Jesus was a mendicant teacher, wandering around Palestine, grabbing teaching opportunities from the worlds of nature and commerce around him. I like that — there is a spontaneity about it that suits my personality type: picture, if you recall, the Jesus-figure in Godspell, the clown, dancing through the labyrinths of learning, sharing love, justice, compassion. (There is a bishop, not of this diocese, who was adamant that Jesus was an ESTJ with a carefully constructed strategic plan … I fail to see that, though it’s probably an argument from silence — or from psyche — it would be like having a timetables clerk for a saviour).
Consider the birds. Seven months ago, after a visitation of black cockatoos, who stripped our trees, I began scattering seed for them. The lorikeets and rosellas came briefly, but didn’t like the tucker. They never came back. Then, slowly, tentatively, the doves arrived. Three or four at first, then a dozen, two dozen, until there was no fewer than forty, a seething mass of brown featheriness (and not always nice to each other).
A galah or two arrived. I was warned that would be the end, that they are the bullies of the back yard. Their mates soon joined them: a dozen, two dozen, until there was no fewer than forty (sound familiar?). The doves down-populated, waited, picked up the leftovers.
A corella dropped in. What mobile phone network are they on? Soon it was a dozen, two dozen, until there was no fewer than forty. A seething mass of white, with a few hardy galahs hanging in there. The doves waited their turn, picked up the leftovers.
I changed my timetable, sick of the corellas swearing at me by 7.30 every morning. They swore more, but finally gave up. Only a few drop by now, on the afternoon shift, after the doves have had their fill.
For the doves were the great survivors. As the cantankerous corellas gave up they moved back in (with the occasional galah). It’s their pad now: they’ve seen the belligerent aggressors off. Late morning, most mornings they arrive, a seething mass of brown featheriness. Still not particularly nice to each other, though.
I like to think there is a parable here somewhere. Jesus would find one. I’ll leave it up to you. The cockatoos never came back, either.
έ̉ν Χριστω̣̃ – (Fr) Michael
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Saturday 12 May 2012
My Grandmother's Pew?
SERMON PREACHED AT THE
CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, FRED’S PASS (NT)
SUNDAY, MAY 13th 2012
(SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 10.44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5.1-12
John 16.16-24
I described John a week ago (and two weeks ago, elsewhere) as the Nimbinite of the early Christian witnesses. Not least because he, who was probably the ‘beloved disciple’ of the Fourth Gospel, was so moved by the compassion and sanctity of the incarnate Jesus he expected of himself and other followers of Jesus great and godly holiness and integrity. Not for John Paul’s sense of the self, wrestling between volitions to do evil and the summons to do good. To John the life invaded by the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, is the life transformed into Christlikeness. But his community were letting him down. Like the hippies of Nimbin they were eroding the supposed structures of decency and John’s own supposed authority, living to their own priorities, and even questioning his integrity as a witness of Jesus.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his command¬ments. And his commandments are not burdensome
John was watching as his understandings of the commandments of God were eroded. Two thousand years later many church leaders have experienced and will continmue to experience the same pain: patterns and activities that were once considered de riguer fall from the practice of faith. Patterns and activities that were once considered beyond the pale are becoming established as patterns of faith. 'Things fall apart', wrote W.B. Yeats: 'the centre cannot hold'.
To some extent there is a yardstick by which to evaluate changes and trends: does this point to the cross of Jesus Christ? Or is something else the hero of this narrative – my good feelings, my self-aggrandizement, my entertainment, preservation of the meaningless, or some other backwater of non-gospel? There are many light-bulb jokes about the various Christian denominations, but the Anglican versions tend to revolve around horror at the notion of change. It’s a caricature, but like many caricatures it contains some truth.
Too often I have encountered in the Christian community those who are burned out and embittered by the processes of change. ‘My grand-mother gave that pew’ or ‘but that’s not the way we do it’ are not words that point to the expectation-shattering cross of Jesus Christ. Nor on the other hand ‘but it’s more relevant’ … I don’t notice Jesus touting relevance, except in so far as he feeds the hungry and heals the sick, as cornerstones of the gospel. Still: church communities are often filled with those frightened by the present and the future, clinging tenaciously to the past, embittered by the changes that just may have been works of the Spirit of God if they have jettisoned the redundant and preserved the kernel of the gospel.
John was not a preserver of irrelevancies. He was fighting to ensure that his community stayed on the main game, the game of cross-focussed, self-surrendering love. As it happens it seems he was probably unsuccessful – the tone of 1, 2 and 3 John is increasingly strident. The fact that we still have his writings suggests that someone eventually saw how important his call to love was. Perhaps to some extent he was too idealistic and forgot that we, the people of God, continue to be fundamentally flawed this side of for ever.
We are caught up in the ‘in a little while’ of Jesus’ peculiar sayings – though he was probably referring to resurrection and the coming of the Comforter-Spirit there is a sense in which we too stew in our inability to see Jesus, stew in our ‘little while’ of inadequacy. As individuals and as a corporate body we sometimes cling to that which needs to be jettisoned – and sometimes I fear jettison that which needs to be clung to. Does it point to the cross of Jesus Christ? Sometimes the answer is easy: wealth and prestige do not. Sometimes the answer is more complex: can we say our prayer book liturgical traditions do? I fervently believe so – sometimes against all odds – for they point to the cross of Christ and to the still small voice of calm, not to the neon-lit imposter God of glamour and of glitz.
But where I am wrong the Spirit has a habit of making new paths into the future. Our expectations of church and society change – and God journeys with us into the future that has God’s footprints, not ours.
For us the task is to continue to cling to the God of the future. In a little while … just beyond our sight, our understanding, and our control: there God beckons us.
TLBWY
CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, FRED’S PASS (NT)
SUNDAY, MAY 13th 2012
(SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 10.44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5.1-12
John 16.16-24
I described John a week ago (and two weeks ago, elsewhere) as the Nimbinite of the early Christian witnesses. Not least because he, who was probably the ‘beloved disciple’ of the Fourth Gospel, was so moved by the compassion and sanctity of the incarnate Jesus he expected of himself and other followers of Jesus great and godly holiness and integrity. Not for John Paul’s sense of the self, wrestling between volitions to do evil and the summons to do good. To John the life invaded by the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, is the life transformed into Christlikeness. But his community were letting him down. Like the hippies of Nimbin they were eroding the supposed structures of decency and John’s own supposed authority, living to their own priorities, and even questioning his integrity as a witness of Jesus.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his command¬ments. And his commandments are not burdensome
John was watching as his understandings of the commandments of God were eroded. Two thousand years later many church leaders have experienced and will continmue to experience the same pain: patterns and activities that were once considered de riguer fall from the practice of faith. Patterns and activities that were once considered beyond the pale are becoming established as patterns of faith. 'Things fall apart', wrote W.B. Yeats: 'the centre cannot hold'.
To some extent there is a yardstick by which to evaluate changes and trends: does this point to the cross of Jesus Christ? Or is something else the hero of this narrative – my good feelings, my self-aggrandizement, my entertainment, preservation of the meaningless, or some other backwater of non-gospel? There are many light-bulb jokes about the various Christian denominations, but the Anglican versions tend to revolve around horror at the notion of change. It’s a caricature, but like many caricatures it contains some truth.
Too often I have encountered in the Christian community those who are burned out and embittered by the processes of change. ‘My grand-mother gave that pew’ or ‘but that’s not the way we do it’ are not words that point to the expectation-shattering cross of Jesus Christ. Nor on the other hand ‘but it’s more relevant’ … I don’t notice Jesus touting relevance, except in so far as he feeds the hungry and heals the sick, as cornerstones of the gospel. Still: church communities are often filled with those frightened by the present and the future, clinging tenaciously to the past, embittered by the changes that just may have been works of the Spirit of God if they have jettisoned the redundant and preserved the kernel of the gospel.
John was not a preserver of irrelevancies. He was fighting to ensure that his community stayed on the main game, the game of cross-focussed, self-surrendering love. As it happens it seems he was probably unsuccessful – the tone of 1, 2 and 3 John is increasingly strident. The fact that we still have his writings suggests that someone eventually saw how important his call to love was. Perhaps to some extent he was too idealistic and forgot that we, the people of God, continue to be fundamentally flawed this side of for ever.
We are caught up in the ‘in a little while’ of Jesus’ peculiar sayings – though he was probably referring to resurrection and the coming of the Comforter-Spirit there is a sense in which we too stew in our inability to see Jesus, stew in our ‘little while’ of inadequacy. As individuals and as a corporate body we sometimes cling to that which needs to be jettisoned – and sometimes I fear jettison that which needs to be clung to. Does it point to the cross of Jesus Christ? Sometimes the answer is easy: wealth and prestige do not. Sometimes the answer is more complex: can we say our prayer book liturgical traditions do? I fervently believe so – sometimes against all odds – for they point to the cross of Christ and to the still small voice of calm, not to the neon-lit imposter God of glamour and of glitz.
But where I am wrong the Spirit has a habit of making new paths into the future. Our expectations of church and society change – and God journeys with us into the future that has God’s footprints, not ours.
For us the task is to continue to cling to the God of the future. In a little while … just beyond our sight, our understanding, and our control: there God beckons us.
TLBWY
AIDS and an anti-Gospel of Hate
A child care centre in our previous town, Whangarei, has caused an uproar by banishing an HIV+ child from its enrolments. The outcry in New Zealand in the past 48 hours has been enormous, with the Human Rights Commission stating that the child’s family have a clear basis for complaint. The child care centre took the action after a group of some twenty parents threatened to boycott the centre.
In 1986 I was proud of New Zealand when, at the height of the HIV-Aids hysteria, it opened its arms to receive Eve van Grafhorst and her family following the refusal of a Kincumber (NSW) pre-school to permit her to enrol. This is the era in which Aids paranoia was out of control, still seen as a ‘gay disease’, still seen as a basis for hatred and vilification.
Although I never met Eve (she died in 1993 after becoming something of a hero in New Zealand) I came to know a wonderful group of people who knew her well and were deeply touched by her life. I was a part of the Northland Aids Network, and although Eve’s first move to New Zealand was to another region (Hawkes Bay) she saw out her tiny-enormous life in Northland. I was proud to be a part of that network—some straight, some gay, some Christian, most not—and proud to be a small part of a movement of compassion and care.
Sadly compassion and decency are often only skin deep. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann (my favourite, cited elsewhere in this pew sheet) learned that with great sorrow as he watched his beloved German people, including most of the Christian community, slide into racial hatred. The bitter blood-letting of Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s demonstrated that faith was often more shallow than racial hatred, as Christians turned on each other (in an area that was statistically one of the most Christian regions on earth). These will not be the last occasions of betrayal of our faith. Who knows? You or I might be numbered amongst those whose faith flows too shallow in our veins.
Here’s hoping the people of Whangarei and New Zealand see sense—and the Christians speak out. As one commentator said, all we have at the moment is a sad and lonely boy. That is not gospel.
έ̉ν Χριστω̣̃ – (Fr) Michael
Mung Beans for Jesus
SERMON PREACHED AT THE
CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, FRED’S PASS (NT)
SUNDAY, MAY 6th 2012
(FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 8.26-40
Psalm 22.26-32
1 John 4.7-21
John 15.1-8
Over the past years – prior to my coming to Fred’s Pass so you’re not expected to remember! – I have often referred to John, the author of the Fourth Gospel and the letters 1, 2 and 3 John, as the Nimbinite of the New Testament authors. This perhaps needs some explanation – and less I offend anyone here as I have once elsewhere, I see ‘Nimbinite’ not as an insult but as one of my highest compliments.
But perhaps some explanations. Nimbin itself needs no explanation in some quarters, but as it is over 3000 kilometres from here and the Territory was not always closely aligned to the hippie movements of the sixties, it nestles in the Border ranges of northern New South Wales, and is the unofficial hippie capital of the country. And, while it might be arrogant to describe myself as the world’s most frustrated hippie I certainly am a frustrated hippie, a would-be mungbean-munchin' calico-wearin' tree-huggin' child of the Age of Aquarius.
Unfortunately – some might say fortunately – I was born a decade too late and a world too far away to have slithered in the mud of Woodstock, 1969. I was nine at the time Jimi Hendrix was playing "Star Spangled Banner" with his teeth, and was falling in love with Judith Durham, not Janis Joplin. By the time I fell in love with Janis Joplin she was long dead.
Rightly or wrongly the Age of Aquarius idealists saw themselves to be breaking out of the constrictions of the 1950s. Liberated no doubt by the contraceptive pill and naïve about the risks of STDs, liberated also by the illicit chemicals that were sweeping the world in digestible and inhalable forms, a generation was discovering new dreams of utopian love, new harmonies with nature and one another. By 1969, though, the utopic 1967 Summer of love was crumbling: four months after the mud and slush of Woodstock the Hells Angels had killed Meredith Hunter at The Altamont concert in California – the day the hippie idealism died in an orgy of alcohol and amphetamine-fuelled violence (it was, incidentally, December 6th, coincidentally and ironically St Nicholas’ day and the day, many years later, of my ordination to the priesthood). That day in 1969 has been described as ‘a lot of really naïve people running headfirst into atavistic tribalism and violence.’
The ideal of hippiedom was one I deeply admire. It was a utopic ideal of free love (I don’t necessarily mean sex!), shared goods, and escaping the treadmill of consumerism. It went belly-up for a whole lot of reasons, all to do with human nature, human economics, the impacts of chemical enhancement – human nature. Theologians would argue that the already had slipped ahead of the not yet – that, just like Marx’s perfect state after the Revolution, human fallenness was going to get in the way, exploitation would re-emerge, and it would end in tears. The Soviet Union was never utopia. Nor was the Age of Aquarius.
Nor was the community of love that John sort to build in the name of Jesus. A hopeless idealist, he wanted the Jesus community to be conspicuous by its love. To some extent it was – but only in the more structured and disciplined communities to which, I suspect, John eventually returns in his old age. Infiltrators overthrew his authority as an eyewitness of Jesus, love dissolved into bitching, and a dream died. It would be centuries before Christian communities of the type John longed for would be re-born, and they would be in a very different shape, with strict rules, penned at first by the great Saint Benedict, removed, too, from the complexities of dual-sex relations (though perhaps they had their own complexities). It was not what John pictured at all.
John’s community turned to custard, but the earliest Christians soon saw how important John’s idealism was. To love one another is to be Christ to one another. The hippies’ dreams of egalitarianism confused aspects of love: throughout the fourth gospel John records words of Jesus that make it abundantly clear that love is not a romantic, much less an erotic, warm fuzzy, but that hard disciplined work of ‘remaining in Christ’.
Again and again Jesus uses that hard and demanding word, abide: Paul picks up something similar when he likens the Christian journey to the athlete’s race: perservere that you may attain the crown. And at the heart of Christian love is not merely Christ the self-sacrificing example (there’s plenty of others who lay down their life in love) but Christ who is made available to us in the Spirit, who never leaves, never forsakes, for as long as we continue the hard work of abiding, the branch inseparably united to the vine. As another allegedly drug-fuelled hippie idealist once wrote ‘Christ, you know it ain’t easy’. He meant the phrase as a curse; I prefer to baptise the line as a prayer.
TLBWY
CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, FRED’S PASS (NT)
SUNDAY, MAY 6th 2012
(FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 8.26-40
Psalm 22.26-32
1 John 4.7-21
John 15.1-8
Over the past years – prior to my coming to Fred’s Pass so you’re not expected to remember! – I have often referred to John, the author of the Fourth Gospel and the letters 1, 2 and 3 John, as the Nimbinite of the New Testament authors. This perhaps needs some explanation – and less I offend anyone here as I have once elsewhere, I see ‘Nimbinite’ not as an insult but as one of my highest compliments.
But perhaps some explanations. Nimbin itself needs no explanation in some quarters, but as it is over 3000 kilometres from here and the Territory was not always closely aligned to the hippie movements of the sixties, it nestles in the Border ranges of northern New South Wales, and is the unofficial hippie capital of the country. And, while it might be arrogant to describe myself as the world’s most frustrated hippie I certainly am a frustrated hippie, a would-be mungbean-munchin' calico-wearin' tree-huggin' child of the Age of Aquarius.
Unfortunately – some might say fortunately – I was born a decade too late and a world too far away to have slithered in the mud of Woodstock, 1969. I was nine at the time Jimi Hendrix was playing "Star Spangled Banner" with his teeth, and was falling in love with Judith Durham, not Janis Joplin. By the time I fell in love with Janis Joplin she was long dead.
Rightly or wrongly the Age of Aquarius idealists saw themselves to be breaking out of the constrictions of the 1950s. Liberated no doubt by the contraceptive pill and naïve about the risks of STDs, liberated also by the illicit chemicals that were sweeping the world in digestible and inhalable forms, a generation was discovering new dreams of utopian love, new harmonies with nature and one another. By 1969, though, the utopic 1967 Summer of love was crumbling: four months after the mud and slush of Woodstock the Hells Angels had killed Meredith Hunter at The Altamont concert in California – the day the hippie idealism died in an orgy of alcohol and amphetamine-fuelled violence (it was, incidentally, December 6th, coincidentally and ironically St Nicholas’ day and the day, many years later, of my ordination to the priesthood). That day in 1969 has been described as ‘a lot of really naïve people running headfirst into atavistic tribalism and violence.’
The ideal of hippiedom was one I deeply admire. It was a utopic ideal of free love (I don’t necessarily mean sex!), shared goods, and escaping the treadmill of consumerism. It went belly-up for a whole lot of reasons, all to do with human nature, human economics, the impacts of chemical enhancement – human nature. Theologians would argue that the already had slipped ahead of the not yet – that, just like Marx’s perfect state after the Revolution, human fallenness was going to get in the way, exploitation would re-emerge, and it would end in tears. The Soviet Union was never utopia. Nor was the Age of Aquarius.
Nor was the community of love that John sort to build in the name of Jesus. A hopeless idealist, he wanted the Jesus community to be conspicuous by its love. To some extent it was – but only in the more structured and disciplined communities to which, I suspect, John eventually returns in his old age. Infiltrators overthrew his authority as an eyewitness of Jesus, love dissolved into bitching, and a dream died. It would be centuries before Christian communities of the type John longed for would be re-born, and they would be in a very different shape, with strict rules, penned at first by the great Saint Benedict, removed, too, from the complexities of dual-sex relations (though perhaps they had their own complexities). It was not what John pictured at all.
John’s community turned to custard, but the earliest Christians soon saw how important John’s idealism was. To love one another is to be Christ to one another. The hippies’ dreams of egalitarianism confused aspects of love: throughout the fourth gospel John records words of Jesus that make it abundantly clear that love is not a romantic, much less an erotic, warm fuzzy, but that hard disciplined work of ‘remaining in Christ’.
Again and again Jesus uses that hard and demanding word, abide: Paul picks up something similar when he likens the Christian journey to the athlete’s race: perservere that you may attain the crown. And at the heart of Christian love is not merely Christ the self-sacrificing example (there’s plenty of others who lay down their life in love) but Christ who is made available to us in the Spirit, who never leaves, never forsakes, for as long as we continue the hard work of abiding, the branch inseparably united to the vine. As another allegedly drug-fuelled hippie idealist once wrote ‘Christ, you know it ain’t easy’. He meant the phrase as a curse; I prefer to baptise the line as a prayer.
TLBWY
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