Friends of God

At a recent chapel cycle at St John's I made three points about friendship.

First, I used a picture (side) to remind us that Jesus was actually betrayed by a close friend. The pain Jesus must have felt by this betrayal is easily overlooked from our position of hindsight. The pain of betrayal by a friend is because we give something of ourselves to our friends. So I asked the question: how you going respecting that piece your friends have given you?

Second, I pointed out that Jesus was known as a friend of those everyone else hated (sinners and tax collectors). The usual practice is to befriend those similar to us or we like, or who might benefit us. Not Jesus. I spelt the implication out in chapel.

Third, to be a friend of Jesus is to be a friend of God. and remember, friends give something of themselves to those they befriend. So when God becomes our friend through Christ, God gives something of Godself to us. (Doctrinally, this is the same as saying that in the Incarnation and the giving of the Spirit God communicates Godself to us.)

See here for a great sandart video about friendship.

I Am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11)

The story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11) reveals the the humanity of Jesus in a narrative form that is of a piece with the deepest theology of the Gospel of John. (E.g. John 1:1-5, 14) Here we see a vulnerable, human Jesus, full of love, and therefore overcome by grief at the death of his friend Lazarus. This is the same Jesus who, in, for example, the Farewell Discourses of Chapters 13-17, will reveal (admittedly in more structured prose) the heart of God. But even so, John 11 can't be matched for the sheer vulnerable humanity of Jesus.

Lazarus is the friend of Jesus. (11:11; also 11:36) We will wait until 15:14-15 before we hear Jesus call his disciples friends. There is something special in the relationship between Lazarus and Jesus. Yet, Lazarus is strangely absent in the Gospels. We meet Mary and Martha in Luke, but not Lazarus. And in John Mary and Martha speak to Jesus, but Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, says nothing. He is resuscitated, and in John 12 the chief priests decide that Lazarus must die as well as Jesus. (John 12:9-11; see 11:45-57) Jean Vanier says that Lazarus seems to be a "nobody" in comparison to the rest of the characters in the story. Like the disabled people Vanier has lived with in L'Arche. In John 11 Lazarus is sick. The Greek word is asthenes, and Jean Vanier says that this can mean not just sick, but disabled. This supposition on the part of Vanier would explain why Mary and Martha are still at home with Lazarus, and why Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, seems absent in the text. He was, as Vanier says, a "nobody".

People wonder why Jesus did not leave immediately to heal Lazarus when he discovered that he was sick. (11:6) The flow of the text gives the answer. The death of Lazarus will allow Jesus to work another "sign" (John 2:11; 4:54), signaling who Jesus is ("I am ..." John 11:25-26) , and the overcoming of death that awaits those loved by Jesus. (As is all Christology, this story is about soteriology, not just speaking of the status of Jesus.)

Jesus arrives and after some dialogue with Mary and Martha is directed to the tomb of Lazarus. Here we see the raw and intense emotion of Jesus, shuddering and disturbed in his own grief at the death of his friend, and deeply moved by the grief of those weeping for Lazarus. (11:33-35, 38) Jesus wept. He does not avoid his grief; resurrection does not make human emotion and the loss of death empty. Jesus here touches the horror of death, and its sheer deadliness, feeling and expressing the anguish and pain we feel when stung by death and its forces. Vanier says

"Here he (Jesus) weeps in front of death; he touches the horror of death, the void created in hearts when someone who is loved dies... This is the only place in the gospel where Jesus reveals his deep, human emotions. when he met the Samaritan women (sic) he was tired, but here something is broken in him." (Jean Vanier, Drawn Into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John, p.199)

But more than this, Jesus here confronts his own mortality. (Yes, mortality, the point of the picture above, with a dead Jesus, gangrene spreading in his tomb.) He is human, and he will die. The blackness of death awaits him, and the horror of death encompassing a loved one awaits the mother and friends of Jesus. Christian hope in the resurrection of Jesus is not an avoidance of death. I will die, you will die, those we love will die. There is no immortal 'bit' in us that avoids death. There is only hope in the God of Jesus who brings resurrection. Indeed, without entering the full horror of death and the cross there is no resurrection. This is not one more example of the spiritual principle of death and rebirth. This is the brokenness, failure, and absolute end that is the prerequisite for grace, the tomb of resurrection.

A Joke

A Catholic priest, an Anglican priest and a Baptist minister sat next to each other in a plane. After take off, the steward came to them and asked if they wanted a drink. The Catholic said, Whiskey"; the Anglican said "Scotch and soda, please." The steward asked the Baptist, who said(rather self-righteously), "I'd commit adultery before I'd have a drink." The Anglican thought for a moment, turned to the steward, and said, "Can I change my order?"

Stats on Child Sexual Abuse

Following a link on Ruth Gledhill's blog I came across a page of statistics with one statistic I don't think I have seen before. The statistics are for the UK, and look at her original post if you would like to follow up some other links, particularly from the three major insurers of US Protestant Churches and claims for sexual abuse. Anyway, on the link mentioned above, the last entry says:

Very few children (less than 1%) experienced abuse by professionals in a position of trust, for example a teacher, religious leader or care/social worker.

(Here is the link.)

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

To Choose is To Renounce

To live we must choose a life, a commitment. We must move from a series of disconnected experiences to a way of life with all its hopes and disappointments. That choice can come to us in a variety of ways: an inner voice, aptitudes, skills, gifts; or what brings us joy or where we find our creativity most exposed.

But this is a path less travelled, for it is our path. But to choose this path is to renounce other possible paths. Perhaps this is one reason why the psychological age of youth with its exploration of possibilities stretches well beyond chronological youth now. There are so many alternatives that might be taken up, which to choose? To choose one might close down others, so choosing one is postponed. But, funnily enough, life itself is postponed. As Jesus said, to choose life will always bring some death with it.

The Two Great Elephants in the Room

... behind and beneath the smooth wheels of the socially constructed world are two abiding facts: unreconciled pain and unexhausted compassion, the history of men and women and the history of God with us. (Rowan Williams)

Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey

That blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

William Wordsworth

Remembering and Forgetting

And yet, longing not to be chained to a traumatic past is not wrong. What is mistaken, however, is the idea that fixation on the traumatic past would somehow guarantee being set free from it. A collective past, like that of an individual, is traumatic when it is not allowed to be remembered, and is just as much so if it has to be remembered. In other words, fixation on the past is merely the flipside of repression. Detraumatisation is the process of becoming able to both remember and forget; it is leaving the past in the past, in a way that embraces remembrance as well as forgetting. (Bernhard Schlink, Guilt About the Past, p. 36.)

The Goal of Self-Denial

Once there was an ascetic who struggled his whole life to reach perfection. He distributed all his goods to the poor, withdrew into the desert, and prayed to God night and day. Finally the day came when he died. He ascended to heaven and knocked on the gates. 'Who is there?' came a voice from within. 'It's me!' Answered the ascetic. 'There isn't room for two here,' said the voice. 'Go away!' The ascetic went back down to earth and began his struggle all over again: poverty, fasting, uninterrupted prayer, weeping. His appointed hour came a second time, and he died. Once more he knocked at the gates of heaven. 'Who's there?' came the same voice. 'Me!' 'There isn't room for two here. Go away!'

The ascetic plummeted down to earth and resumed his struggle to attain salvation even more ferociously than before. When he was an old man, a centenarian, he died and knocked once again on the gates of heaven. 'Who's there?' came the voice. 'Thou, Lord, Thou!' And straightway the gates of heaven opened, and he entered

.

I think this is from Nikos Kazantzakis, God's Pauper, but I am not sure. When I reread it some day I will find out!

God Cares For Each Of Us

The Christian gospel declares that people are of inestimable value because they are the children of God, the concern of God’s love, created for an eternal destiny; not just people in general, but individual men, women and children, each with a name, each having priceless worth. This was made startingly plain by Jesus when he told his disciples ‘the very hairs of your head are all numbered’: an extravagant piece of imagery to drive home what he was saying. When we take his words seriously, we begin to realize how far-reaching their significance is. If they are true, if that is how things really are, if God does care for every single man, woman and child in the teeming millions that inhabit the globe, not to speak of the countless generations of the past and those as yet unborn, we cannot dismiss anyone as of no consequence; nor are we entitled to suppose that some are more important than others or that any should be sacrificed to serve some interest which takes precedence over their inherent worth. The consequences of accepting this basic presupposition are shattering, calling in question not only the way in which we commonly behave towards many of our fellow human beings, but the international, military, political, economic and social policies which have been and still are considered reasonable by those who are responsible for them.

Paul Rowntree

We Are Incomplete

Most of the time we act as though we are complete. But we are not. From birth we need others, and none of us knows everything, in fact none of us knows what we need to know. There are gaps, holes within us. There is a God shaped hole that, if left unacknowledged, we will try to fill. But instead of filling it with God we will have to fill it with that which cannot fill: 'stuff', relationships, or whatever. Idols in other words. The God hole in us can only be filled with that which is greater than us, transcendent; the finite will collapse under the strain when shoved in the hole. No wonder we have to shove more and more 'stuff' in.

If you wonder what a humanity that fills the God hole would be like, then study the Gospels. Jesus is not confused about what goes where in his life. In him the finite (his humanity) can carry the infinite, but only because it is open and empty. The great paradox: when we are empty we can carry the infinite, when full, well, all we carry is the finite as though it could function and satisfy like the infinite. Idolatry is the result.

To Fulfil Our Promise, That is All

I don't want to be anything special, I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfil its promise. (Etty Hillesum)

Jesus the Exorcist and Healer

When it comes to the healings and exorcisms of Jesus it is easy to get caught up in discussions about the miraculous on the one hand, and questions about the reality of the demonic on the other. While important, those discussions need to be broadened a little. Brad, my co-minister here at Holy Innocents used to work with children with multiple disabilities. In that work he would use every channel available to communicate with the children. He remarked in a recent sermon that he could see some similarity between his work with these children and the story of the healing of the deaf man with a speech impediment in Mk 7:31-37. Those schooled in the debates about the reality of healings and the question of magic miss the very basic ways that Jesus is communicating with the man in the story. Jesus touches the man's ears and tongue, and looks up to heaven and sighs. The man would recognise what Jesus was indicating and doing. The question of what happened in the healing does not disappear, but we need not see the touching and the saliva as some kind of magic, or even just as a prophetic acting out. Jesus might have also been communicating with the man, telling him what he, Jesus, was about to do.

The same holds true with the exorcisms of Jesus. The Gospel stories explicitly weave social and political realities into the exorcisms. Two examples, both in the Gospel of Mark, come readily to mind. The first is Mk 1:21-28 where the exorcism is clearly linked to the contrast between the teaching and authority of Jesus with the teaching and authority of the scribes. And then there is the story of the Gerasene demoniac. (Mk 5:1-20) I can't remember where I read it, but apparently there is some evidence to suggest that in antiquity demon possession increased during times of foreign occupation. Demon possession, while a spiritual reality in the text, is not divorced from the political realities of the people within the text. And just in case we doubt it, the name of the demon is legion, the basic unit of the Roman army.

No One is an Island (Part 2)

Most people have heard the famous line, “No man is an island”. You might have even heard a little more of the meditation it comes from:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The above comes from John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, and “For whom the bell tolls” was picked up by Hemingway. It is a meditation upon our interconnection as human beings and as baptized Christians. And I think it is a way of understanding the whole of the Christian faith; a sort of lens to understand what we believe and what we are being drawn into. Some doctrine and biblical passages to reflect on through the lens of 'No One is an Island'.

• Doctrine of God (Trinity) God is not alone (Jn 1:1)

• Jesus Lives, dies, raised for God and others (Jn 5:19-24;11:45-53)

• Eucharist “We who are many …” (1Cor 10:14-22)

• Baptism into Christ, Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Rom 6:1-11; 8:15-17)

• Humanity Gen 1:27

• Ethics Matt 5:21-48; Rom 12:9-21

• Church Mk 3:13-19; Ephes 4:17 – 5:2

• Evangelism Acts 2

• Healing Mk 5:21-43

• God, Jesus, Spirit, love 1Jn 4:7-21

And as in all Christian doctrine, all the above lead into each other and back again.

To view Meditation XVII see here, or a podcast of it being read, or the whole of the Devotions, or my sermon on 'No One is an Island' and a link to a really cool video here.

Purity

I have a need of such a clearance
as the Saviour effected in the temple of Jerusalem
a riddance of the clutter of what is secondary
that blocks the way to the all-important central emptiness
which is filled with the presence of God.

Jean Danielou

Vocation: The Coincidence of Your Gifts and Passions And The Deepest Needs Of Your Neighbour

The tendency is to limit the circle of those we are to be concerned with. But if God has counted every hair on our heads, it is difficult to see how I can exclude you from the circle of my neighbour. This is hardly something new, but it must be said because in practice we don't do it. The lawyer who, in trying to justify himself and his question, says to Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" is not thinking (at least at that stage) that the circle would include absolutely everyone. Even your enemy. (Lk 10:29-37; cf Matt 5:43-48)

This is important for a whole lot of reasons, including the obvious like peace and justice. But it is also important when discerning vocation. Our deepest vocation is to be found in the coincidence of our gifts, skills and passions and the deepest needs of our neighbour.

Please stop, please!
Silence!
Listen to the beating of your heart.
Listen to the blowing of the wind,
the movement of the Spirit.
Be silent - said the Lord -
and know that I am God.
And listen to the cry of the voiceless.
Listen to the groaning of the hungry.
Listen to the pain of the landless.
Listen to the sigh of the oppressed,
and to the laughter of the children.

Celebrating One World (CAFOD 1989)

Surrender and Healing

The Christian faith is about union with God. But to be united with God we have to give up everything – even ourselves. Making ourselves, securing ourselves, controlling our lives, our futures, our desires, our image and identity, dying to self. And in this dying we are found in God, and we discover who we truly are. All the rest is stripped off as we come to live more and more into God. It is quite harsh for it calls for a death to the usual things about ourselves that we would all think quite reasonable. And you can get a good glimpse of it when sick, diseased, facing an operation, wearing out, dying. Our fears come into play. What will happen? We are losing control. Things could happen that we don’t like. We try to gain control.

I remember hearing about a group who believed they would never die if they had enough faith. All those who died had obviously no faith! (I kid you not, such a group existed in Adelaide!) Tlak about the denial of reality, trying to gain control by manipulating God. It is a temptation for all of us, especially in the dark times of illness etc. A last ditch attempt to deny reality or escape it. A way of manipulating God. (Pray harder; and when the outcome is not what we wanted and we say, "Why did God not listen?" Well, what a give away!) When I had an operation a few years ago I discovered something about myself. I couldn’t trust myself to God. I wanted a certain outcome, and I wanted God to make sure it happened. All normal, of course, but it is not what Christian healing is about. Christian healing is not about using our faith to get what we want. Facing the darkness of sickness etc. is an opportunity to deepen our surrender to God. Anointing with the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus provides a clue: the cross is the symbol of losing life and of surrender; faith in God is not a shield from the reality of our lives. We get sick, injured, wear out, and die. Faith is about trusting in God no matter what. Its easy to trust God when everything is going smoothly, a different matter when we are in the darkness of suffering. That’s when the rubber really hits the road.Can we give our lives to God? Can we trust that all shall be well, no matter what? Can we give up our very selves in the promise of gaining life? That’s what healing is about. Sometimes the outcome is what we want. Eventually it won’t be. But that’s beside the point. The point is knowing that in the light of the resurrection of Jesus all shall be well. No matter what.