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‘The Gospel is about Extravagance Not Sacrifice’

This morning’s theological storyteller we call John, has told a very old story and this story seems to have been reworked several times as it appears in various guises in at least three other gospels. In John, it is a good woman. In Luke, a sinful woman. In Mark, the woman anoints Jesus’ head. In Luke and John, she anoints his feet. Later generations have imagined the woman was Mary Magdalene. And the differences go on.

In John, Judas objects. In Matthew, the disciples object. In Mark, it was some of those present who objected. In Luke, it was Simon, the pharisee who objects. In Matthew and Mark, all this took place in the house of Simon, the leper. In Luke, it happened in the house of Simon, the pharisee. In John, it took place in the home of Lazarus. About now one might be excused for being confused. This is quite a story!

So, amid all the changes to this story, where do we go? Where is the story’s focus? Maybe it’s on the response of the woman. But we need to be careful if we go down that road because we know the woman’s response is not always welcomed by those of the culture of the compilers and of a time of patriarchal history. Looking at the wider context of the story we see that the protests in many of the stories surrounding this one seem to focus on the waste of resources, with those resources going to assist the poor.

So as a guide, Uniting Church theologian Bill Loader offers this comment: He says:
“It is not that we should see [her response] as stroking the ego of Jesus, but rather as indicative of her response…  A person is responding to love and acceptance.  It is not the time to talk budgets, but to value the person” (WLoader Web site 2004).

A Girardian note on this story suggests that we find ourselves in Lent and the cross looms large ahead of us, bringing us closer to the revelation of God’s extravagant love – reflected in Mary’s scandalous generosity – juxtaposed against humanity’s imposition of blame and cruelty.

This passage contains layers upon layers of scapegoating and misappropriated blame, but cutting through it is truth, beauty and compassion.

A frequent misinterpretation of this passage is that Jesus is acquiescing to the inevitability of impoverishment, as if poverty is a natural phenomenon to which some are necessarily doomed. But if God is Love – if Love fashioned the universe and all that is in it and formed humanity to reflect Love – then the suffering that comes with cultural, economic and social concern; destitution is not divine design. No, there is abundance for all, so why does Jesus say, “You always have the poor with you?”

Well! what if poverty is a way that the consequences of negative mimesis have become entrenched over time? As people live over and against one another and exclude and marginalize or exploit and manipulate others for their own benefit, the abundance of creation is horded by some and denied to others? The current economic questions around equity seem to signal tis poverty as acceptable.

Furthermore, the escalation of human conflict, as desires for wealth, power, and influence clash against each other, erupts into war that further impoverishes those who already have little. No one will benefit from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine other than those who have the power and the resources already. The poor are often those conscripted into battle or sent to the front lines to fight for profits claimed by others under the guise of patriotism and ‘the empire’ remains the hidden reason. Spilled blood poisons the soil, and today tools of modern warfare destroy homes and livelihoods and wreak havoc on the land and water, rendering them unable to provide for the people as intended. I don’t think Jesus foresaw bombs and missiles, per se, but I do think he understood the escalation of violence and the advancement of weaponry over time which would be put to use in the service of fear and greed and deepen the poverty of the people. He knew the results of “Empire building”.

Jesus saw how God’s commands to welcome and love strangers and foreigners have been neglected. He saw instructions on forgiveness of debts ignored and the further entrenchment of poverty through the generations. He saw how people and nations defined themselves over and against others and how claiming the exclusive raises the question of an exclusive God who has pushed out scapegoats within communities and fostered enmities between them. Thus the Poverty that results and metastasizes from these patterns of human behaviour is something Jesus intimately understood precisely because he placed himself at the center of it. The same forces that impoverish ultimately kill Jesus.

So, when Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you,” he is lamenting, not acquiescing to, human sinfulness – which can be summed up as the brokenness of human relationships that compels us to find our identities over and against, rather than with and for, one another. We become unbalanced, left brain prioritized, in other words he saw how we can be conscripted by function and effective and efficient over meaning and understanding and the resultant adversarial responsive. And then Jesus says, “You do not always have me.” He is affirming that his challenge is to see the need to challenge our assumptions that are not balanced.

Yes, he is very likely foreshadowing his death, because he knows the results of having power and control. We will always have the poor. But he is not contrasting himself with the poor but rather standing in solidarity with them. He is not seeking any focus on himself but rather highlighting the need for constant vigilance in the face of responses that are not tested against reality as we know it. And he is saying, “Unless you can see the unique and beautiful face of each person right in front of you, you will never truly care for the poor.” Poverty comes from dehumanization and exclusion, from casting people aside from the human community, from violence that violates and destroys bodies and souls, and from a lack of adequate critique pof meaning and understanding. What are we doing this? If you want to help those who are poor, see them! Welcome and befriend them, Jesus tells us. “And do not begrudge an act of extraordinary kindness and generosity toward them, as Mary is doing for me.” And if this Mary is in fact Mary Magdalene then here he includes a rich loving relationship as the example of how to combat poverty, by love. The issue of debate between The Friends and ourselves about what is the better way to deal with homeless who use our doorways as shelter is a perfect example of this challenge. Ban and police them or work with them in the needs. The poor, disaffected, unable to work with the system are always with us.

Yes, there is so much more in this action, in this anointing for burial as both preparation for death and metaphorically the beginning of death’s undoing itself – the undoing of the victimization and ritualization that grafts sacrifice into the lifecycle of communities and destroys them from the inside out is another half dozen sermon.

What I think is important here is the idea that poverty as a consequence of the dehumanization that is pinpointed against a single individual or group in the scapegoating mechanism, as the widespread result of scapegoating from the foundation of the world. Because in an age and a society where the poor are still scapegoated, and violence – in the form of destruction of social programs and the diversion of funding to wars that further entrench poverty – violence that harms the poor is whitewashed and cloaked in pseudo-righteousness.

The Girardian approach to this suggests that we must see the social and political dimension of Jesus’s words, as well as the personal. At the core of it all, to say “You always have the poor with you,” is to say that the fullness of humanity is always denied.  I would prefer to say unfinished. In our story Jesus draws the focus back to himself; ultimately to affirm the dignity of everyone and to show us that dignity that we may see it in ourselves and others, and not to offer us a supernatural escape clause.

If we follow the Girardian approach and see poverty itself through the lens of scapegoating, we can see how this passage presents further layers of scapegoating as well. These are layers that can lead to marginalization and poverty. Judas (the mythical bad guy) scapegoats Mary. He chastises her for her extravagant generosity as she spreads the perfume over Jesus’s feet. The evangelist (the cultural collaborator) scapegoats Judas. He says that Judas has no concern for the poor, but wanted to steal from the treasury.

Commentaries say other scholars are more sympathetic to Judas. And, yes, the story has Judas betraying Jesus, but so do we all. To give in to and turn to the ways of violence for self-protection or enrichment is to betray Jesus. To build ourselves up over and against others is to betray Jesus. Entrenched biases and prejudices are betrayals of Jesus that permeate our world and infect our souls.

For the evangelist to hone in on Judas’s faults and judge his motives is to detract from the deeper truth that everyone witnessing such extravagance on Mary’s part was very likely scandalized by it. And today, while giving to the poor is considered a virtue, programs that uplift the poor and attempt to restructure society so that poverty is reduced are often maligned as “hand-outs.” “Do away with foodbanks because all they do is perpetuate people who cheat the system”. Ban the homeless from our CBD because we are damaging out tourism potential. We must ask, to what extent are we scandalized by our extravagant abundance, and how much more must we open our own hearts to acts of extraordinary generosity and kindness?” Maybe we should build rooms in our church buildings and give them to the homeless.

The chief priests scapegoat not only Jesus, but Lazarus as well, “since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting their Judaism and were believing in Jesus.” And let’s remember that this was Jews moving between their own faith expressions. They were not becoming pagan or any other form of religion but rather within a world of diverse practice. Fearing loss of authority and power, and fearing destruction of their particular community by Rome, they conspire to put Lazarus to death… again.

The challenge to us in this text is to acknowledge that generations of Christians have scapegoated Jews because of an anti-Semitic reading of this text. We have scapegoated many who can’t keep up or fit in to our norms of society and we have set Jesus apart from every other victim by making him carry the burden of being supernatural and we see his execution as something unique and more offensive than that of anyone else, we miss his solidarity with the victims of violence in all times and places, and we mistake the violence done against him as worse than our own. We push to the background the fact that many in his world were crucified. How is it different from the men women and children killed in the Ukraine?

But what do we do about this?  Well maybe look again at Mary who, being herself, marginalized, models the generosity and vulnerability that Jesus later displays when he washes the feet of his disciples. In our Hebrew Scripture for today God declares “I am about to do a new thing,” foreshadowing perhaps the forgiveness and undoing of the ways of blame and violence that lead to death that spring from the cross and resurrection…

So, what do we do about this? What is our response to this reality? How do we interpret Jesus’ words about the poor, Mary’s extravagant generosity, or Judas’s chastisement, or the reaction of the chief priests? And if “we always have poor among us,” what does that mean? What does Jesus have to say to today’s social and political and economic systems? What does he have to say to the ways we see, or don’t see, those who are poor among us? What hope does he offer the poor themselves, who comprise the majority of the world?

Well, let’s go back to the story again, in fact let’s see if we can put this story into context. Stories such as: The man who had two sons; A man with a hundred sheep, and A woman with ten coins. In the parable of the man who had two sons we meet the younger son who, after collecting his share of the family’s estate, leaves home and spends it all on extravagant living. When he returns home, broke, he is welcomed back by his father, who bankrolls, out of the other brother’s inheritance, an extravagant homecoming party. In the parable of the one sheep missing from a flock of 100, the fellow goes off searching for the lost one until it is found. And when he finds that one sheep, throws a party in an act of extravagance and maybe even offering the sheep as part of the party food!

Likewise, in the parable of the woman who loses a coin. With a sense of urgency she lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and goes searching. She is in charge of the household finances.  Indeed: “her power and status derive from maintaining orderly household management” (Reid 2000:187) So she doesn’t give up until she has found that coin. Then she throws an extravagant party, probably spending that coin and several others, in honour of the recovered coin and her selfhood.

Extravagance and joy characterize these Lukan stories. As it does, I suggest, in this morning’s story by John. But what of John’s added comment: ‘There will always be poor around, but I won’t always be around.’ Well, again if we go back and ‘hear’ that again, checking the passage from Deuteronomy which many scholars feel John has been inspired by. this is what we hear: Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land’ (NRSV). Open your hand…  Be compassionate to others! Com- passion.  Feeling with. From the very depths of your person.

So, with the broader Deuteronomy text ringing in my ears, I think along with others that this story from John implies that it was: Mary – with her love, the lotion and the touch, and not
Judas – with the speech and the pious-sounding advice, whose response was genuinely compassionate. The speech by Judas sets up a competitive situation and a closed hand. The action of Mary sets up common likenesses and an open hand. Matthew Fox of ‘creation spirituality’ fame, and who we had as one of the Ferguson Lecturer  2019 he had some interesting comments on compassion which I think could be helpful: “Competition isolates, separates and estranges.  Compassion unites, makes one and embraces…  If we can move from competition to compassion, we will have moved from dull and moralistic and ungrateful and legalistic (thinking)… to celebrative thanking… Celebration leads to fuller and fuller compassion” (Fox 1979:72, 89). This is perhaps our challenge in trying to work with those who hold power and control.

Extravagance and celebration and joy! For of such are the images of the ‘glimpsed alternative’, and ‘revelation of potential’ called the realm of God. It seems here that Jack Spong got it right when he said: love wastefully!

Notes:
Fox, M 1979.  A spirituality named compassion and the healing of the global village, Humpty Dumpty and us. NM: Santa Fe. Bear & Company.
Reid, B. E. 2000.  Parables for preachers. Year C. MN: Collegeville. Liturgical Press.
Scott, B. B. 2001.  Re-Imagine the world. An introduction to the parables of Jesus. CA: Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press.
Scott, B. B. 1989.  Hear then the parable. A commentary on the parables of Jesus. MN: Minneapolis. Fortress Press.

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‘Jesus and the Deception of ‘Empire’

‘Give me my inheritance now instead of when you drop dead. Because I can’t wait that long. I need to move on. I need to leave home, now’. Another way of saying this is about the purpose of Lent It is that: “We enter into the desert to discover life.”

We know that feeling do we not? It comes from a deep sense of knowing that something about this world is not right, an innate sense of being unsettled, incomplete and it seems to come as the primary desire. We need to move on, to find a better Way. This just might be what it is like to be a fear driven society and it just might come from ourselves.

An example of how subtle and complex this fear driven situation drives us is likened to the feelings of the Father waiting for his wayward son. We try to concentrate on saying what needs to be said in this present moment. There may not be another time we tell ourselves, so what is to be said must be said now. Like the We love you. We will miss you. The door will always be open. We will be waiting for you to come home. We will be praying, always praying. We try to imagine what the next few months will be like because we know we cannot say goodbye forever, since we know our heart will not let us do that. Whatever we tell ourselves about getting on with life, we know we will be waiting. Holding our breath every time the phone rings. Listening for the steps upon the porch.

The Jesus Seminar voted the Prodigal Son parable, ‘pink’: and pink means that Jesus may have said something like this. So, we can probably say that this story is an important story. The story of the so-called Prodigal Son… so-called because it really is a story about three characters: the father, the elder son, and the younger son, is one of the best known of all the biblical stories.

We have heard it… maybe a zillion times! But have we really heard it?  Really listened to it?

A younger son wants to leave home.  He insultingly asks his father for his share of what may become his inheritance. Knowing there was no point in trying to hold on,
the father agrees, and shares out his livelihood to both sons. The younger son leaves home and lives a life of extravagance. We know his story.

We also know how the father, always watching and waiting and loving, sees his son coming home. And. Ignoring the teachings of the Hebrew scriptures, he runs out to meet him and protect him, in case any member of the village should recognise him as someone who has dishonoured both his family and his village, and attempt to kill him. So, the father welcomes the son back with an extravagant homecoming party.

Likewise, we know the story around the elder son. When he arrives home, he notices a party is in progress, and is told it is for the younger son, who has also come home. In true sibling rivalry he takes offence, yells abuse about his father, and refuses to ‘go in’ to the party. We also know how the father, lovingly, goes out to meet him.

What’s the hermeneutic response for us now? How can we hear this story anew?  We go back to the story. First, this is a story about a father who had two sons.  Indeed, not only had two sons but loved two sons, went out to two sons, and was generous to two sons.

Second, the father does not reject either son, under any circumstance.  His love is given to both, not to one at the expense of the other.  Yet this same love does not resolve the conflict. It accepts conflicts as the arena in which the work of love is to be done.

Third, there is a missing third act in this parable (Scott 2001). The conflict between the brothers is left unresolved.  So, we are left with a real question: what happens next?

New Testament scholar Brandon Scott is helpful in shaping up this question with a suggestion: “Soon the father will die.  Then what? He asks. If the sons continue on with their established scripts, they are headed for a collision.  One will kill the other. Or they can follow the father’s script and surrender their male honour and keep on welcoming, accepting, and being with the other.  They have a choice between being lost or found, dead or alive” (Scott 2001:82-83). What is this alternative?

I suggest that it is an alternative to the Roman Empire and in fact an alternative to ‘Empire’ as a societal institution.

In this parable the storyteller has Jesus offering a simple suggestion: but in practice it doesn’t seem that simple. This new world is a re-imagined world, the hoped-for world Jesus continually talks about, and it pictures co-operation, not contest, as the basis for the realm of God. Loving one’s enemies, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, collaboration not contest. The message is that one is loved not according to pre-set conditions, not by more rules and regulations, not by doing but by being.  Making love is less about what one does and more about who one is, living love perhaps, depending upon love not because of what it does but rather because it is a way of being. Maybe that’s the message and maybe it’s that simple. Be God like, be love, live it.  But do we have ears to hear that?

An Exercise to Balance Your Brain’s Two Hemispheres

Jesus told parables so that, as with any good story, they could weave their way into the fabric of our lives in different ways. In the light of last week’s discovery, stories seem to take us straight to the hippocampus. They seem to speak to the whole brain and not just to a hemisphere. They invite us to experience as well as engage cognitively with. They pull the poetics and the practical together. Stories invite us to listen, to hear, and to draw our own conclusions. But be careful.  Stories can also be dangerous. Especially stories told by a certain Jesus of Nazareth.

The following is an article written by David Galston of Westar Institute. For me it highlights the imbalanced brain and a fear driven approach to the world. Its claim in my view is that it is a Fear driven philosophy. An approach that avoids the right hemispheres insistence on meaning for one’s actions. And thus a disdain for communal nature of humanity.

It begins…. On Monday February 22, two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, addressed the Security Council. He reminded the Council of his country’s history with empire. The borders of his country, like the borders of other African countries, were not drawn by the people of Kenya today. Their borders were drawn up at the Berlin Conference in 1885 where no African representatives were present. Decisions about their fate were made in the far away metropoles of London, Paris, and Lisbon.

Despite this background of colonial violence, Ambassador Kimani stated that “at independence” had these new artificially created African nations “chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial, or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars.” He then added, “We chose to follow the rules of the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations Charter not because our borders satisfied us but because we wanted something greater forged in peace.”

Ambassador Kimani made the clear and powerful point that while we cannot change imperial history, we do not have to continue forward on the basis of imperial values. Instead, there can be a post-imperial future.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is all about “’empire,” particularly, it seems, the ninth- to thirteenth-century Kievan Rus empire that encompassed Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. Both modern day Russia and Ukraine root their history in the Kievan Rus empire once ruled by another Vladimir called the Great (980–1015). It was this Vladimir who led Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus into the Eastern confession of Christianity.

Putin knows his history, and it is not a coincidence that he fills his rhetoric with notions of Ukraine not being a real country but belonging spiritually to Russia. Indeed, he goes as far as denying that Ukraine ever existed.

Russia with Putin compares to Rome with its emperors, but the difference is that Rome never denied the existence of the nations it controlled. As an empire, though, and like any empire, Rome propagated some of the same rhetoric: the nations were not civilized, they were conquered to be liberated, they needed peace to prosper, and they should thank Rome for newfound blessings.

Ambassador Kimani called Russia out on its imperial mindset and its inability to consider that real liberation for humanity lies in a post-imperial world. The history of nations living under other nations’ self-mythology has to end.

Ambassador Kimani has been both praised and criticized, but the spirit of his words is significant. What does a post-imperial world look like both in the relationship of nations and the mindset of individuals? This question invokes the world of ideas that inspire but, unfortunately, do not yet describe reality. Three exemplars of a post-imperial world come from philosophy and religion, the two homes of human vision. The exemplars are inter-subjectivity, intrinsicality, and dialectic. These are all philosophical words that have expressions in religion.

Inter-subjectivity means that no one can be a “subject,” an individual, without a relationship to someone else. The condition of being human is inter-subjective. In other words, we are all in this together. To abuse inter-subjectivity is to place yourself in control of another subject (another person). This abuse backfires because it is a breaking apart of relationship. It means suffering for others and a loss of humanity for the self. A post-imperial world will be an inter-subjective world where becoming human happens with others, not against others. The parable of the Good Samaritan is an example from religion of this lesson. It is a lesson empires never learn.

Intrinsicality is a word from process philosophy. It means that all forms of life and all matter in the universe have value. Things are valuable because of their inside or intrinsic worth. When you think about this lesson, it relates to inter-subjectivity: nothing can become what it is without the other. The other is of great value because it is other. The other holds dignity. Sharing dignity with the other is the act of becoming who you are. Nature has dignity as much as people do, and so do inanimate objects. The parable of the women putting leaven in bread is an example of intrinsicality because she values what is normally considered unclean. Empires have a habit of ignoring intrinsicality, and they create sorrow accordingly.

Dialectic is a difficult but common word in philosophy. It refers to struggle. It is often coupled with the word “negative.” A famous book in philosophy is Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. In simple terms, it means that no one can stand out from a background without being distinct from the background.

The act of being distinct is to be negatively related to the background: I am not that. To be swallowed up in the background is to be lost, and this lostness is called “bad faith” or, sometimes, “the unhappy consciousness.” Being unhappy in philosophy means that there is no dialectical relationship to your background. No questions about how you think. No bother with your family history. No doubts about your culture. No concern about your political views, and so forth. To be unhappy is to be undialectical, which is the elaborate way philosophy defines being a fundamentalist. To struggle is to be dialectical, and this is the honesty of being human.

An example from religion of dialectical honesty is the poor woman who pesters the powerful judge. The judge can’t ignore her and finally gives in to her; she is the dialectical negative who stands out from the background to awaken an otherwise corrupt figure. Empires rely on undialectical thinking. Empires do not like to be questioned. It takes the courageous and the powerless to wake up empires.

The political leaders of Russia think that re-establishing their imperial status is good news. That has never been true for any empire. It is really bad news for the world and ultimately for the empire itself. It leads us away from a post-imperial world and from some of the greatest lessons in life found in philosophy and religion.

I want to finish this with a comment about what I suspect the fear is that the likes of Putin and many others are afraid of. It may be a hang over from the excesses of Communism that Putin could remember but is is also a result of a Left Hemisphere drive World. A fear of togetherness. A togetherness where there is a positive alternative to separateness in a world, aimlessly hurtling through space.

McKnight and Cormac wrote in their book due to come out this September that:  Our real health, wealth and power are found together, in local places; not in rugged individualism and the consumer society. That means we, in our role as neighbours, are the critical actors and our neighbourhoods are the bedrock on which an alternative future must be built.  They were careful to point out that institutions and technology play important roles in modern life. They don’t try to suggests that older, privileged, white guys shake their fists at the sky, bemoaning modernity. However, they do argue that communities have been dislocated from their central role in democracy and that getting back into the driving seat is essential to our shared planetary futures, and to better address the central issues of our time. To that end, we place institutions and technology in service of, and to, communities. I would suggest  that this is not in the in the interest of ‘Empire building’ but rather in the interest of extendin our community capacities; not to harm them or control them or somehow improve their efficiency or impact but rather to just do them. Institutions and technology make great servants, but woeful masters because they become empires of power and control and generate fear in order to do that. Amen.

‘An Affirming Faith in The Face of Covid’             

Many of the Jews in Jesus’ day, it seems, believed in a God who punished the bad people and rewarded the good. They went so far as to say:

• if you live in poverty or have a bad accident or disease, you are revealed by God as a sinner;

• if you are healthy and prosper you are revealed by God as a righteous person. We no longer think that sin is that simple or able to be relieved by an interventionist God.

There is a story that gives us a bit of a modern version of that old way of thinking; it goes like this….

A minister… let’s call her Diana, rushed around to the home of friends where a small child has suddenly died. She was met at the door by the distraught father, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the local university, who usually was most composed. “O Diana, thanks for coming.  It’s a nightmare. You know, I have not been reading my Bible much these days.” At first Diana was confused by her friend’s opening remark. What had reading the Bible to do with a little child’s death? Later, after she had thought the issue through, Diana was able to help untangle the poor father’s anguish.

The father’s first reaction had been to feel guilty. Years before, when he had been confirmed, he had promised to ‘diligently study the scriptures.’ In the anguish of the new grief, the ancient fear that the death was a punishment from God, had broken loose. Some one was at fault. It must be him. His mind came up with a broken vow. Normally, that man would have logically dismissed the idea of a child’s death as divine retribution, as rubbish. But in the grief crisis, the ancient superstition had got the jump on him. In all of us, primitive stuff like that lies semi-hidden. It’s like the ghosts of old gods that refuse to completely go away.

In all of us, hidden away in the murkier parts of our psyche, are irrational fears and superstitions. These are a hangover from the not so ancient, primitive past of homo sapiens. And by not so ancient I mean that they may only be 500 or so years old. One of these superstitions is that we may be the guilty cause of accidents and disease to ourselves or those whom we love dearly. There are of course some religious people in New Zealand today who are still committed to that concept of God. Some of us may still slip into that thinking as it has been so strong in our lives. The God of this thinking when held up against the whole picture is one of anger and retribution for the unrighteous, and of the reward of good health and prosperity for the righteous. It is a simple view but one under huge challenge today.

Rex Hunt quotes from a sermon delivered by Bruce Prewer, a retired Uniting Church minister and author of many books which help shape an Australian spirituality, and he says that; “One of the most recent statements of this unhappy dogma, was exhibited recently by an evangelist (so called!).  It was offering time at a big gathering and the announcement was made before the offering. The leader said: ‘We all know bad economic times are coming.  There will be a great collapse of the markets and people will lose everything they own. But those who give well to God this day will be among the few who will do well and prosper in the bad times that must come.’” Bruce Prewer’s response was: “Yuk!” (Prewer web site 2004)

Others, such as John Shelby Spong and John Dominic Crossan and Sallie McFague, are also at the forefront of putting old theological superstitions to bed. The challenge is for us to do the same. Happiness or misery cannot be simply equated with goodness and badness. That old superstition is a lie. The old gods of retribution and reward who lurk in the dark corners of our minds, are false gods. Dismiss the superstition.  We have Jesus’ word on it. But…

And sometimes there always seems to be a ‘but’, doesn’t there! We also have the claim that Jesus’ word says: ‘Do not pretend that the good or evil that we do does not matter’. Of course, many of us believe that accidents, massacres, disease, are not God’s punishments. But if we don’t watch our step, if we don’t hedge our bets on this, we can all end up with another kind of disaster…we will likewise perish. Not as bodies that die, but as persons who can decay and perish while living. This is the loss of hope issue, the sense that with the liberalization of theology and faith we might lose control and end up with a horrible life. Better the current belief than the more complex one.

This is also part of the current ‘climate change’ debate. The war in Ukraine discussion, the legitimacy of the recent vaccination protest and its debate Whatever side you might choose to be as to its authenticity you will have to deal with it. Theologian, Sallie McFague, writes: “Global warming is not just another important issue that human beings need to deal with; rather, it is the demand that we live differently.  While I prefer to understand that global warming requires a slightly different approach than climate change, I agree that we cannot solve it, deal with it, given our current approach to conflict. It is not simply an issue of management; sure, it does require us to take seriously the amount of plastic in our oceans and the amount of waste that our economic system produces, and the assault on freedoms rights and outcomes but that is a management issue and it is not enough, rather, I thing it demands a paradigm shift in who we think we are.  Sally reminds us that the challenge is that without a shift in paradigm we cannot expect ourselves or others to undertake the radical behavioural change that is necessary to address our planetary crisis.” (McFague 2008:44). As individuals, as a world, we are all capable of perishing… not as a species limited by biology because we all die but rather disintegrating as persons. And none of us is exempt.

It is also not unlike the impact and response to the shooting in Christchurch three years ago. The ignorance of or naivety around the fact that we are surprised and shamed by what took place in our lovely country will not be addressed by management of behaviour. New rules and regulations about what a protest is and how it should be managed will not change the environment. We have discovered that we have less rules than other countries but their experience is that even more rules does not stop such atrocities. We have also discovered that we have ignored our own history in that atrocities of a greater nature have taken place in our nation’s past. Hundreds of people have been slaughtered in our own internal racial wars. For those of us who are of Jewish and Christian heritage violent atrocities are part of our heritage.

Rex Hunt suggests that this Lent might be a good time for us to do a couple of ‘life-affirming’ things. Maybe we can update the thinking which shapes our faith and beliefs.

Maybe we can change our minds and hearts by looking for the life-affirming clues all around us – the tender care rather than the axe! This requires us to accept that as a species we have instinctive and psychological traits that have generated social, political and religious paradigms that need challenging. The acceptance of an original sin, the obsession with self-deprecating repentance as the sole means of change, the rising acceptance of revenge as closure all need to be challenged if we are to rid ourselves of violence as a means of change. Our history as a species is riddled with it and we know it does not solve things. Maybe we can be the special people we are, but it requires more than just a cognitive awareness and a management process by which we prevent ourselves from continuing to act out in a simple fight or flight response to difference and challenge. But before we do this, I want to show a video that I think might help us think before we act. It is a video about the human brain that asks us to think differently about how we come to our decisions and it challenges old assumptions about how we do this. My hope is that if we are better informed about our own processing of life, we might ask ourselves the important questions before we respond to the unknown or the challenging with violence and control and more legislation.

Notes:
McFague, S. A New Climate for Theology. God, the world, and global warming. Minneapolis. Fortress Press, 2008.

rexae74@gmail.com

Video: The Path of Wisdom

We are ‘Living Stones’

There was a while back a program run by the Middle East Council of Churches, and there is reported a comment made by a Palestinian Christian who said to participating churches. “Thank you for coming to visit the ‘living stones’, and not just the dead stones, the holy places, the archaeological sites. Most Christian pilgrims bypass us he said; we are invisible. We are at best dirty, dangerous Arabs. “They say ‘how wonderful it is to walk where Jesus walked’. I say it is more wonderful to walk with the people with whom Jesus walked. I have been walking where Jesus walked for the last 50 years. It’s a big deal!  But the purpose is not only to walk where he walked, if one can actually do that, but to walk how he walked.

When one thinks about that we realize that it is a huge challenge to those of us who live our comfortable complicated lives in the shadow of an institutional Christianity with all its security blankets of doctrine, belief systems and creeds that produce screeds of liturgies and words of great literary value. Even more so these days when all that seems to be failing and the people who walk the Way seem to be disappearing fast. It’s a big deal for sure to walk in his shoes but there is an even bigger deal I suspect and that is to be living stones, to walk the Jesus Way today in this time and place, or as Perry Gianzer says we are to be citizens of another Kingdom, we are to be living stones or stones that do not conform to what stones are. What appears to be stones is rather those, standing off to the side looking in, watching the decline, different, and noticeable. Let’s be fair also. They might have been called prophets in the past. But they are a bit like protesters who forget what they are protesting about or get caught up in a new interpretation of cause. They are valued for a moment but they are dead stones and we are called to be stones that live and thus living stones. It is a fine line here for sure because as Gainzer says that if faithful disciples experience life as “aliens and exiles,” then a good Christian education must include helping kids understand as well as practice what it means to be an alien. The task of a living stone is to be an outsider and different and unique but an alien. And by definition that means over and against the accepted common place culturally bound, assumptions about goodness and mercy and purpose and action. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, suggest that Christians are “resident aliens.” Of course, what it means to be a “resident alien” can be subject to some misunderstanding but I want to suggest that the term might better be living stones, Stones that are about a faith journey, rooted firmly in the humanness, and the planet always looking for the benefit of both in a symbiotic relationship where the stability, integrity, honesty and courage, vitality, innovation, creative and vibrancy are always organic living events of love.

Gainzer gives the example of when talking about the paperwork for renewing his wife’s resident alien card, their youngest son exclaimed, “Mommy, you can’t be an alien. If you’re an alien you have to be from outer space.” Gainzer chimed in that during his first Christmas in Canada (his wife’s country of citizenship), it actually felt as cold as outer space (minus twenty-five degrees Celsius for five straight days to be exact), but he did not think that his son or wife thought that comment was helpful. His wife then patiently explained that being a resident alien only means you are a citizen of another country. Whereas Paul in his letter to the Philippians reminds Christians that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). Thus, good Christian education, at the very least, involves helping people understand as well as practice what it means to be resident aliens, or as I suggest Living Stones.

As with most Christian parents, we are not always sure in our culture that we know what it means to raise resident aliens or as I suggest, living stones. We enter the world as strangers not knowing who we are. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, we should allow children to learn about themselves naturally. In fact, the best kind of education, according to Rousseau’s philosophy, involves protecting children from society’s corruption by taking them out to nature. This seems to resonate with what is meant by being a ‘Living Stone’.  

One of the interesting things I thought when hearing a couple talk about their vision and aspiration for their new Early Learning Child Centre was that spending time in nature may do many things, but neither educated human beings nor living stones are cultivated naturally. Children need help and guidance to discover who they are. In this endeavour, living stones realize they cannot depend solely on the majority political community for help. Since Gainzer’s wife remained a Canadian, their children were dual citizens (members of two kingdoms as Augustine would describe it). Gainzer does not believe his son has learned more than a few facts about Canada in the three years he attended an American public school. His Canadian identity has simply not been addressed or nurtured. Of course, this is not surprising given that American public schools seek to create productive Americans and are not designed to produce good Canadians.

The Gainzers recognized that the cultivation of their Canadian identity will take a special effort. Living Stone Christians face a similar challenge. We should also not downplay the challenge or shrug it off. Education can inform children of their identity but it can also warp their self-understanding. Without some educating from members of one’s family, children would know nothing of their previous identity, their history, or their special rituals, practices, heroes, and particular cultural achievements.

Christian living stones face a similar danger. One American study of high school texts books found, unsurprisingly that; “The underlying worldview of much modern education divorces humankind from its dependence on God and rightly so because it is not about dependence but rather about active, responsible collaboration as part of an organic whole. Some education replaces religious answers to many of the ultimate questions of human existence with secular answers as if secularism is somehow opposed to religion which it is not. It was birthed in western religion; and, to segregate the secular form religion is to compartmentalize and alienate the world from the conscious participation of the human. In its most extreme it replaces what it sees as extremism with its own most striking, secular understanding of reality as a matter of faith. In other words the secular is given the clothes of religion.

While I would affirm the need to question and even to move away from some of these traditional assumptions about God and the interpretation that has grown up over the years there is a clear challenge in the change that takes place. We may not view the secular intrusion as negatively anymore but we do lament the loss of the Christian myth upon which our faith has been sustained. It seems we have successfully demythologized Christianity but what have we put in its place? Our lament suggests not enough!

Young living stones may lose their identity unless parents and the Christian community, the Church, carefully cultivate it. One of the primary ways that children develop an understanding of themselves and their world is through narratives or stories and as Alasdair MacIntyre notes, “Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.

Gainzer notes that his son will learn what it means to be a Canadian by learning Canadian history and literature. Christians have been graced with a similar kind of orientating narrative through Scripture. Thus, just as Israelite parents were instructed to pass on God’s law, they were also told to tell the stories of God’s saving works to their children in order to orient their lives and provide context for rules. There are two key points here and the first is that the charge is to pass on by way of story, the understanding of how those that came before made sense of life and how to live it and what is perhaps more important is the use these stories are to be put. They are not to indoctrinate or impose belief but rather to enable the children to orient their own lives in their own time and place so as to provide a basis for their own law. And here the sense is not a book of rules for life but rather a way of being that is fulfilling. Not stones, but living stones. There is space for interpretation and in fact it is encouraged, and there is acknowledgement that societies need common sense. There is a purpose for this storytelling and it is to keep alive the quest for common sense. Working it out together and doing it together are what it’s about.

The question we face today is what are the values, learnings and questions that require telling and how do we tell the stories in a world of avatar, AI, Cyberspace, a Universe that is infinitely larger than our imagination can conceive. The children’s stories need to be far more relevant than they are now. The simple has shifted.

For those who want to rely upon legislation and rule of law I would suggest that rules and regulations can provide a degree of guidance for children, but children will always need to know the reasons for the rules. Its more than about consequences and rather what these consequences say about human life and how to be a living stone. These reasons are rooted in identity stories.

Before giving the Ten Commandments, the story has God reminding Israel of their redemptive story, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). Similarly, Christian parents and educators need to help children to understand the moral life as well as all of knowledge education in light of the overarching story of creation, including humanity. It is an evolutionary reality, an organic expression and as I have suggested elsewhere God is not a noun but more of a verb.  These stories provide a holistic understanding of identity and who we are that our children will never receive through politically controlled forms of education that tend to downplay or avoid competing identities and allegiances and become PC driven. I am not advocating a non-thinking competitive society but rather one of living stones, one where active participating human beings are rooted in a confident, hope-filled world and this is a world beyond climate change, beyond political mess and beyond rampant individualism and a world beyond the need for fear as a motivator.

It is easy for schools to help children understand their true national identity, but they struggle to contribute to an understanding of their wider human identity and worth although they may try. For example, educators have often attempted to bolster students’ self-esteem using positive affirmation techniques such as “think happy thoughts” while some traditionalists have argued for grounding a child’s self-worth on academic competence. Be good at doing it claims and the being good at being will take care of itself. Neo liberalism perhaps. The market will provide. Either approach I think, neglects a Christian understanding that all humans have worth and dignity because they are a sacred creation. They are ‘Living Stones’ Adaptable, evolutionary and alive as well as the a very crucial participant of creation, evolution and its cyclical or spiral reality.

The mentally or physically handicapped child and the cognitively or athletically gifted student have worth, value, and dignity apart from what they can either accomplish or not accomplish. It’s about being rather than just about doing. It’s about Theopraxis, an applied theology. The child’s dignity and worth does not depend on whether they “think happy thoughts.” If we fail to impart this evolving identity story to our children, we have neglected to tell them the truth about who they and others really are as human beings. Identity-shaping stories do more than provide a sense of human worth; they also shape our affections and desires. In one’s own school experience as with Gainzer, we know one can be trained to think and desire like a citizen of this world but sadly not always as a living stone.

Educators help students cultivate and prize certain identities through their school’s curriculum and overall ethos. In fact, the integration of what we understand as democracy and learning is effective in our schools. Not surprisingly, resident aliens take different subjects and imbibe a different ethos. This is evidenced by the desire to preserve one’s language and culture. Who is Jesus for me and what words do I use to communicate his value and his example in my life’s decisions? I can’t ask these questions without being a living stone. As Christian living stones, we must recognize the need to teach our children an alternative curriculum and help them live in another ethos. One that is confident and robust to engage in the pluralistic debate, one that is intellectually authentic and understandable at all levels of engagement.

What is difficult for us is to recognize that we do not want to be elitist as a living stone but rather to be clear that our different citizenship should alter our curriculum. For Christians, the importance of this point goes even deeper if we see being in the image of God important and if Jesus’ impact in society is a value then by imitating his understanding of life, love, humility, servanthood, forgiveness of enemies, and acceptance of difference, we will learn how to be more fully human.

Stories of Christian history are important in that when students hear these stories people like Augustine, Polycarp, and John Chrysostom, as well as many others of more recent ilk have an impact, not in terms of passing on a doctrine or a particular ideal thought but as legitimization of thinking and alternative viewpoints and a contemporary understanding takes place. For Christians these characters in the Christian story of the church are just as important as a president might be in the story of the American nation-state. Much of what it means to be a citizen gets transmitted through a school’s ethos and not its formal curriculum. Living stone homes and communities need to embody a distinct ethos with different symbols, icons, and calendars. Living stone homes and communities have a whole different ethos with different symbols, icons, and calendars.

Jon Amos Comenius (1592-1670). became one of Europe’s most well-known educational reformers. His educational ideas were deemed revolutionary from the simple fact that he conceived that all education—in its purpose, structure, curriculum, and methods—should be influenced by the Christian story. For instance, with regard to the structure of education, he became one of the first educators to suggest the radical idea of “providing education to the entire human race regardless of age, class, sex, and nationality” including “young and old, rich and poor, noble and ignoble, men and women—in a word, of every human being born on earth. The basis for this amazingly progressive and humanizing vision sprang from Comenius’s view of humanity as made in God’s image. “All men are born for the same main purpose; they are to be human beings, i.e., rational creatures, masters over the other creatures and images of the Creator,” Comenius wrote. “God himself often testifies that before Him all things are equal. Therefore, if we educate only a few and exclude the rest, we act unjustly not only against our fellow men but also against God who wishes to be known, loved and praised by all. In many other ways, Comenius gave himself to developing a whole vision of Christian education from which we can learn today. In his magnum opus, The Great Didactic, it is noteworthy to observe the fundamental basis for this vision. Comenius believed “the ultimate end of man is beyond this life. He understood that Christian education begins with remembering that we are living stones, rocks upon which life can flourish. Amen.

Luke 4: 1-13

A ‘Self Affirming’ Lent…

Wednesday 6th February 2022. The date Lent began this year. Did you eat pancakes on Tuesday as the last day of plenty? And did you note Ash Wednesday on the 6^th? Its perhaps significant given the that it was the day the police chose to clear and disperse the so-called protesters in front of parliament in Wellington City. There is ash about as a result of what can only be termed as destructive fires. Destructive in the fact that they have destroyed the utopian idea of regenerative protest. Again it seems that a clear and sure understanding of Lent is required when we face the despair and loss and grief that has been raised by such Ash and the understanding must address the regenerative nature of the production of ash or in this case the regenerative ideal of genuine protest.

At our Ash Wednesday services, we produce ash from burnt palm leaves and other flammable branches and that ash is a symbolic invitation to come down to earth. And to wonder at the gift of life, our life with the earth, the shared body of our existence.
And which reminds us of our humanity. Today is the first Sunday in Lent when we reflect on the wilderness experience of the one, we call Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, this story of Jesus’ testing ordeal in the desert, is legendary. However, scholars – at least the ones who influence me – claim this story comes from one of the early traditions of the Jesus movement, which the storytellers, including Luke, adopts. They are not considered to be an eyewitness, historical account.

Traditionally, Lent and in the recent 800 to 1000 years has been the season of abstinence or self-denial. A time of doing without. A time of fasting. Or heaven forbid a time of sacrifice. That unfortunately has been the way according to much of our broad, church tradition. And it appears to have been a strong motivation over the centuries. But I and many others are not so sure about that any more. The regenerative aspect of fire and the production of ash needs to be considered a priori in liturgies and understandings of Lent. We need to rekindle our faith and be blessed, acknowledge our abundance and our blessedness during this period of Lent… Otherwise it remains a ritual or a practice without credibility. Despite the actions of the recent protest, actions many question as protest action we no longer see the nature of natural fire as only destructive because we know its warmth, we know its comfort and we know its regenerative power. How many of us actually believe that ‘abstinence’ or ‘self-denial’ is anything other than a self-inflicted attempt to satisfy or assuage guilt and inadequacy. Surely our hope is that Lent might become a time of doing with, a doing more, rather than a doing without. Surely it is a time of self-discovery and self-affirmation, as well as a time to claim our connectedness with the whole of the cosmos, rather than a time of self-denial.

A colleague’s personal observation asks; If you have ever gone on a walk with a bird watcher, perhaps you will know what is being suggested here. The bird watcher’s sense of sight and of hearing seems so acute that nothing is missed. Ian McGilchrist speaks of the brain hemispheres functions as no longer reducible by allocation to one or the other but rather integrated across and within both hemispheres The left providing the detailed functional how and what questions and the right the why but both being required to provide the whole picture and or action. For the bird watcher the sight and hearing are acute amid the very ordinary… the sticks, shrubs, grass, trees. What appears to be a jumble of sticks and noises and flashes of colour, to a trained bird watcher can be a small bird, a blending in parrot or a darting fantail. Walking with a bird watcher one discovers how much there is to be noticed. Both hemispheres are required in birdwatching as they are for life that is both functional and has meaning. And when they are in sync one’s walks in the park or paddock becomes so much richer. The ordinary is seen in a new light. What was there all along, is noticed for the first time. Just because something is there does not mean we automatically see it and understand it. Sometimes perception takes practice. So, the suggestion is for Lent to become ‘forty days’ when we can uncover and discover once again our own worth-fulness, our own potential our own connectedness to the earth and the universe. The task of Lent is Self-discovery and connectedness rather than self-denial and isolation. Lent, is to be seen as a life affirming discovery rather than life denying, and this says we are not judged by our past, but by the way in which we relate to our past.

This is not a let off nor and easy option because even a gentle review of our own lives will uncover moments when we have been faced with decision making. Decisions which have shown our neglect of an inner life. Decisions which have required us to shed emotional garbage. And sometimes these decisions can be called a ‘crisis’. Other times the word used may be ‘testing’. All of them are about how we respond, or our ‘being’ in the world. What is the function and meaning of the protest we engage in perhaps? And in Jesus’ case it was to break the culture of violence characterized by a ‘tit-for-tat’ them and us mentality. So, this Lent, let us dare to accept the invitation of a self-affirming ‘forty days’.

To help do this I want to suggest we take a leaf out of the of the ancient Celts. Last week I spoke of the idea of the thick and thin places as an incarnational example, spirituality found in the thin places and I proposed that these thin places might be discovered amongst the thick places or about seeing God in the ordinary. Every aspect of Celtic life accepted that the mundane is filled with divine presence. The Celts sensed Spirit’s permeating embrace throughout their daily activities, no matter how ordinary. The Book of Kells and other documents are evidence of the vast collection of prayers, hymns, blessings, and folklore infusing Celtic culture with praises of the regular human experience. They sang and prayed while working, fishing, kneading bread, weaving cloth, milking cows, and kindling the hearth. Dawn ‘til dusk, birth ‘til death, they blessed their existence. We can do this too! Just like them we are immersed in mundane daily routines, and our God is in our midst. Our prayers today can revolve around activities like sitting at computers, driving the car, helping the children with homework, preparing dinner, or watching sports.

Our practice might be to do one ordinary thing each day for six weeks be it rising from our bed, brushing our teeth or turning on the computer if we do this with a liturgical intent, a practice of connection will happen. When we do this action our intent will tune us into some questions like what does my body feel right now? How do I let go of that feeling? How do I acknowledge and move on? How do I note the aches and pains and turn to love?

The next practice might be to observe the unfolding of the particular season we are entering next. The Celts were madly in love with the natural world. Love poems were written to the moon, songs to the seals, prayer rituals performed in rivers. They experienced unity with God in green hills, dark caves, deep wells, cheerful birdsong, and countless other parts of creation. Similar to the Hebrew psalms, cosmic images such as stars, the sun, and planets are woven throughout Celtic literature. They celebrate the “musician of bird call”; they wonder at the “awakener of soil,” and they call out to “the hope-bringer in the night.” Most of us today live inside buildings, rarely venturing into nature unless on a special occasion of hiking, beach walk or park. Even people who work outdoors rarely take the time to recognize the sacredness that surrounds us. It takes a deliberate softening of the heart and a desire to notice the wonder intrinsic in creation.

Our practice might be to intentionally spend one moment each day listening to nature. Be attentive to the buds on a branch in Spring, the leaf fall in Autumn the colour change of the leaves. Watch a cloud drifting by or listen to the wind. Nature is always speaking and we might be open to receive the hidden messages. As we note our senses growing in sensitivity, we will know a deeper experience of being safe and at home.

The next practice might be to explore your love of learning. This is rooted in the understanding that life has as its root the desire to know and thus to learn. The practice will seek to express a love of learning based in the idea that Celtic culture was essentially non-cloistered monasticism. Common folk, pagans and Christian alike were absorbed in a regular schedule of spiritual growth. In pre-Christian times the Druids were the first to foster studying by learning about morality through myths and developing wisdom through prayerful daily routines.

What this suggests is that continual learning and open-minded curiosity fuels spiritual growth. It is too easy to neglect feeding our spirits the nourishing soul food it needs to thrive. Many of us abandon poetry, song and storytelling in the face of hectic schedules and deadlines. Many of us don’t understand what music or poetry do for our wellbeing because we get swept up in the temporal, work as the whole of life’s experience. It is easy to starve our souls when life feels full. The Celts’ love of learning reminds us of our inquisitive heart, and welcomes a yearning to grow wiser.

Our practice might be to actively seek to become more tolerant and more loving, it might also be to establish a process whereby we commit to ongoing self-inquiry. In the next six weeks we might read a book about spirituality or find a workshop where we can attend and experience the search for spirituality. If we do this with all the above intent it will not matter what spiritual bent you participate in because you will be critiquing it for yourself. Even your favourite mindfulness practices can contribute when you see lent as an opportunity to make these alternative explorations of yourself.

Many beautiful people gather for hope, inspiration and self-care. When you share your story, other people get great ideas. The message is that we can all thrive together! Share our story and cultivate a supportive community together. We can see lent as a time and place to love.

Rex Hunt tells of a book he read that said “We are human beings with all the strengths and weaknesses of our species.  Occasionally we reach the heights of heroic self-sacrifice and at other times we sink down into villainous self-serving.  Being aware of the extremes to which we can be drawn is, one of the most important pieces of self-knowledge we will ever possess” (Alsford 2006:140).

As Luke’s Jesus of Nazareth gained an important piece of self-knowledge, we too can face the wilderness experiences of life, often not in any special or heroic way, but simply as we choose to get up in the morning “and go out into the world to encounter what it has to offer” (Alsford 2006:138). And in the process, notice the present-ness of the divine or God if you like, right here. In the ordinary. In the everyday. Amen.

Notes:

Alsford, M. 2006.  Heroes and Villains. London: Darton, Longman & Todd.

rexae74@gmail.com