Feeding the 5000

[Sermon for Pentecost 12, August 1, 2008 @ Belair. The reading was Matthew 14:13-21.)

What did you notice in the reading? The miracle is pretty hard not to notice! I'm not one of those who in principle disbelieves in the possibility of miracles. That Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes seems possible to me. But it in this case is is easy to let the miraculous take us away from the point of the miracle.

Some things to notice about the story:

• the compassion of Jesus leads him to heal and feed
• the disciples thought there were just too many people to feed from their meagre resources
• Jesus asks the disciples what they have. 'Just this little bit' is their reply.
• the eucharistic overtones of the feeding (Jesus takes, looks to heaven, blesses, breaks, and gives; see Matt 26:26)
• the huge amount left over

There was so little to share, but in the end so many more could have been fed! A recurring theme in the Bible:

• the mustard seed (Matt 13:31-32)
• the yeastin the loaf (Matt 13:33)
• a cup of cold water will get the reward (Matt 10:42)

But pre-eminently, the cross of Jesus. The defeat of a peasant by the might of Rome, yet a defeat that saves not only those who directly sinned by crucifying and deserting him, but the whole world.

And a recurring theme in the history of Christianity:

• St Francis of Assisi
• Charles de Foucauld
• Brother Roger of Taize

But they are famous examples. What about putting yourself in that list? What about putting this church in that list? Have you ever felt that, in comparison to the world's needs you are just five little loaves and two fish? Of course.

Now continue the story. Christ takes the loaves and fish, blesses, breaks, and distributes. And all are fed, and it turns out more could have been fed.

Does it feel like I am stretching the story a bit? Not really. Think about what we are about to do at the Eucharist. We will say that we are the body of Christ, then we will, at the altar, take bread, bless it, break it,and distribute it. We, the body of Christ will receive the body of Christ; we will eat it, it will become one with us. At the end of the service we will say, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. In the name of Christ. Amen." We are that bread, we are that body in the world.

Today it doesn't perhaps matter all that much whether you believe this miracle happened or not. What is of real interest is whether you think you could be that miracle, the church you are part of could be that miracle, taken, blessed, broken, distributed, with much left over.

Jesus and Non-Retaliation

St John's Chapel Address Weeks 1 & 2, Term 2, 2008. Part of the 'Jesus is Different Series'.

[The reading was Matthew 5:38-48]

Ten years ago, after a Christmas service, a man high on drugs carrying a screwdriver and yelling satanic abuse, burst upon me and the congregation. He held a screwdriver in my belly while yelling his abuse a few inches from my face.

My response to this, after the incident, was to learn martial arts for seven years. Not an unreasonable response perhaps. The problem is that my response keeps the world as it is. The next time this happens, and I fight, the spiral of violence continues, and could even get tighter.

Contrast my response to the teaching and life of Jesus. He has a different vision which he was willing to live (and die) for. He says that we should not overcome evil and violence through evil and violence but through love. Turn the other cheel etc.) And love can be costly, but to maintain the spiral of violence costs us all even more, at least in the long run. (Think of the way weapons of more, developed for self-defence, get more and more terrifying.) This is a different view of being human, one that leads to life, and life not just for us but for all of us.

"You Are The Generation We Have Been Waiting For!"

Yesterday many of us had a good session with Tim Costello and Jim Wallis in the St John’s Chapel. Tim Costello is well known in Australia. Jim Wallis has been an extremely influential figure in the churches in USA, particularly in is work through Sojourners in bringing out the true justice orientation of the biblical faith. He is very good stuff. His early books and writing in Sojourners almost 30 years ago where very influential in my life. His main point was the need for us to continue to struggle to meet the world’s needs with God’s justice and compassion. He invoked the axiom we have all used at some point, both in reference to ourselves and now to younger generations: we can change the world! Foolishly, however, I asked a question during Q & A time. My question went something like this:

"It seems to me that while we can change some of the world, we don’t seem to be able to change the world. We win some battles but also the world seems to be the same in so many ways from generation to generation. The realization of this can come as a shock. Many people when they realize this become disenchanted, even cynical. How do we prevent this from happening? When disenchantment begins to set in do we hope people will be able to move from ‘we can change the world’ to hope in God, or should we perhaps modify our discourse to young people now, which would mean not being quite so optimistic about the extent of change. Utopia is not going to come through our action."

Which didn’t seem to go down that well. (I wish I hadn't used the word utopia; it seemed to exacerbate things.) Jim reiterated his point about working for those causes that are here with us now (a good point and quite right), and that things have changed. His new book uses as examples of the change: Desmond Tutu in his struggle against Apartheid and the anti-slavery movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,among others. I think he might even have interpreted me as saying that nothing changes so why bother! But anyway, I wouldn't mind an answer to my question. When we say to young people ‘You are the generation we have been waiting for”, at some point in the future most of them will realize that, although great victories might have been achieved through their work for justice, injustice just moves on to a new crisis. This crisis too can be overcome, but injustice has already moved on again! I know so many people who have lost the passion for justice and faith because they could not move from “We can change the world” to hope in the God who will bring the change in God's way and time. (This was one of the points Jim made in his talk - hope in God as essential.) Hoping in God is not a renunciation of responsibility, but relieves us of the need to carry the messiah complex cherished by secular, enlightenment society. We hope in God, and act as ambassadors for the God of justice, working for signs of God's kingdom now, and discovering the kingdom where many overlook it.

So, my question again: Do we continue to tell young people they can change the world, or do we change (perhaps only subtly) what we say to them in the first place? But even subtle changes, while I suspect more honest, are just not as inspiring as the refrain, "You are the generation we have been waiting for!"

Respecting Our Common Humanity

It will be useful for me to post abbreviated versions of the various addresses, sermons and classes that I present as chaplain of St John's. Even if you won't find it interesting now, keep it in the back of your mind for when you might want some ideas for addresses to young people in Years 7-12. The following was the address I gave at the assembly at which I was commissioned by the the Venerable Peter Stuart, Archdeacon of Adelaide early in Term 2.

[The reading was Genesis 1:26-31.]

Our reading today tells us that we share a common humanity, and that this common humanity is made in the image of God. We should always remember this great dignity attaching to being human together.

We also need to be respectful of that common humanity and its great dignity, as we live it and as we encounter it, in others. And I can think of three ways at least in which we can respect the great dignity of our humantiy here in this school:

1. By acknowledging each other. This might seem like a strange thing to suggest, but to acknowledge one another acknowledges our common presence to each other. When we acknowledge the other person we are recognising the right as a human being to be given space in our world to be human with us. And to give this basic right of existence to other people is to affirm their worth, a worthiness with its source in God.
   
   
2. The way we treat each other. The way we treat each other is the primary way we show respect to the common humanity we share. The problem is that this is precisely where we struggle as a race to be respectful. Jesus can help us here. This term in chapel we will be looking at some of the things Jesus says, and contrast this with what we ordinarily do. Jesus is a trustworthy guide of how to respect the dignity of each person we meet.
   
   
3. The third way respect for our common humanity can be practiced applies particularly to my role here as chaplain and priest. I will endeavour to provide a reason for us to be here that is more than compulsion, and more than self-interest. We respect the God in whose image we are made when we go beyond these things to discover the meaning and purpose of life, and to use this reason and purpose to live, study, and enjoy ourselves. The meaning and purpose I speak of here is to be found in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. So expect to hear a lot about him in the coming years!
   

NT Wright's Concerns About GAFCONish Claims

When I hear Peter Jensen say that ‘we are not self-selected; we are God-selected, because we are based on the word of God’; when I hear beloved and respected Jim Packer say that the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ should be the basis of a new covenant to which all English bishops will be required to sign up; when I hear Vinay Samuel, one of the sharpest minds in the whole GAFCON movement, saying (unless he was misreported) that ‘we are not breaking away from the Anglican Communion – we ARE the Anglican Communion’; and when I see Bishop John Rodgers of AMiA saying that ‘we are the true and faithful Anglicans . . . the true representatives of the Anglican Communion’ – then it is time for someone, and it might as well be an old-fashioned Bible-believing evangelical like me, to stand up and say, with usual English understatement, ‘hold on, this seems to be somewhat over the top’. Just as the ‘covenant for the Church of England’ bore all the marks of sloppy thinking and hasty drafting, so the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’, though affirming more or less the doctrines that I myself have spent my whole adult life affirming and teaching, bears all the marks of similar haste. In addition to its embarrassingly obvious weaknesses, it has smuggled in, alongside the doctrinal affirmations, various open-ended formulae which basically mean ‘We will decide who’s in this new club and who’s out of it, and if we decide you’re out we claim the right to plant new churches in your territory, “authorize” them, and send in bishops to look after them’. This is not a ‘suspicious’ reading; it is more or less exactly what the text says. And I say to my fellow evangelicals in the Church of England: do not be taken in by this. This is not the answer. There are good answers to such problems as we face and this is not among them. (NT Wright)

For the full text of his comments see Stephen Bloor's post here.

Free AudioBooks Online from some of the Tradition's Best

Here

Rowan Williams and Consensus

Here is a good summary of Rowan Williams' strategy for the Anglican Communion, 'contrasted' with the GAFCONish type slurs we hear of him.

And Stephen reads him right here.

Talking About Sacraments (Part 2)

The church has found some sacraments particularly meaningful, and in the celebration of these particular sacraments we are opened up to the presence of God all around us, and within us. Seven of these sacraments are often listed: eucharist, baptism (and confirmation), anointing, ordination, marriage, and reconciliation (confession & absolution).

But why celebrate particular sacraments over and over again? If everything is sacrament, why not celebrate any or all sacraments? There are a few reasons. First, the ritual celebration of these particular sacraments is not meant to exclude the sacraments of everyday life. It is more that we need particular celebrations to remind us of our sacramental universe and lives. By celebrating these sacraments the church is encouraged to find God everywhere. If God can come to us in the humble form of eating and drinking bread and wine together, we are reminded to look for God in the smile of our neighbour.

Second, when we humans do not make particular celebration of what is always and everywhere around us, we soon forget. If we do not stop to find the beauty somewhere, we will not find it anywhere, even though it is all around us! If we do not celebrate and cherish our love by another, we will soon take it for granted or even forget it, even though we are always carried by that love!

Third, repetition brings fluency and skill in recognising and living the sacramental life. These particular sacraments become the doorway to sacramental living all the time. Moreover, intellectual familiarity with what we are doing repetitively allows us to get out of our heads and into our hearts. The problem with variety is that we never have time to get much further than intellectual analysis.

Of these particular sacraments, eucharist and baptism are the two most important, and this for at least two reasons. First, Jesus commanded us to practice them. (See Matt 28:16-20; 1Cor 11: 23-26) Second, they are the two crucial sacraments of initiation and sustenance in the Body of Christ, recalling for us in dramatic form the death and resurrection of Christ, and our participation in him.

Talking About Sacraments (Part 1)

John O’Donohue, in his book Anam Cara defines a sacrament as ‘a visible sign of invisible grace.’ He continues:

In that definition there is a fine acknowledgement of how the unseen world comes to expression in the visible world. This desire for expression lies deep at the heart of the invisible world. (pp. 72-73)

The threshold between God and the cosmos is paper thin. In traditional language we can say that we are surrounded by sacraments. The whole of the created order is sacramental. From constellations in the sky to the smallest seed, the created universe tells the glory of God. We live in a sacramental universe.

And it is not just ‘things’ that are sacraments. Touch is a sacrament. The caress of a lover carries with it more than a simple explanation of skin brushing skin. If it were not so, why did God become human, and could it have even been possible? It were not so how could we be ambassadors of Jesus Christ? How could we be the temple of the Holy Spirit?

African Bible Study

Here is a group Bible study method that requires no formal knowledge, but will deepen your life with God. it is truly confronting if done consistently over time. You could do it each week with a group of people using the Sunday readings. The important point is not to justify your answer or particularly explain it. The point is our transformation through engagin with the Word of God.

1. One person reads the passage slowly.

2. Each person identifies the word or phrase that catches their attention.

3. Each shares the word or phrase around the group. (NO DISCUSSION, TEACHING, JUSTIFICATION)

4. Another person reads the passage slowly .

5. Each person identifies where this passage touches their life today.

6. Each shares their answer: "This passage touches me ..." (NO DISCUSSION, TEACHING, JUSTIFICATION).

7. Passage is read a third time (another reader).

8. Each person names or writes "From what I've heard and shared, what do I believe God wants me to do or be? Is God inviting me to change in any way?"

9. Each person shares their answer: "God invites me to..." (NO DISCUSSION, TEACHING, JUSTIFICATION)

10. Each prayers for the person on their right, naming what was shared in the other steps.

Close with the Lord's Prayer and silence.

Prayer: Experiencing the Relentless Love of God

What we try to do in prayer is to experience deeply and consistently the undeserved, relentless love of God for us, despite everything. (Katherine Marie Dyckman & L. Patrick Carroll)

Desire

To desire God is to pray. (Rene Voillaume)

Going Dry

Going dry is a common experience in the life of prayer, and it is a great grace calling for some sensible discipline. We all have times when we feel our prayer life is going nowhere and achieves nothing. This is the time we might stop praying. And this is exactly the time not to stop praying. This kind of dryness is, more than likely, an invitation to go deeper. God is inviting you to a new level of relationship, which is why your usual way of relating just isn't working anymore. The newer, deeper level of relationship might be entered through a variety of ways, which might not include a new way of praying, but it will include praying (even if it is your current way of praying). The new depth of relationship might be forged through service, Scripture study, a more serious engagement at the Sunday liturgy. Or some other way. Don't expect some extraordinary experience in prayer to be the sign that you have gone deeper. (God will most likely be kinder to you than that!)

The above can apply to congregations also. People can drift away because nothing seems to happen for them like it used to. They blame the congregation or someone else. But, in reality, all that is going on is that the way they participate in the church and their relationship with God is being invited to be deepened. Go deeper, don't leave!Explore, take a few risks! God won't disappoint, especially if you let God have a real relationship with you, one in which God's relationship with you doesn't have to look how you think it should.

Eschew Extraordinary Gifts

The Christian tradition has consistently counseled avoiding extraordinary gifts whenever possible because it is difficult to remain humble when you have them. Experience teaches that the more extraordinary the gifts, the harder it is to be detached from them. It is easy to take secret satisfaction in the fact that God is giving you special gifts, especially when they are obvious to others. (Thomas Keating)

Saying Our Prayers

The problem with talking to people about prayer is that it can end up sounding so corny. It's embarrassing to say to people "Just say your prayers". You sound like a complete Christian sap. But it is so true!(I'm talking about the prayer bit not the sap bit.) If you've done some hard yards when it comes to prayer you know that it is important to say your prayers even when it is boring and nothing is happening. Why? Because our relationship with God is not at our convenience and need not play out how we think it should, or when we think it should. If you are not given the grace of the greatest prayer life in the history of Christianity, indeed, if 'nothing' ever happens, just keep going. In fact, according to the majority of the tradition, it is best to eschew the great moments for the more ordinary (and sublime) experience of humbly being before God.

Although, if you are thinking that your prayer life is 'boring' this might be a sign of something going on. But more on that in a couple of days.

To Pray

To pray does not primarily mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather it means to think and to live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts into thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him in a pious niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings.

(Henri Nouwen)

Strength Out of Weakness

The most important thing, and that which will enable you and I to be disciples for a whole life, no matter one's own sense of inadequacy, alleged failures, or disappointment, is a sense, a familiarity with our own weakness and emptiness. But not just weakness and emptiness; weakness and emptiness as the great dignity of our humanity and the fount of grace in our lives and ministries.

A few observations and anecdotes to finish this series on emptiness.

First, contrast the training for ordained ministry current ordination candidates receive and that which I received. They are given opportunities to attain skills and competencies early in their ordained ministries that I did not. And I think the training now is busier and more intense. But because of the gaps in my training I had to rely on personal presence in a way that the newly ordained now might not. I am not advocating this as a desirable place for the newly ordained to find themselves in! But just to point out the potentially unrecognised danger competency brings.

The danger is a lack of depth covered over by competency. Those who train now are prepared for ministry in a much more productive manner than in the past, but the competencies can become the new bag of priestcraft tricks of the past. In the old days it was tempting for the priest to pull out his communion, or oil, or bible or prayer book, or mumble a prayer with his clerical collar on, and think this would suffice for real sacramental personal presence. A bag of tricks is not what priesthood is about, whether that bag of tricks is a prayer book, the sacrament, th Bible or a whole new range of competencies.

Second, I remember sitting in the Peterborough Rectory and looking at my books back in the mid-90s. I had just finished my PhD, and here I was up in the country with a PhD that nobody cared about or saw as useful, or even knew what it meant! There seemed no way to pursue that path of academia, to develop it, or if there was, it seemed like it would drag me from the task at hand. And the task at hand was to be the parish priest of Peterborough and the people in it. There seemed little overlap.

And third, for ten years a attempted a radical pursuit of material privation in obedience to the call of Jesus. (I have a fundamentalist past, but not of the right wing type so prevalent today.) In the end I had virtually nothing left, except a huge mountain of pride. The actions were commendable, noteworthy, saintly, but in spiritual terms they count for nought. When I obeyed Jesus radically, I distanced myself further from him.

These three stories/observations speak to me about the great dignity of our humanity (its weakness and incompletion) and the dangers associated with that weakness. They also speak to me about what it means to be a baptised Christian (and subsumed within this common baptism, a priest): refracting back to the world, church, and all creation our common destiny grounded in our createdness and God’s grace. All three stories warn us of making our discipleship to our strengths. Relying on our strengths, rather than allowing strength to arise out of our weakness. For example, my radical pursuit of the gospel should have been the result of a letting go of those things I was formerly filling the emptiness with, but instead I refilled the emptiness with my pride. Or in the case of my PhD, it became something I could stand on and rely on (or its knowledge, or the differential between my knowledge and most other people’s knowledge), rather than something I could offer humbly in service to God, not knowing where that offer might lead. And in the case of priestly formation and competence, the danger of a mechanical and human generated application of a ‘bag of tricks’ bearing little resemblance to the true iconic value of discipleship.

I am not suggesting that we can’t be competent and increase competency, can’t have PhD’s, can’t operate in areas of ministry in which we are comfortable and capable, or radically pursue the gospel in our lives. But let us do so always from the perspective of the great dignity of humankind. (That is, our incompleteness waiting to be filled by God). The simple humility that flows from knowing our great dignity can ensure that our skills and competencies, the radical choices we can make, the achievements we accrue along the way, can become means of grace for others rather than condemnation of ourselves.

Priests to the World?

But what of the world and being a priest? If ordination to the priesthood is grounded in baptism, then surely priesthood is directed out to the world just as baptism is? In my previous post in this series I spoke of how priests refract back to the people of God who we are because of our common baptism. So too, priests show the world our common source in God and our common destiny as creatures. This is the call of all the baptised, and in a particular way, the priest. We are to be that iconic display of the dying and rising Christ, or in the language I have been using, the great dignity of being human. Not exactly in the way the world would ordinarily think of that dignity, but instead as a human dignity grounded in our emptiness and openness oriented to God through Jesus Christ. We do this in all sorts of ways, in every part of our life. No different to what all the baptised should be doing, but as priests we are related to all the baptised in this mission in such a way that we are particular examples of this death and resurrection, emptiness and fullness, weakness and power made perfect.

In this sense we become priests to the world trying to make the connections to enable faith in the crucified-risen Lord. However, the goal is not, ultimately, for everyone to become Christian. It is much bigger than that. The goal of creation is for all of creation to be united with God in Christ. In this sense, hypostatic union is the destiny of everything. The whole creation is groaning in its weakness and imperfection as it awaits redemption through union with God. We are priests of this destiny for all creation. Not priests in the sense of mediating this salvation – that is the role of Christ the High Priest. No, we are priests in the same sense of refracting back to creation what it is, and what its destiny is. And again, what we refract back is our weakness and incompleteness – shared by all creation – which is, at the same time, the great dignity of creation waiting to be filled by God. As priests sharing in and reflecting back to the rest of creation our mutual weakness and hollowness as the point of God’s grace and fulfilment.

Thinking theologically: Creation can bear God in the most intimate manner, and the particular word of importance here is union. And so it fits together if we think of creation as an openness waiting to be filled by God, Jesus as fully human (made from stardust), baptism of those professing faith in Christ (receiving the Spirit in faith and discipleship of Jesus), and the use of sacraments as the outward sign of an inner grace. Ordination stands on these four foundational insights and is consistent with, and folds into, them. And for any priests reading this post, remember, the ‘stuff’ of the sacrament of ordination is you.

To read:

1Cor 15:20-28

Colossians 1:15-22 & Ephesians 1:3-14

Romans 8:18-25

1. Priests, how connected do you feel to your baptism and the vows you made (confirmed)?
2. Could you have the courage, and the humility, to be a priest living in grace and weakness?
3. Do you have eyes to see the coming unification of all things in the crucified-risen Christ in the world now? How could you live that ministry of unity through your ordination?

Solidarity in Sin to Solidarity in Salvation

And thus whoever simply refuses to shut his eyes to the abyss of hatred, despair, and depravity that can be seen in the life of men on earth, and thus who refuses to close himself off from reality, will find it difficult to contrive his own escape from this damnation through a purely individualistic conception of salvation, and to abandon everyone else to the grinding wheels of hell. Just as God so loved the world that he completely handed over his Son for its sake, so too the one whom God has loved will want to save himself only in conjunction with those who have been created with him, and he will not reject the share of penitential suffering that has been given him for the sake of the whole. He will do so in Christian hope, the hope for the salvation of all men, which is permitted to Christians alone. (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

Priesthood and Emptiness

There are two ways of looking at priesthood. One grounds it in baptism (presumably one reason for the necessity of baptism before ordination); the other sees it as a gift from a different realm of the Spirit than that of baptism (ARCIC II). I favour the first, but include the second. For me, ordination to the priesthood is about a refocussing and concentration of my baptism in a re-ordered relationship to the people of God. (Perhaps this is the gift from another realm of the Spirit, as ARCIC II puts it?) Through baptism priests are icons of Christ, and in ordination their relationship to the people of God is so reordered to be a perpetual living reminder of who we all are together. Priests refract back to the people of God our mutual identity as icons of Christ within the iconic Body of Christ.

Which might sound like abstruse theologising. What does it mean? It means that priests are to be truly human, refracting back to the people of God the great dignity of the human condition in all its weakness and failure. Priests are filled by the Spirit of God, yet the weakness and emptiness that is filled never leaves us. It is the weakness in which God’s power is made perfect. But it never ceases being weakness, and at times, failure. This is the mystery of the cross and resurrection – life and death – that we carry in our bodies as baptised disciples of Christ. As St Paul says, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”

To be a priest is to know one’s weakness, perpetually living it, so that the life of Christ might be made manifest. Priests know their sin, but not just as a point of self-condemnation. Indeed, no longer a point of self-condemnation, but a point of grace through faith, a sign of the weakness that brings grace abounding in our lives. Priests are called to direct others beyond guilt and forgiveness to the point of faith in the grace that fills out all human weakness and failure. We don’t ignore sin; it is transformed into a source of grace and the perfect expression of the power of God.

To read:

Rom 6:1-11

2Cor 4:7-12

2Cor 12:1-10

For Reflection:

1. Recall an act of ministry that was sourced from weakness but revealed God’s power. (Either you as minister or ministered to.)
   
   
2. Is your past sin sufficiently ‘dealt with’ for it to no longer be merely a point of condemnation but give you a sense of the great dignity of humanity and God’s grace in your life?