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.

Identity vs Intelligibility?

In an early journal article Jurgen Moltmann suggests a helpful continuum to understand the history of the church. He suggests that the church moves between the two poles of relevance and identity; in the world but not of the world, incarnated in the world with a citizenship in heaven. If it moves too far to one side there is a reaction the other way. Mission and evangelism follows this continuum. Think of those churches that focus on ‘personal faith’ as a gathered community to the extent that their sectarian nature makes them irrelevant to the world around. Of course, they would say that is the whole point! Calling people out of the world that is passing away. Or consider those churches for whom their Christian faith seems little more than an overlay upon existing views on society, human relationships, etc. So relevant that they have merged back into the world around them! Mission and evangelism requires both identity and relevance. We are a people called out, yet God sent the Son to save the world. Remove the admonitions concerning justice from the Bible and it would almost be readable in one session! The goal is to integrate the continuum, although, as Moltmann says, different ages reflect different emphases.

In the current turmoil in the Anglican Communion we can see this continuum and the conflict arising within it at work. Today we might use the term intelligibility rather than relevance. (I'm being kind here because deep down I think the temptation is to be relevant, which implies that irrelevance is just around the corner.) Of course, both poles in the current debate would claim that they are being both faithful to their Christian identity and intelligible, although in a candid moment the right would admit identity is more important to them and the left would admit that intelligibility is key for them. When a parish, diocese, Province or Communion holds together those from opposing poles then we have integrated the continuum. That is, communion prevents the narrowness that an emphasis on one pole or the other necessarily brings.

Thin Ice Needs More Than Personal Moral Courage

Bernhard Schlink says that the Holocaust is evidence of the thin ice that human culture rests on, and how easily we can descend into the depths of barbarity. It is tempting to think that Germany 1933 couldn't happen here. However, the way in which Australians were so easily turned against asylum seekers in recent history hardly fills one with confidence. Theologically, a doctrine of Original Sin would also suggest that we are always on thin ice. How do we stop our society falling through?

Schlink says we should learn from the experience of Germany during the Nazi years. His generation (born during or shortly after the war) criticized their parents for not showing individual moral courage. He says he and his colleagues were mistaken in their criticism because individual moral courage in the Nazi years ended up in pointless symbolic acts or extremely small victories of no lasting effect. (He cites the events depicted in Rosenstrasse as an example of the latter.) Personal moral courage is effective when it is practiced within a society with institutions that encourage and do not punish dissent, and where individual social and political views matter. When we allow such institutions (e.g. parliament, courts, churches, unions, political parties, universities) to be undermined and no longer reflect a culture of engaged disagreement the ice will, at some point, break.

It would seem to me that the Anglican Church of Australia has a role to play in this. We are diverse and have rules regulating the manner in which disagreement can be voiced and worked through. I wonder if the suggested solutions to our Communion's disagreements over sexuality are going to reinforce our credentials as the church that tolerates dissent or not? I can't see it myself, and I think that the increasing centralization across the Communion (including Australia) augurs badly for us as an institution that will not just tolerate dissent, but work it through fruitfully. After reading Schlink I see that the stakes are greater than just freedom in the church.

In as far as there was any resistance during the Third Reich and the Holocaust that had an effect beyond being symbolic gestures, its basis was found less in individual morality than in communist or socialist solidarity, Christian faith and ecclesiastic responsibility, and the honour code of officers or of the aristocracy. The lessons of the past pertain not just to individual morality, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to societal and state institutions in which individual morality must be preserved if it is to have the power to resist in the crucial moment. This applies to citizens' engagement within and on behalf of institutions to ensure their proper functioning. (Schlink, Guilt About the Past, p. 33)

Syro-Phoenician Woman

A guest post from the Revd Ron Keynes, based on Mark 7:24-37.

We have become almost inured to the sight of a Lord Who was happy to meet anyone whoever or wherever they were, and yet continue to be surprised by the Infant Church in the Acts of the Apostles stumbling over its outreach to Gentiles. This little cameo bears a close look, if only because previously traditional treatment of it tended to take off the sharp edges of Jesus’ words to the woman. Never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is in Tyre (Gentile territory by a long distance) with the obvious intent of taking the blinkers off His disciples.

It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs was the rendering in the AV Bible. I recall Sunday School story treatment of this passage asking teachers to render ‘dogs’ and ‘puppies’ on the grounds that Jesus would never have been so severe on a woman as the original appeared. On the contrary, Jesus was being quite rough, as that woman would have expected, but it was not to be rude to her as much as make the disciples face the horror of their own attitudes. That lady would have expected such an outburst, and her response shows that she was ready for it.

The disciples, on the other hand, were confronted by a human being who not only handled the abuse, but showed a depth of spirit and faith that would have been totally unexpected. This sort of thing should be a constant discovery even for the modern Christian.

Surely, then, the tell-tale story that follows in today’s Gospel should be the one that shocks even more. This is not just the telling of the story of the healing of a deaf-mute! This is an intended shock for the Christians of every later age that they are the deaf mutes, for they have seen the glory of the Gospel but have refused to see it in others or share or with others.

Arguments For the Existence of God

The arguments for the existence of God, whether you think they are weak or persuasive, express nothing of the living relationship with God that precedes them. They are not meant suddenly to bring people from a state of disbelief to belief. But they are meant to offer some explanation for the possibility of belief, when correctly understood.

Generally speaking arguments for the existence of God look at everything as a whole, and then ask questions about this whole. So they look at all the elements and interconnections, processes and events of the world (and cosmos) and ask if there is a way of making sense of them all as a single whole. Atheism thinks that this is an unnecessary step because the different parts make sense in themselves. There is no reason to try and make sense of the whole as a unit, so to speak.

The problem for atheism is that most people intuit that it is a reasonable thing to ask questions about the whole thing as a whole, as though there is a reason behind the whole. And this intuition has been aided by the trend of modern science to advance a theory of a 'first event' like a big bang as the beginning of the universe. (Not that the Big Bang is the moment of creation, but the Big Bang as suggestive of an origin, and therefore asking questions of the whole.)

As I understand it we know that everything in the universe is essentially energy; energy moving from one arrangement of energy to another, more complex, less complex, etc. Everything is dynamic, moving, with nothing so basic that it doesn't change and mute into another configuration of energy at some point. So everything is moving, and indeed, at the smallest levels randomly, yet at the higher levels of order predictably. Why? Why doesn't everything at some point just collapse into randomness. A little bit out, then a little more out, etc, until the whole thing collapses into meaninglessness?

People have wondered, and continue to wonder about what holds the whole together, what makes this a universe, a single whole of underlying unity and, therefore, of meaning. Some people think that we should not ask these questions. Most people do sometime in their life, and even if they think there is no meaning they will still act as though there is.

Take the argument for the existence of God that says there must be a start to all the causes in the universe. Many people then say that there must have been a start to God, which means that God isn't God, and so forth. Which isn't the point. The idea is to stretch our imaginations. God is not one thing amongst many. God is not one cause among others. God is a fullness complete within Godself. Not like anything else in the world. That takes imagination to think about. It stretches us beyond what is usual and normal to see below the surface, and to do so in a way that does not imprison us in our current way of thinking. In this conception of God and creation God is not one more linear cause, but the underlying cause or reason for all causes, for everything that is, an underlying fullness and completeness guaranteeing the order and sensibleness (rationality) of all that is.

Jesus in Need

We are having a food drive at St John's in support of the great work of the Magdalene Centre here in Adelaide. So at chapel I am talking about the reason why Christians are involved in justice work and helping those in need. There are lots of reasons, like most of the Bible is concerned with it, and compassion of course. But also because those in need are Jesus himself, albeit in a most unlikely disguise. At chapel I started with the first half of Matt 25:31-46 and the separation of the sheep from the goats. "Why are we receiving the kingdom?" ask the saved. The answer is simple, "Because you fed me, clothed me, etc." I talked about how reasonable this is, of course, if you see the king of the universe starving to help (or not) is going to be crucial. And then comes the sting in the tail with the second half of the parable: when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

Love God and Love Neighbour

If we listen to current debate in the church (clearly a debate we have been having since the time of Jesus) it seems it is easy to lose Jesus' dual focus of loving God and loving our neighbour. Of course, everyone says they are being faithful to the command of Jesus, but the liberal left have the tendency so to unite the two that Christianity ends up social work/peace & justice work with a veneer of God, whereas the conservative right have a tendency to separate the two, and then subordinate love of neighbour to love of God. Although Jesus does indeed put the two in that order (Mk 12:29-31), if hierarchicalized in this way the bald statement of the two greatest commandments as a summary of the whole law is not an adequate basis on which to build our practice of the two greatest commandments. The Johannine corpus makes it clear that loving God cannot be divorced from loving neighbour. (1Jn 4:7-21) This unity of love is also at the heart of the washing of the feet. Jesus' command, after showing his love for the disciples by washing their feet, is not to command a pietistic love of himself (i.e. of Jesus), but a command for them to wash one another's feet. (Jn 13:14) St Paul is explicit on this point when he says that the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8-10). And James is following Jesus when he says that our faith is shown through our love of neighbour. (Jas 2:8-26).

How to hold the two together? The answer is Jesus of course, and specifically thinking here of his dual unity of person in two natures. As in so many things Christian, we hold together that which might otherwise be torn asunder. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the greatest expression of this, and is now our guiding principle in application of a theology of union. In the case of uniting love of God and love of neighbour, we should remember that the divinity of Jesus is inferred from the kind and quality of his human life. But this does not mean that his humanity is merely a cipher for his divinity (a problem with the Christian right) or that we can, in practical terms, ignore his divinity (a problem for the christian left). In a parallel fashion, we cannot love God apart from our human neighbour, yet in loving our neighbour wed should not ignore God.

A practical result is to be found in the Eucharist. The Eucharist makes no sense without our neighbour (why a priest cannot preside at the Eucharist alone), and not just the neighbour in the pew next to us. We bring our love of neighbour practised during the week to the liturgical expression of our love of God. (Not just the other way around.) When we do this bloodless piety is transformed into a genuine thanksgiving for what God's enfleshment in Jesus and his death and resurrection has won for us. We are able to love God's flesh and our neighbour's flesh, and vice-versa.