KAUWHAU at
TE POU HERENGA WAKA O TE WHAKAPONO
TRANSFIGURATION
(11 February) 2018
Readings:
2 Kings
2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2
Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
Sometimes we see forms of
Christianity that are obsessed with arrogant irrelevancy. I have seen places
where order, etiquette and protocol are substitutes for love, for embrace, and
for the manaakitanga
that dwells at the heart of God. We have perhaps all seen church communities
whose gate-keepers hold fiercely to a message that proclaims that their practice,
theirs alone is the practice acceptable to God (if God matters at all in their
discourse). In such places, if the practices that God – or in reality the gate-keepers – desire is carried out to the letter then all shall be most well,
and fellow-journeyers can stay stagnant in a complacent bubble, untroubled by
dwindling congregations and a changing world around them.
It is in some ways a metaphor
for the outlook of Christianity in much of the post-colonial world. It surfaces
in many forms: provided we appear to make the right noises about God it matters
not one iota if we are predators, abusers, tax dodgers or worse. As long as we
join the right political parties it matters not one iota if we are predators,
abusers, tax dodgers or worse. As long as we wear the right clothes or drive the
right cars it matters not one iota if we are predators, abusers, tax dodgers or
worse.
These are demonic distortions of
Christianity, present in many forms of the Church of God, high and low, left
and right. Although I am not aware of it in tikanga outside of my own – and
remain a grateful manuhiri* in tikanga Māori
– we need to avoid any impression that we believe any part of the Christian
community is immune from such attitudes.
Paul finds it in almost all the
churches that he writes to; arrogance raising its head in different forms in
different contexts. Aren’t we good, say the Corinthians: we can do anything we
like because we have perfect freedom in Jesus, freedom greater than anything
those mere mortals out there can understand. Aren’t we good, say the Galatians,
because we adhere more strictly to the rules and regulations of faith than
those sad people out there. The Romans and some Thessalonians had their
versions, too, and there are hints that the communities particularly of gospel
writers Matthew and John, of the Hebrews, and of the epistle writer James had
similar traits. Aren’t we good says one church group, because we wear stylish
clothes, speak out about pollution in the rivers, and though we do often travel
in oxygen-sucking jets to attend our important conferences we do so with our
fingers crossed and always serve our coffee from jars marked “ecologically
sustainable” or “trade aid.” Aren’t we good, says another, because we never get
caught having illicit sex, never publicly condone abortion, never swear or
drink when anyone is watching and always vote for the party that wants prayer
in schools and parliament.
Aren’t we good?
Confronted by such attitudes I often
turn to Paul, but he was only one in a long sequence of irritating,
challenging, prickly prophets castigated for speaking out against hypocrisy. The
prophets were awkward customers. We may glibly read of Elijah and forget that
while he was a thorn in the side of the elitist, corrupt government of his day,
bitterly criticising King Ahab for his duplicity. He was also a flawed servant
of God who, like Job never really grasped the breadth and depth of divine love,
and was not above having a sulk when things didn’t go his way. We may read,
too, of Elisha, with his “double share of … spirit," and forget that he
was a thoroughly flawed human being, petulantly punishing children who called
him names, and possibly being less pious than we sometimes think in grimly
accompanying his mentor Elijah to the apparent closure of his early existence.
I highlight these flaws in the
chosen people of God because we spend far too much time expecting God to be in
the nice and right places. We expect God’s people to be right and nice people
according to our own cultural preconceptions.
But God does not dance to our
tune. Jesus, in parables such as the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan, constantly
pointed to the God outside our boundaries. To the God in today’s contexts who might
be found in whichever wing of politics we don’t belong to. To the God who is at
work in the hands of an atheist or a Muslim or wherever else our prejudices
tell us God should not be. God may equally well be radically absent in the
hands of those we believe should be servants of God: bishops who forget to sift
truth from untruth, youth leaders and pastors who forget to protect the
sanctity of those in their care, kaitiaki pūtea moni** who forget that the money in their care is not to be
buried in the ground (or their pockets!) but to be used expansively and
generously to serve God in the lives of the poor or even to proclaim recklessly
God’s love, generosity, or sheer bewildering beauty.
I speak of course as one who has
never pretended to be un-tainted. Yet there is and must be a difference though between
those who play games with the gospel of God and those who are genuinely unabashedly
hypocritical. The corridors of God’s eternal love will be filled with those,
like sullen Elijah or petulant Elisha, grumpy Job or impulsive Peter, doubting
Thomas or irritable Paul, those have stumbled along with all their flaws
sincerely seeking to serve God. There have been a myriad Christ-bearers through
history, those who genuinely stumble, genuinely seek to find God in that very
stumbling, genuinely seek again and again to turn their face to the searing light,
transfiguring light and redeeming love that is found in the welcoming arms, the
manaakitanga*** of the
divine Trinity.
There will also sadly be those
who lie or conveniently replicate the lies of others, who deliberately deceive,
cover the traces of their errors or deception, and do their best to maintain
public profile as squeaky-clean executive servants of Christ. Anything to achieve their intentions! Faced with these
people we must sometimes just fall back on a doctrine of judgement: the God
who, as Jesus puts it, sees in private will in the eternities to come expose,
then lance, and only then heal their hypocrisies. Somehow – though we are
called to allow God alone to be the judge, we must still find ways to scan the
human heart, to look for the best, to look to restore and redeem rather than to
condemn
Above all we must look to
ourselves. Do we play games with God, attempt to shield ourselves from the gaze
of God, re-create God in the image that suits us? I hope and pray not. As the
world of fundamentalist US nationalistic Christianity, which has placed the
flag of America into the rightful place of the Cross of Jesus, as that form of
Christianity collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy – as colonial
mainstream Christianity has also had to do in decades past – we must look to
our own mission. We must, as some of us will say on Ash Wednesday, turn to
Christ and be faithful to him. In doing so we must allow the Spirit to strip
away our falsehoods and our game-playing. We must ensure even these words are
not empty, finding ways to seek out and serve Jesus in the lives of those who
are hurting. We must, as the Spirit tells the flummoxed disciples at the mount
of Transfiguration, “listen to Jesus.” And in our daily lives we must accidentally
demonstrate that this is what we are doing.
*manuhiri: guest.
** manaakitanga: tradition of hospitality
*** kaitiaki pūtea moni: custodian of finance (treasurer)
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