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Jairus’ Daughter

Mark 5:21-43

The story Mark tells takes place on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee; a large freshwater lake some thirteen miles long and eight miles across, surrounded by high mountains. After leaving Nazareth Jesus seems to have spent most of what was left: of his short life in the city of Capernaum, which was on the northern shore of the lake and the center of its fishing industry. A number of his best friends lived there including Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, together with Peter and his brother Andrew, who were all of them partners in some sort of fishing enterprise that employed other people whose names we don’t know and that seems to have owned at least two boats.

When Mark gives his account of what happened by the lake on this particular day, he puts in so many details that Matthew leaves out that it seems possible Mark was actually there at the time or at least had talked to somebody who was. The kind of story that Mark is telling us here is a quiet, low-key little story and in some ways so unclear and ambiguous that it’s hard to know just why Mark is telling it or just what he expects us to make out of it or made out of it himself. It’s a story not about stained-glass people with some sort of special role but about people who lived and breathed and sweated and made love and used bad language when they tripped over stuff in the dark and sometimes had more troubles than they knew what to do with and sometimes laughed themselves silly over nothing in particular and were thus in many ways very much like the rest of us.

Jesus had just crossed over in a boat from the other side of the lake, Mark writes, when he found himself surrounded by some of them right there at the water’s edge where there were nets hanging up to dry and fish being gutted and scaled and stray cats looking around for anything they could get their paws on. He doesn’t say there was any particular reason for the crowd, so it’s probably just that they had heard about Jesus — probably even some knew him and were there to gawk at him. There may have been a lot of wild stories about who people said he was and what he was going around doing and saying. They might have been there to see what wild things he might say or do next.

Part of what all these stories about Jesus in the Gospels are trying to tell us is who he was and what it was it like to be with him. They’re trying to tell us what there was about him that made at least some of the people there by the lake that day decide to give up everything they had or ever hoped to have, in some cases even their own lives, maybe just for the sake of being near him.

Video Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbkvQcf6kJg

Matthew’s account doesn’t give us the name Jairus, but Mark’s does. A man named Jairus had somehow made his way to Jesus and threw himself at his feet, or fell to his knees perhaps, or touched his forehead to the ground in front of him. The man was a synagogue official of some kind, important enough to have the crowd give way enough to let him through. But he doesn’t behave like an important man. He behaves like a desperate man, a man close to hysteria with fear, grief, horror that his daughter is on the point of death. Jairus doesn’t say “my daughter,” he says “my little daughter.” She is twelve years old, going on thirteen, we’re told, so she wasn’t all that little really, but to Jairus she would presumably always be his little daughter the way even when they’ve grown up and moved away long since, we keep on speaking of our sons and daughters as children because that is what they were when we knew them first and loved them first. Remember here the place we are told women have in his culture.

His child is dying is what Jairus is there to get through somehow to this man who some say is like no other man. She is dying—he says it repeatedly, Mark tells us, dying, dying—and then he says, “Come and lay your hands on her,” because he’s seen it done that way before and has possibly even tried doing it that way himself, except that it did absolutely no good at all when he tried it, as for all he knows it will do absolutely no good now either. But this is the only card he has left to play, and he plays it. “Lay your hands on her, so she may be made well, and live,” he says—live, he says, live, not die, before she’s hardly had more than a glimpse of what living is.

It’s a wonder Jesus even hears him what with all the other things people are clamoring to him for, but somehow he does, and so does a lot of the crowd that follows along as Jairus leads the way to where his house stands.

They follow presumably because for the moment Jesus is the hottest ticket in town and because they don’t have anything better to do and because they’re eager to see if the man is all he’s been cracked up to be. But before they get very far, they run into some people coming the other way who with the devastating tactlessness of the simple souls they are come right out and say it. “Your daughter is dead,” they tell Jairus. They have just come from his house, where she died. They saw it with their own eyes. There is nothing anybody can do about it now. They have come too late. “Why trouble the teacher any further?” they ask her father, and it is Jesus who finally breaks the silence by speaking, only it’s just Jairus he speaks to. “Do not fear, “he says. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. And then, “Only believe.” And what is he to believe? “The child is not dead,” he said, “but sleeping.”

Video Part 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbkvQcf6kJg

Back to our text. The question is what kind of a story is this? If the little girl had actually died the way the people who were there in the house believed she had, then it is the story of a miracle that bears witness to the power Jesus had over nature. If she was only sleeping as Jesus said—in a coma or whatever he may have meant – then it is a story about a healing, about the power of Jesus’s touch to make the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk. Either way it is a story about a miracle, but about a miracle that doesn’t end with an exclamation point the way you would expect, but with a question mark or at most with the little row of dots that means unresolved, to be continued, to figure out somehow for ourselves.

Who cares any more than her mother and father can have cared. They had their child back. She was alive again. She was well again. That was all that mattered

It is that life-giving power that is at the heart of this shadowy story about Jairus and the daughter he loved, and that I think is at the heart of all our stories-the power of new life, new hope, new being, that whether we know it or not, keeps us coming to places like this year after year in search of it. It is the power to seek the adventure of being human even when that journey isn’t all that easy for us anymore and to keep going on and on toward whatever it is, whoever Jesus is, that all our lives long for reaches out to take us by the hand. Amen.

Pentecost 5B June 24, 2018
I Samuel 17: 1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49        Mark 4:35-41

‘When Storms Matter’

Goliath stood huge in his stocking feet, wore a massive collar, big enough to go around several dog’s necks, a great helmet and a waist belt big enough to saddle a horse with. When he put his full armour on, he looked like a Transformer of skyscraper size. Built like a Sherman tank when stripped to the bare essentials, he had plenty to carry around, and flesh and bones were the least of it. There was a sense of the great burden of having to defend his title against all comers. He was the great defender, the mighty warrior and there was a sense of the mangled remains of the runners-up. The burden was expressed when he tried to think something out, because it was like struggling through a bog up to his hips, and when he tried to explain something, it was like pushing a truck uphill. His dark moods were leaden and his light moods like carrying an elephant on his shoulders. He would have considered underarm deodorants a sign of effeminacy.

The stone from David’s slingshot caught him between the eyes, and when he hit the dirt, windows rattled in their frames as far away as Ashkelon. The mighty had fallen to the ground, the world was ending. The ringing in his ears drowned out the catcalls of the onlooking armies, and his vision was all but shot, but he could still see enough to make out the naked figure of a boy running toward him through the scrub. The boy’s hair streamed out behind him like copper, and he was as swift and light-footed as a deer. As David straddled Goliath with Goliath’s sword in his hand, the giant believed that what he was seeing was his own soul stripped of the unwieldy flesh at last for its journey to paradise, and when David presented the severed head to Saul later, there was an unmistakable smile on its great lips.

In the storms of life, regardless of what we name the mystery our God is with us. Facing impossible odds, we receive divine guidance and energy. Trusting in our God, we can do greater things than we can imagine. The impossible becomes possible as we tap the deeper energies of the universe be it seeking to name them or give them anthropomorphic shape and concept to explain our human agency. Miracles that don’t violate the nature’s law; nature’s power and the powers residing in us are often more than we can imagine. Faith, Hope and Trust open us to quantum leaps of power, inspiration, and energy. What we name as God’s grace is sufficient for us to respond to every crisis. Even though we appear weak, we are strong in Creative love.

What child doesn’t love the story of David and Goliath, described in I Samuel 17. It accommodates instinct in that there is violence in the victory, and this story is an inspiration for the “Bully and the bullied” within each of us. The underdog defeats the villain, the bully gets what’s coming to him, the weak defeat the strong. Yet, beyond the real violence of the story – the Goliath who is vanquished and beheaded – a deeper message may be found. Beyond the violence, beyond the destructive instinctive purely humanistic response there is more. When we trust in this mystery we name God, and I might name Creativity itself, we can respond with courage and strength to the forces that threaten to defeat us. We do not need to accept violence as a natural human activity. Power belongs to the creativity we find in serendipity, ambiguity and the unexpected and dare I say it the satirical, and this suggests that our alignment is not with bullies, oppressors, and those who would plan evil. There is a way when there is no way and we progressives know this as ‘The Jesus Way’. In Creativity God we are inspired to be agents in our own destiny and co-creators with the divine.

The challenge for us in our story is that we are called to be compassionate toward Goliath. He was a tool of the opponent. Perhaps, gigantic as a result of a genetic abnormality, the adversarial mode, the instinctive primitive brain, the military response gave him status and income, and delivered him from social ostracism as a result of his size. He became a victim of culture and of evil. Fighting was all he knew, and bluster and bloviation were his meal ticket. Perhaps, Goliath hoped for a quiet life, far away from the battlefield. But, his destiny was to fight and sadly to die. In the end he is more a victim than a villain in this story.

In Psalm 9 which we did not read today God’s preferential option is for the poor and vulnerable. The oppressor’s days are numbered. Prayers will be answered. We will be liberated from those who unfairly treat us. God will deliver the weak from the snare, and the impoverished from the unjust. We will rise. The catch in this, or the moment of awareness, is that God’s timetable differs from our own. Patience will be required and we have it. The patience to let the moral arc of history emerge in its patient and persistent way? Here is our understanding of the nature of evolution which is in its free serendipitous uncertain and random being our very certainty. Our finiteness in infinity as the science of the quantum might say.

And then we come to our epistle. Again, the dichotomy as Paul proclaims that now is the day of salvation. Today is the day of healing and transformation, confirming that healing and transformation often appear under their opposites. Paul and his companions are described as externally powerless and the objects of scorn. They are of no account and subject to the whims of the powerful. They have nothing. Yet, beneath the persecution and contempt, they are empowered by God’s presence. They possess an inner joy that flows from their trust in God. Their joy is not the result of external circumstances but their relationship with the Living God, revealed in the suffering and resurrected Christ. Salvation and healing are real, and contemporary, regardless of the circumstances of life. We are encouraged in reading this, to look with imagination and confidence for the presence of mystery – to seek the peace that calms and empowers – despite what we are currently enduring. We have everything we need to experience this and our sustenance our way through and beyond adverse circumstances.

Finally, we find Mark describing Jesus’ ability to still the storms of life as well as the storms of nature. The disciples panic when a sudden windstorm rocks their boat, filling their craft with water. In their fear, they call upon Jesus, whose calm voice stills the storm. There are two storms described in this story – the first is the storm at sea, our relationship with that which is beyond our immediate control, the external realities that might put us at risk. The passage proclaims God’s ability to work within the forces of nature to bring health and peace to the planet. The cosmic purpose is about the reality of creativity and change, there is always the movement from what was to what might be, yet, stilling the storm seems a fantasy for those in the path of hurricanes and tidal waves. In an interdependent universe, we have some effect on the forces of nature, we acknowledge this in our acceptance of some responsibility for climate change. and perhaps in the tradition of rainmakers and shaman, Jesus’ own spiritual power and synchronicity with nature could have influenced the course of a storm. Still, we know it is best – during severe storms – to pray for sunshine and find a place of safety!

For many of us as congregations in the western world and in countries where the secular has been strong, the storm at sea is more existential than meteorological. The storms we face involve budget and membership. We fear what will happen to us; we wander if our congregation will survive the changes in the spiritual landscape and our own aging demographics. We wonder what will happen to St David’s Community of Faith because of the need to save old buildings, what will happen to the value of St David’s in a post secular world. The second storm Jesus addresses is the inner tumult, the fear and anxiety within each of us and our institutions. A fishing prayer goes, “The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” Dwarfed by the grandeur of the universe and the challenges that confront us, we appear to be powerless. We are uncertain if our lives matter or if the universe cares for us. An alternative version of the saying gives us another perspective, the sea is God’s sea, not an indifferent force, the sea may be huge but it is dependent on each one of us. God’s sea ultimately will bring us homeward with waves of healing.

As we read this story, we can see two miracles described. The first is the inner miracle. When the disciples remember Jesus is in the boat, they are still fearful, but they are no longer hopeless. They sense that Jesus’ love and power is greater than their fear. Their attitude toward the storm begins to change: yes, this is a difficult situation and we are in trouble, but God is with us and we’re going to make it. The second miracle is the pacifying of the storm. According to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is so in synch with the energies of the universe that by his energetic word he can calm the storm. Here we have the synergy with the very creation story of old, Jesus seems to set up another type of vibration, strong enough to neutralize the destructive impact of the storm. In summary then, today’s readings remind us that despite our apparent weakness, we can experience newfound courage and strength when we trust Creativity God’s loving power. The storms of life will not cease, bullies may continue to threaten us, and external factors may put us at risk, but nothing in all creation can separate us from the love or the power of love that has its roots in Creativity itself. That which we see as the Jesus Way and that which we might name Creativity God. Amen.

Pentecost 4B

June 17^th 2018

Mischievous Mustard Seed Satire

 If we start with all the stuff we have previously heard about this parable, there is a good chance many of us have heard it said this is a story about contrast. About a tiny mustard seed that grows into the greatest of all shrubs. The trouble is that botanically speaking “mustard does not grow to be the greatest of all shrubs, nor is it the smallest of all seeds. Which says that; hyperbole is used to drive home a contrast. On the other hand, wild mustard, an annoying weed, is almost impossible to eradicate once it has infested a paddock or vegetable garden. When you get it in your paddock, like ‘ring fern’ or Scotch thistle’, your paddock is ‘unclean’. So what might the storyteller be suggesting?

Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar suggest: “Jesus’ audience would probably have expected God’s domain to be compared to something great, not something small.” (Funk 1993:59) And then this interesting point: “As the tradition was passed on, it fell under the influence… of the mighty cedar of Lebanon as a metaphor for a towering empire… In his use of this mustard seed metaphor, Jesus is understanding the image for comic effect.” (Funk 1993: 484)

Having said that let’s take a moment to reflect on what the satire might be alluding to given that all the parables are thought to be comments on the realm of God that Jesus is hailing as present and unfolding. The kingdom come perhaps. Lets also take a moment to reflect on how satire is used today.

John Bennison in a sermon on this invites us to start by remembering that radical religious extremists with a distorted view of Islam committed a horrific act of terror a few years ago, executing the staff of a small satirical French publication. The satirists had dared to depict the Prophet Mohammed in cartoon caricature; all the while lampooning those misbegotten adherents who in turn regard such irreverent acts as blasphemous. The Western world reacted with outrage and defiance to such an affront. World leaders joined a million, person protest and unity marched through the streets of Paris, chanting “Je Suis Charlie,” in defense of freedom of speech, and on behalf of the publication’s name. When the modest magazine ran its next issue a week later, the printing presses couldn’t keep pace with consumer demand.

We note that anti-blasphemy laws are common in countries where there are a majority of Muslims. At the same time, it is notable that nearly ninety countries in the world, including France, have laws against the defamation of religion and public expression of hate against religious groups. In the U.S. there are laws that prohibit “hate speech,” where it pertains to words that “offend, threaten, or insult groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.” We have recently debated the Australian rugby player, Israel Filau’s comments about homosexuality in the context of hate speech and rights to religious freedom.

While a clear distinction might be drawn between the use of words and the vehement reactions they may incite, more profound underlying questions remain. Once the dust settles and more thoughtful discussion ensues, we are left with what constitutes the differences between hate speech and freedom of expression? What one might consider merely irreverent, others might regard as not only offensive, but blasphemous and in violation of established law, whether religious or secular. In an attempt to take it out of the legal domain we begin to talk about what is PC and what is not. We talk about false news and political truth as descriptions that almost legitimize dishonesty. When should freedom of expression be curtailed if, and when, it leads to deliberate or even unnecessary provocation? What meaningful purpose might blasphemous satire serve, justifying its use as being of greater importance than the negative consequences that may result? We need strong leaders, or benevolent dictators is the cry. Was it a slip of the tongue or deliberate satire when Fox news announced the meeting of Trump and Kim Jong Un, as the meeting of two dictators?

Again, we are left with a question; While a clear distinction might be drawn between the use of words and the vehement reactions they may incite, … what constitutes the differences between hate speech and freedom of expression?

In the faith that was the faith of Jesus, the religiously observant person was forbidden from even pronouncing the name of their god, let alone seeing the face of the divine; hence they had the tetragrammaton YHWH commonly pronounced ‘Yahweh’ in English as an acknowledgment that even the utterance of the name was forbidden, and thus the word Adonai (“Lord”) is often substituted. To do otherwise could be considered blasphemous. In the Torah, it states that he that blasphemes the name of the LORD “shall surely be put to death.” (Lev. 24:16)

In the canonical gospels of the Christian scriptures, Jesus’ antagonists are continually portrayed condemning the Galilean peasant preacher’s words and actions as blasphemy. The gospel author’s construct their stories to include the gradual, but cumulative, effect of tension and controversy surrounding Jesus. Moreover, they show Jesus as continuously breaking the rules, healing on the Sabbath, usurping God’s exclusive right to pronounce absolution, and making use of political satire in his depictions of the reign of god; until the mounting evidence is sufficient to condemn the offender as deserving death. Here is the collaboration of the Roman empire politically afraid of the Jesus movements political aspirations and the religious afraid of his corruption of their orthodoxy.

Whether it is the religious institution or the Empire of Rome, both the question and consequences may be the same. What useful and greater purpose might “blasphemous” satire serve, to make it worth the risk? When thinking about a ‘Purposeful Satire’ we might acknowledge that at Harvard University each autumn, the Ig Nobel Prizes are apparently awarded for the most esoteric, trivial or simply off-the-wall kinds of scientific research imaginable. As a parody of the prestigious Nobel Prizes, winners of the ignoble (hence the name of the awards) achievements of the last year might include researchers who study how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears; as well as others who investigate whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat; and still others seeking to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast. And this is serious stuff, not unlike the debate about the Proctor’s right to ban and remove the Otago University Student publication from circulation.

The award ceremony at Harvard is organized by a science publication that goes by the name of Annals of Improbable Research. It considers itself a humorous, even satirical, magazine. It’s all meant to be good-hearted fun by those who take scientific inquiry very seriously.

Since the Enlightenment and Age of Reason it has long been suggested that scientific theory and empirical evidence is the religion of choice for those moderns, or now post-moderns, who have left primitive cosmologies and mythic theologies behind. We as progressive Christians might be considered as such people but why do we treat serious matters with the use of satire?

Well I don’t think we have time for a full answer to that question but we can offer an observation about the purposeful use of satire, regardless of its possible consequences. Religiously motivated types we might call fundamentalists, or radical extremists, or fanatical adherents of a warped interpretation of their religious convictions for their own purposes, all have a common response it seems. They all consider satire, lampooning, or mocking their deepest held beliefs to be intolerable blasphemy. And, since many religious traditions have a satire component to their text, it asks where does one draw the line, or cross it?

Was Jesus a Satirist and Blasphemer? Well at Harvard the stated purpose of the Ig Nobel prizes has always been to “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” While the awards are sometimes thinly veiled criticism and gentle satire, they are also used to point out that even the most seemingly absurd can result in new and useful ways of seeing things.

So too, there may be no better way to describe Jesus’ use of satire in what are considered some of the most authentic sayings attributed to him in what we know as the parables. The idea of a good Samaritan, or a foolhardy shepherd who’d forsake an entire flock for one, dumb sheep, or a woman who’d turn her house upside down in search of a single coin are all examples of the kinds of absurd little stories with a bite sufficient to make one first laugh, then think more deeply. This brings us to today’s text of the parable of the mustard seed as another example.

All three synoptic gospels include their own variation on a somewhat briefer and probably earlier version found in the “sayings” of the Thomas gospel: The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.” He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.” (Thomas 20:2)

When Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed — how from the tiniest planted seed such tremendous and specular growth is possible — any motivational speaker or campaigning politician could adapt such a hopeful message out of context to suit their own agenda. Jesus’ original listeners, however, would have thought it was a joke; as in, “Did you hear the one about the mustard seed that thought it was a mighty tree? …” In fact, the mustard bush was a fast-growing weed that – once it took hold – could become so large it was almost impossible to eradicate. With echoes of the Ezekiel text from the Jewish prophetic tradition about the mighty cedar tree providing shelter and shade, Jesus’ image of the reign of God being compared to a mustard bush that could be equated with — or replace – the mighty cedar might well have made his listeners both laugh and cringe.

Perhaps when the evangelists chose to include and adapt this parable for their own purposes in what later became the New Testament canon, they wanted to encourage their fledgling congregations to put their shoulder to the gospel plow and assure them that everything was possible with God. Just plant the seeds and watch the good news spread. But those who first heard the parable may have first gasped, then chuckled uncomfortably and nervously shifted in their seats when they were invited to imagine the divine as an irascible weed. With a little biting humour, Jesus was poking fun of their traditional image of the reign of God; while prompting them to think differently about it.

As already mentioned, the parable of the mustard seed is only one of a number of such challenging little stories. Almost a folk tale, set in ordinary, every-day secular settings, typically irreligious, they also often portrayed the religious authorities in a less than favourable light and they had a challenging twist about them. Jesus had to be deliberately poking people in the posterior with a sharp stick. Is it any wonder he paid the price when his satirical critiques hit too close to home for the institutional hierarchy.

When the gospel story depicts him “setting his face to Jerusalem,” along with everything that would await him there (Matt. 19:1; Mark 9:30-32; Luke9:51-56), Jesus may well have known his satirical jabs would not only be considered irreverent but judged to be blasphemous.

To his credit, however, it seems clear his use of satire was always used to serve a deeper purpose than a quick laugh. Namely, to think more deeply about the nature about what he called the reign of God. With the stakes so high, he did not seem interested in simply exercising his right to mock, ridicule or castigate those whom he regarded as having lost their way. Amen.

Notes:
Cairns, I. J. Mark of a Non-realist. A Contemporary Reading of the Second Gospel. Masterton. Fraser Books, 2004.
Crossan, J. D. The Historical Jesus. The life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. North Blackburn. CollinsDove, 1991.
Funk, R. W. & R. W. Hoover. The Five Gospels. The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. New York. MacMillan Press, 1993.
Geering, L. G. Christianity Without God. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press, 2002.
Reid, B. Parables for Preachers. The Gospel of Mark. Year B. Collegeville. The Liturgical Press, 1999.
Scott, B. B. Re-imagine the World. An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press, 2001.
Sanguin, B. The Way of the Wind: The Path and Practice of Evolutionary Christian Mysticism. Toronto. Evans & Sanguin, 2015.

John William Bennison http://www.wordsnways.com/

Pentecost 3B

Genesis 3: 8-15         Mark 3: 20-35

A New Way of Being Human

Along with the age-old way of being human based on the personalized and anthropocentric approach to God, so too is the idea of God casting out Satan, no longer the way of working toward being human. Up until now, such ideas of God and evil have been essential to our species survival. These ideas have, at the very least given us a relative peace within our own groups in geographical and cultural distinctiveness but now we have a new world and a new opportunity to travel that path towards being more human. For us as followers of the Jesus Way this is the path that Jesus offers us. He said or is recorded as having said; “And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.” Jesus seems to be saying that we have, in fact, been a house divided. Our recent review of human history suggests that human beings have always found ways to divide ourselves based on what was called the satanic way of accusation. Tradition has also said that, that way of being human has come to end in the cross, and Jesus’ new way of forgiveness is the only true way forward.

But what does that mean in terms of our understanding of God. This is important it seems because you and I are called to be part of this new order, this new alternative This new humanity. The old alternative is that older way of seeing salvation as an escape from a world that will forever remain divided and subject to violence and the primary question has been; which way of salvation do you want to be part of? One suggestion is that in order to see the choice more clearly, we have to raise our level of discourse to that of anthropology: that Jesus comes to invite us into a whole new way of being human. But again; what does that mean?

I think it means doing more of what we’ve been doing which is calling our community to treat each other as interdependent, be it family, village, town or community, especially when it comes to the least of us, “we shall always have the poor with us” and those different from us, ‘we are neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor master, gay nor straight, or different in skin colour. I think it means doing more as children of God, good citizens, faithful people etc. The task we are called to is to engage in the bridging of the gaps of this partisan polarity. We are called to be part of the solution in a world that is captured by violence in all its forms, from physical abuse of another to the sustaining of systems seeking to avoid the critique of its influence on the human path to flourishing.

In our Genesis reading there are a number of tantalizing phrases in this familiar passage from the Creation story. One could emerge from this text, taking a number of different directions: God searching for us, the nakedness of shame, the pervasive nature of blame, or the relational impact of curse. The theme that seems to be most harmonious with the themes presented in our Gospel passage are the resolution of the relational curses in the person and work of Jesus, “their sins will be forgiven them,” and also the pervasive nature of blame, “a house divided against itself shall not stand.”

It is also hard to resist dwelling on the beauty of the passage about God searching for Adam and Eve “at the time of the evening breeze but,” why that narrative elaboration? Well maybe; the evening breeze on a beautiful evening is an invitation to discern what could be the purpose in this text telling us that God was heard walking in the garden “at the time of the evening breeze.” Often the sounds on that occasion are magnificently alive because we’ve grown accustomed to the alternative sounds perhaps. In the sounds of the rain and storms of winter we miss the sound of the insects that can only be heard in the stillness. We miss the sound of silence and the sound of nature breathing and moving. I think these are the sounds of creativity that arise out of the silence of imagination that we miss when consumed with the business of the now.

The worldview of a Creativity God, with its strong affirmation of God’s immanence in the world, is not as threatened by the picture of God walking around in the garden “in the evening breeze” as our classical theistic forebears might claim. They took issue with such a passage of scripture because their theological concept of God was one of an utterly transcendent and impassible Gods.

Process Theology, proclaims the immanent God who is concerned about the whereabouts of a couple who were created free — free enough to hide from God even in the Garden of Eden. And thus, any mention of “breeze” in the scriptures invites us to clue into this translation as connoting the same Spirit that is involved in the Creation narrative in the first creation story, as well as elsewhere throughout the Bible. The Ruach, (wind, breeze, breath, Spirit) is one way that we might be able to translate the meaning of what is happening in this text to hearers who might be unwilling to let go of the idea of an omniscient God walking around searching for Adam and Eve.

The alternative claim to an omniscient God is that the Breeze blowing might just be one and the same of “God walking” and “God speaking” to Adam and Eve, who know they have trespassed upon God’s commandments. As Sally McFague has stated in Models of God, this Pneuma/Ruach/Spirit might be a good way of conceptualizing God in a way that connects humans to non-human creation and to a Creativity God, as was outlined in the Trinity Sunday sermon a couple of weeks ago. I called it Serendipitous Creativity but the serendipity can be assumed as the acknowledgement of the evolutionary component in creativity. Furthermore, the fact that God is portrayed as searching for Adam and Eve is a description of a divine relationship with humanity in which it could be said that God is actively involved in the pursuit of a humanity fulfilled. Creativity God is concerned with our well- being, our location in life, and this offers us the best possible outcome of relationship.

In this week’s Mark reading Jesus has been gleaning some wheat for a snack and then healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. After that, he is then pictured healing a multitude of people, such that he had to escape for fear of being crushed (3: 9-10), hushing up some impure spirits (3:11), then deciding to delegate the power of exorcism to twelve apostles (3:13-19). After this whirlwind of activity, Jesus returns home (3:20), where he is met with suspicion. His family seems somewhat embarrassed, since the word around town is that Jesus has lost his mind, and the scribes have an even more scandalous charge. He’s filled with the Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, since according to their logic, only the ruler of demons can cast out demons.

Jesus has the decency to entertain the charges of the scribes, and counters their logic with his own, woven into parables. “If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand, and if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand, and if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. Note here that “his end has come”. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Process theology speak says we can take this phrase as a lure to speak about our prevalent divisive cultural and adversarial political climate though the comparison here between a “kingdom” and “Satan’s kingdom” as implied by Jesus.

Jesus’ parable puts him and his followers on the side of the plunderers, making their way into the house of the “Strong man,” and binding him, so that he and his followers can plunder the property. We look at our world today and we see examples of the resurgence of the “strong man” story around the world. Look at United States, Russia, The Philippines and many other places and we see political electorates which seem enamored with the possibility that such a “strong man” might provide salvation for a group of people politically engineered to feel victimized and hunkered down in a bunker mentality. Perhaps it is of interest to us that Jesus quite clearly positions himself on the side of the plunderers in this parable. How might an exorcist with a plan to “bind the strong man and plunder the property” be the torchbearer of followers of Christ in this political climate?

My summary to date is that the creation story and the gospel or the Jesus Way challenges us to see ourselves as part of the creativity, part of the culture building, part of the meaning development and one might say, part of the problem, and that when we see and understand this we are able to understand what forgiveness, freedom and the alternative Jesus Way, looks and feels like, and discover a new way of being human.

And on that note, I want to suggest that after service today we will engage in that very challenge. We will be asked to think about a name for our school; not our umbrella name because I think there is adequate justification being voiced that says St David’s Centre is where the location, heritage, legend and traditional, is valued and expressed. In other words that name says where we have come from and what we value as we step into the future, and now we are ready to engage in providing a name for our school. This will express what we think is distinctive, forward thinking and invites those who have no understanding of our spirituality, our aspirations as a sacred community of faith and how we think we might go about encouraging the development of young human beings to be spiritually aware, authentically driven and leaders of our world in a future which is beyond our imagination. In short what sort of world do we think the future might be, should be and how do we prepare others for it, even if we are not sure of what it might look and feel like.

What we do know is that it will be a world where our children will benefit from being multi-lingual, technologically astute, self-aware, and innovatively driven. A world where fear as a driver of violence, uncertainty, ambiguity is no longer valid and where society is based on an understanding of the efficacy of love and compassion. A new way of being human.

Genesis portrays the emergence of fear and sin in the human story. The Gospel portrays Jesus as declaring that all sins are forgiven and that love is the vehicle that replaces fear. Jesus is here, relating the sin to his own experience of feeling debased by the scribes who are describing his work and words and ministry as arising out of an unholy Spirit. If God is searching for us and comes walking in the evening breeze, which way the wind blows is important for our living as human beings, in other words what we say about ourselves to those who do not know us or what we believe is important. So, what are the words in naming our school that say who we are and what we believe we are aspiring to? Amen.