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Luke 11:1-13

Does Prayer Change Things?

Today is one of those times in the lectionary when the topic is a repeat of other readings in the year. This time it is the subject of prayer and one wonders whether there is anything new to say about prayer. So given all that I thought we might just touch into some theological wanderings through the prayer I think is the most used and dare I say it the prayer we spend the least time on analyzing what it is that we are saying when we recite it out of habit.

Rex Hunt gave some thought to this that I found interesting and so I thought we might see what he says as we explore. Like me he reminds us that most analysis of prayer begins with what prayer is and what it isn’t. Rex says; that, prayer was not some Harry Potter-style magic where you say certain words and specific things happen.

Neither is it Santa Claus–style bargaining… Be good and you get what you ask for.
Be bad and you don’t. Instead he suggested that prayer was more akin to the ‘language of the heart’… Rex suggests that prayer is more like a conversation with oneself than one with a higher power, more an invitation to sense the connectedness of the whole of life – and the “always present God” rather than “an elsewhere God” (Morwood 2003:8).

He suggests that the characteristics of this kind of praying would include listening in silence which I think is like taking one’s mind to a place where no words or concepts or anything is required, just a conscious attempt to note all the things swirling around in ones mind as if waiting for a sign or something to take up and still the swirling. A silence that shuts the outer world out and attempts to still the inner one.

He suggests another characteristic is one of giving insights into ourselves and possibly others, and by this I think he is suggesting that the discovery of this silence, this nothingness highlights the fact that we are unique, nothingness is only nothingness when confronted by somethingness perhaps,  there is a self that fills the space, and when we get there we realize that all human beings are alike in this commonality of what it means to be human, sure we know that genetics and environment and relationships all impact on who we are but that commonality is clear and it doesn’t wipe out our uniqueness or our particular input into the wider world, it enhances and clarifies it.

Rex highlights another characteristic as connecting us to each other and here I think he is exploring the world of mirror neurons, of environmental and genetic cause or why do we need to be a particular species. What is being human and why is it important in the greater scheme of things? What is our relationship with the trees and plants and other animals? What is our connection with the planet and the cosmos. I was watching a couple of movies this week. One was Tomorrowland about the insatiable desire of humankind to find another futuristic world and Interstellar about the end of this civilization and the desire of humans to find another planet to live on.

What his this got to do with prayer, well maybe that desire to be connected to one another both at a personal and procreative imperative level and at a planetary survival of the species level. We know instinctively that we need each other yet we spend so much time fighting for our individuality. Is this not at the seat of prayer conditioned by consciousness?

But all this is psychological wandering and its not all that has been said about prayer and its ability to change things. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard once commented: ‘prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays’. Others have refined that a bit, to: ‘Prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people and people change things’. Henry Nelson Wieman went further and suggested that prayer ‘works’ with the: “re-creation of the one who prays, of [the] appreciable world, and of [their] association with others, so that the prayerful request is fulfilled in the new creation” (Wieman 1946:282).

Here we leap to my favourite approach to this. Prayer is about ‘Reimagining the world!  Reimagining relationships!  Reimagining possibilities!

Returning to our text we see that the focus of today’s Lectionary story is again on ‘prayer’.
In particular what we have called The Lord’s Prayer. And our storyteller says the context of the story is a request from the disciples for Jesus to teach them how to pray. And so we are given Luke’s version of that prayer.

If we are honest at this point, we have to says that there is a fair amount of doubt as to whether Jesus actually taught anybody how to pray, let alone a group called the disciples. Recent 21^st century scholarship now suggests this prayer comes from a group of people called the Q People… One of several groups of people who make up the early Jesus movements. Their particular ‘claim to fame’ was they were only interested in the teachings of Jesus “and not on the person of Jesus or his life and destiny” (Mack 1993:1).

It is suggested that during their life together as a community they began to develop a series of strategies to help them survive. Those strategies were:

• they started writing their wisdom down,
• they began to claim Jesus as their founder,
• they began to compose and write down angry sayings, condemning those who rejected them, and
• they began to institutionalise prayer as a response to their situation.

And the outcome of one of those strategies was what we have come to identify
as the Jesus Prayer or The Lord’s Prayer. Named that way because they took bits and pieces of his teachings and wove them together, so every time they said these words, it reminded them of Jesus, their founder. It was a brilliant strategy!

This short prayer showed they believed Jesus prayer life was, and as a result, their prayer life needed to be, basic and broadly focused, “and more broadly focused than that of many religious people today” (Taussig 1999:98)

One of the challenges of this stuff is what I suggested at the beginning when I suggested what prayer might be. All this latter approach to prayer acknowledges the sociological and psycological evolution of human thinking but it is very easily lost as just ‘head’ stuff rather than ‘heart’ stuff. So what do we do with this? Well, again Rex  offers us an option. He tells of a group of refugees in El Salvador where they too have taken the Jesus or Lord’s Prayer and earthed it in their experiences of living in this world. And here is the result of their reflection on this prayer.

 Abba/Father…
As God’s children may we build a new earth of sisterhood and brotherhood,
not a hell of violence and death.

may your name be holy

That in God’s name, let there be no abuse, no oppression and no manipulation of the conscience and liberty of your children.

May your rule take place

Not the rule of fear, force or money, of seeking peace through war.

Give us each day our daily bread

The bread of peace, so we can sow our maize and beans, watch them grow and share them together as a family.

Pardon our debts, for we ourselves 

pardon everyone in debt to us.

May our relationships not be based on self-interest.

And do not bring us to trial into a trying situation

Let us change lament for songs of life, clenched fists for outstretched hands, and the weeping of widows and orphans for smiles…

This is not some reciting of some well-known words in auto-pilot, like so much of the saying of the Lord’s Prayer in its traditional form, today is. This is basic existence, real life, stuff.

And so is the story which Luke adds to this prayer story. The arrival of an unexpected guest seeking hospitality. Only for the host to have no food in the family larder.
So a neighbour is asked to help out. As Bruce Prewer observes: “…[Luke’s] Jesus is talking about basics.  Good food, not luxuries for the over pampered.  Fish and eggs were the main source of protein in the common person’s diet.  Not snapper or rainbow trout, but plain stubby little fish from Lake Galilee; the ones now called St Peter fish.  And eggs; not caviar but common hen’s eggs.  Basics” (BPrewer web site, 2001). It is for the needs of others that we are told to ask, seek and knock on God’s ‘metaphorical’ door.

That’s what makes this Lukan story, important. That’s what makes the refugees’ reflection, important. That’s what makes the Q peoples’ prayer, important. That’s what makes what we do and say every week, important. Amid the basics of life, and remembering others needs, it invites us to reimagining the world, reimagining relationships, reimagining possibilities. Not for our benefit.  But for theirs, because ‘prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people and people change things.

Paul Alan Laughlin who’s prayer we recited in today’s liturgy said in an article some years back that he describes his take on the Jesus/Lord’s Prayer as A Mystical Lord’s Prayer.

“The first and perhaps most important thing that sets this version of the Lord’s Prayer off from the others is its theology, which dispenses entirely with the personal, parental Father-Sky-God of the original, and replaces “Him” with a non-personal, immanent power-presence (or source-force), an infinite one (or One) that is none other (or non-Other) than the spiritual core of the person or persons reciting or singing the prayer.  The implicit theology of this prayer, then, is not monotheism but monism…

“The second distinctive feature of this version of the Lord’s Prayer follows from the first; for having eliminated a personal divine Other above, this Lord’s Prayer… has no petitions for any intercessory acts on behalf of a human individual or group.  In their stead are strong affirmations of how we are already emboldened from within ourselves to become better persons and to accomplish ever-greater things.  This “Lord’s Prayer,” then, can properly be regarded as a daily reminder of our full human potential-miraculous and praiseworthy in its own right-to be good and do good.

“Thus, he says; my Lord’s Prayer is not an invocative device, but an evocative (psyche) exercise in self-realization-or perhaps Self-realization, if the ego-self is to be distinguished from one’s deepest and truest identity, as it is in most mystical traditions.  For humanists, this “within” may be seen differently: as our rational and empirical faculties, perhaps after the fashion of Plato, who equated the human “soul” with the intellect.  In either case, what we have here is an acknowledgement of a mysterious and in some sense sans divine Immanence (versus Eminence) – a reference to the indwelling mysterious Presence and Power that (at least for mystics) permeates or infuses the cosmos, and that (for humanists as well, though probably the capitals) abides in nature, human nature, and therefore ourselves” (Reprinted from The FourthR, Vol 22, No. 6. Nov-Dec 2009

Paul’s Mystical Lord’s Prayer which we will recite latter is as follows:

O presence and pow’r within us,
Being and Life of all.
How we are filled, how we o’erflow
with infinite love and gladness!

We shall this day sow grace and peace,
and show mercy to all,
and gentle loving-kindness.

And we shall be not so self-serving,
but a constant source of giving.

For ours is the essence,
and the wholeness,
and the fullness forever.

Notes:
“Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer” by a group of Refugees, El Salvador, in G. Duncan. (ed) 2005.  Entertaining Angels. A Worship Anthology on Sharing Christ’s Hospitality. London. Canterbury Press.
Mack, B. 1993.  The Lost Gospel. The Book of Q and Christian OriginsPraying a New Story. New York. HarperCollins.
Morwood, M. 2003.  . Richmond. Spectrum Publications.
Taussig, H. 1999.  Jesus before God. The Prayer Life of the Historical JesusThe Source of Human Good. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press.
Wieman, H. N. 1946.  . Carbondale. Southern Illinois University Press.

rexae74@gmail.com

 

Pentecost 7C, 2019
Luke 10:25-37

Who Is the Neighbour We Will Allow?

Jesus is travelling in the north for several weeks and turns south making his way along the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. It was a dangerous route since much of it was through a rocky wilderness that sheltered many bands of thieves or robbers.

He is of course not alone. Our story tradition says he traveled with companions and the curious, who were interested in hearing something of what this strange Jewish cynic-like sage had to say about the nature of human life and its prospects.

Jericho, Jerusalem, and a road. Our story is probably the most known and best loved story in our biblical tradition. The story of the so-called ‘Good Samaritan’ seems to have touched into something that many identify with in some way or another. It is a great story, that is without doubt but herein is its problem. Because it is so well known and so well loved it has been domesticated applied to many situations as a metaphor and we miss that it is first and foremost a parable… By that I mean it is a story which turns our ideas and values and worldview upside down. It is perhaps an active metaphor that locates it in our time and in our place with a disturbing element.

Theologically speaking, for years and years the church’s interpretation turned this parable into an ‘example story’. Into a story of two so-called bad blokes and one good bloke. But an ‘example story’ is what this parable isn’t. This demands that we explore a little why we do that.

If the thrust of the story was about good blokes verses a bad bloke, or as an illustration of love of neighbour, or even a diatribe against heartless religious leaders, the offer of aid by a Jewish lay person would have been sufficient. Remember that Samaritans are Jewish people with a differing theology about the place of the temple. They are remnants of the Northern Kingdom, maybe liberals among conservatives perhaps but still Hebrew people. Or at least not too different in world view.

In this the offer of a lay Jewish person would be enough of a challenge to deal with and likewise, according to John Dominic Crossan: “If Jesus wanted to… inculcate love of one’s enemies, it would have been radical enough to have a Jewish person stop and assist a wounded Samaritan…  [But] the internal structure of the story and the historical setting of Jesus’ time agree that… the whole thrust of the story demands that one say what cannot be said, what is a contradiction in terms: Good-Samaritan” (Crossan 1992:62).

And that’s a major shock. Because it challenges the hearers. It challenges them and us and their and our, understanding of God and of whom God approves. The Samaritan, who is both a lay person and an outsider, embodies the true interpretation of the Jewish tradition: to show compassion.

Two people who help us appreciate a much broader understanding of what ‘compassion’ is, are Matthew Fox and John Donahue. Matthew Fox suggests that: “Compassion is not pity…  It is not feeling sorry for someone.  Compassion is about feelings of togetherness. It is about all those risks to self and exposing one’s vulnerability. Turning the other cheek is not just about looking away, not judging, and accepting difference. It is about being prepared to be changed, to see things anew. And it is this awareness of kinship or togetherness that urges us to seek after justice and do works of mercy (Fox 1979:2, 4). Like Matthew Fox was saying last week compassion is not only about caring for each other as fellow human beings it is about deeply caring for the whole of creation, about all the relationships. Each piece of plastic in the ocean is our concern, each decision about the survival or extinction of any microbe, animal, and atom is in need of compassion.

John Donahue also views compassion as something more than just concern for or awareness of. He describes ‘compassion’ like this: He says: “Compassion is that divine quality which, when present in human beings, enables them to share deeply in the sufferings and needs of others and enables them to move from one world to the other: from the world of helper to the one needing help; from the world of the innocent to that of the sinner”   (Donahue 1988:132). So, who is my neighbour? Well we could say that from our experience as a biblical storyteller, when people have heard this story of the good Samaritan many of them ask that same question and then identify with the Samaritan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osfQg4yKtq8

But it’s not as easy being a ‘good’ Samaritan as it seems at first sight! The stories told by our cultural storyteller – television, and experience – tells us people continue to pass by on the other side. The story doesn’t seem to be all that powerful a catalyst for change in our behaviour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqO3cmoFoQg

So, let’s listen to the story again, but this time we will try to imagine it from the injured person’s point of view. Why didn’t they stop and help me? I thought a minister was supposed to help others. And that church worker… Bet she was only going to another flower roster committee meeting. She could have been just a bit late… Wait on; here comes someone else. Maybe he will stop and… Oh no. Not one of them!

Wait on, I mustn’t be so pessimistic. Here’s one. Oh dear, he’s a Samaritan, this is not supposed to happen. Why a Muslim… Anyone but him really. Perhaps it would be better if you kept going? Please, don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t touch me. O God, don’t let him touch me…

The late Robert Funk spent many years studying this parable. He asked this question:
“Who in the audience wanted to let himself or herself be helped by a Samaritan? This is the primary challenge because the appearance of the Samaritan makes sense on no other basis” (Funk 1996:176). Who among you would want to be helped by someone you didn’t respect or have time for or rubbed you up the wrong way? Who among you when you were in dire straits, vulnerable, and at risk would welcome someone you didn’t like to help you?

Funk then went on to suggest that had the victim in the ditch been a Samaritan and the hero an ordinary Judean, a different question would have had to have been asked. The question would be: who in the Judean audience wanted to play the role of hero to a Samaritan victim? What makes this question challenging is that, the role of the victim is the inferior role. The role of the helper is the superior one. And who doesn’t want to be the hero?

Who is my neighbour? That’s the supposed context of this story and the most common question asked by those who hear it. It is about the challenge of identifying one’s neighbour as the one in need but there is another contextual question in this story as well. Another ‘word’ which must also be considered if this story is to be a parable rather than just an example story.

And that can also be shaped into a question: The question is ‘whom will I allow to be my neighbour?” On this question, Megan McKenna’s comment is very suggestive: “If we were in the ditch in that condition, who is the last person we would want to be indebted to for the rest of our lives, especially if acknowledging the debt would cause us to be outcast and associated with that group by everyone in our current world?  Is there anyone or any group that we feel that way about?  Would we rather die than face the fact that this person or these people are our neighbours? (McKenna 1994:149).

That is one heck of a challenge and makes this parable very disruptive of our comfort. It does not allow us to sideline the challenge by putting is aside under the cloak of a story of a good bloke verses a bad one. Our honest answer to the question that risks our integrity, our commitment to justice and our willingness to die for it, gets close to the heart of this parable. And our answer just might really surprise us as well. I know it does for me in my current circumstances as minister of St David’s facing questions about my behaviour, and I know it could for those of you who care about St David’s as well as for me. Who is our neighbour? And Whom will I allow to be my neighbour? These are questions we ask of ourselves when we seek to be compassionate for all people and our planet with whom and for which we share this life. Amen.

Pentecost 6C. 2019
Luke 10:1-10

A Cynic Like, No Frills Jesus,

Today is the 7^th Day of the 7^th Month 2019 a date that is other than the date of this day today, of little significance. Well that’s probably untrue in that there is no doubt the fact that this day, this date for someone has some significance. It has to be someone’s birthday of anniversary of some event. There was a date similar but not the same that had significance and that was Saturday the 7^th day of the 7^th month on the year 2007 and at 7 minutes past 7am on that day the world ended.

Of course, it was off the mark because we are still here! But in reality there have been over many years several ‘visions’ or predictions as to when the ‘end of the world’ or the Second Coming of Christ, is to occur. One of the most famous of these predictions goes back to an American, called William Miller, a farmer and layman of the Baptist church, and a person who was one of those instrumental in establishing the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Beginning with a strictly literal reading of the ages of people mentioned in the first chapters of Genesis, and the dating of other events mentioned in Daniel and Revelations,
“Miller believed that precise calculations were possible and one could predict the second coming of Christ and the inauguration of the Millennial kingdom… somewhere around 1843”  (Wikipedia). Actually, the 22 October 1844, was the date commonly accepted throughout the Millerite, movement, although it has been said Miller himself was uncertain as to the exact day. The topic was discussed in the newspapers as well as in theological journals. “New Testament eschatology competed with stock market quotations for front-page space…”  (Wikipedia).

But when we go back to our numerical patterns. We find that in a sample poll conducted towards the end of 2006, again in America, it showed that one in four Americans anticipated the second coming of Christ in 2007. Indeed, 11 percent said it is “very likely” that Jesus will return to Earth in 2007!

William Miller and his followers not only tapped into a long tradition,
they have also added to and expanded that tradition. And as we now know, it is from within the Millennial or Rapture or Armageddon fundamentalist traditions that much of the so-called ‘religious right’ in the western world seek to influence governments on foreign policy issues.  We might take for instance the relations in the volatile Middle East.
We might as how can there ever be a negotiated solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict,
when fundamentalist Christians continue to lobby politicians while claiming that:
“Peace and peace plans in the Middle East are a bad thing… because they delay the countdown to Christ’s return”  (Quoted in Crossan 2007:201) Domonic Crossan reminded us of this in 2007. The problem is that vote scared politicians continue to listen to them!

So, let me be quite clear about what I think: “The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen soon.  The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen violently.  The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen literally.  The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with divine presence” and let me say that I am not alone in this thinking. Domonic Crossan said as much in 2007. (Crossan 2007:230-231).

Returning to our text we see that over the last two weeks our gospel storyteller whom we call Luke, has been setting out his agenda, his vision, for cooperating with divine presence. Foxes have holes, but have nowhere to lay your head… Leave the dead to bury the dead… Carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals…. Salute no one on the road…
Take what food and drink is offered you…

It has to be that these stories about these short, sharp sayings, are important  – both then and now. Contemporary biblical scholarship suggests they are either from, or have been influenced by, the code of the Q Movement… The texts we take as from an unknown source used by the gospel writers. The important collection or memory of Jesus sayings,
which in their earliest state, are very close to the Cynic’s style of making social critique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3F4BCzN5D8

And we can also now speculate that those same Q people were not only part of a very lively Jesus movement in Galilee, remembering and shaping just the sayings tradition of Jesus, but that their ‘voice’ is probably the best record we have of the first 40 years of the Jesus movements.

When we look at some of the basic conventions of the time we see that by conventional common sense standards of the everyday word, a home was necessary; the streets were unsafe, a son must honour the family above all else, especially in death, money and clothes and provisions are about living – and status, respect given and received was what made the world go around, only clean or organic food is what one should always eat.

Popular tradition has it that the Cynics always challenged their listeners by their dress and their sayings, to re-imagine the world away from the everyday world of common sense. Now this is where an important bit comes in. So too does the link to all that stuff I said at the beginning: about Millennial or Rapture or Armageddon fundamentalist traditions, usually called the ‘apocalyptic’ tradition. An apocalyptic or ‘end world’ theory doesn’t exist in any of these sayings, despite what some, including some scholars, want to claim. Neither does a blue print for modern world missions. This is why mission is usually not defined. It is God’s mission and thus does not fit man’s definitions which are culturally bound.

What does exist is a new counter-culture tradition that simply suggests:  don’t jump to hasty conclusions, consider the human condition or circumstances of all. And when you take account of that kind of in-depth thinking, something different can be accomplished, now. This is what I was suggesting last week and the week before. Good news is about the new, the radically alternative and different. A change of attitude or behaviour is a simple response but only part of it. A new vision of what it means to be human on equal terms based in love on love and for love. Being alive to the present moment in all of its possibilities, positive and negative. What makes me suggest some of this? When a ‘no-frills’ Jesus used imaginative language to call into question his received life/everyday world, in favour of the life world that emerges in his parables and short sayings (aphorisms),  (Patterson 2007) then he and we, are getting close to what it means to live
with divine presence – both then and now.

We can catch hold of that presence when our eyes are wide open… “capable of catching a glimpse of what lies beyond the reigning view of the world” (Funk 2002:28).

Like I have said before, the Roman Empire, like all empires then and now, and what seems to permeate our culture even today is that empires, institutions based on a power over are base in the premis that they will change the world through victory after war. Note that peace is dependent upon victory and only comes after war. The ‘end-of-the-world’ advocates say we’ll save the world by destroying it. Jesus seems to have said: let’s re-imagine the world differently by considering the human condition of all. That is now our ‘no frills’ journey, where-ever it takes us. Amen.

Notes:
Crossan, J. D.  2007. God and Empire. Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. New York. HarperSanFrancisco.
Funk, R. W.  2002. A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press.
Patterson, S. J.  2007. “Report from the Jesus Seminar on Christian Origins” in The Fourth R 20, 1, 16-20.

rexae74@gmail.com

 

Pentecost 5C, 2010
Luke 9:51-62

‘The Influence of a Wider Horizon

Some of you might remember the film The Dead Poet’s Society, that tells the story of a remarkable teacher’s influence on his students in a prestigious boarding school. The teacher, Mr Keating, played by Robin Williams, invites the boys “to jump up and stand on his desk as he has done in his teaching, so they can see things from a different perspective, a wider view… a different horizon – then seize it” (Bausch 1999:239).

It was a film about a teacher who invited his students to view the world differently and that theme resonates with the theme of our story from Luke today. The text is about embodying and following in the way and style of Jesus of Nazareth. We have explored before what the Way of Jesus is all about. It is essentially about an alternative way of living and while we might have concentrated on his way of being in the past and locked ourselves up in the mode of believing as ‘being’ we now think differently. We now think that just being is not enough. We now think that being and doing are part of the same thing, to do is to be and to be is to do. A bit like the shift from Facebook to Instagram. It is less about the need for the visual, the photographic conversation and more about the importance of the 90% of communication through the visual and the embodiment and less about just the mind and the content of the words.

When we look at our Lukan text we see that there are three sets of reactions worth noting. The first is that of the Samaritans, who recognize that Jesus “has set his face to go to Jerusalem” and will not receive him. They apparently recognize that Jesus is on a mission … and they want nothing to do with it. Or perhaps they believe that because Jesus is set on reaching Jerusalem, he will have no time for them, no time to discuss or heal or whatever they may have hoped. In either case, they have expectations of Jesus that he is not meeting and when his resolution to march toward the cross upsets their plans, they reject him.

The disciples, in turn, react to this rejection with a surprising and rather alarming! – request: they want to call down fire from heaven to devour the Samaritans. Of course, this may not be as surprising as we’d like to think. Jews and Samaritans did not get along, the disciples were apparently not above ethnic prejudice, and they knew their biblical history enough to know that Elijah had done something similar years before. They, also, do not like to be thwarted in their plans. They were there to see that Jesus made it to Jerusalem, and anyone and everyone who stood in their way could move out of the way.

The question we might ask here is “Does Jesus make a noticeable difference in our lives? Or to put it in traditional terms: Does the grace, mercy, and love of God made incarnate in Jesus come first in our plans and do they shape our lives, or do we shape our faith to fit the lives we’ve already planned? I want to suggest here that if we’re honest, many of us will identify with the latter option because we recognize that we harbour a deep-seated desire to be in control, to maintain some semblance of order in a rather chaotic and confusing world. Yet Jesus in this passage is clearly not willing to concede: he demands that his mission comes before all of our plans, even those that seem most reasonable.

Why does he do this? Well maybe because we really aren’t in control, that it’s an illusion, and that a rainstorm, or tornado, or illness, or loss, or tragedy, or any one of a hundred other things might dash our hopes as well as our plans and bring us to ruin. Maybe we aren’t in control and Jesus is telling us to let him be? But wait on a minute! As tempting – and as pious – as that might sound, I’m not sure that the passage in front of us invites the choice between us being in control or Jesus being in control. Think about it: Jesus doesn’t go to Jerusalem to assume command or take charge. Rather, he goes to Jerusalem to thrust himself fully and completely into people’s out-of-control lives and comes out the other side.

So perhaps that’s the promise of the Gospel – not that we can be in control, or even that God is in control, but rather that God joins us in our out-of-control-ness, holds onto us, and walks with us to the other side. That may not always seem like all that much of a promise, but after a few days without power supply… or a few months on chemo … or a few years of addiction … at least it sounds real and therefore trustworthy.

After all we invest a lot of time, energy, and money in being in control. And plenty of religious folk invite us to invest lots of time, energy, and money to surrender to God’s control. Yet the world is still a terribly chaotic and unsettling place. Does it work is the question? Doing what one has always done but doing it better sounds like a good strategy. So what if the deepest calling of a Christian disciple isn’t to be in control – ourselves or vicariously through God – but rather to give up the illusion, to take some risks, and to throw ourselves into this turbulent life and world God loves so much trusting that God will join us in the adventure, hold onto us through all the ups and downs, and walk with us to the other side.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s a faith journey. Maybe that what being and doing the kingdom thing is all about. And when we, like Jesus’ first disciples, fall short yet again, then all we can do is give thanks that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, entering our chaotic lot and walking in our turbulent lives that we may know that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing.

In theological parlance, the Way of Jesus is not compartmentalized into belief and non-belief, non-historically factual and existentially mythical. The Way of Jesus is an alternative to the status quo, it is new, a new creation, good news, transforming love, a way of compassion as opposed to rules and law. Or as the late biologist and theologian Charles Birch, suggested: “The way Jesus offered was one of being open to surprise and new perceptions, not clinging to established guidelines and inherited patterns” (Birch 1993: 79). A ‘different horizon’.

As I said last week my reflection on the meeting of Northern Presbytery on Saturday was one of seeing the Presbytery in a huge struggle to find itself in a whole new world.
It struggled with what to be in today’s world and it talked about what it thought it should do in the way of survival. It talked about all the things it had been doing for the last hundred years with todays, words. The received message was that the decline is all the fault of the people who still come to church. The message was that all we were doing was not enough and that we should be doing it better if we wanted to arrest the decline. The trouble with this approach is that despite all those who nostalgically seem to long for church to be like it was in 1944 or 1954 or 1964, that can never be.

For one thing, church is now only one of several institutions or organizations offering a view of the world and a purpose for living. It seemed to me that the church is no longer listening to Jesus. The church is, if you like, in a supermarket situation in which many people feel no need to buy its products at all and the church’s answer is to try to do what it has been doing for years but do it better.

According to those who do research on these matters the major challenge the church faces is in being able to identify and name the presence of God or the sacred
in our often-fragmented life-worlds. Jesus spoke to his world with such effect that a whole new religious movement was established so why can’t we? There are some who are taking the risk but they are being seen by the church as difficult or wrong and unfaithful. Others mostly beyond the church are attempting just that. And they are often coming up with different and competing answers which can cause some of us to be a bit shocked because we fear the church no longer has, if it ever did, a monopoly on things spiritual or sacred or God stuff. As I have said before. What if beyond the God we know, beyond the secular was the new religious age?

One who has written on this subject, Australian David Tacey, says: “What has been brewing inside the soul is a new spirituality that will surprise both the secular establishment and the official religious tradition… The miracle is that the secular keeps giving birth to the sacred, often against its will and in spite of its own judgement” (Tacey 2000:252,253). Richard Kearney’s work on a post atheism God or ‘Anatheism’ and Caputo’s work on the Weak God ask us to go beyond the status quo of a supernatural, theistic almighty God and to see the human Jesus in his culture and setting before we make him fit our supernatural needs.

As you know I have a view on all of this, which I know has been and is still a challenge for some. I want to suggest that maybe because these comments are not the traditional ones there are some who want to hear them. Not as stumbling blocks or even challenges to their faith but as alternatives that enable a clearer examination of what they do believe and will work in the lives as they know life.

A very difficult part to this is that one needs to have or cultivate a ‘high’ view, about the place of change. Being open to new perceptions, and not clinging to established or inherited ways of thinking about things is always an alternative to be explored. For us as church the challenge is not to cling onto a theology that does not fit our 21st century understanding. In other words, the kingdom of God is about now, that’s why we question the concept of kingship. We need to let go of the medieval understanding of kingship and the current understanding of Empire as a system of governance and we need to find an alternative that relegates the old ideas. Kingdom is less about an area of the earth controlled by a monarchy and more about a life that an alternative way is lived in a complimentary way, a compassionate way, a way that celebrates human flourishing rather than controls its behaviour.

Simply perhaps, the church needs to ensure it frees folk to go on the journey that Jesus chartered, rather than to worship the journey of Jesus (WWink). And while that might sound easy it is as radical a change as the one Jesus advocated in his time! If we go back to this weeks particular story the tradition is not clear concerning Jesus’ intentions, as he approached the Samaritan village. We also see that whatever they were, he was not able to carry them out, because the village folk denied him and his friends, hospitality. Many scholars have speculated on why they acted this way. Theological reasons and cultural reasons have been offered but maybe it was just that the people had heard about this Cynic-like bloke and were cautious of losing the status quo. There was a German New Testament theologian called Willie Marxsen, who seemed to be always pointing out that not everyone who met or heard Jesus had positive reactions! Some said: ‘This bloke’s a nutter!’ Others said: ‘This is good teaching.  Admirable.  Interesting.’ Still others said: ‘In this person’s words and deeds I have experienced God’s very own presence in my life.’

According to the various biblical storytellers, Jesus encountered opposition
to his perception of reality from the authorities of the day, but just how hostile this opposition was, is a matter of speculation. On the other hand, those same storytellers say that many ordinary people were attracted to him and his re-imagined worldview.

Another challenge not addressed by today’s church is that people didn’t go to the synagogue to meet with, or listen to, him. They met him on the hills and by the lake.
While they were hanging about in the marketplace. Or while they were mending their fishing nets. They ate with him and held parties for him. They invited him into their homes.

There’s no indication whatsoever in the gospel stories that the synagogues ever had any more worshippers because of Jesus. St David’s Mission does not depend upon its buildings. It depends upon its people being people of the Jesus Way.

And while not wanting to fall into the ‘literalist’ trap, nevertheless those who chose to listen and take on board his comments, experienced what he said as ‘good news’.
“What they learned from Jesus and experienced in his presence was not just a good teaching or a good way of life – it was not an ethic… Rather, it was an expression of who they would claim God to be”  (Patterson 2002:222). It was then up to them whether or not they felt free enough to go on the journey Jesus was chartering.

Engaging in the Kingdom of God was less about a place where everything was right and good and more about a place to be fully human as Charles Birch’s comment said “The way Jesus offered was one of being open to surprise and new perceptions, not clinging to established guidelines and inherited patterns” (Birch 1993: 79). It is important to live in this day and time rather than being caught in the past and that’s the first invitation to us all. Let go where we have to. The second invitation is, to follow Jesus up onto the desks and chairs… in true Keating/Robin Williams style: to jump up and stand on desks and chairs and table tops and ladders, so that we all can see things from a different perspective, a wider view, a different horizon. And then seize that opportunity to be different. If we can do that together, then we will know what being in the kingdom is all about. As for the Presbytery it might be to put down what worked in the past, put down what is not working now and get up on the table of risk and the new and the alternative and maybe we can be in for an exciting and different journey!

Amen.