hell contaminates is the integrity of God as an intimate loving parent.

The second foundational theological doctrine hell contaminates is the traditional doctrine of omnipresence. If hell is a place without God, a place of separation, pain, and torment, then the notion that God is unbounded, infinite, and everywhere is plainly wrong.

There are numerous stories of gross evil happening throughout history, and maybe the one we are most familiar with is the Jewish Holocaust. The gas chambers, the inhumanity, the suffering, are seared upon the conscience of the Western Christian world. Was God absent? Yes. [Big pause]. And no. The God of power, might, and justice was absent. But time and again those who were there talk of glimpsing a god who was suffering alongside them.

As St Paul so powerfully said, ‘What can separate us from the love of God?’ [Romans 8:28] And he answers, ‘Nothing in all creation.’ There is nowhere where God is not. There is no three-tiered universe with heaven on top, middle earth, and hell on the bottom. Heaven is simply a symbolic way of talking about the presence of God. The reference in the Apostles Creed to Christ’s descent into hell is simply a symbolic way of saying there is no one nowhere outside of God-in-Jesus’ love. Death cannot separate us from the love of God. The alleged existence of hell creates a boundary around the love of God and therefore is anti-gospel.

Is there then no judgment and no justice? The Gospels don’t talk about hell but they do talk about judgment. While Christians differ over divine involvement in consequences there is a ‘reap what you sow’ maxim that pervades. There are rights and wrongs, good decisions and bad, and all have consequences. Like a stone in a pond a good deed or a bad one ripples out affecting the environment around.

Can there be judgment and justice without prisons and torture? For those who say ‘there must be a strong deterrent’ then on a theological level the same thinking creates a hell. However there are others of us who say that prisons and torture have never been an effective deterrent and indeed deny our common humanity. We believe there are other more effective ways of restoring people and protecting society. In this life or the next we don’t need a hell in order for there to be justice.

I think post-life judgement is just wishful projection – hoping we will be okay and others won’t. Hell of course has always been a convenient place to put those who are politically and theologically threatening to one's worldview. The post-life heaven that makes sense to me is one where we will all be there. For some that will be ‘heaven’ for others ‘hell’.

I think this-life judgement is along the lines of ‘reap what you sow’. The nasty, rich and famous neighbour might get all the accolades but his nastiness in time breeds nasty relationships around him. His judgement is living with himself. Now I know that this understanding of judgement sounds sort of lame compared to a full-on eternal rotisserie Dante barbeque. Yet I think Christians have to make a choice between either a God of reward and punishment who burns and tortures the baddies in hell or a God who is unconditional love and empowerment. You can’t have both. For fear is the antithesis of love.

Hell as an instrument of fear has contaminated Christianity for too long. As a literal or metaphorical place its effects are still the same: undermining the integrity and omnipresence of a God who is unfathomable and inexhaustible love. Hell has fostered an infantile spirituality of rewards and punishment. Hell has bred generations of preachers and churches who made their profits through fear. Hell needs to be extricated from Christianity. It is dangerous theological and psychological asbestos. It is anti-gospel. For as the writer of II Timothy wrote long ago, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.” [II Timothy 1:7] May we then bravely cast out the entire doctrine and mythology of hell until our great grandchildren will only ever think it was once a pizza company.

Amen.

September 21, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Feast of St Matthew

Like blowflies to a carcass of raw meat, religion always attracts an unsavoury element. Ideologues, legalists, and the narrow-minded swarm in turning ancient sayings, customs, and understandings into ecclesial laws and moral dictates, submerging the spiritual beneath their own needs to control and be controlled. Reformers like Jesus spend a lot of their time trying to swat them away.

It is amazing that the carcass of religion survives and can be taken, cleaned, prepared, cooked, and served to feed the spiritual desires and hopes of normal people.

St Matthew’s is part of religion. It offers a spiritual space you can get pleasantly lost in. It offers liturgies and music, people and events, thoughts and writings. It is a place of spiritual refreshment, a well for the thirsty rather than a club for the well-heeled.

When you are not part of a church, or have had a bad experience of it, it is difficult often to see past the blowflies religion attracts. Their noise and activity obscures all the good you hope is there

One of the concepts that Christianity talks about is sin. Rather than a list of what we think is naughty, bad, or evil the Bible offers a brief but profound description: ‘that which separates us from God’. For some there seems to be a great chasm between them and God. Sin is a big deal. For others, like me, it seems like acknowledging the air we breathe. God is and has always been very close even when I’m unaware. Nothing I can do will change that closeness. God is unconditional love. And unconditional means unconditional.

Blowflies love the notion of sin. They have turned it into an industry. They have compiled and graded huge lists of sins. They have devised complex methods of trying to diffuse God’s supposed wrath and earn approval. Judgement, guilt, misery, and ecclesial power mongers are the maggots produced.

The message of Jesus and St. Paul is that God doesn’t feel that separation between the divine and human. Their message is ‘You are forgiven, so live free’. Whether you understand that this is the result of the death and resurrection of Jesus [like Paul did], or whether you understand that this has always been the nature of the God called Love [like Jesus did], the message is the same: ‘Forget sin. Forget the things you think are blocking you from God. Sure get your relationships with other people as right as you can, but don’t think God has a list of grievances against you.’

When liturgies say week by week “Lamb of God you take away the sin of the world have mercy on us”, and “I am not worthy to gather up the crumbs from under your table”, I think God weeps. Blowfly thinking and blowfly readings of Scripture have triumphed. By our words we are saying that we don’t believe that God has taken away the sins of the world. We don’t believe that God has forgiven anything that ever needs to be forgiven. We don’t trust God. We don’t believe the 16th century Reformers understanding of ‘the once and for all’ nature of grace. We don’t believe we are loved unconditionally. We prefer to listen to that blowfly in our mind that continues to say we are not worthy.

As retired Bishop John Bluck once said about such theology, ‘It is like the cream doughnuts we had as kids. We know the taste and like it. We also know that it kills our hearts.’

God wants us to live free. God doesn’t see us as two-year olds who need constant scrutiny and control. God trusts us as adults. It is hard to spread a spiritual message of hope – a message that everyone is unconditionally loved, the Divine is known in that love, and together we can make the world a better place – when we don’t believe it. Or at least I think we don’t believe it. The authorised liturgies of the Anglican Church that thousands recite weekly declare our corporate disbelief in the power of God’s love and the enduring, atoning work of Jesus.

This is a large part of the reason our Worship Committee and I have been proactive, especially over the last year, in writing new liturgies that take God’s love seriously. It’s not a case of change for change’s sake, but change for integrity’s sake.

While all of us need to reflect on and examine our lives, our successes and failures, good things and bad, there is a huge difference between seeing our actions or even ourselves as ‘sinful’ and imagining that God sees us similarly. ‘Nothing can separate us from the love of God.’ This is the theological reality of the Gospel. We have been and always will be forgiven. God isn’t interested in the scratches we get when we fall off the bicycle of life. God wants us to get back on it, and live, love and pedal free. The blowflies want us to stay looking down at our bloody knees and forget the liberty of God.

As part of her service of installation a few weeks ago the Bishop of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews, prostrated herself before the altar and reportedly stayed there flat on the floor for some minutes. This is an old symbolic rite of unworthy subjects humbling themselves before a mighty king. It is also blowfly theology.

To use parental language for God: ‘Is this what a parent wants of their children? Is submission what a parent values, desires, and needs?’

Well, this is exactly what one sort of parent does want: the insecure parent. This is the parent who never wants their children to grow up. This is the parent who doesn’t want their children to become adults, make their own choices, and live their own lives. This is the parent who wants their children always to be dependent because they are frightened of losing them.

Maybe the greatest blasphemy is that blowflies have made us believe that God is insecure. That God needs us to be obedient submissive children rather than creative powerful adults. That God needs us to prostrate ourselves rather than stand tall, proud, and answer back. That God needs us to say every day that we are weak and God is strong. That God needs us to be insecure in order to disguise God’s own insecurity and fear.

And what we also know about insecure parents and the insecure children they produce is they are risk adverse. They won’t venture into new ways of thinking and acting. If we are going to heal this world, to thwart the violence and the greed that feeds it, we need to find new ways to think and act. That will involve taking risks.

I believe in a God whose love is secure. I believe in a God whose freedom is grounded in that love. I believe in a God who wants us to be secure and revel in the knowledge that we are loved and that we are free. Only then can we build relationships that express a selfless love and a courageous freedom.

I have used the metaphor of blowflies but it has this inadequacy: there are significant, powerful, religious and political interests in keeping people fettered, sinful, and spiritually insecure. They should not be underestimated. I call them blowflies, but remember they managed to kill Jesus. They managed to corrupt his message. They managed to instil in Christians the need for continuous repentance. They managed to promote and have widely accepted a view of humanity as untrustworthy. The Gospel of unconditional grace and empowerment has been turned into a rulebook of earned love and servitude.

This Church of St Matthew is named after a man who followed the grace and freedom of Jesus. He didn’t beat himself up every day of the week saying ‘Woe is me a sinner.’ Instead he moved on from being so defined and therefore so restricted. He left the bad things of his past behind. Let us likewise trust God, trust the message of Jesus, and get on with living loved, living free, and living powerfully in order that all may be loved, free and powerful.

September 14, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 18     Exodus 14:19-31     Matthew 18:21-35

The parting of the Red Sea – remember or imagine the impossibly high walls of water with the motley band of Israelites walking through to safety and the Egyptian army with horses and chariots being deluged and drowned – every last one of them. I think it was Cinemascope and one of the first movies I remember vividly from my childhood. When I look back I think that the rash of biblical movies in the 1950s and 1960s did as much to tell me important stories of the bible as Sunday school ever did. They were laced with lollies, and if I was lucky some hot chips to eat on the way home while still reliving what I had just seen. The Ten Commandments will always be Charlton Heston as Moses, the strong staunch leader who has a hotline to God and does miracles – remember the staff turning into a snake – now that was really freaky. In that era we didn’t question the story – it was part of our Christian heritage and just reinforced what we heard at Sunday school. Our God saved our good ancestors from the baddies who were out to get them and they were all killed. Just as it should be we understood. Life was uncomplicated.

We grow up and life bites and kisses, satisfies and infuriates, challenges and stabs, and along the way we find out a bit about ourselves. Quite a lot if it is our intention to live what is called the “examined life.” We learn that not everybody is like us and that they can do mean and horrible things that hurt us, make us cry and we never want to see them again, and maybe we dream that something really awful will happen to them. Then they’ll be sorry! Good job – they had it coming we might think secretly.

There is a difference about how we live individually and collectively that is reflected in the two readings today. Our world is governed by a largely retributive justice system where a person pays for their wrongdoing. Their crime is examined and the damage assessed, the life and record of the perpetrator may be taken into account and judgement is passed. Justice is seen to be done.

Forgiveness or mercy are not generally part of the picture. A debt is owed to society for crimes committed and the criminal must be seen to pay. This is all well and good and how we have developed as civilized people able to live en masse together in community. But it is a far cry from how we understand our progenitors, the first homosapiens, who killed primitively and indiscriminately merely to survive. Simplistically this gave rise to the Darwinian notion of the survival of the fittest. Certainly the strongest and mightiest would triumph over the weak and sickly.

Our Old Testament stories tell us of the forging of a people, a nation – the Israelites who banded together and who, with the might of the awesome God who defined them as a people, vanquished their enemies and survived. Rules were made as they became a people and these rules and laws for living together continue to inform much of our own legal systems today.

Our parable from Matthew reinforces the notion of paying for your debts. It’s quite a layered story ostensibly dealing with mercy or forgiveness over the payment of debts. As we hear, a King calls in his debts from a slave who owes him an unimaginable amount – millions if we do a literal translation and we know a slave could never get that amount together, but wait a minute – what was the King doing lending it to him anyway – and he’s left it this long and the debt has got so big… Well, the slave can’t pay – he grovels and abases himself. He flings himself on the mercy of the King who is going to sell him and his wife and children to recover the debt. And wait for it – Hallelujah, the King, Mr Super-rich, forgives him so he walks away free.

Wow – fantastic we think – how generous and wonderful for that poor lowly indebted slave.

But the story continues – the slave comes across a fellow slave who owes him just $10 and can’t pay – who pleads with him just as he did with the King. Demanding payment he just about throttles him to death and then has him thrown into debtor’s prison – all for a measly amount when he himself had been forgiven a fortune.

Other indignant slaves report this to the King who furiously condemns the mean and unforgiving slave and throws him into jail to be tortured till he pays up. The juxtaposition in this parable is between justice and mercy. It has often been understood as an allegory on God and heaven. I don’t hold to this idea as I don’t believe God is a torturer.

Framing this story are verses exhorting us to forgive others. At the beginning it is an infinite and total forgiveness without limits, seventy-seven times, forgiveness that should pervade our very souls. And at the end of the story, the threat of torture if we don’t forgive others from our hearts.

Forgiving is hard. As I mentioned before forgiving others can be difficult. But I believe that forgiving ourselves is harder and yet that is where forgiveness starts. Recrimination, self loathing, self criticism and guilt over realising sometimes too late what we have done are all common traits of being human. Our common life together is regulated by rules and laws that attempt to administer justice for crime by convicting the perpetrator and less commonly recompense the victim. This is not the forgiveness that Jesus talks about. I would like to suggest that the forgiveness that Jesus asks that we try to live is personal. It is primarily about ourselves and concerns the freedom and wholeness that elude us when resentment, anger and self-recrimination dominate our spirits and clutch at our hearts.

A personal anecdote. When I was training for ministry I spent a great year at St Peter’s church in Onehunga. My father’s family a few generations back lived in Onehunga and I knew that some worshipped there and were buried in the old churchyard on the street-front but I had never been to see them.

It was an interesting four sided plinth of marble structure with inscriptions of different members of the family on each side with suitable dedications. One tugged at my heart and has stayed with me ever since. A name was simply inscribed and underneath was poignantly written “Until the day break and the shadows flee away.”

I don’t know if you have had terrible and sleepless nights wrestling with pain and hurt or confusion but I have and I am sure you know what I mean. Concerns of the heart are always harder at night – perhaps because it is dark and quiet and there are no distractions. But it is usually because we are sick with hurt of some kind – sometimes unresolvable and something we somehow just have to work through. But I would like to offer the possibility that these tormented thoughts are based upon unforgiveness of some kind. That all our torment and inner anguish or even petty irritation is based upon lack of forgiveness for ourselves and our actions, our perceived stupidity, our culpability – because the inference is that if we cannot forgive ourselves then we cannot forgive others. If we hate ourselves then we hate the world, if we forgive ourselves we can forgive others as is written in our formal Anglican liturgies.

I believe that this is the liberating message of Jesus. That in forgiving ourselves for our very human weaknesses we are free to forgive others and leave our prisons of judgement and alienation behind. Only when we can do this do we become truly authentic and real, we become free to be as Jack Spong said “the best we can be” and the shadows flee away.

It about the paradox that Jesus poses between forgiveness and justice.

September 7, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 17     Matthew 18:15-20

A young rabbi found a serious problem in his new congregation. During the Friday service, half the congregation stood for the prayers and half remained seated, and each side shouted at the other, insisting that theirs was the true tradition. Nothing the rabbi said or did moved toward solving the impasse. Finally, in desperation, the young rabbi sought out the synagogue's 99-year-old founder. He met the old rabbi in the nursing home and poured out his troubles. "So tell me," he pleaded, "was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?" "No," answered the old rabbi." Ah," responded the younger man, "then it was the tradition to sit during the prayers?" "No," answered the old rabbi. "Well," the young rabbi responded, "what we have is complete chaos! Half the people stand and shout, and the other half sit and scream." "Ah," said the old man, "that was the tradition."

I think we all know conflict and division are not just the tradition of the rabbi’s congregation. Having just endured watching the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions, the tradition is alive and well in national politics there and here. It appears to be the tradition of Lambeth Conferences as well, if the last one is any indication. Some conservative bishops attending proudly wore T-shirts proclaiming “Holier than Thou” on the front, while those supporting the gay and lesbian community thought “Lambeth 08: Holy Crap” would’ve been more accurate.

Experience tells us that conflict is the tradition of every societal community, large or small. And not just conflict but conflict imbued with self-righteous certainty, seasoned with a heaping spoonful of hypocrisy.

I know this is true because those who disagree with me are clearly self-righteous hypocrites. The church is full of them. Bishop Francisco Reus-Froylán, the first native Puerto Rican bishop, taught me this as a young priest when he came to my church for a confirmation service. Bishop Paco, as he preferred to be called, told my congregation that when people tell him they don’t go to church because it is filled with hypocrites, he tells them not to worry, there is always room for one more. Bishop Paco was a very forgiving man, even towards my dog at the time who nipped his leg, tearing his trousers.

Scholars make a compelling case that Jesus never intended to create the church. Apparently they don’t think he was that stupid to ask for that much trouble. But just two weeks ago we heard the opposite. Matthew’s gospel tells us Jesus made Peter the cornerstone on which he would build his church. While Jesus would roll his eyes at this self-serving claim, the assertion did succeed in giving Matthew’s gospel prominence over the others in the church’s eyes. That’s why it comes first in the New Testament.

This week we hear why Jesus would’ve scorned the idea of having a church. Apparently it is already in conflict. We know this because Matthew already has Jesus teaching the church conflict resolution techniques. The irony is not lost on us. An institution founded on a gospel of peace and love is rift with disagreement right from the start.

Since the church is here, whether Jesus is happy about it or not, we appreciate Matthew’s guidance on how to approach conflict. What I appreciate most is what he doesn’t suggest. He doesn’t suggest winning at all cost by smearing your opponent with lies and half-truths or name-calling. (Please take note Sarah Palin. You might want to re-read this portion of the Bible you take so literally.) He doesn’t suggest declaring a jihad on those who have a different worldview like Bush, Cheney, McCain, Putin and Bin Laden. He doesn’t even suggest publicly threatening excommunication of prominent pro-choice Catholics like John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden as some American Bishops have done. Matthew seems to think that drawing lines in the sand is unchristian. More importantly, Matthew is not arguing for the impossible: the absence of conflict. Matthew acknowledges its reality. He might even recognise that conflict is necessary and useful. It is necessary for the human heart to grow more loving. It is useful because it provides a laboratory for practicing the Christian mission. In Matthew’s view that mission is reconciliation.

I agree, but reconciliation is one of those words that need to be unpacked, because in my view it often gets over-sentimentalized in flowery language. In truth reconciliation is painful, hard work. When shortcuts are attempted, differences are glossed over for the sake of peace and unity. There are two problems with this. Firstly, any peace and unity achieved this way is not real. It will not last. There are no quick fixes. It requires a process. And secondly, as desirable as they are, peace and unity are not the goal of reconciliation. Justice is. Where there is justice, peace and unity will follow.

Besides requiring patience, what makes the process so hard?

Matthew implies it begins with respect for the one who has hurt you. Ouch! That’s a big ask. But that’s what Matthew means when he says we begin with taking the one who has offended us aside in private. It is an act that allows the other an opportunity to save face. It provides for an exchange of views without playing to a crowd. It creates an environment for mutual truth telling without intimidation. The problem of course is both parties may view the other as the offending party. For example, even in private the evangelical will denounce the progressive’s attempt to include gays and lesbians in the full life of the church as violating God’s will. And the progressive will know just as certainly that full inclusion is God’s will. Each will believe the other is harming the church.

So respect is not enough. Humility is also called for. Not the “what a miserable wretch am I” kind of humility. I mean the knowledge that we are all of the earth and to earth we shall return kind of humility. Understanding we are one in our potential and our failings; our capacity to love and our capacity to harm. Humility is prerequisite to forgiving ourselves and the ones we believe have caused harm. Such humility unbinds us from judgments that plug up our ears. It opens us up to listening with new ears to hear. I subscribe to the maxim: Confuse your enemies; listen to them.

Where true reconciliation is concerned respect and humility are essential, but they are not usually enough. Matthew seems to understand this when he offers step two. Bring a small group of others into the conversation to give evidence. I have a problem with this if it means to overpower or intimidate the other. I agree, however, if he means bring those who have been harmed into the conversation. Allow them to say how they experience the other’s actions as unloving. It makes apparent the consequences of injustice. If both parties feel they have been harmed then all who feel injured should be given opportunity to tell their truth. Only then does the whole truth have a chance of coming out.

The trickiest part of the reconciliation process is Matthew’s third step. If hearing the consequences of injustice did not bring reconciliation, he recommends bringing the conflict to the entire community. In Matthew’s day majority rule was unheard of and the idea of tyranny by the majority would’ve been nonsensical. For Matthew, bringing it to the community was about corporate responsibility. If a member of the community is harmed, all are responsible for it if it is not confronted and stopped. Bringing the conflict before them is an opportunity to repute it and to seek forgiveness for any complicity, knowingly or unknowingly, on their part.

If the offender still doesn’t listen, Matthew’s final admonition is to treat him like a tax collector – the lowest of the low. It sounds harsh, even unchristian, but once again, irony enters today’s Gospel. Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus called him to discipleship. He better than most knew that to be despised by society was not the end of the reconciliation process. Even pariahs are not outside of God’s love. Matthew knew that in God’s tradition there is always room for one more hypocrite.

August 31, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 17     Exodus 3:1-15     Matthew 1:21-28

I went to Australia on holiday a few weeks ago, to the Gold Coast to be precise, and I had dinner with an old friend who has retired there, mainly because of the weather I must say. His mother had died recently just one month short of her 99th birthday. She had been a faithful Catholic and worshipped at the Italian Catholic church in London for most of her adult life after marrying a British Regimental Sergeant Major in Cairo in the 1933. My friend was unexpectedly surprised and touched by her funeral.

After arriving in England he could not find any record of her funeral arrangements yet he knew that back in the 1980’s or 90’s sometime she had definitely made them. With some help he set to and rang all the funeral directors in London – it began to look rather bleak as the constant response to his query was “Sorry, no record of this person’s arrangements.” Finally he dialled the number of the very last company on the list and amazingly Yes… yes, they had the funeral arrangements for one Elvira Green, all paid up, planned and organized.

My friend was staying in Hammersmith and talked of how the funeral went. It was a grand funeral entourage. He was stunned – 2 large and imposing vehicles arrived at the house, – the car carrying his mother was one of those grand old-time ones like you see in old movies with completely glass sides. As they wended their way across to the East side of London to St Peter’s Church in Clerkenwell Road all the world could see this stately procession with Elvira very prominent in her coffin through the glass.

There were two cars with two drivers and three more men to carry Elvira to her church and final resting place. The journey took well over an hour and went right through the heart of London in the middle of the day, through Piccadilly Circus and so on. I could tell by the way my friend spoke about it that he was deeply affected by it all.

We skirted around the topic of faith and we philosophized and discussed life and how best to live it, as we all do from time to time. Then out of the blue he said to me “It’s so easy to be secular.” And this comment has stayed with me since.

We all know what he means. Our society rolls along in its very secular mode, generally with nary a glance at faith issues or the meaning and purpose of life. Sure – there are those of us who are faithful to a credo, to an ongoing experience perhaps, to a relationship with someone we call God, to a constant quest for understanding and therefore becoming. This often becomes expressed in social justice issues, in liberation of some kind for the suffering, in how we treat each other and how we speak and act towards what’s happening in the rest of the world.

And life goes on.

But sometimes something hits us a bit harder and more personally and we are forced to stop, to go inside ourselves, to re-evaluate and to ponder on it all.

I am not sure that this is exactly what was happening to my friend but his comment to me and this mornings readings all coalesce into a sort of attempt to try and understand what life and God are, what they are about, what they mean in my and our lives and say in our society now where it is as my friend said “so easy to be secular.”

First up – it made me question myself and my role as a priest. Was I meant to try and convert him, to evangelise a sensitive intelligent and worldly nominal Catholic. Or maybe to pray for his mother’s soul, or for him to find what we call God in his life, or to express my own evolving faith convictions and hopes. It made me feel strangely impotent. I didn’t do any of these things but I listened and responded to the conversation with the deep interest and love that good and enduring friendship is. Since then I have questioned and examined myself and my responses or lack of them and the statement he made.

When I looked at today’s readings my first impulse was to be all holy and talk about how in Matthew’s gospel, verse 26, it says “what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life.” Life here can also mean soul – soul, that indefinable person that we are. The verse is right – what is the point of having everything materially that secular life so prizes if you don’t like yourself or cannot live with yourself, if you need more and more to fill the empty void of a life based on what’s outside rather than inside. It’s about staying and playing in the shallows rather than taking on the challenge of the ocean and finding out what really matters in one’s own hidden depths. Often that is where we become more God-conscious.

But the Moses story goes to the heart of things. Moses has escaped death twice, once as a baby and later having to scarper out of Egypt for killing the killer of his kinsman. He’s a shepherd leading his flock towards Horeb also called Sinai, the mountain of God. He probably thought – safe at last! But there’s this bush burning ever so brightly and not getting any smaller. Moses goes to check it out and he hears this voice calling to him out of that burning bush… “Moses Moses” – and Moses replies “Here I am.” To cut to the chase – we all know it is God calling to him from the bush. God wants him to go back – to bring the enslaved and suffering Israelites out of Egypt. God promises them big things – a good and broad land, a land of milk and honey. Naturally Moses is reluctant and says ‘What will I call you?’ God replies, “I AM WHO I AM – tell them I AM has sent you.”

The common interpretation of the Hebrew word for God is Yahweh. Interestingly this name for God is based upon the Hebrew verb “to be.” Some scholars have translated this I AM name for God in Exodus as “I cause to be” or “I bring to pass” or something like “I let be what I let be.” What this infers is that God is dynamic, not fixed – indeed God’s first utterance in the Bible is “let there be light!” This begins the history of letting-be and becoming.

What I am suggesting here is what Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Paul Tillich, Jack Spong, Marcus Borg and so many others hold – that God is indeed the ground of our being and more – that God – I AM is Being and is within all being itself. I AM is in the now and the future, in our being and our becoming – in all being and all becoming irrespective of faith and religion. It is how we live into that self-reflective being that defines us and directs our lives. For us church and faith are part of our evolving and intentional search for the being and the becoming in community – with ourselves and others celebrating together what we perceive as sacred in our midst.

When my friend said “it’s so easy to be secular,” what I believe he was saying is that it is so easy not to have religion. I don’t believe he is without faith but it is faith of a different kind. Faith in kindness laughter and love, and the vulnerability that makes him wonder about the meaning of it all. To quietly remember and wonder at the gifts and grace of his mother who treated him so royally to the end. And perhaps on a warm summer evening to contemplate the Infinite Mystery that we call God whom we see and meet in Jesus.

August 24, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 15     Matthew 16:13-20

In the school of Liberation Theology, wherein I was weaned, it is important to state one’s social location. So, I begin today with a confession: I am the son of a fisherman.

Not just any fisherman, mind you, but a fly fisherman. Without giving you the entire credo undergirding my childhood, suffice it to say that fly fishermen consider their art to be the true and pure form [the ‘single malt’ of fishing], and bring to it a passion that is religious in its devotion.

Now the son of a fly fisherman is a category all of its own. There are gender expectations of similar devotion and accompanying skill. Some sons willing embrace the art. Others refrain from embracing. I was among the latter.

However I have retained a respect for the art and the passion it invokes as well as some insight into the disciplines, like standing waist-deep in the ice-cold waters of the Tongariro.

St Peter of course was a fisherman. And I, as you would expect, bring to his stories both my respect and my reservations. I respect his endurance, his skill, his passion, and the patience of his family and friends. My reservation is that passion, talents, and the presumptions that often accompany them can lead to much good but also can harm. They can lead to an inflated self-importance and the pushing of others into obscurity. This was Peter’s shadow side, to use that Jungian phrase, and a side that the New Testament was not shy in revealing.

The historians tell us that Peter bar Jonas was a Galilean – one of those from the rural and politically rebellious north. The Jonas family were affluent Jews in that they owned fishing boats and had taught their sons at least three languages [Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek]. There was also a family affinity for alternative religion of the contentious variety. Peter and Andrew were probably followers of John the Baptist before swapping to Jesus. Both John and Jesus were populist preachers who challenged the legitimating symbols of power in Roman-occupied Palestine, and suffered the consequences. Following Jesus’ death Peter was one of the leaders of a emerging religious sect. He seems to have been a centrist in the early ecclesial debates, between the followers of James on one side and the followers of Paul on the other. He lived and worked for some years in Antioch and its environs and later in Rome where he was killed in the persecution under Nero – around 64 CE.

The early preachers and story-tellers however give us much more than the historians. Indeed so much more that your patience would be sorely tested if I attempted to comment on the full extent of their work. So I will be randomly selective, as I suspect the gospel writers were. I will also leave the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline letters, and the letters that bear his name but not his authorship, alone.

Firstly I want to comment upon the two calls – the ‘follow me’ of Matthew 4:18ff and the ‘feed my sheep’ of John 21:15ff. In both stories Peter is out with his friends fishing. Peter is a social creature, enjoying the camaraderie and team work of this vocation. As a fisherman he knows about patience, toil with little result, and the blend of luck and skill that determines success. Jesus meets him in the context of what Peter both knows and is secure in. And both times Jesus calls Peter out of that knowledge and security.

Away from the environment he knew Peter initially flounders. The Gospels are full of stories of Peter getting it wrong. Whereas I doubt Peter often got it wrong when he was fishing. The call to follow Jesus was actually a call to change vocations, to change the direction of his life. He didn’t grow old teaching his grandchildren how to catch fish on the shores of Lake Galilee!

You may have noticed that the fishing metaphor to describe Peter’s change in vocation doesn’t quite work. The synoptic passage has the call to follow Jesus linked with an occupational change from catching fish to catching people. But the metaphor has a cringe factor about it – for fish, once caught, are killed, filleted, cooked and eaten! Other gospel contributors dropped the metaphor. The Johannine commission has Peter feeding sheep not catching fish. There are no references to fishing in the Peter speeches in Acts or in the Pauline letters.

So, my first point is that Peter was asked by Jesus, twice, to give up his fishing that he loved, knew, and was respected in, to follow a way of love and justice that he only faintly understood. Both times when he responded to Jesus with a ‘Yes’ he didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.

Secondly, I’d like to comment on the water stories. Whereas the fishing metaphor dies out as the story progresses, the prevalence of water doesn’t. He fishes on the water, he tries to walk on the water, he allows the water to wash his feet , and he leaps into the water .

Like many Aucklanders I grew up close to water and have loved it all my life. Beside it, on it, in it, under it… the sea has been a constant friend and companion. But this understanding would have been foreign in the ancient world. The sea and its depths were to be feared. Not many, even fishermen, could swim. There was an association too between water and ill-health, I presume along the lines of catching pneumonia from bathing.

My point is that the water stories are not just about compulsive bravado but about conquering fear. This the lens through which I read the walking on water episode. In case you’re wondering, I don’t think Peter or Jesus literally walked on water. The storytellers were saying that Jesus does what God does [see Job 9:8] and rescues the drowning [the Psalms have a number of passages about God who rescues supplicants from drowning]. The message of the text is that God-in-Jesus speaks to our fears, invites us to try the impossible, and walks beside us when we do.

I suspect Peter had a number of fears: a fear of failure, a fear of not being chosen, a fear of doing the wrong thing, a fear of himself… Many of the Peter stories in the gospels are about Jesus addressing the issue of fear.

Lastly, I want to talk about the rock episode as per our reading this morning. As you probably know Protestants have preferred to label Peter’s confession of Jesus as the anointed one [in Greek ‘the Christ’] as the rock and Roman Catholics the person of Peter. Protestants believe the Church has been built upon the realization of Jesus’ identity, whereas Catholics believe the Church has been built on the leadership of Peter. Upon this little pebble in the ecumenical shoe whole books have been written and I don’t intend to add more grit.

I want instead to muse for a moment on the stability of a rock that acknowledges its fragility. For this is the great irony in calling Peter a rock – he was so patently flawed. Or of calling his or others confessions of Jesus a rock when often a few moments later they are getting it so wrong. Following our Gospel reading today, for example, Jesus admonishes Peter: “Get behind me Satan” [The Satan being like a prosecuting lawyer in a courtroom rather than a hot fellow with horns].

Consider too that the Gospels are products of the Post-Easter Church written and edited by people for whom changing a word here or there, or showing a beloved leader like Peter in a better light, would have been considered appropriate when ‘moved by the Spirit’. Given this it is both surprising and wonderful that the early Church had the confidence and maturity to re-present one of its key leaders [some would say the key leader] in such an unflattering light. They could have, for example, just kept the rooster in and edited out the sinking or the Satan.

We see in these inclusions a Church that is not frightened of its faults, its shadow side. This is a Church that is emotionally and spiritually robust. If all the male disciples run away the Church keeps moving. If the treasurer cashes in for 30 pieces of silver the Church keeps going. If one of the brightest and best of the revitalized movement [Stephen] is stoned to death the Church re-interprets his death as foundational. If Peter the beloved leader has a tendency to get a big head, act rashly, and dwarf his friends this Church will tell you. They aren’t into hiding weaknesses. Strength doesn’t come from the denial of weakness. Strength comes when that weakness is integrated into the whole.

So this morning I want to pay tribute to Peter who had the courage to leave his vocation for an uncertain future, to conquer his fears including his fear of himself, and to see and teach others that our failings and vulnerability are part of our strength. He is a worthy leader to follow and emulate.

August 17, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 14

This morning we have begun to use a new liturgy, the culmination of seven months of writing, consultation, and composing. It’s titled: “Journey in Aotearoa”.

The journey referred to is the spiritual journey into God. It’s a journey of discovery – discovering who God might be, who we might be, and what might be asked of us. Traditional church language, of which this liturgy uses little, would have called this ‘revelation’, ‘redemption’, and ‘sanctification’.

Aotearoa, our context, is both the starting place for this journey, the means of travel, and the destination’s cradle. It is similar to T.S. Eliot’s famous words ‘at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’. Note I use the word ‘cradle’ to indicate that the destination itself may feel like a beginning, or a beginning again. For the spiritual journey never ends.

There are many ways that the Church has promoted as the highways or backstreets to God. The life of Jesus, the Bible, and the traditions of the Church, the sacraments, and worship come to mind. Yet how we read, how we listen, how we know, and how we pray are all shaped by our context.

This emphasis on context [people of the land… people of the sea…] is what is called in technical language ‘incarnational theology’. It means that God is not far off somewhere over the universe but, as revealed in Jesus, is in our midst. God is around us, among us, and within us. The feelings and experiences we have of God being transcendent, mysterious, and beyond are interwoven with our experience of God being with us here and now in this place. We know God and are known by God in our physical, cultural, and emotional contexts.

One of the key metaphors for this liturgy is water. Water is literally all around us here. It refreshes us, it disturbs us, and it nourishes us. In the Church it is used in baptism [a beginning ritual], in blessing houses [an owning ritual], and in the Eucharist [a sustaining ritual]. It is also symbolic of our ancestors’ journeys in coming to this land. All peoples have travelled either on or over the water to get here.

The Song of Praise, written by Joy Cowley, talks about life as a river. Life flows, but not from a bad place to a good one or from sin to grace. Rather struggle, pain, loss, endurance, tenacity, hope, love, and joy are all blended into the flow; tossed and tumbled by the river. Sometimes we float sedately and at other times we are thrown through the white water. Sometimes we are in control and sometimes we’re not. The refrain ‘Where does the sea begin? Where does the river end?’ asks the question whether there are any limits to where God, has been, is, and will be in our lives.

The Words of Encouragement and the Prayer for Everyday are not the comforting ‘God loves you’ words of traditional liturgies. Neither are they of the ‘you-are-a-sinner-God-forgives-you variety. These words are not to make us feel good about ourselves but to encourage us to get up and do something. Like love one another, know our neighbour, loosen bonds of oppression, and protest. They are focussed on our mission to others not on our own needs. Daniel Berrigan, the resolute Catholic peace advocate, reminds us that when we are tired, weighed down, trying to care for the fractious and the fragile, when we want to avoid anything difficult, then like it or not, we just have to do what is right.

Similarly the response after the first reading: ‘Kia kaha. Be strong’. The traditional liturgy asks us to ‘hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church’. This liturgy however asks us to take what hear, if we can, and use it as spiritual fuel for the tasks of mission.

The crux of any Eucharistic liturgy is the prayer of The Great Thanksgiving. They usually have an up-down movement. God is up. He [and God unfortunately is always a ‘He’] creates humankind, who quickly screw up. God tries a variety of fix-it formulas. Then Jesus is sent down, dies, and is resurrected/elevated back up to God. He leaves behind his Spirit and the Holy Communion. We, the disciples’ offspring, are to carry on his work and message.

This Great Thanksgiving however starts with the earth, our planet. Spirituality, God, earth, and humanity are all interwoven. Earth is not a profane object. It is part of us. When we care for it and listen to it, it is like listening to our own bodies or listening to our parents/partner/children. In order to underline the intimacy of our relationship with the earth the liturgy uses some anthropomorphic language e.g. ‘ocean’s fingers caress’ and ‘the pregnant forest tends’.

It is important though to note that the liturgy is not trying to deify nature. It isn’t equating the earth with God. The purpose of the personifying language is to build connection, recognizing that our Western thought has in the past sought a disconnection with nature in order to utilize and exploit it. What we are seeking today are ways to cooperate with nature, and theologies that support that.

The first responsorial has us addressing creation ‘O brilliant sun… O bountiful earth’. Again this is not an attempt to deify nature. There is a long tradition of praying to others beside God – like Mary and the Saints, ‘Brother Sun and Sister Moon’, etcetera. Praying to them, despite what early Protestants would have us believe, doesn’t mean we equate them with God.

The Great Thanksgiving goes on to talk about, as with the river, the toss and tumble of human life. It identifies the structural, political, and cultural arm-wrestle between generosity and greed, with the cop-out option of apathy. Generosity and greed compete for allegiance in our hearts, in our neighbourly relations, and in our governments’ policies. This struggle impacts upon our earth and upon our soul.

Jesus knew this struggle and took sides. For centuries mainstream Christianity preached a Jesus who was above the struggle, who wasn’t interested in politics but only in saving souls, a Jesus who was on all sides and none. What that meant in effect was a politically neutralized Jesus, a Jesus who was in the pocket of the powerful, and therefore a Jesus who was bad news for the poor.

The resurrection is a way of talking about Jesus’ life and commitment living on in his followers. This liturgy again uses a water metaphor: the precipitation cycle. As water flows from river to sea and back again so Jesus life feeds and flows through our lives. It is not constrained by his death. The indication of a life affected, infected, by Jesus is love – i.e. a giving life rather than an absorbing love. This love comes like a gift.

The gift of love, the Jesus legacy or spirit, is both a comfort and a disturbance. While it is sustaining and supportive it also obligates us to be generous and confront the policies and practices of greed. It obligates us to work for justice. This love is our compass, paddle, and destination of our journey.

The Prayer after Communion expresses not only our gratitude but also that we are gifts of God given to the world. With all our faults and failings God flows through us, trusts in us, and believes in us. We are grace and hope, holy and powerful.

You may notice there is no subtitle called ‘Blessing’. On one level the whole liturgy is a blessing, declaring God’s generosity. On another level the blessing is the gift of Jesus’ life known as we gather together around an open Eucharistic table and journey on into God. On another level earth, our here and now, life itself is the blessing. And on another level we are the blessing. Warts and all, worries and all… we are God’s eyes, ears, hands, and hearts… God’s love and hope for the world.

August 10, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 13     Luke 16:19-31

The once-in-a-decade Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops is over. It has gone far better than the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams or even the most optimistic observers could have imagined. There has been no formal schism. No one made a show of walking out. There have been no angry public speeches, accusations, hissing and booing. This episcopal banquet was satisfying and successful. Some 670 bishops and their spouses, lobbyists, and journalists can now all go home and the Church can return to normal.

Actually the Anglican Church never left normal. For contrary to what many think, and what a number of Lambeth Conference attendees want them to think, bishops do not set policy or rule the Church. Even in England and central Africa the Church is hesitant to ascribe sole decision-making power to the episcopate. Any and every Lambeth resolution has to be adopted in each individual Province before it has authority, and most never make it.

One of the cultural and theological divides between England’s Anglicanism and New Zealand’s is that of authority. Generally speaking the English model, shaped by their monarchical legacy, is of bishops discerning the will of God and telling the people what it is. They are rulers. They are therefore to be respected and shown due deference.

New Zealanders on the other hand have a history of ‘discriminating irreverence’ towards authority. We corporately discern the will of God. Elected members make up a majority of the General Synod who rule our Church. The role of our bishops is to articulate the vision, spur us to think, and empower us to act. Respect is earned and deference unusual.

These and other cultural and theological understandings of authority converge at Lambeth and add some tension to the menu.

Lambeth 2008 was what it has been since 1867: an opportunity to confer, discuss, encourage, get to know each other, and talk about differences. Compared with 1998 this conference though saw some notable changes. Gone were the copious piles of papers, motions, amendments, votes, and statements. As the Archbishop of Canterbury wryly noted producing resolutions does not have a direct correlation to acting upon them.

In their place there were small discussion groups called indaba [a Zulu word]. The formula was simple: in small diverse groups they listened, built trust, and encouraged each other in the tasks of leading mission. They talked too about differences between them and the pain it caused. Friendships developed. The result was a rich collegial feast.

And there were no resolutions. There were no resolutions condemning the homophobia of Nigerian, Ugandan and Sudanese bishops. There were no resolutions condemning the many gay bishops in the Church either. There were no resolutions advocating a return to ‘biblical principles’ [a catch cry of fundamentalists]. There were no resolutions promoting justice grounded in self-giving love either. No wonder the evangelical Bishop of Nelson is reported as saying that it was all an expensive waste of time. There was nothing saying black is black, white is white, right is right, and Rowan is wrong. For the media the conference had all the colour and consistency of porridge, served of course in beautiful Canterbury china.

Lambeth 2008 had a long-term strategy. The majority of Western societies now accept that homosexuality is not a disease, a deviance, or even an evil. Although it is not plainly talked about lest it sound patronising, there is a widespread liberal belief amongst the majority of bishops that slowly in time other societies that currently don’t share this view will become more tolerant and accepting of the human rights of gay and lesbian people, which includes the right not to be discriminated against. The Church though by its nature is a conserving and conservative organisation. It is slow to change. But eventually it will. Rowan Williams’ task at this point in history is to try and hold everyone together, reproving those who have embraced change too quickly, comforting those who find it repulsive, and encouraging all to pray and read the Bible together, as slowly the majority of the Anglican Communion drifts towards change. It might take decades but eventually the Church will get there. This is why so many fundamentalist Anglicans boycotted the conference: they knew that this tacit ‘revisionist’ agenda would be present. As Theo Hobson writing in the Guardian says, “The whole event is an incredibly delicate exercise in long-distance liberalism.”

It is also an exercise that extols, nay venerates, unity.

Outside the gates of Lambeth sat one uninvited bishop, Gene Robinson. His election was, unlike the election of English bishops, the popular choice of the parishioners and clergy of his diocese. Unlike English bishops his election was also confirmed by his Province’s General Assembly, the majority of who were democratically elected. His crime though in the eyes of Rowan Williams was that he dared not only to publicly declare his sexual orientation but also his commitment to his same-gender partner, Mark. His diocese and General Assembly knew this. He is an honest man who is paying a big price for honesty. He was shut out of Lambeth, out of the collegiality, out of the indaba huddles, and out of the rich banquet of interchange and fellowship. In the Bible there is a story of a poor man, Lazarus, sitting, excluded, at a rich man’s gate. Bishop Robinson was the Lazarus of Lambeth.

The message to the world was that for the Church unity comes before the inclusion of gay and lesbian Anglicans. And the world got the message. There was also another message: that the wellbeing of the institutional church comes before the wellbeing of its mission in Western societies.

Archbishop Williams believes that the global Anglican Communion is something sacred given by God. It is a precious vessel and his task is to care for it. He believes that the divisive issues that seek to crack and splinter that vessel need to be moderated. Although he knows it is unjust, at the end of the Lambeth Conference Williams spoke supporting moratoria on gay blessings and bishops. He seems to believe that justice for gay and lesbian Anglicans needs to be delayed and denied in order that unity is preserved. The value called ‘unity’ takes precedence over the value called ‘justice’.

The Church however is not intrinsically sacred. Like other institutions – marriage, democracy – much good has been done through it, but so has much harm. It is a vessel but it’s the quality of its contents that matter. At its best the contents of the vessel called the Anglican Communion are the concrete manifestations of the unconditional love and justice of Jesus. By focusing on unity, a theme that Jesus said little about, the mission of the church to include the excluded, which Jesus said and did a lot about, is diminished. The longer the Church maintains its prejudicial views and policies towards gays and lesbians the more irrelevant and less credible it becomes. The priority of unity compromises our priority for mission.

While the tenor of Lambeth 2008 and its indaba process is worthy of support, it was seriously and fatally compromised before it began. By excluding bishops – and here I include not only Gene Robinson but also those of an ultra-conservative hue – it sent out a clear message that this was not ‘an open table’. Only the select could commune. Gays need to wait outside and be grateful for any crumbs. Inside the bishops might have felt good about being there, feasting up large like the rich man’s guests, but they were seemingly ignoring the Lazarus cost of structural exclusivity. That cost is credibility. And the hell awaiting them is irrelevance to the majority in the secular Western world.

August 3, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 12     Genesis 32:21-31

The Christian God has many faces, and one is struggle. When we struggle with disappointment, fear, guilt, loathing, and regret we struggle not just with ourselves or those close to us but also with God. God is not divorced from our pain but is in the midst of it. Usually God is a friend helping our healing. But sometimes God can also be our adversary, wounding us.

This was the experience of Jacob. By the ford of Jabbok he met with God, who was in the form of a wrestler. They struggled all night. At dawn God wounded Jacob. The text alerts us that the “face” of God and the “faces” of Jacob and his estranged twin Esau are all one and the same. By facing his brother Jacob would confront the “face” of his God. But he would also confront himself. Only when he confronted those aspects of his own personality that filled him with fear and disgust could he heal the conflict in his soul.

As I drive around Auckland I see these church noticeboards telling me there must be more to life. God is often marketed as ‘more’ and ‘better’ and ‘fulfilling’. To follow God, so they say, is to find abundant life. I suppose a sign that says “Wanna be wounded?” doesn’t quite cut it. In the drive to make God everybody’s best friend, coach, and mentor I think we’ve lost the sense that following God can be absolutely terrifying.

Another way to think about ‘wounding’ is that when we have to make hard decisions, and though our eventual choice might be the right one, there is a cost. Win-win encounters sound nice in theory but they come at a price. Sometimes that cost is a dent in the ‘we-can-do-anything’ myth. Sometimes that cost is knowing that we have caused others pain. Sometimes that cost is knowing the loss of innocence and that we can never walk the same route again. Usually we come away from these soul-struggles hobbling. It is not easy to face God.

Joan Chittister in her book Scarred By Struggle, Transformed By Hope uses the Jacob story as a paradigm for a “spirituality of struggle.” In the Jacob saga she identifies eight elements of our human struggle – change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring. “Jacob does what all of us must do,” writes Joan, “if, in the end, we too are to become true. He confronts in himself the things that are wounding him, admits his limitations, accepts his situation, rejoins the world, and moves on.”

Jacob’s story really begins with a robbery. Jacob stole, through trickery, the irrecoverable patriarchal blessing from Esau. Jacob was now to be the child of the Promise, the chosen one. Esau, in his pain and anguish, wanted to kill Jacob, and Jacob fled.

As the boys had grown up their different personalities had emerged. They were polar opposites. Esau was the hunter, sensual, living for the moment. Jacob was passive, quiet, and a schemer.

Twins in various cultures have been a symbol of the divided self. Jacob had fought Esau in the womb. Esau was his alter ego, the shadow self, that Jacob carried within him and with whom he would have to come to terms if he was to live a fruitful life.

This was the primary soul-struggle Jacob would have to contend with – not so much reconciliation with Esau but with his own self. The ‘faces’ of Esau, God, and Jacob would blur.

Throughout his life Jacob was unable to live comfortably either with or without his brother. He had disguised himself as Esau to fool his father into giving him the blessing. It is an odd image. Jacob was trying to be both brothers at once. In psychological terms, it is almost as though he was trying to heal the conflict in his personality that would so often impede him in later life.

Jacob through deception stole from his brother and caused him enormous grief. Jacob, far from prospering through this theft, then led a blighted existence. Jacob could not forget the wrong he had done his brother. He had no peace. His life became a struggle.

Jacob fled to Mesopotamia, the opposite direction from the Promised Land, and remained there for the next twenty years. He lived in the household of his wily uncle Laban who tricked the cheater into marrying his eldest daughter, Leah. Then seven years later Jacob married the favoured and younger sister, Rachel.

One of the questions the text raises for us is how come this receiver of the patriarchal blessing, this inheritor of the promise, this one blessed by the God of struggle, lived such a terrible life? Was he blessed or was he really cursed? Or is the whole saga an attempt by Jacob’s descendants to come to terms with his legacy of both family dysfunction and engagement with God?

The conflict within Jacob’s soul soiled any harmonious family life. Jacob was born into a family system where there were favoured and unfavoured children. Unless confronted such systems reproduce in each generation.

Jacob set up winners and losers. This was his understanding of how life operated. He favoured Rachel, the younger sister, and despised Leah. Leah and Rachel, not surprisingly, got into a competition of trying to win Jacob’s favour, and passed that destructive competitiveness on to their children.

Finally after twenty years in Mesopotamia, with two wives and additional maids to bear his children, Jacob decides to begin the journey home, and into his past. He was the first of the patriarchs of Israel to make a return journey. Henceforth the whole notion of return would become an important symbol of integration and reconciliation in the faith of Israel.

It was a journey both to find peace with his brother and within himself. He was now a rich man – with large flocks, slaves, etc. – and at the same time impoverished in his family relations and in his own soul. Interestingly as he neared his homeland Jacob began to experience God again. [1] Already Jacob had sensed that in addressing his brother, his shadow self, he was in some mysterious sense addressing God.

Jacob then hears that Esau is heading his way at the head of four hundred fighting men! Gulp!! Jacob assumes the worst. In fear and distress Jacob divides his followers into two camps in the hope that some might escape the bloodshed to come. He then runs to God.

Jacob is no longer confident in his own cleverness. He feels unworthy and small. Yet he does not flee. He realises that he must go forward to confront the past. Next Jacob dispatches a huge gift of livestock to Esau. His envoys were to say these are from “your servant Jacob”. Then he sends his wives, their maids, and his eleven children ahead of him. He has divested himself of all his outward status and power.

And that night Jacob meets wrestles with God by the ford of Jabbok. He is tenacious – and we get that lovely line of God saying ‘Let go of me!’ He wrestles with himself, Esau, and divinity. He wins and he loses. He is healed and he is wounded.

The next day he meets Esau. It is wonderful day – hugs and tears all round. Esau too must have done some processing of his past and learnt to live with his limitations. It’s important to note however that although there is reconciliation for the brothers neither lives happily ever after. And neither do their descendants. From Esau came the nation of Edom [nowadays the Dead Sea area and southern Jordan] who had many wars with Israel.

Struggle defined Jacob’s life. Outwardly he was rich in possessions and children. He was the child of promise. He was seen as blessed. Inwardly however his life was a struggle. He didn’t know how to create or facilitate relationships of mutuality. He didn’t know that power and even love can be destructive without mutuality. He didn’t know that God would fight him and wound him.

[1] Life started to assume a “double” aspect; each apparently mundane event would also have a divine dimension. For example God sent messengers to Jacob, and he responded by dispatching messengers to his brother Esau.

July 20, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 10     Matthew 13:24-43

The power of spiritual story is to point to the presence of God among us.

The Commander of the Occupation troops said to the Mayor of the mountain village: “We are certain you are hiding a traitor in your village. Unless you give him up to us, we shall harass you and your people by every means in our power.”

The village was indeed hiding a man who seemed good and innocent and was loved by all. But what could the Mayor do now that the welfare of the whole village was threatened? Days of discussion in the Village Council led to no conclusion. So the Mayor finally came up with a solution. There is a Bible verse that said, “It is better than one man die and the nation be saved. [1]

So the Mayor handed over the innocent man to the Occupation Forces, begging to be pardoned. The man said there was nothing to pardon. H would not want to put the village in jeopardy. The man was cruelly tortured and finally put to death.

Twenty years later a prophet passed by that village, went up to the Mayor and said, “What did you do? That man was appointed by God to be the saviour of this country. And you gave him up to be tortured and killed.”

“What could I do?” pleaded the Mayor. “The priest and I looked at the Scriptures and acted accordingly.”

“That was your mistake,” said the prophet. “You looked at the Bible. You should have also looked into his eye. [2]

The role of spiritual stories is to invite us into awareness. Their role is not to prescribe the outcome of that invitation. Their role is to suggest, and then leave us to discover whether there is truth in it. Spiritual stories are not manuals for us to follow step by step, but guides that seek to set our imaginations free.

When the Bible is used as a rulebook that one should to follow religiously to achieve salvation it becomes a servant of fear. When the Bible is used as a guide pointing to but not prescribing the Holy it becomes a servant of love.

St John’s Gospel begins with the phrase: ‘the Word became flesh’. ‘The Word’ was neither an utterance of speech nor a jotting of a scribe. It was rather the Greek concept of a living divine spark [Logos] merged with the Hebrew concept of an anthropomorphized wisdom [Sophia]. The writer of the Fourth Gospel understood this divine wisdom to be uniquely manifested in Jesus.

The poet Edwin Muir [3] once coined the phrase ‘the Word made flesh here is made word again’. What some forms of Christianity have done, like the Calvinism that Muir was referring to, is to try to reduce the love of God in Jesus to words. Words have been used, often legal prescriptive words, to harness and contain the power of Jesus’ love. Words that in one context have given life in another become weapons of control.

Spiritual stories, like those contained in the Bible, are not of course written by God. They are written by pilgrims like us. Some stories endure through generations, and time and again valuably point to the presence of God. These stories come to be collectively labelled as ‘inspired’. Sometimes whole collections of stories, like the Bible, are so labelled.

Yet we need to be careful about how we use the word ‘inspired’. What might be inspirational for one person might be destructive for another. Even collective wisdom can in another time and culture be collective nonsense. Worse it can become a tool for fear, and fear’s child: oppression. There is no guarantee that so-called wise words will last the test of time.

The Bible is a collection of spiritual stories. Some ‘stories’ are poems, others are parables, others are theocratic history, or songs, or biography, or letters. Most of them talk about that human word ‘God’ and try to name how the spiritual is part of us.

Some of the biblical writings are hopelessly time-locked, irrelevant and potentially destructive. Texts that describe the role of children, wives, and slaves fall into this category. When for example someone reads Proverbs 31, titled ‘a good wife’, at a modern day wedding the most appropriate response is to smile. It has no relevance to our lives today, and hasn’t for centuries. When a woman though is forced by her husband, church or culture to conform to Proverbs 31 the Bible becomes an instrument of oppression.

Many of the biblical writings though seem to be able to transcend the time, culture, and context in which they were written to speak to our hearts today. They remind us to seek, celebrate, and share love. They remind us that we are not the centre of the universe and our tendency to inflate our importance gets in the way of love. They remind us that hospitality, generosity, gratitude, and the courage these values often require, are more important than unswervingly adhering to a moral code – even though that code might be contained in the Bible.

When we hear religious phrases like ‘The Bible is the Word of God’, ‘The Bible reveals God’s plan for our salvation’, and ‘The Bible contains all things necessary for our salvation’ – we need to be mindful of what the Church is not saying.

Firstly, we are not saying that God dictated the Bible or moved the pen of the authors. Rather after the words were written, sometimes long afterwards, communities of faith found the stories inspirational and wanted to preserve them.

Secondly, we are not saying that God is all-knowing. The idea God had foreseen all the bad choices of humankind and devised ways that the consequences could be rectified compromises human autonomy and free will and therefore our capacity to love and to heal.

Thirdly, we are not saying that God planned that Jesus would be born, live, die, and be resurrected in order to save humanity. The manifestation of God in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was experienced and written about after 33 CE. For God to plan torture and death makes God a monster.

Fourthly, we are not saying that if one reads the Bible with an open mind the clear redemptive actions of God will be made plain. Unfortunately the Bible is frequently used as a weapon for the fearful to inflict their views upon the others and seek to protect themselves. This fear can be dressed up in convincing logic. At its best though the Bible invites us to look into the eyes of our neighbour and into our own hearts to find and experience the presence of God’s love.

There is much debate today, as there has been for centuries, over the meaning and interpretation of the Bible. Although it may sound simplistic I think there are basically two types of reader: those who see the Bible as a rulebook in order to live more right, and those who see the Bible as a heart guide in order to love more fully. When faced with the decision of the Mayor, priest, and Village Council frightened of the Occupation Forces it is usually the former, those who see the Bible as a book of rules, who can be blinded by it, and then seek to blind others with it. I hope and pray though that the Bible, that great Jewish and Christian treasury of spiritual stories, will always be read through the lens of our hearts and through the eyes of the world’s victims.

[1] John 18:14

[2] De Mello Song of the Bird p.57

[3] The Incarnate One by Edwin Muir

July 13, 2008

Linda Murphy

Pentecost 9     Matthew 13:1-23

Have you ever rung the Auckland City Council? I do a lot and they seldom listen. Then there is Telecom’s computer generated voice, which is so annoying. You know it is not listening. It doesn’t have any ears!

If they do listen, they do so with their minds made up and as a consequence I am left dissatisfied. The Council of course is not alone in its mode of mind-made-up customer service. Listening seems to be a lost art.

Look at Zimbabwe, where the people voted to remove Robert Mugabe. He didn’t like what he heard, so he ignored the people.

I googled “listening” and there are 205 million sites dedicated to listening. The word ‘listen’ is used more than 400 times in the Bible where listening is often inconvenient. Abraham, Isaiah and Noah listened to God and it completely changes their thinking and understanding.

The subject is taught in business schools as an important managerial skill. Counsellors and therapists also study the subject. There are numerous papers and thesis written on the subject. So why is such an important communication tool used so badly? Why do we as friends, colleagues and neighbours fail to listen to the message?

If I feel frustrated that I am not being listened to, how angry must the marginalised groups such as Immigrants, teenagers, the homeless in our own society feel?

I can think of many world leaders who are not good listeners but I find it difficult to think of any current leaders who are good listeners. They may in fact be listening and express an abundance of empathy but the result is little change. The ‘church’ often falls into this category. How many of the problems within the Anglican Communion on the eve of the Lambeth Conference is the result of different factions refusing to listen. It is little wonder that we are surrounded by bigotry and violence.

Today’s Gospel from Matthew includes the verse ‘Let anyone with ears listen’. This is a reoccurring theme in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus frequently points out to the disciples the importance of listening.

So what skills do we need to listen effectively?

Listening requires of course a pair of ears but there is a non verbal element to listening properly. Effective listening is when the listener seeks to understand the one talking, and this seems to be the hard part. When the disciples didn’t ‘hear’ the message as Jesus intended it, it wasn’t their ears at fault but their spiritual perception.

Sometimes we don’t listen because we are:

* preoccupied,

* can’t ‘hear’ past our presumptions and prejudices,

* can’t ‘hear’ past our own opinion that is listened to,

* our desire to be ‘the important one’,

* our need to share our wisdom.

Listening to each other is important to avoid conflict, hurt and injustice.

We listen attentively to Michael and the Singing Group’s music each Sunday and hopefully to the sermon. Daily we passively absorb material from the media in various forms. Seldom do we reflect on this information. In the case of TV ads we unwittingly take on messages in the subconscious. In the case of campaigns against: drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and domestic violence this is not a bad thing, but it does leave the possibility to be manipulated by some powerful sector in society.

This manipulative communication is of course propaganda. Think how damaging this can be. Remember Hitler’s Nuremburg Rallies or more recent times the lies that lead to the current Iraq war.

To achieve attentive listening we need to be genuinely interested in hearing and understanding the other person’s point of view. Our body language must express our interest in what the person is saying. We also need to verify that we have understood what was being said. The skill is not just hearing the words but ‘listening for the message’.

As a Mother I have not always listened attentively and it has usually cost me. I agreed to buy those really expensive and oh so necessary trainers. Teenagers are very skilled in knowing when we are not listening attentively and that is when they ask for those things you have no intention of allowing. All parents listen inattentively at your peril.

Another type of listening skill is hearing the message underneath the words being spoken. Often your child maybe saying “I don’t want to go to school today I’m sick”. In fact there may well be no illness but a problem at school or in the workplace. It’s about hearing the message not just the words.

Being Verger at St Matthew’s requires attentive listening. The nervous bride, the mother or father who knows how to organise a wedding ceremony better than we do and my nemesis First Security clamping cars during funerals, all need me to show empathy and acceptance that I understand what they are saying and of course I will endeavour to make sure the bride’s special day is special and mum and dad are shown an alternative way as diplomatically as possible.

However the First Security officer doesn’t usually receive an empathetic reply more in the way of “Listen to me, remove those clamps now or…”

I am often in conversation with ‘streeties’ and the topics are various. When listening to Jim or Joe is always give them my time, my attention, eye contact, a smile or commiserate. We share a worry or a pleasure and the reward is in the listening. Its not advice they need it is my attention and acknowledgement of their existence as members of our community. To listen to ‘streeties’ generally means I am taken out of my Paheka middle class world and that has been an unexpected challenge and reward for me.

Two Sundays ago Clay spoke about the importance of hospitality in being a Christian. Last Sunday Glynn spoke of the importance of spirituality. Both hospitality and spirituality cannot be attained without listening to ourselves and to each other.

Listening to our own ‘still small voice’ leads to a deepening of relationships and a greater sense of self for all. This kind of communication isn’t limited to human interactions. Listen to an animal, the waves on the beach, or the roar of the traffic on Hobson Street and you will come to a greater appreciation of your place in the universe. This spiritual listening is contemplative. It is essentially prayer. May we listen with our hearts and minds wide open. Fearlessly accepting that we will be changed along with those to whom we listen.

For those willing to listen properly, there are wonderful things to learn. Let us each day spend time listening to nature, our environment and humankind. Listen to God just as Abraham, Noah and Isaiah did before us. It may rock our world but the world will be a better place.

July 6, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 8     Matthew 11:16-30

Karl Rahner writes, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or not at all”. A mystic can be defined as one who finds God in all things and lives in gratitude. Mysticism has a long history and it’s not limited to Christianity. Indeed mysticism regularly stands apart from the dogmas and dictates of religious organisations. To find God in all things and to live thankfully does not require one to be a signed up member of anything, obey a bishop, canon, or creed, attend church, or believe in impossibilities. The Christian of the future will be a mystic is quite a statement coming from a Roman Catholic theologian.

There’s a story about a mystic who was asked about the path to God. He was reticent to answer. How could he put into words what he had experienced in the depths of his heart? Is it possible to express the inexpressible? He finally gave them a formula – so inaccurate, so inadequate – in the hope that some of them might be tempted to experience for themselves what he had experienced.

They seized upon the formula. They made a sacred text out of it. They constructed a religion around it. They imposed it upon everybody as a holy belief. Some even gave their lives for it. And the mystic was sad. It might have been better if he had never spoken.

Such are the perils of preaching!

Spirituality is a word that’s popularity has risen as the population of churches has fallen. Spirituality describes the search for meaning without necessarily using the language of religion. It can be used for example as a way to talk about an individual’s act of commitment beyond their self-interest. It can be used too as a way to talk about self-discovery, and finding satisfaction beyond material comforts and reliable friendships. It can be used also as a way to talk about trauma, and finding extraordinary strength when ordinary supports have been wrenched away.

Some church leaders decry the popularity of spirituality and the desire for people to find spiritual meaning outside the tenets and dogma of religion. However others, like me, see the word as a helpful bridge between the best that religious faiths have to offer and the reality of secularized living. It is a hopeful word for it assumes that anarchically the quest for faith and theological understanding is happening beyond the bonds and control of organized religion.

I like to think of spirituality as footpaths through the forest. There are a variety of footpaths one can take on the search for meaning. Some paths end in disaster. Some are unsafe. Some have unhealthy consequences. Others offer a range of beauty, adventure, and satisfaction. Not everyone has to walk the same footpath. Nor is the end point the same for all.

This morning I want to name just four of those paths. The first I’ll just mention in passing for it was the main course of Clay’s sermon last week. Blessed are those that know the soul-value of food. Food sets the table of hospitality around which conversations of life, meaning, and wellbeing can occur.

Secondly, and connected with hospitality, is kindness. There was an article recently in the British newspaper The Telegraph about happiness. Using a formula of O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He they had computed the happiest day of the year. The O was for enjoying outdoor activity, the N connection with nature, the S socialization with friends and neighbours, the Cpm was positive childhood memories, the T mean temperature, and the He was holiday expected. I was staying with an academic who pointed out the inadequacy of the mathematics involved. I pointed out its inadequacy in terms of soul.

It didn’t involve feeling for, giving to, or helping strangers. There was no kindness to others. Happiness that doesn’t have an other-centred component in the formula is like living on a diet of doughnuts. They look good, taste good, but in the long term aren’t satisfying and play havoc with your spiritual health. Regardless of the needs of strangers we need them. We need to exercise our compassion and generosity. We need to think of others beside ourselves and our friends. We need to show a little non-self-centred kindness. Blessed are those who are kind to themselves and others for they have learnt the path to happiness.

The third pathway is nature. Walking in the bush, ambling along forest paths, smelling the undergrowth, dripped on by the thick foliage… Walking along the seashore, shoes off, with the tide tickling your toes… These sensuous moments, and others like them, not only make us feel good they also feed the soul. How that happens is difficult to explain.

I visited an artist last week who lives in the centre of one of the biggest cities in the world, London. It is something akin to a prison for her. She tries of course to make it work – strolling in parks, cycling everywhere, she even kept a canoe but the commercial sightseeing boats have made that too dangerous. The people, colour, and variety of opportunity are wonderful. But the concrete, bars and brick walls still entrap her soul. Holidays are holy days. She longs for freedom.

Blessed is the one who is longs for nature, and expresses that gratitude by caring for the environment, making time to touch it, and letting it touch them.

Lastly, children.

It was the passport control area at Ataturk International Airport, Turkey and I was in a queue, a long queue, at the end of which a solitary guard directed people into one of six shorter queues that each led to an officer behind a desk. The guard seemed resigned to his duty. It was one of those mind-numbing, boring jobs that someone had to do. No one talked to him or, of course, thanked him. Impatience was in the air. This was another bureaucratic necessity to be endured before one could leave the country. All wished it could just speed up and be over.

Suddenly a child cried. His father stooped, picked the child up, and put him on his shoulder, where he continued to whimper. The guard approached and started making amusing faces for the benefit of the child. The guard was playfully engaging the child and inviting the child to smile. Slowly the child caught on. Those waiting in line turned to watch. Smiles breeched many faces. An air of happiness caught on, an antidote to impatience.

This guard was offering much more than a pacifier. His love of children shone through and offered a glimpse of soul amidst the routine of control.

Why do I see an interest in children linked to spiritual health? It’s not a concern for the vulnerable. That pathway is kindness. It’s not a desire to have children of one’s own either. Not everyone needs, is able, or should feel socially compelled to have children. As a friend said recently, one can enjoy flying in an aircraft without having to own one.

I think this spiritual pathway has to do with being interested in someone whom others might see as insignificant, or of less value, or whose thoughts aren’t worth thinking about. It’s about finding in the encounter with a child some truths not only about children and the world at large but about oneself. It’s an indicator of humility, and a willingness to learn about the God who is still a child. Blessed is the one who can relate to children and their world for they manifest the playfulness of God.

These are just four paths through the spiritual forest, intersecting with each other, and with other paths. There are many paths that one can travel and one may even travel without a path. I pray that this service of worship may be an encouragement to you on your journey.

June 29, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 7     Matthew 10:37-42

On occasion I make a foray into the blogosphere to see if our Progressive Christian message at St Matthew’s is generating any discussion. I am rarely disappointed, nor was I last week when I had a serious case of work avoidance behaviour.

I came across this gem from blogger A.J. Chesswas from Taranaki, in which he expressed concerns about Canadian bishop Victoria Matthews, the newly elected bishop of Christchurch:

From what I've read Matthews… is labelled a "theological conservative". … I assume the label of conservative means she is committed to the doctrines of the Nicene Creed, such as the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, the atoning power of his death on the cross, the new life afforded us by his Holy Spirit, and his promise to come again. Some may wonder how these basic theological commitments alone could make one a conservative, but when compared to the true liberals of Canada, or even our own Kiwi examples like Glynn Cardy and Clay Nelson, she definitely looks conservative. Somehow it is quite possible to retain one's position as a vicar in the Anglican Church without even being a Christian!!

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved to learn that Glynn and I don’t fit Mr. Chesswas’ narrow definition of being a Christian or annoyed.

While we find the theology of many who hang on to the metaphors of the 4th century for the nature of God and the personhood of Jesus beyond useless and often destructive and shake our heads in bewilderment at those with a literal understanding of those parts of Scripture that support their worldview, it never occurred to us to suggest they weren’t Christian. While I do confess embarrassment at being grouped with them, I long ago accepted that there is nothing monolithic about Christian thinking. There are countless flavours. In the end that is probably a good thing. Worthy theological arguments will prevail and the not so worthy will fall away like Limbo and Transubstantiation. Until they do, we will continue to squabble. Squabbling appears to be a trait instilled early into Christian DNA, as Paul’s stern letter of protest to the contentious Corinthians attests. Upon reflection, being contentious may be what it means to be Christian.

Or perhaps not, but these ruminations led me to wonder what exactly it is that defines a Christian? And this question leads to another more important question why is it so important to some to determine who is and who isn’t?

In our sacramental tradition our baptism defines us as Christian. As most of us are infants on the occasion we are unaware that we have been so labelled although we may protest the unexpected bath. It is a freely given unconditional gift of the church. Our assent is neither asked for nor required. When the priest marked our foreheads with a cross of oil, the church states we are indelibly marked as Christ’s own forever. Even if we never again enter a church we are still part of the fold. As in families, members may become estranged but they still belong to Jesus.

However, infant baptism is not sufficient to define who is a Christian. There are traditions that believe that baptism is reserved only for those able to make an adult statement of belief. Does that mean they are not Christian until then? If so, what about traditions, like the Salvation Army, that do not have a sacrament of baptism? Are none of them to be considered Christian?

In those traditions baptism may or may not be important but it is not more important than accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour. This flavour of Christianity believes that is the only road to salvation. Those who are saved and stay saved is their definition of a Christian. The problem for these traditions is that being a Christian is not an unconditional gift that you may use or put away in a cupboard and forget. Those of this mindset argue if you accept Jesus you also accept a certain set of beliefs grounded in their literal interpretation of Scripture. They are not dissimilar to Mr. Chesswas, who argues that an unconditional gift still requires life long literal agreement with a 4th century creed and its less than helpful metaphors to remain a Christian.

My beef with such understandings of being a proper Christian is that they perpetuate division within not just the Christian family but also the human family. These views are grounded in the old separating-the-sheep-from-the-goats question: Who will God elect to be saved? To those who reject the concept of an external personal God, the very question is nonsense. Those who think the answer is important can still only guess as to whom has and hasn’t been saved. Their God isn’t saying. Not surprisingly, those who still think this way are always certain they are amongst the sheepish elect.

Today’s Gospel has Jesus giving his disciples some instructions about how they are to represent him. He doesn’t baptise them first. He doesn’t have them memorise a creed. He doesn’t give them an animal husbandry manual so they can identify sheep from goats. He doesn’t give them assurance of salvation. In fact he tells them it’s not about them at all. He suggests they have to have a right attitude. As important as family is, they need to understand that what Jesus represents is more important. What he represents is even more important than life itself. He tells them their task is to represent him and in doing so they represent whom he represents.

I can hear the disciples saying, “Huh? How do we that? Do we wear special clothes? Do we need a collar? Should we lug the Torah around and quote it chapter and verse?

I can see Jesus shaking his head with a bemused smile. “No, just welcome people into your lives. Welcome everyone, but especially welcome those no one else does. Don’t look so shocked. Even if all you do is give them is a cup of water, you will find that most gratifying.”

“Is that all,” they query.

“Yep. That’s it. Be hospitable and everything else will follow.”

Hospitality it turns out is at the heart of our faith. A Christian is simply someone who is hospitable. Sounds too easy until we think about what is required.

It is easy to be hospitable to birds of a feather: people we identify with, who strike us as interesting; who might be useful to know. It’s no problem to invite them to our homes for a few drinks and a meal. Those occasions are their own reward. It is another story to invite those of a different feather: people of a different culture, class or race who can offer no obvious advantage to us. Being well-bred we might invite them and make them feel at home, all the while wishing they were… I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind.

But why did Jesus make hospitality the basis for his ministry? Perhaps because it is essential to building relationships. It is the first step to overcoming fear, finding understanding, and giving respect. Ultimately it is the foundation of bringing about a peaceful world. It is the source of harmony.

If you doubt it I challenge you to think of a time when you were shown unexpected hospitality that at least improved your day and may have changed your life.

I don’t have to think back too far. It was about three years ago. I’d been in New Zealand a week. While he might have some regrets now, Glynn took a chance on an immigrant with an unusual background and opened his heart and the doors to St. Matthew’s to me. It couldn’t have been more unexpected. His hospitality changed my life and his and even some of yours. Mr. Chesswas, what could be more Christian?

June 22, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 6     Gen 21:8-21     Matt:10:24-39

Hagar, a familiar name. We know her story – Sarah’s surrogate, slave, second-best, outcast, disposable, alienated. A wanted unwanted child, Ishmael. She has no voice, no power, no place. She lives at the behest of others who dictate the terms of her life and probably her death. A life of servitude laced with fear and resentment. Her future – precarious and unknown.

It is a pretty unthinkable way of life for us now where we have individual rights and laws that protect a person from such enslavement. But it was real then, and this story continues on today in numberless lives of men women and children. Think refugees, the hungry, the occupied, the dispossessed, the violated, the desperate. Only God does not come to save them and transform their lives.

 On reading this passage from Genesis I was constantly struck by the notion that the children of Abraham – Isaac and Ishmael, are at the root of the conflict in the Middle-east today.

Isaac carries God’s promise and can be seen as a father of the modern nation of Israel. In contrast, Ishmael is to be found in the beleaguered land of Palestine. The same inequality and unjust dominance of one brother over the other continues unabated today.

God tells Abraham not to worry about casting out Hagar and Ishmael. God has ordained that Ishmael, like Isaac, will found a great nation because he too is Abraham’s offspring. God’s covenant is with Abraham, and to all his descendents. The reading tells us ‘God was with the boy.’ Yet we have this savage and deadly conflict between the two peoples that is so deep rooted as to appear to be irreconcilable.

Ancient feuds and rivalries between close neighbours or tribes is the stuff of vicious and bloody war. It is, just as Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel today about family and neighbours – where a person’s foes will be one of the household. People who have lived alongside one another who run amok with madness. Think of Rwanda with the Hutu and the Tutsi, of Kosovo with the Serbs and the Croats, and again and again and in our time thousands of years later with the devastation and division of Palestine for the creation of Israel. This has led to a far-reaching and incendiary outpouring of hatred and death. The conflict is about land taken, different cultures, different stories from Abraham, faith.

On a day to day basis for me it is the sad stories about ordinary people who try to live a normal life that tug at me and make it real. I hear about a Palestinian mother and her four children sitting down to eat together being blown apart by a stray bomb, and I blanche with the nearness, the reality.

I know the unholy thing that is war and the pain and the grief and the fury of it all. It is a horrible and gory reminder and isn’t just about premature and unconscionable death – but such grief and such waste. The waste of lives, the family, the love and laughter, the trials hopes and infinitely precious potentials that are annihilated, turned to dust. The fuel for even greater vengeance that ever simmers just under the surface.

To this seemingly impossible and deeply complex problem that is a major source of hostility the world over I would like to offer some heartening actions and reflections being put forward by two prominent people. The first is Daniel Barenboim. He is a brilliant world famous Jewish musician and conductor and was the Reith lecturer for 2006. [1] His lecture series was titled ‘In the Beginning was Sound.’

Barenboim offers his lived understanding of the conflict and his contribution to a better understanding between Israel and Palestine. The overarching title of his lectures is a sort of alliteration on the opening lines of Genesis – ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth… and ‘In the beginning was the Word’ from the gospel of John. For Barenboim ‘In the beginning was ‘Sound’ is a better example of a creative unifying force as he believes that the power of music to move us is deeper and more profound than words.

He brought together young Arab and Israeli musicians and founded an orchestra [2] and discovered that music overcomes and transcends boundaries and prejudices – music is the great equaliser. Music in an orchestra is a model of a hierarchy with equality, where every instrument has its vital part to play and where every note played is essential to the whole. Each has its day. The lectures make powerful, inspiring and thoughtful reading and are well worth the effort.

Barenboim’s take on Israel, where he lived for a time as a child, is that Zionism is a Jewish European idea and therefore foreign to the Middle East. The solution, in his eyes, is for Israel to integrate, to become sort of Arabised, appreciate the Arab culture and to become part of the Middle East rather than a foreign body which it is at present. This leads to ongoing hostility. His vision offers mutual enrichment rather than alienation. Just like playing music.

The second person is Tony Blair. A closet Anglican when English Prime Minister who came out as a Roman Catholic when he left ministerial office. I know suspicion hovers about him through his support of the invasion of Iraq and other questionable decisions but a recent article in Time magazine about his vision is worth consideration. [3]

Recently he has birthed the ‘Tony Blair Faith Foundation.’ Blair’s goal is to enable faith to overcome the dividedness it arouses, so that it can have a real voice in the world. He believes that religion is key to the global agenda and intends to spend the rest of his life working on interfaith perspectives and cooperative actions that build bridges and look to heal our confused world. Blair believes that in the west we need to overcome the irrelevance of faith that is driven by our consumer oriented and materialistic society, and the frightening religious extremism that fundamentalism can become.

Interestingly, he claims that the passionately secular European countries need to understand the importance faith has for Americans and Arabs alike. And I had to admit to the truth of his statement that it is we who are out of step with much of the world as to the influence of religion inherent in daily life. Blair thinks that in the rich world “without spiritual values, there is an emptiness that cannot be filled by material good and wealth.” It is faith that gives meaning to billions of lives and he will try to broker faith to the betterment of all. As Blair says “ faith is part of our future” He does all this as a committed Catholic Christian, who in the article Bono likens to a pilgrim.

We are part of a global society. We can speak to our friend in Africa or Ireland at the drop of a hat. We all draw from the well of our inherited histories and genes or genealogies. We are, according to the theory, only 6 degrees apart from anyone else in the world.

Barenboim and Blair speak of what we long for and what we must act for. They speak for a better more harmonious world where life is seen to be best where we can all live equally and faithfully with our God – the God Abraham walked and talked with, whom Hagar called El-roi. Where we are all vital and essential to the whole – just like an orchestra.

Movingly, Israeli poet Shin Shalom writes in some Jewish liturgy that is used in English synagogues:

Ishmael, my brother,

How long shall we fight each other?

My brother from times bygone,

My brother, Hagars’ son,

My brother, the wandering one.

One angel was sent to us both.

One angel watched over our growth-

There in the wilderness, death threatening through thirst,

I, a sacrifice on the altar, Sarah’s first.

Ishmael my brother, hear my plea:

It was the angel who tied thee to me.

Time is running out, put hatred to sleep.

Shoulder to shoulder, let’s water our sheep.

[1] A Reith Lecture is a lecture in a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures of the day, commissioned by the BBC. Begun in 1948 in honour of the first Director-General of the BBC, John Reith. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/

[2] The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

[3] Time, June 9.

June 15, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 5     Matthew 9:35-10:23

As an unrepentant romantic idealist, it is not surprising that the musical Man of La Mancha is a favourite of mine. One memorable interchange is a one-way conversation between Sancho and Don Quixote who is severely depressed about ever reaching the impossible dream. Sancho sings to him:

When I first got home my wife Teresa beat me,

But the blows fell very lightly on my back.

She kept missing ev'ry other stroke

And crying from the heart

That while I was gone

She'd gone and lost the knack!

Of course, I hit her back, Your Grace,

but she's a lot harder than I am,

and you know what they say...

"Whether the stone hits the pitcher

or the pitcher hits the stone

it's going to be bad for the pitcher."

It was Sancho I thought of as I read in today’s Gospel, “When he saw the crowds he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd.” These people were landless, powerless, and impoverished. They were the pitcher caught between two stones. The first, Roman law and oppression, gave them no hope of rising above their life circumstances. The second, the purity laws of their faith, blamed them for those circumstances. If they were righteous, God would have blessed them. They were outcasts and justly so. In the Greek version of the Beatitudes they were the Anawim (A-N-A-W-I-M) translated as “the meek” that Jesus said would inherit the earth.

But the Anawim were more that just the dispossessed and marginalised in Israel. The prophet Zephaniah (Zeph 2:3, 3:12-19) relays God's message that, even in the worst of times there will remain " a faithful remnant" in our midst. He reveals that this faithful remnant is the Anawim.

In 1936 Albert Nock explained “The Remnant” by paraphrasing the call of Isaiah:

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

It was perhaps with Zephaniah’s words and Isaiah’s challenge in mind that Matthew’s Jesus sends his disciples only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, explicitly telling them not to go to the Gentiles and Samaritans, two groups he, himself, has offered healing. Showing love and compassion to the Anawim was an in your face prophetic act condemning the enforcers of the purity laws. Institutional faith did not get it that the most impure act was not to love your neighbour. They sought to be the dispensers of divine love, when it has already been extended to everyone. The priests and Pharisees were no better than their Roman masters. They were equally bad for the pitcher.

It was with these thoughts banging around my head that I watched this week the documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So. The film portrays the stories of five Christian families that have to contend with discovering that one of their children is gay or lesbian. The struggle portrayed is between parental love and church teaching that the Bible condemns homosexuality as an abomination. The film is both deeply moving as you hear their stories and extremely maddening as you see clips of Christians mangling Scripture to support their own bigoted hatred.

We meet Chrissy Gephardt, a daughter of the former House minority leader Richard Gephardt and his wife, Jane, who talks about her sexless marriage to a man before falling in love with a lesbian friend, admitting the truth about herself, coming out and eventually joining her father on the presidential campaign trail, with his support and encouragement.

We also meet Jake Reitan, a young man from Minnesota whose coming-out when he was just fifteen has changed his entire family, leading his once-conservative Christian parents to become gay rights activists side-by-side with their son. The Reitans, who look about as American-as-apple-pie as any family from Minnesota, never expected that one day they would be leading activists in the gay civil rights movement, getting arrested with their younger son in front of Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family and marching in parades.

We also meet the Poteats, an African-American family in which both parents are preachers still struggling to accept that their daughter, Tonia, is a lesbian. David Poteat, Tonia's father, says that when his children (a son and a daughter) were growing up, "I said God, please don't let my son grow up to be a faggot and my daughter a slut." He chuckles ironically and adds, "And he did not. He did not do that. He reversed it."

Things did not resolve so easily for the Poteat family, whose literalist biblical readings and conservative Christian upbringing (along with the ongoing reinforcement of their church family) proclaimed that the lifestyle of their openly homosexual daughter Tonia was pure unadulterated sin. By the end of the narrative the family remains on the razor's edge of estrangement, with the love of the parents for their daughter holding a tenuous upper hand over their church's unwavering condemnation.

The saddest and most poignant story is Mary Lou Wallner’s. Ms. Wallner believes her daughter, Anna, hanged herself after receiving a letter she wrote to Anna rejecting her after she came out and admonishing her to return to the path of righteous sexual orientation. She is now a political activist advocating for gay rights.

The narrative culminates with the triumphant outcome of the story of Gene Robinson, who lived for years as a "normal" married man before embracing his homosexuality, coming out to his wife and leaving her for a male partner. In 2003 he was consecrated as the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church – but in order to protect himself against the numerous death threats he'd received, he was forced to wear a bulletproof vest to the ceremony. As a footnote, last week he and his partner entered into a civil union.

It was clear after watching, that the remnant, the Anawim, are still with us, and so are the enforcers of purity.

Society is quite good at marginalising people. Look at what we do to the homeless, immigrants, women; people of colour. But the church is exceptionally good at marginalising the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community and supporting society’s homophobia and then justifying it with scripture-based faith. And lest we as Anglicans kid ourselves that it is only Evangelicals who do this. We need to remember that only one diocese in the Anglican Communion has ordained as bishop an openly gay man in a committed relationship. And that single act has threatened to fracture the Communion forever. Lest we think that New Zealand, at least, is more enlightened, we need to remember that our diocese will not approve for ordination as a priest or deacon a gay or lesbian person who does not promise to live a celibate life. As official policy neither does the diocese permit clergy to perform civil unions in or out of the church. Marriage, of course, is out of the question.

I find the church’s participation in perpetuating GLBT people as outcasts a source of deep personal shame. But at the same time I feel that we at St Matthew’s are amongst the disciples Jesus sent to the Anawim. There are many here who nurtured the GLBT community when it was still illegal to be a homosexual by providing space here for them to worship as a community. Thirty years later the Auckland Community Church is still here. You are a congregation that supports our blind eye to diocesan policy by permitting civil unions here. Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters know this is holy ground for them, which is why they hold their annual candlelight memorial to remember those who have died of HIV/AIDS here. And why a memorial service will be held by the GLBT community here this afternoon to honour the memory of Darren Taylor, who is better known by her drag diva persona, Miss Bambi Slut. Bambi performed for gay and straight audiences across New Zealand and Australia at nightclubs, corporate functions, and charity fundraisers.

The GLBT community, especially those who hang on to their faith in spite of being reviled by their co-religionists, is to be treasured. They are part of God’s Remnant. That is why we seek to reassure them and encourage them to keep hanging on… even if we are a church. We do so because we dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow that one day no child will have cause to fear or feel shame to learn they were born with a same-sex attraction. That one day the church will celebrate that child’s presence amongst us, and the special gifts he or she brings. That is our quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.

June 8, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 5

‘The valley of the shadow’ is an evocative phrase. I have hiked in steep sided valleys where the sunlight seems to visit for less than a couple of hours in the day. Not that you’d know it, mind you, for the dense bush blocks out the direct light. The vegetation, the animal, and the insect life are very different in such valleys compared to the ridges and the slopes that the sun embraces. The valley of the shadow is an altogether different place.

The phrase ‘the valley of the shadow’ comes from Psalm 23 and refers to despair and hardship in one’s spiritual life. The fuller phrase is ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ and thus it is frequently used at funerals. Death though can be both physical and spiritual. The death of meaning is a spiritual reality. Part of the grief, for example, of physically losing someone close is the spiritual loss of the meaning you gave to each other. Divorce similarly can involve a loss of meaning.

Elie Wiesel is one of my theological heroes. He is a Jewish writer, a Nobel Laureate, and a Holocaust survivor. His best known book is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences in several concentration camps. For ten years after the war he couldn’t write about it. When he did finally write he had trouble finding a publisher.

“I was the accuser,” writes Wiesel, “God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone – terribly alone in a world without God and without humanity.”

As we Christians walk on in our faith we need to wrestle with the implications of the Holocaust. There is the undeniable contribution Christianity made in helping to shape the minds of those who devised, built and ran the death camps, and those who knew they existed but were silent. Christianity had taught that Judaism was wrong, outdated, and killed Christ. Christianity had taught compliance to authority more than it had taught its adherents to protest for human rights. Christianity still all too frequently teaches these things.

In the final analysis though Christianity ‘passed by’ [1] the suffering Jews not because it disagreed with Judaism or felt impotent to intervene, but because Christianity had for centuries projected particularly upon Jews its religious and racial fears and hatred. I fear a similar process is happening today, post 9/11, in projecting religious and racial fears and hatred onto Islam.

However the implications of the Holocaust include more than Christian hegemony, political acquiescence, and the projection of fear and hate. It has implications about God.

Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget that first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night... Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.”

The God Wiesel accused was religion’s familiar God. The one we Christians usually call Father. This is the God who is all-powerful and all-loving. This God is the one from the ‘Footprints in the Sand’ poster. Remember in the poster how the pilgrim thanks God for walking with him or her but questions why especially during “the most trying periods” there is only one set of footprints in the sand instead of two. And the God replies, “[that’s] when I carried you.”

The Footprints God is one that I hope you all have or will experience. It is a God of comfort. And we often need it.

But this familiar God starts to deconstruct, to crack, in the valley of the shadow of Auschwitz. When children and adults are being brutally slaughtered then God is either unloving or impotent. Usually with that choice we opt for a God who is all-loving and isn’t all-powerful. But what does all-loving look like when indifference, brutality, and suffering have combined to block out all hope?

Wiesel is not alone in this spiritual questioning. A number of Christians over years have written about the absence of God – that is the God they trusted and thought they knew. I think Jesus’ experience on the cross was similar when he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I think we do a disservice to people to pretend that God is always present, even if invisible. There are times when the familiar comforting God is absent. There are valleys in life where there is a different God from the God of the sunny ridge. Indeed in the valley of the shadow the sunny God dies, and the meaning associated with it dies too.

The God of the valley of the shadow though is often hidden, and difficult to explain to those who have never been there. It is more akin to the God by the Jabbok ford in Genesis 32 whom Jacob wrestled with all night and was wounded by. Note the confusion in the text around the wrestler – was it a man or was it God? Tradition has compromised and called it an angel. I prefer to think of it as the-God-whom-Jacob-wrestled-with. That is how the text names the experience.

The word ‘God’ is a way to construct meaning. Some would say we create God in order to have meaning. God becomes a piece of slate onto which we write our assumptions and understandings of life and the world. As the slate metaphor implies this is a fixed, static, compliant God – one who is assumed to be understanding and predictable.

But then something happens. Maybe we move, or maybe God does. Or, as is often the case, trauma comes smashing into our lives extinguishing the light. The slate shatters… maybe replaced by cloud or fire or a wrestling of the soul... but not by anything we’ve known previously as God.

With the shattering of the slate that God is gone. Our assumptions and understandings written and supported by the slate are gone too. The world feels wobbly.

Some then say that the slate God, also known as the true and only God, was a fake. They scrap the whole God enterprise and use their relationships or their needs as the basis of their meaning making.

My advice to fellow pilgrims who have entered valleys of shadows is five-fold:

Firstly, trust your heart. Yes the God you once knew is not here. The meaning associated with that God no longer fits your experience. Don’t discount your experience. That God was flawed.

Secondly, keep walking. Believe that it will lead somewhere and you will one day walk in the sunshine. No one knows how long that will be. Don’t believe those who pedal instant sunshine.

Thirdly, keep your spiritual routines: coming to Church, saying the odd prayer, strolling on beaches, lighting candles. These routines help you keep your balance.

Fourthly, seek out others who know about the absence of God. You might have to find such company in a book, but I hope not. These others won’t give you answers but will give you support.

Lastly, believe too that there is a God in the valley of shadow, and you might first meet that God in the deep reservoirs within your own soul. It might be that which wrestles with you and by which ironically you are both wounded and healed. Or it might not.

[1] The allusion here is to the Parable of the Good Samaritan when the religious leaders passed by the man who was beaten and lying by the side of the road.

June 1, 2008

John Paterson

Pentecost 3

On June 1, the Rt Revd John Paterson visited St Matthew's for confirmation. In this podcast the confirmands, Caitlin Gunasekara, Reece Davis, Patricia Gosper and Barry Gosper share why they are seeking to be confirmed and Bishop John and Glynn remember their confirmations.

May 25, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 2     Isaiah 49: 8-16a     Matthew 6: 24-34

Carpe diem – ‘seize the day’ is a familiar phrase and one which I have sometimes invoked when anxiety or worry afflicts me. It reminds me that this very day, this very moment is actually the only reality – this moment that holds the memory of life past and the projection of hopes and dreams for the future. These include looking back on the mixed bag that is life which contains joy and wonder and pain and regret at the same time – a source of reflection and hopefully a source for a growing wisdom. And in a forward direction, projections of what perhaps life could be, what we think is possible, probable and maybe a sneaky outside hope that we might never admit to but is nevertheless very much part of our inner world

I am a child of my generation, of this time in history of multi-tasking where the more we can pack into a day the better. The maxim is that it is good to be busy, on the go, to be productive and achieve so that we can have more and live better, afford that extra tuition for the kids, have an occasional blowout at a fabulous restaurant, maybe take the family to Fiji or Australia for a holiday, buy that luxury trifle because you do really deserve it. I’m not necessarily decrying this life as I am part of it and can see the logic in our small corner of the world.

Don’t worry about it – as Jesus says in our gospel reading today, don’t worry – tomorrow is another day and life has its own pace and seasons. There is little to be gained from worrying.

But I do worry. Not so much about my own comfortable life filled with minor and occasionally major anxieties but about what is happening to our world, this earth which sustains us and of which we are a part. We humans are special – we alone are the manipulators of our environment which is becoming deeply, perhaps mortally wounded by the machinations of the God of wealth.

In 2003 a film called ‘The Corporation’ was released to wide acclaim from those who care about this planet. It told us that the corporation came into legal existence just after the abolition of slavery, using the same legalese to justify its personhood. A Corporation is legally a person, one designed to pursue profit legally and without regard for human consequences. The film vividly exposes how this person is a dangerous destructive psychopath without a conscience.

It is this person, the corporation, that like a virus spreads its particular sickness across vast continents and controls the food and water on this planet.

We all read about food and water crises which are killing tens of thousands to perhaps millions of men women and children each year. According to world-renowned activist and scientist Vandana Shiva this is a direct result of the power and control of these corporations and the concomitant greed of the super-rich. As she writes, countries of the South like India that could once feed themselves and where small farmers could make a living, are now rife with poverty, dispossession and desperate suicides. As corporations dictate and control world markets we also see and hear their muscle in false propaganda and orchestrated media releases about food and water shortages and price rises. These shortages and rises are the direct result of these avaricious and amoral corporations that give rise to globalization, which over the last 15 years has spread like a pestilent and deathly virus throughout the world. Its agents are the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation which override national sovereignty and promote the illusory idea of ‘free trade’ which is paradoxically and utterly ‘unfree.’ Corporations are harvesting obscene profits while people die of hunger.

I ask myself continually what we, as Christians, should be doing, thinking and praying about this. Should we be like Jesus in the Temple and get physical like those three protestors recently at Waihopai who burst the bubble on intelligence gathering? Do we write and support those who protest globally? Do we talk and pass on information about these vital and life threatening issues within our own social gamut? Or are we as numbed as the next person on the street?

While I often lament the demands of modern communications, namely, the internet – I am also thrilled at how the access to information is democratized and we can collect knowledge and share information globally so that criminal legalized injustice such as this can be exposed and condemned for the deathly sentence it brings in its wake.

In light of this global catastrophe it is salient to examine today’s reading from Matthew. Jesus says we can’t serve two masters – God and money – he’s right, we can’t. For us God and money are both essential for living but serving money instead of God leads to greed and serving one’s own ego. Serving God means listening and caring, not ignoring the plight of others on this earth, and to be vigilant and aware of insidious and sinister structures that trade in money for death.

Jesus says not to worry inordinately about the trivialities that can consume us like ‘what will I wear – does this look good on me – what’s for dinner. I say inordinately because I too do all those things, but they should not be the lynchpin or the centre of our lives. Jesus exhorts us to look at creation, the beauty and timeless seasons that we see in birds that fly east or north for the winter to return in the spring, to lilies that are reborn in their regal and velvety magnificence year after year without any concern. Jesus says don’t worry.

In a way this gospel passage reminds me of that great philosophical book of the Bible – Ecclesiastes. The familiar phrase that extends into a poem – ‘To everything there is a season” comes from that short and very readable book and it’s true. There is no point in worrying about life that contains its own rhythms and stages that are common to us all, rich or poor.

But it is also true that Jesus asks us to strive. To strive for the kingdom of God and for righteousness – or goodness as I prefer to understand that outmoded word. Then we will stop worrying, will we?

This striving, struggling, yearning, trying hard, doing ones best is a mark of the Christian life.

It is a daily reality for us all in ways big and small whatever our station or stage of life – there are always new and different challenges to be met as the world and our lives twist and turn. This can often take the form of anxiousness and worrying. Jesus says don’t. I believe he is speaking about our personal lives and is telling us that it is quite normal but hey – be cool – we are all in this together and if we look around us it is beautiful.

For me, when I am anxious I go to the gym or maybe walk my dog, or go to a good movie that engrosses me and somehow shifts my perspective. Last Saturday afternoon I took myself off to St Helier’s beach where barefoot I rolled up my jeans, bought a double ice-cream and waded in the water’s edge for a quiet meditative couple of hours in the sparkly autumn sunshine. It was a deep time of spiritual renewal for me where I listened to the murmurings of my heart and just let them be.

However, on a global scale I do have this sneaky outside hope that we can, miraculously, as people who follow in the way of Jesus strive together and impact upon a world that is riven with greed and injustice that blights and desperately worries the lives of so many. Those real people who become statistics in our information overload era, those victims we must speak up for in solidarity with all life.

Earth Democracy, Justice, Sustainability and Peace, Vandana Shiva, 2005.

May 18, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Trinity Sunday     Genesis:18:1-14     Matthew 28:16-20

Sentence and Prayer of the Day

Some nights stay up till dawn as the moon

sometimes does for the sun.

– 13th century Persian prayer

O God our mystery, you bring us to life, call us to

freedom, and move between us with love. May we

so participate in the weave of your presence all

around us that our lives spin with colour. Amen.

– Glynn Cardy

In any literal sense depicting God as a trinity is nonsense. If God is God – that is within and beyond all our human philosophical constructions - there are more than three expressions of the Divine, more than three movements, three ‘faces’, three ways of knowing or experiencing God.

In modern times some scholars have tried to resurrect it’s relevance by emphasizing the social relationships within the Trinity. How the Father related to the Son and vice versa, and how the Spirit fitted in. Two of the key words were ‘self-giving’ and ‘interpenetration’. Yes, they actually said the latter with a straight face!

Yet it all seems very quaint and anthropomorphic to me. God being a cosy little threesome dancing together doesn’t leave much room for the gooseberry called humanity. Even in liberal interpretations of Trinity being a parent-creator, a Jesus-exemplar, and a spirited life force, I fail to see how its social relationships are meant to be a model for team work or community. Is one of us meant to be a creative, another prepared to die, and a third fiery?? And we are all meant to be self-giving and inter-xxxx each other. The mind boggles!

Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era was trying to come to terms with its experience of Jesus, its experience of his life living on in them, and its realization that God was still more. It wanted to say that their experiences of Jesus and God-within-each-other weren’t the whole story. Yet it also wanted to say that the Divine was more than the fixed idea of a transcendent, untouchable, holy God off the planet. So the Cappadocian boys, and their sister, in the 3rd century offered the Church the oxymoron of a tri-unity or trinity.

At its best trinity is a theological construct trying to hold together infinity and finitude, accessibility and inaccessibility, the tangible and the mysterious, the known and the unknown, the personal and the impersonal, stillness and movement, and diversity and unity. The problem comes when people and institutions lock it down with definitions. A good example of lockdown is the phrase ‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ from Matthew’s Gospel. For a baptism to be legitimate the officiant has to recite this ‘magical’ formula. I’m surprised we are not meant to say it in Aramaic! But then again it is highly unlikely that Jesus ever said those words himself. They are a formulation of the later Church.

The Church has a long history of trying to contain God, put some quick setting cement into divinity’s gumboots, and fix God to their chosen spot. Some definition of God is I concede an inevitable part of engagement, but definition can quickly drift into dogmatic statements that are then taken too literally too often. The depiction, for example, of two-thirds of God as human-shaped males is a case in point.

One of my favorite phrases from the New Zealand Prayer is ‘Ko te Karaiti te pou herenga waka’. In English: ‘Christ is the mooring post for our canoes’. The metaphor can of course be taken to mean that we go off journeying in our wakas and then return each time back to Mother Church and her dogmas that remain stuck fast into the muddy bottom. However, my spirituality and the spiritual journey of most of us, including the New Zealand Anglican Church, is that we don’t return. We travel long distances and when tired seek a sheltered mooring post. After staying a little while we set off and journey on until again we seek a new mooring. I hear the metaphor as saying that at each place we stop, each new mooring, we experience God in Christ. As we change on the journey so the Christ we experience changes.

God is fluid more than fixed. A fluid God is forever fluid but a fixed God becomes stuck in a time-warp. A fixed God ordains a fixed Church, with fixed ideas, and invites people to join in order to be fixed.

Generally speaking, the Church can’t cope with a fluid God. It wants to nail God down. Its needs for security, stability, and routine are psychologically transferred onto the Divine. One of the most damaging biblical verses is “[God in-Jesus] is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.” It’s damaging because it fixes God in canonical concrete and invites the Church to be fixed too. The Church has tried to hard to be ‘the same, yesterday, today, and forever’ and it’s bored its people away.

This morning we heard read the tale from the Abrahamic legends of the visitors at the Oaks of Mamre. On one level this is a story about a visitation of divine messengers to Abraham telling him that his post-menopausal wife, Sarah, would conceive. Sarah’s response was to get the giggles. Her barrenness had been a constant shame to her. But on another level this story is theologically intriguing because the language used for the three visitors is not that of messengers [or ‘angels’ in Hebrew] but of ‘the Lord’ or God. The division between these three visitors and God is not clear, and seems to be purposefully confusing.

The Christian Church has taken this story and given it a Trinitarian twist. The artist Rublev painting in 1410 gives it another. He paints all three visitors as non-gender specific. In other words each could be male or female.

Rather than get into Trinitarian projections, as I’m sure the Hebrew authors didn’t intend, I prefer to see this story as an example of the fluid nature of the concept of God. Yes, God is mysteriously beyond making a call on our lives. But God is also present among us in our eating, talking, and giggling.

Arising from the understanding of a trinity God who is fluid and not fixed there is, I suggest, three consequences for the practice of our faith.

Firstly, humility. We need to acknowledge that we don’t have a monopoly on God. We need to humbly learn from other faiths and those who have no faith. Yet we also need to dialogue and at times critique other faith and religious perspectives. We don’t have God in our pocket. And the God others have in their pocket may have something to teach us.

Secondly, iconoclasm. The fluid God of Christianity can be incarnated and manifested in a variety of forms. 1960s white Southern Baptists needed to meet the black Christ. The English Anglican Church, and Sydney too, need the female Christ. The Anglican Church of Nigeria needs to meet the gay Christ. Christ comes in a variety of ways to iconoclastically break through our prejudices and stir us to change.

This has implications for the way we pray. We usually create or hold before us images and symbols to centre our prayer. They might include crosses, pictures of Jesus, candles, etc. Yet we also need to regularly practice iconoclasm: breaking from those images and symbols in order to avoid idolatry. I believe the Church by portraying a fixed God called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has created a three-headed idol.

Lastly, discomfort. The Christian God is not content to offer comfort without challenge. Nor I might add to offer only challenge without comfort. We need however to be constantly wary of the comfortable God and the ways we idolatrously make God comfortable. It is too easy to have an armchair God who never challenges us about how we spend our money or our time, who never challenges us about who we vote for if we vote at all, and who never pushes us where we don’t physically, mentally, or emotionally want to go.

The fluid God though will journey with us if we have the courage to set off unsure of where we might be going.

May 11, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost Sunday     Act 2:1-21

Sentence and Prayer of the Day

Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication. – Algernon Black


Wind of Spirit, come


Sweep through our days.


You are a broom that disturbs, dares, and
demands of us.


You clean out the cobwebs of mediocrity and
cynicism.


You bring a desire to welcome the new within our
aging house,


That it may be warmed again and again.


Wind of Spirit,

Come Sweep through our days. – Glynn Cardy

Sometimes change is foisted upon us. Sometimes we go looking for it. Sometimes we get more than we bargained for.

Recently I decided my writing style was as tired and limited as my wardrobe. It was functional, but colourless and getting a little threadbare in the seat. It seemed that no matter what I wrote – an email to my kids, a recipe for a neighbour; a grocery list – everything sounded like a sermon.

So I enrolled in a writing class to explore other genres. The first class was on the craft of writing short stories. The first example given was a very short short story (only 202 words) by a Kiwi, Judy Parker, entitled simply “The Hat.” Sometimes, as you will hear, escaping your native genre is harder than it looks. She wrote:

The priest looked up from the psalms on the lectern, cast his eyes over the hats bowed before him. Feathered, frilled, felt hats in rows like faces. One at the end of the row different. A head without hat. A cat without fur. A bird without wings. Won’t fly far. Voices dance in song with the colours of the windows. Red light played along the aisle, blue over the white corsage of Mme Dewsbury, green on the pages of the Bible. Reflecting up on the face of the priest.

He spoke to the young lady afterwards:

“You must wear a hat and gloves in the House of God. It is not seemly otherwise.”

The lady flushed, raised her chin, strode out.

“That’s the last we’ll see of here,” said the organist.

The organ rang out, the priest raised his eyes to the rose window. He did not see the woman in hat and gloves advancing down the aisle as though she were a bride. The hat, enormous, such as one might wear to the races. Gloves, black lace, such as one might wear to meet a duchess. Shoes, high-heeled, such as one might wear on a catwalk in Paris.

And nothing else.

As I listened to this story, Pentecost’s spirited wind whistled and wailed in my ears and flames flitted and flickered before my eyes. Like seemingly drunken disciples the story preached a most unseemly and in-your-face faith. Buck-naked, tradition, worldly power, patriarchy, hierarchy, and the orthodox were put on notice by a god definitely out of her box, but wearing a hat. So much for the dream of escaping my genre.

I couldn’t help thinking that it is a new Pentecost story for our time. But more on that in a minute.

Luke’s story is just as unseemly. His is a story of chaos and disorder. God is running amok. Boundaries are crossed. Taboos are broken. The young’s visions and their elders’ dreams are being voiced in confrontational language to the established order. The old order is slipping through the fingers of power faster the harder they cling to it. The unpredictable new is in the ascendancy.

What was new in Luke’s account? Until this time religion, like politics, was local. It was a product of the culture. It reflected the values of the tribe. It gave them a sense of who was friend and who was foe. It played to their fears of the others who were beyond the tribe. It grounded their xenophobia and ethnocentrism in righteousness. It served as the glue that told its adherents who they were and who they weren’t. Religion gave people an illusion of living in an orderly and predictable world. Outside the boundaries of their religion was a place of chaos. Its inhabitants were demonic or subhuman. In the early history of Israel, those who worshipped gods outside the culture were idolaters. Identifying idolaters gave the faithful of the local religion a target for their contempt and hostility and someone to blame for their disappointments and failures.

This wasn’t true just in Israel but in most places until Jesus. Israel was amongst the first to believe in monotheism, but it was Jesus’ followers who believed that their god was everyone’s god. Universal monotheism was a Christian innovation. Upon reflection the first generation of Christians came to believe Jesus didn’t just come for the Chosen People but for the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, the Centurion’s servant and the Samaritan leper. Luke, in telling the story of Pentecost, already knew that Christianity had spread to the edge of the known world and to its centre in Rome. It had already transcended tribe and tradition. A religion that included everyone was a revolutionary concept without precedent. A religion of the poor and powerless without an enemy or enmity and yet inclusive in its membership was as outrageous as the woman who wore a hat, gloves, shoes and nothing else.

Unfortunately universalism contains the seeds of its own undoing. On one level it is inclusive. On another it cannot tolerate diversity of belief. In its own way it is no less provincial than the ethnocentric religions that preceded it. This became clear when Christianity acquired power as the state religion of Rome. With power came oppression and intolerance. Belief in a “one true religion” no longer permitted differences. Those who did not believe in the universal faith were pagans or infidels. Conformity to religion’s expectations became more valued than transformation into the divine image. Anyone who did not wear a hat and gloves was not only a pagan but a threat to be cast out.

It would’ve been bad enough If Christianity was the only monotheistic faith claiming a monopoly on unique relevance, exclusive truth and “salvation,” but about 600 years after Pentecost Mohammad established the third great monotheistic faith equally committed to universalizing its beliefs. Crusades, pogroms and jihads were the fruit of the three monotheistic faiths grounded in their common patriarch Abraham.

This 2008 world, now shrunk by the internet, high-speed travel, immigration from places of religious carnage, has put us face-to-face with lady diversity walking brazenly down the aisle. Even in New Zealand it is inescapable even as the church tries not to notice her… um… hat. That diversity has always existed but now she lives next door. The only thing worse is when she wears a head scarf instead of a hat. Such a world calls into question how we live in community with those who we have traditionally vilified as idolaters, pagans, or infidels. The answer is not clear or obvious. But the need to do so for our own survival is.

To focus on this issue within the Christian community, there is a growing progressive movement to rebrand Pentecost Sunday as Pluralism Sunday. The motive is to transform an exclusive religion into something new: one that holds onto the inclusiveness of Pentecost while retracting exclusive claims to universal truth and salvation.

This may sound radical to us, but for most of human history most religions have not presumed to possess universal truth. This position is not taken out of ignorance of the existence of other religions, but out of a judgment that a specific religion has, at most, a claim on those who belong to the culture in which that religion is found. To be born into a culture is to inherit a religion; to be born into a different culture is to inherit a different religion. No one presumes that members of other cultures are inherently deficient; they are merely different. Buddhism and Hinduism have the position that religious diversity is inevitable, beneficial, and necessary because of human diversity. Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism hold that except for priests every one “belongs” to all religions, calling upon each one for different needs. The idea of exclusive loyalty to one religion is incomprehensible to their adherents [1].

Past Christian attempts to find a way to pluralism have failed miserably. They have approached the goal by trying to find in other religions commonly held beliefs. The idea being, “see they aren’t really different from us.” While on a basic human level that is true, what is really happening is a form of Christian imperialism. Based upon their commonly held beliefs "they" clearly are just as human and just as wise and moral as "we" are. “They” must participate in the same religious universe that "we" do, even if, on the surface, "their" religion seems quite different. Their religion is divine, not demonic, after all. See they are wearing hats and gloves. Labelling others as “anonymous Christians,” a label made famous by Karl Rahner, is not pluralism. It is arrogant chauvinism and unworthy of Jesus.

True pluralism begins with tolerance, which is not a virtue Christians are renowned for. But tolerance alone will not get us there. It needs to be followed by curiosity about other religions. As religious historian Max Muller has pointed out, “To know one religion is to know none.” With curiosity comes appreciation for the other as well as greater appreciation for one’s own tradition. With knowledge and appreciation comes empathetic dialogue discussing the strengths and weaknesses contained in all religions. The goal of that dialogue is not to create a new religion born of syncretism but to improve the one’s we have, that each will enrich and inspire us all no matter which faith we follow.

Because of its history and self-interest, I don’t think we can look to the institutional church to rebrand Pentecost Sunday. I think it is up to us to be wind and fire – god out of the box. If it is going to happen we must put on the new hat of pluralism, strip ourselves of the ethnocentrism and chauvinism that cloaks our faith and walk brazenly down the aisle.

[1] Rita M. Gross, Religious Diversity: Some implications for monotheism. www.crosscurrents.org/gross.htm

May 4, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Ascension Sunday     1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Sentence and Prayer of the Day:

“What the Church has done to Jesus Christ is what the Governor of California wants to do to the redwoods – chop them down and make them into comfortable lounge furniture” – Daniel Berrigan SJ 1972

“We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons.” – Daniel Berrigan SJ

Let us give thanks for the lives of all prophets, teachers, healers and revolutionaries, living and dead, acclaimed or obscure, who have rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy. We also celebrate that part of us, that part within ourselves, which has rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy. Amen. – Michael Leunig

There is a long history of protesting Christians. This last week three, including Fr Peter Murnane who has preached at St Matthew’s, were at it again. They punctured a balloon covering intelligence-gathering equipment at Waihopai in the South Island. They also punctured the illusion that New Zealanders are far removed from American wars.

It is well attested that Waihopai information is fed to the American military. It is well attested that the American military invaded Iraq on spurious grounds. And it is well attested that the vast majority of casualties since that invasion have been Iraqi civilians. The preservation of all human life is fundamental to Christian belief. War, and all that aids and abets war, is anathema. War is murder, and Waihopai is complicit in it.

The Waihopai three are part of the international Christian network called Ploughshares. The name comes from the biblical verses admonishing the people to turn their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

There are of course many people who, while sympathetic to condemnation of the Iraq occupation, disagree with the protesters about breaking the law and destroying public property. Ploughshares however justify their actions in terms of the greater good. Do you worry, for example, about breaking down the front door of a house and illegally entering if there is a fire and children are trapped inside? Ploughshares would say that war is raging out of control, children are trapped, and we need to help.

The Berrigan brothers and their friends formed Ploughshares in 1980. Daniel and Philip Berrigan however were already well known for their social action. Daniel was a Jesuit and Philip a Josephite priest. In 1968 during the Vietnam War, for example, they and seven others invaded the selective service office in Catonsville, Maryland, pulled draft files out of their cabinets, piled them outside, and set them afire with homemade napalm. They went to prison for 3 years.

Dan Berrigan wrote, in advance of the Catonsville action: "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?"

On September 9th 1980 Dan, Philip, and six others began the Ploughshares movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested, charged, and imprisoned.

The most well-known New Zealander involved in a Ploughshares action is Moana Cole. In 1991 Moana was part of the ANZAC Ploughshares that entered Griffith Air Force Base in New Jersey, hammered on a B52 bomber headed for Iraq, poured blood on it, said prayers and started digging up the runway. The four people were arrested and spent one year in jail.

In 1994 Moana was involved in the first Ploughshares action on New Zealand soil. Moana and Australian Ciaron O’Reilly entered Harewood US Airforce Base in Christchurch on Hiroshima Day where they poured blood, prayed and were subsequently arrested and fined several hundred dollars.

Ploughshares differ from other types of protest in that they are liturgies, intentionally sacramental. A sacrament is a ‘window into God’. It is an action that helps us see into the nature and meaning of the Divine. The pouring of blood [sometimes the protesters own blood], the hammering of weapons of war into implements of peace, the use of sickles… all these are symbolic theatrical acts that point to a God who loves all, who desires peace, and who is prepared to confront the powers that be to achieve it. The God of this liturgy is not a couch potato but an activist intent on change.

In many churches and their liturgies there is the notion that God is always a human-shaped hug. When walking beyond the comfort of such notions of ‘loving God forever kind’ not only do our ideas about God change but the language to connect with God also changes. The liturgy of protest makes us look afresh at God-language. Often in my experience no language can immediately help. For a while, sometimes quite a while, we walk our liturgy in silence and tears.

Protest actions of course can easily be misconstrued. It is hard to have the ‘perfect protest’. Someone’s idea of the sacred – whether it be ‘property’, ‘the law’, or ‘the church’ will always be desecrated. Think of Jesus and the cleansing the Temple episode. He destroyed other people’s property, disrupted legitimate business, and brought violence and upset into a holy place! Liturgies of protest will always be offensive to some, and especially to those with the biggest investment in the political and religious status quo.

There is something about political action that shapes us. In times of social upheaval physical location is important. Are we marching on the streets, or expressing our opposition to neighbours over the back fence, or watching on television, or switching channels, or wishing the government would crack down on these protesters, or being part of the constabulary doing the cracking? Many of us here this morning have protested against wars in Vietnam and Iraq, against nuclear warships, against racism in South Africa and in our own land, against policies that entrench poverty, and many other things. We are a church who walks our faith with placards.

There is always vulnerability in liturgies of protest. You are clumped together with a great variety of people and are assumed to think the same about this and any other issue. I have walked with communists, freemasons, and grandmothers, ACT party members, and those in favour of legalising marijuana. You are also vulnerable because at times there is violence and abuse directed against you. It might be a bystander with a rock, or an over-exuberant police officer.

These experiences, these liturgies of protest, shape our prayer in ways that are difficult to describe. That mix of passion, solidarity, vulnerability, and potential violence affects you. It is often a time of looking into your own soul and being found by the god who is there. The frightening thing is we may not recognise this god as God.

I know when I meet someone who has marched with me, who has stood alongside me, who has been arrested with me, that I have a certain respect for and trust in them. Conversely when I am with people, particularly those who aspire to leadership, who have never stood up for any issue, then no matter how talented they are I find it difficult to give them the same degree of respect and trust. Will they walk their faith when it counts? Will they risk displeasure, abuse, and ill-informed criticism?

The ANZAC Ploughshares trio wrote last week: “At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes – these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.”

Today let us give thanks for them, pray for them, but above all pray for the victims of war – including our own damaged souls.

April 27, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Easter 6     Acts 17:22-31     John 14:15-21

Pluralism. It’s a word that is used rather carefully or diffidently in public Christian discourse today. Although it is widely recognized as valid honest and logical in our 21st century global society, religious pluralism is a complex issue. It asks that we recognize that our faith is not the exclusive source for truth or that we tolerate other faiths as being as real and true as our own.

At baseline, as Christians we are followers of the ‘way’ of Jesus Christ. Our spiritual inheritance rests in a triumphant monotheism that is defined by Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Our faith statements hold that he knowingly died for us – that we might be forgiven through his sacrificial and grisly death as a criminal. Furthermore, not only did Jesus die and appear again three days later but he did not leave us bereft, alone or without him. As we hear today in our gospel reading from John, he comes to us with another advocate, the Spirit of truth.

Our first reading from Acts is a famous passage where the redoubtable Paul arrives in Athens. As we hear he is most upset to see the numerous statues and idols that litter the city. He examines them and finds one dedicated to an ‘unknown God.’ Cleverly Paul engages the Athenians on the premise of revealing the nature of this ‘unknown God.’ Winningly he says – ‘O’ Athenians, I can see how religious and dedicated you are – but I will reveal to you the nature of this unknown God – the true and only God, one who does not reside in temples or objects but is the genesis, the creator and life giver of all things that were, that are, that ever will be. This is the God you long for.’ And Paul utters the fateful and famous line: for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’

First century Athens was a charming, decadent city based on learning. It was the university city of the Roman world and as such contained the keenest minds of the time. It was, I quote, “a delightful a place to live in for religious persons of leisure and cultivation.” It was a curious and openly pluralist society based on freedom of worship, faith and the search for truth.

In the 2000 years since then Christianity conquered and has dominated the Western world. We have been savagely monotheistic and oceans of blood have been filled over time by those who would deny the supremacy and ultimate truth claims of the church. But in the 21st century it is difficult to maintain the exclusivity of this singular monotheism.

Yet, I believe our spiritual longing and groping, as Paul puts it, is based firmly within this understanding. It is our focus, our spiritual inheritance, our reality. Moreover, I also believe that it is important to cleave to, to reverence, to pray and sing out loud, to argue and hope, to lose oneself in, to delight in the God we love, the God who moves within and between us.

Living religion represents a unity of three elements which reside in a mix of the institutional, the intellectual and the mystical. [1]

We worship together here as church, an institution which provides the community we are called to be part of as Christians. This, at best, provides great and historic worship within the creativity of the new, guidance and support, good teaching or theology, food for thought, a haven at times perhaps, fun sometimes – all within the community of believers that we are willingly part of. If we are lucky church liturgy and music can also be a pathway to the mystical.

Second, the intellectual element is how we think and wrestle with theological concepts and problems in our post-enlightenment world individually and collectively. Most of the content of our sermons and study groups are contained within the intellectual as we try to come to grips with what it means to be Christian in our global and pluralist world. In his argument for the nature of the unknown God in our Acts reading today, Paul is using this analytical and intellectual component to try to convince the Athenians of the truth of his belief.

However, I believe that the third element, the mystical, is that which we grope for, that which we long for, that which we need to sustain our faith within the hurly-burly of life. It is the yearning for the mystical that will not let us go. It is why we are here. The mystical is about love, about the intuitive and emotional element that gives us the hope and the heart to love and to live well. The mystical is the ‘inarticulate speech of the heart’ directed towards God.

What enticed me into this pulpit was not the institutional or the intellectual but the mystical – that place that sometimes I arrive at where God is indeed the ‘ground of my being’ and I am infused with something extraordinary that transforms my daily worries and realities – something that transports me and invades my heart with love for all things. It bids me to embrace goodness, to speak for justice and truth, to try to love openly, and to use a Jack Spongism, to ‘love wastefully.’

It is not an easy road as I am sure you are all aware – we are not static things but living creatures ever in motion as we respond to our inward thoughts and our responses to our environment. Pain and struggle are the shadows of these liminal moments that we must embrace too. However, I believe this mystical longing is a human trait, an innate characteristic if you like.

This universal longing for the mystical, for God – for Love – for illumination, self-forgetfulness or oneness transcends religion, yet religion is the primary and outward expression of it. In our Christian tradition we have Saints galore who personify the mystical from Francis of Assisi to Meister Eckhart to Julian of Norwich, through to more recent times with people like Dorothy Day, Anthony De Mello, John O’Donohue. We have ecumenical communities like Taize that are entirely based on the mystical whose affecting refrains we sing here at St Matthews.

But – as the saying goes – we are not alone! Other traditions have their own sacred writings and ways of giving voice to the mystical in their tradition. The ‘mindfulness’ of Buddhism, the Tao or ‘the way’ of the Chinese mystic Lao Tzu, the Upanishads from India that are reputed to be the oldest mystical documents in the world, the Shema – the most important prayer of Judaism, the Sufi of Islam. These few examples of other traditions express the same ongoing longing for God that brings us here today.

As Jan Ruysbroeck, a fourteenth century Christian mystic wrote “God is there for everyone, with all the gifts divine. The angels are there for everyone.”

The complexity of pluralism lies in the intellectual mode. Pluralism can appear to relativise our faith, our God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But in truth the mystical longings we all share transcend the institutional and the intellectual. I am personally fascinated by the sacred texts of other traditions and what they reveal about the nature of God and relationship. I am made richer by it also. I can genuinely love my Muslim neighbour knowing that she too desires and longs within the mystical dimension in her life just as I do – her path is merely different to mine and that is OK.

I am able to live my personal monotheistic faith in the Jesus of the gospels, in the Spirit of truth, in John’s God that is Love, and in Paul’s ‘ground of our being’ alongside the pluralism that is our world.

We are all searching and yearning. Just like Paul.

[1] Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. Fortress Press, 2001

April 20, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter 5     Genesis 38:1-27

Sentence of the Day:

Look at the person in the mirror and know that you are wonderful, precious, and a repository of the divine. – Glynn Cardy

Prayer of the day:

The feisty courage of Tamar speaks to us down the centuries. May we know within us the God who doesn’t give up, doesn’t collude, and who is not afraid to break the law when the law is wrong. Amen. – Glynn Cardy

The story of Tamar [Genesis 38] is about rights, responsibilities, oppression, and God. The context is patriarchy, maybe as early as 10th century BCE. Men rule. Women serve, and are breeders. If you don’t serve and you don’t breed your worth is minimal. So on one level the story is not about Tamar at all, but about the patriarch Judah and Tamar’s male offspring.

Judah, the fourth-born son of Jacob, was one of the jealous brothers who ditched daddy’s favourite. The critical question that the Tamar saga seeks to answer is why the genealogical line of blessing – that in time would lead to King David – would go through Judah and not Reuben [Jacob’s first-born].

Judah had three sons the eldest of whom, Er, married Tamar. The text is brief and pointed: he was wicked and God slew him. ‘Wickedness’ is not explained. What is explained is that Er was childless and, as per Deuteronomy 25:5-10, it was the duty of Er’s siblings to ‘go in’ to Tamar so that she conceive and thus perpetuate the dead brother’s name. In Israel at this time there was no belief in afterlife bodily resurrection. Your offspring were your afterlife.

But this custom was not just for the benefit of the deceased. It protected the woman from economic deprivation and a sort of social wilderness. The childless widow was no longer a virgin in her father’s family, and no longer belonged there. Rather she remained a barren wife in her dead husband’s family until the so-called ‘curse’ of barrenness was lifted.

The second son of Judah, Onan, however practices a primitive form of birth control. The ‘sin’ of Onan though is not birth control but refusing meet his obligations and to help create another man's children. His reason was probably greed: Onan might have preferred to divide his inheritance with the one remaining brother [dividing it two ways] rather than also with the family of his deceased brother [dividing it three ways]. Again God pops up to kill another brother.

The next step following the Deuteronomic prescription should have been that the third son of Judah, Shelah, 'goes in' to Tamar. But Judah hesitates. He doesn't want his last son to die too. Tamar seems jinxed. Perhaps he feared she was a witch of sorts who killed her lovers. Fear and suspicion distract Judah from his responsibilities and the rights of Tamar.

Judah tells her to return to her father's house. There she is not a virgin, a wife, nor a mother. There she is either to be pitied or scorned. No one petitions Judah on her behalf. No one cries out for justice. No one seems to befriend Tamar, affirm her personhood, or tell her that she has done nothing wrong. She is terribly alone and hope seems lost. There she remains.

Between verse 11 and 12 something happened for Tamar. What it was we have no idea. But she moved from despair, from thoughts maybe of suicide or ‘overdose’, from feeling wronged and victimized, to determining that she would take hold of her own future. Despite her social powerlessness as a woman, and a barren widow at that, she determined to confront the injustice. And she changed history.

There is in mythology a character called a trickster. This is someone, real or imagined, who breaks the rules and disobeys normative behaviour. A trickster confronts the powers, and often triumphs through trickery. The role of the trickster is to point to the deep truth that the sacred often comes through upset, reversal and surprise.

Tamar the trickster disguises herself as a prostitute and waits on the edge. Along comes Judah and avails himself of her services. As surety in lieu of payment Tamar keeps Judah’s ring and staff – signs of his identity and authority. Tamar conceives from her encounter with Judah and the proverbial hits the fan. She has invited scandal, and scandal has come.

In response to the anger and death that Tamar’s supposed ‘adultery’ elicits she produces the ring and staff. Judah perceives the truth. “She is more right than I,” he admits, “since I did not give to her my [third-born] son.” Judah humbly acknowledges that he is wrong.

Note in verse 26 where it says, “He [Judah] did not lie with her again”. Scholars wonder whether this is just an admonition against incest or whether it reflects Judah's fear of a woman who has survived two husbands and has boldly bettered him. He is wary of the once-was-powerless one.

Tamar, like Rebekah before her, gives birth to twin boys – the mark of a special matriarch. The text vindicates her ethically scandalous action.

While this is a story of a woman’s courage, it is to its patriarchal audience about Judah. Judah has no love for his father Jacob who neglected him. Judah then loses two sons, and does not protect the widow rights of Tamar. Jacob has lost a son too [Joseph], thanks to the jealous brothers. This story of Tamar is a lesson for Judah – a lesson in feeling empathy for his father and a lesson in trying not to protect what he loves [his son Shelah] by denying what is right [justice for Tamar].

These lessons are at the heart of reconciliation. It is Judah who in later chapters facilitates the reconciliation with Joseph and thus saves the fledging Hebrew nation. Not surprisingly then the genealogical line of blessing bypasses the first-born Reuben, by-passes the gifted and big-headed Joseph, and instead goes through Judah and, as Jesus’ biographers noted, Tamar.

The role of God in this story is interesting. By name God is simply inserted as a killing machine: God killed Er, God killed Onan. I suspect the author is using God to explain the inexplicable, namely why two brothers should prematurely die. And I suppose this is preferable to Judah's musings about Tamar being a witch. Note that patriarchal cultures, and their religions like Christianity, have a long history of sticking the label ‘witch’ on any woman who seems different or outside their control.

Using God as a literary tool to explain the inexplicable is vacuous. We can of course psychologically understand it. We can for example empathize with the young man this week that attributed his survival to God while his school friends died in the raging floodwaters. Surviving while others perish can be deeply disturbing. Yet theologically it is nonsense. God doesn’t rescue one teenager and kill the others.

Similarly, while the patriarchal authors might only be able to see their God in death, the God of the prophets and powerless is present in the whole of the narrative even if not explicitly named. There is a saying in our Gospel today about the deity being in Jesus and Jesus being in the deity. I would claim that in her powerlessness, in her willingness to risk scandal, and in her trickery of the patriarch the deity was in Tamar and Tamar was in the deity. God is present in the story, and that presence is seen most powerfully in Tamar.

As we read afresh this story hear three challenges. Firstly, make time and effort to tell those who are marginalized and despairing that you believe in them. You are glad that they exist. Indeed because we don’t know everyone who is feeling marginalized and bereft, make a habit of conveying to anyone and everyone that you believe in them, and that they are a beautiful human being worthy of respect and dignity. And in addition to being empathetic take some responsibility, like Judah should have.

Secondly, be alert for the deep truth that God often is known and comes alive among us through upset, reversal and surprise. The institutional church has great problems with this. It wants to control and prescribe God. It doesn’t see God in barren widows, tricky prostitutes, or strong minded women. Let us be alert to God in places and people where we don’t believe God could be.

Lastly, and similarly, let us be mindful that the one who initiates a scandal, who seems to have ‘sinned’ in the eyes of the Church and world, could well be the bearer of the truth that sets us free. Can God be in the guise of a prostitute? Yes!

April 13, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter 4     Luke 10:29-47

Sentence of the Day:

"There are only two feelings: Love and fear. There are only two languages: Love and fear. There are only two activities: Love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear." – Michael Leunig



Prayer of the Day:

The debris of true gods and false gods litter the pages of history,

testimony to our inability to hear strangers' truths and live with

difference. May love be our guide to avoid the pit of fear. Amen.

He was an immigrant and an outsider, who lived inside the borders of Israel. He spoke with an accent. He worshipped another god, a false god. As a foreigner he was viewed suspiciously. He was a Samaritan. 
– Glynn Cardy

Sermon:

Peter Brown, the Deputy Leader of NZ First, articulated ‘anti-Samaritan’ sentiment last week when he warned of the “real danger we will be inundated with people who have no intention of integrating into our own society. They will form mini-societies… that will lead to division, friction and resentment.”

This is the politics of suspicion and fear. It persists through every age and nation like a virus that won’t go away. Ironically it foments the division, friction, and resentment Brown and his ilk allegedly want to avoid. Fear is the motivation that justifies the powerful pushing the racially, and often economically, less powerful into prescribed roles and functions. Prejudice and racism are the gates that keep them there.

Brown, of course, wasn’t talking about Samaritans per se but those he lumped together as ‘Asian’. But Brown could have been an American politician talking about ‘Hispanics’, or a British politician talking about ‘Muslims’. Or he could have been a leader of a synagogue in first century Palestine.

There was also in our biblical story an insider. Unlike the Samaritan outsider he was a faithful Jew who prayed daily to the true god. Like his contemporaries he listened as people bemoaned the influx of immigrants into Jerusalem, heretics like Samaritans, and by his silence assented to the moaning.

We don’t know too much about this insider until the boundaries of his world were violently shattered. He was beaten up on the Jericho Road and left in pain, semi-conscious, lying in a ditch. He didn’t know who did or didn’t help him until much later. He just groaned, and ached.

When the Samaritan saw the beaten man he had no way of checking on his credentials. He didn’t know whether this was one of those bigoted racists who petitioned and demanded that foreigners go home. He didn’t know whether this was one of those religious purists who would have considered himself contaminated in the presence of a Samaritan. He didn’t know whether the beaten man was nice or nasty, generous or greedy, loved or hated. He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. Right race or wrong race, right face or wrong face, right god or wrong god… it didn’t matter. This Samaritan’s urge to help overruled any misgivings. Kindness was stronger than suspicion.

One of the critical issues most nations and cosmopolitan cities face is finding the balance between on the one hand the need for cultural identity and on the other hand the need for wider social cohesion between multiple cultures.

Immigrant groups are usually tolerated to the extent they blend in - although it’s always hard to blend when you look and sound different, or when the racial/cultural hegemony keeps you at the periphery of social and economic power. Blending has usually meant learning and adopting the language and perceived cultural norms of the majority and relegating your own native culture and language to the status of a ‘hobby’. Such blending has been justified in order to maintain the social cohesion that the power-holders deem acceptable.

All people need to some degree to feel a sense of cultural identity and belonging. Minority cultures need places where they are nurtured and where they can exercise autonomy over their affairs. These are needed not least because culture and spirituality and mental health are so intertwined. To be a strong and vibrant nation or city there needs to be strong and vibrant individuals secure in their cultural inheritance. Only when there is that security can there be the openness and fearlessness to embrace that which is foreign and strange and to discover what unites people across cultures. Rather than the powerful imposing social cohesion, social cohesion will emerge when cultures, races and faiths give each other the respect and resources they need. When unity is imposed it quickly becomes uniformity. When diversity is honoured the willingness to come together is enhanced.

The issues of unity and diversity, identity and cohesion, are not new. As the story of the Good Samaritan indicates they were prevalent in Jesus’ Palestine and throughout the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire, like our globalized world today, attracted to its metropolitan centres a great and wide variety of cultures, languages and religions. Religiously the Romans valued tolerance as a practical measure to aid the cohesion of the Empire. Paganism – namely the worship of the Roman gods and goddesses – tolerated Judaism and Christianity as long as they demonstrated religious tolerance and acknowledged the ruling class system. In the early 300s however the Emperor Constantine saw the benefits of switching from using Paganism as a cohesive force to using Christianity. Christianity was sharpened as an instrument of uniformity.

Unfortunately for the Empire it didn’t work. The Great Council of Nicaea and its successors were ultimately political failures. In the name of trying to get all people to believe the same they labelled one set of beliefs ‘right’ [or orthodox] and another ‘wrong’ [or heretical]. The former were rewarded and the latter punished. The wisdom of orthodoxy didn’t hold the Empire together. Those Goths who sacked Rome in 410 were so-called Christian heretics who traced their theology back through Arius.

For any society social cohesion is important but using a religion for that purpose – as some would want to do in our country with the ‘Christian nation’ ideal – simply doesn’t work. It produces insiders and outsiders. And the only way an outsider can become an insider is by shedding their cultural identity, language, and religion.

Within Christianity itself the fixation upon right beliefs has done a huge disservice to our integrity and impact upon the world. We have become known for justifying wars, oppressing creative thinkers, and being intolerant towards other faiths. If only we had followed the way of the Good Samaritan who didn’t preach to the roadside victim nor to the innkeeper… who didn’t try to convert or control anyone… who didn’t try to profit from his intervention... If only we had followed the Samaritan who was simply kind and generous.

At its heart the parable of the Good Samaritan underlines that action is what speaks most powerfully. It is not what we believe but how we act that counts. It is not my true god verse your false god but our acts of kindness that manifest our spirituality. It is not my culture that’s in the ascendancy that is important but the hospitality and compassion that any culture is capable of extending. It’s not about power but service, it’s not about privilege but people, it’s not about beliefs but acts of kindness.

Suspicion and fear are viruses that spread particularly during times of social unrest and change. It is all too easy to blame the immigrant, the one who looks and talks differently. It is all too easy to say the immigrant must change and be like us, or get out and leave our prejudices intact. Jesus’ response to this virus was to tell a story about how a Jew was beaten up and fellow Jews - the pious and the powerful – walked on by. Then an immigrant, a man with a different god, a heretic, stopped and helped him.

For Jesus it wasn’t your race, culture, or god that was important. It was whether you had the courage to be kind when your society was cowering in fear.

April 6, 2008

Clay Nelson

Easter 2     Luke 24:13-35

In Israel being a tour leader is a cottage industry. Many supplement their incomes by leading Christian and Jewish pilgrims around the “Holy Land.” On my pilgrimage, Abrahim, a professor of Geography most of the year, led us. He was a Lebanese Catholic, so he was assigned Christian pilgrims. He was a faithful person, but he loved tweaking the overly pious. When our bus approached the Sea of Galilee he explained that this is the only place we are certain Jesus walked.

On the Jericho Road headed towards Jerusalem he pointed to an inn and with a straight face told us that was the very inn that the Good Samaritan took the man who was robbed and beaten. Cameras started clicking madly until some started to laugh sheepishly, remembering it was just a story not an historical event.

When we arrived at Emmaus, he tried to pull the same thing saying this was the exact spot that Jesus broke bread with Cleopas and his friend. By this time we were on to him. No one took the bait. He gave us a congratulatory smile and then explained that many through the ages have tried to turn this story into an historical event seeking the actual place it happened. He said there are at least three places in Israel that are said to be Emmaus and none of them conform to the geographical information provided in the story of being seven miles from Jerusalem. However, he conceded, this is as good a place as any to remember the story and remember Jesus by breaking bread together. And so we did and so it became our road to Emmaus.

What I took from that day was that the road to Emmaus is anywhere we are on the road to nowhere. We know the place. It is where high hopes are recently dashed. Where despair is falling on the windshield faster than the wipers can push it away. Then with relief, the highway sign tells us Emmaus is the next exit.

What marks our arrival at Emmaus? It is not hopelessness and despair. As many know that can be a very long road. No, it is determined by whom we meet on the road, but that doesn’t mean just anybody. We just have to remember Job’s so called friends who kept explaining that he was somehow responsible for his misery. It is not the priests and scribes in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan who carefully walk on the other side so as not to be troubled by the troubles of others. But sometimes we meet someone like the mysterious figure Cleopas and his companion met on the road.

While the story is just that, a story, I believe it reflects the collective memory of Jesus’ followers about Jesus himself. It reflects a core truth about the character of Jesus, even if the words he uses are not his but those of the early church.

What is at his core based on this story? Jesus listens actively. Listening is a caring response. He is not defensive in his response to these disciples who still don’t understand. Nor is he coercive by arguing for who he is, subtly or overtly. Instead he draws out of them what they already know, respecting their autonomy and capacity. And lastly, he does not pull rank. He is non-authoritarian. He does not make them sit down to eat with him; he patiently waits to be invited to join them at their meal. When they finally discover for themselves how to leave the hopeless road they have been travelling, he gets out of their way.

In a word, at the core of Jesus’ character is empathy. Empathy is recognised as being responsive, accepting, and empowering in our relationships with others. I would argue that empathy is the essence of the Emmaus experience. And it is central to the practice of our faith.

What is not central is sympathy. Jesus is not sympathetic towards his disheartened disciples. He does not pity them.

Sympathy feels the pain of another, but goes no further unless it is to find someone or something to blame for our plight. Blaming, like pity, does not bring wholeness.

Empathy, on the other hand, understands the pain of another but empowers them to move beyond it.

Furthermore, as sympathy is about feelings, it is restricted to those to whom you can relate. Empathy is more than feelings. It is cognitive and so is learned. It is available to anyone. If you are able-bodied you may not be able to sympathize with someone who is wheel chair bound, but you can empathize.

If sympathy were at the heart of communion the only people around the table would be people of our own gender, race, age, class, sexual orientation, nationality, political perspective and belief. If that were the case, most of us would be having communion alone.

But empathy begets empathy. Empathy does not divide but brings people together, not in mutual agreement, but in mutual understanding. It is a conscious act of giving that empowers others to give as well. It is what we give and receive at communion.

Empathy is what forms and defines us as Christians. Empathy is our mission. It is at the root of our social service, our prophetic calls for justice, our caring for the planet, our striving for peace, and for our random acts of kindness.

To see an example of its effectiveness we only have to look at the Democratic primary in the United States. As those closest to me are fully aware, I am a wee bit obsessed by the campaign – and that is putting it kindly. I have a variety of reasons, but mostly because I have never seen another candidate quite like Barack Obama. He clearly doesn’t understand how politics is played in the US or probably anywhere else.

He was recently on his own road to Emmaus after appearing to have the contest wrapped up. A conservative cable news network, with some encouragement I suspect from his opponent, began showing continuously a loop of snippets from his black pastor’s sermons that were suppose to scare white America. It looked like the good times were over. A lot less has sunk other good candidates. Then he gave a speech addressing race in America entitled “A more perfect union,” an opening phrase of the US Constitution describing its purpose.

The speech was historic for so many reasons: eloquent, honest and courageous are most mentioned. However, most pundits missed its most unique quality. Politicians often speak in sympathetic terms modifying their sympathies for whichever group they are courting. They assure those voters they feel their pain and promise to go after those they think are to blame. What we heard instead from Senator Obama was a speech that offered us Emmaus. He empathized with all America. He showed understanding of how the racial divide has hurt everyone. He was responsive to the racism no one was openly talking about. He did not play the blame game or seek to save himself by throwing his pastor under the bus. He trusted that Americans could sort it out if they faced up to it. As comedian Jon Stewart pointed out, he spoke to Americans like adults. He encouraged Americans to empathize with each other for the good of all. It should not surprise you to know he is a quietly committed member of the most progressive Christian denomination in America.

At the end of the speech, which you can watch on Youtube, he retold the Emmaus story not just for Americans but for all of us.

“There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with,” he said.

“There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

“And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

“She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

“She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

“Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

“Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger.”

Now I can tell Abrahim about another place to find Emmaus: Florence, South Carolina.

Senator Barach Obama's "A More Perfect Union"

March 30, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Easter 2     Low Sunday     John 20:19-31

What are we gonna do – quick, lock the door – don’t let them know we are here – did they see you – what happened. What the heck is going on – we saw his body – he was dead on the cross a couple of days ago and his body was in the tomb, but Mary said she saw him – Yeah, he’s been seen again, alive … what’s going on.

Sure, we thought – hoped – that he was maybe the Messiah, the king, the promised one but look what happened – You didn’t see him today did you – nah – give me a break. In this reading from John the disciples lock the door because they are frightened, confused and anxious.

Fear is perhaps the most basic human instinct. We are creatures of survival, of what is termed the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome. This recalls our primeval ancestry which holds that when faced with danger, predators or the threat of imminent death our human response was flight – if we were hungry or protective enough our response was to fight.

The disciples are afraid. They are marked as being intimates of this crucified rabble-rouser Jesus and are therefore suspect. They hide behind locked doors to talk about what has happened.

In spite of evolving over many millennia humans are still guided or ruled by fear. Generally this is right and necessary – we don’t walk in front of moving cars as we are afraid of being run over – we mostly try to live within our means as we are afraid of losing what we have – we try to love and be kind to those we care about as deep down we are afraid of losing that love, being rejected isolated and alone. These sorts of fears are usually automatic and protective mechanisms and they oil the wheels of our society and give life together shape and comprehension.

It is a different sort of fear that the disciples experience. They have consorted with an enemy of the state. Jesus, a Jew who publicly condemns Temple politics. For this he was put to death. Their leader and friend Jesus challenged the power and norms of culture and society of the time. He was, I believe, a revolutionary. I also believe that this wild and revolutionary Spirit is still alive in his followers if we but choose to listen and to act.

Most people would agree that Jesus was a spiritual revolutionary who sought to bring people to a new relationship and understanding of God and themselves, and this is what the church has largely concentrated upon. The outward workings of this new spiritual relationship could be said to reveal Jesus the social revolutionary in that his vision is based on egalitarian principles of human engagement. These demand the restructuring of unjust institutions and structures that have no regard for people’s lives and trade in unhealthy fear. There has not been a huge fanfare for Jesus the political revolutionary though, and this angle is generally eschewed by the church and Christians alike as it is perhaps too direct, too challenging, too divisive, too frightening. Seeing Jesus as a political revolutionary who actively opposes oppressive political structures could be just a bit too big, too demanding and alarming.

In this reading we are in a locked house, a house that smells of fear. Jesus comes among the huddled and fearful disciples and pronounces ‘Peace be with you’ twice. Like God in the Genesis story, Jesus breathes upon them and they are given a new Spirit. Eight days after the first appearance Jesus comes among them again. This time he comes to reveal himself to Thomas who was absent when he first appeared and needs convincing. He gives the peace blessing once more, and indicating his wounds Jesus says to Thomas – “put your finger here – reach out your hand.”

The central message is that Jesus comes to unlock their fears, to allay their dread, to change the disciples lives, our lives, and the world forever. To their fears Jesus says – “Peace, forgiveness, put your finger here, reach out your hand.”

Fear can be an awful thing – crippling - paralyzing – gut-wrenching, and it can make us hide, lie to ourselves, fabricate stories and to act in cowardly and despicable ways. It can express itself in silence and in rage and violence. We all lock doors in some ways to keep ourselves safe. But this always comes at a price.

I think that the price is real wholeness. Wholeness is a sort of hackneyed buzzword that means something like undiminished, complete or whole. I am not talking about perfection here – we are by nature fractured frail and crazily wonderful people. We laugh and we cry, we fight and hopefully we forgive. I think that when Jesus offers the disciples peace, forgiveness, the vulnerability of touch and care he offers us too a recipe for wholeness – an open recipe to help us overcome and transform our fears, to enable us to grow and expand our visions, our worlds.

 The text tells us that this transformation is wrought through the Holy Spirit which Jesus breathed upon these first disciples. It is a Spirit that changes hearts, minds and relationships within the mandate to mutual blessings of peace, forgiveness and caring for one another. It is not about individual piety but in following the way of Jesus which is at once collective and political. The Peace blessing that we share in each Sunday here and all over the world could understood as Jesus saying – “hey people – this fear thing, get over it, there’s a better way to be.”

On a caring level this transformation of our fears asks us to “reach out your hand” to those we find hard to understand, to those living meaner lives than ours, to the “other” the different, the rejected, the disadvantaged, whoever and whatever they may be.

In the 21st century we are asked to ‘put our finger there, reach out our hands’ to those who suffer globally – politically to try, to speak to place our finger to help bind up wounds and to reach out our hands to help others towards the justice they need. Here the wounds of Christ are seen in the blood of gory battle, the Aids victim, the starving, the persecuted, this polluted and devastated earth we are part of.

Christianity has ever been an incipient faith. A faith that is embryonic with possibility and this continues today as we wrestle with our world and the fears spoken and unspoken we all live with. Loneliness, violence, hatred, economic, social and gender injustice – you name your own, there are so many and we all combat these in ways big and small in our own lives. Like the disciples we cannot necessarily rid ourselves of the causes of the fears and ills that assail us. However, we can, in some measure, through this mysterious gift of the Spirit, work together and pray our way towards a future where noxious and destructive fears are transformed into courageous and revolutionary hearts minds and actions. You bet.

March 23, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter Day

Once someone approached a disciple of the Muslim mystic Naqshband said, “Tell me why your Master conceals his miracles. I have personally collected data that shows beyond doubt that he has healed and helped people by the power of his prayers. Why does he conceal this?”

“I know exactly what you are talking about,” said the disciple, “for I have observed these things myself. And I think I can give you the answer. First, the Master recoils from being the centre of attention. And secondly, he is convinced that once people develop an interest in the miraculous, they have no desire to learn anything of spiritual value.”

I have a strong suspicion that those who see Easter primarily as a paranormal miracle miss out on its spiritual truth.

It’s like the joke of when God and St Peter teed off at the local course. God went first, giving a mighty swipe and slicing the ball off into the rough. Just as the ball was about to hit the ground, a rabbit darted out of a bush, picked it up in his mouth, and ran with it down the fairway. Suddenly a hawk swooped down, picked up the rabbit, flew with it over the green, and then dropped it. The rabbit landed on the green, the ball popped out of its mouth, and rolled into the hole.

St Peter turned to God in annoyance and said, “Come on now! Do you want to play golf or do you want to fool around?”

And I would say, does the Church want to continually fool around portraying the central message of Easter as a miraculous revivification of a dead man with transcendent saving implications, or does it want to play the game of real life where people hurt and seek hope, and where the spiritual is daily bread not heavenly banquets?

Indeed I find the annual fixation on a supposed suspension in 33 BCE of the realities of life and death to be dismissive and derogatory of the passion and commitment of many men and women, including Jesus, who have railed against oppression, political or religious, and have paid for that with their bodies. I believe in a real Jesus, a real man, who really loved, who really suffered, and who really died. It is because he was real that he has meaning for my life.

The resurrection of Jesus is a symbolic way of talking about the power of hope to persevere, undefeated, despite all that death can throw against it. It is a symbolic way of talking about the power of love overcoming the forces of hate. Resurrection is found, not in a busted Jerusalem grave, nor in a dead man walking, but in the lives of ordinary people.

People like Paul of Tarsus. Paul was a guy who found no conflict between his ancestral faith and killing some theological deviants called Christians. He was a first century equivalent of George Bush – going to church and approving of water-boarding.