The American trade unionist George Meany once said that economics was the one profession where a person could gain great eminence without ever being right. A more caustic observation is that capitalism is “survival of the fattest”.  These wry observations may seem especially relevant right now, not only because of the havoc wreaked on millions of people around the world by the global economic crisis; but because the taxpayer-funded handouts to some of the corporations chiefly responsible for the crisis have been justified on the grounds that they were too big to be allowed to fail.  No economist or financial expert predicted the crash; and it seems that, despite some notable casualties, the fattest have not merely been allowed to survive, but have largely escaped the consequences of their actions.

Much of the anger and frustration people experience in these circumstances stems from the fact that there just seems to be nothing that can be done to change the situation.  We can call for tighter regulation or increased penalties for corporate misbehaviour; but at the end of the day, we seem to be stuck with this system that seemingly allows the rich and powerful to flourish, while the bulk of the population struggles along with economic uncertainty – where they are not actually living in downright poverty.  We can’t go back to a simple farm-based economy of barter and trade; and the utopian society promised by both the left and right of politics only end in tyranny.  So what are we to do? Where are we to find an alternative?

In recent years, many people have begun to look to the Bible for that alternative, and especially the Old Testament and the economic and political structures of ancient Israel.  But the problem with doing this is that you can’t simplistically transpose the pre-technological economy of 7^th Century BC Israel to the mass technological economy of the modern world.  It just won’t work.  So does the Bible actually have anything relevant to say about economics, and the basis on which we should be ordering modern society?

Many Christians are coming to the conclusion that the Bible does, indeed, have a great deal to say about economics – but not through a simplistic, literal reading of the text.  Rather, the Bible speaks to us about the purpose of economics: which should not exist merely as a theory of exchange or production or labour, there to be manipulated by those with the resources to do so.  Rather, economics properly understood, describes a system of relationships: between humans; between humans and the natural world; and between humans and God.

We catch a glimpse of this in today’s reading from the Book of Ruth.  Or, rather, we catch this glimpse in the passages from Ruth we don’t hear today.  Because between the passages we’ve heard today in which Naomi instructs Ruth in how to court Boaz, and Boaz and Ruth marry and parent a child, there is a long section in which Boaz acquires the land formerly held by Naomi’s now deceased husband; land which had passed to her sons, who have also died, and which she is now forced to sell as a matter of economic necessity. 

The fact that Naomi is both widowed and without sons is important, because in ancient Israel, all property rights were vested in men; so a widowed and sonless woman was in a very precarious economic position.  Without a husband or a son, Naomi cannot retain the land that has been held by her family and must sell it; but in order for the family not to lose the land, her nearest relative has the right of buying that land from her.

So here we see the first kind of economic relationship described by the Bible.  Land is not a mere possession, to be exploited and used for whatever purpose is deemed most desirable.  On the contrary, it is an inheritance, a legacy passed down the generations.  So those who have current use of the land exist in a relationship to the land itself, to not exhaust the land and make it worthless; but they also exist in a relationship with the past and the future.  With the past generations who nurtured the land and made it available to them; and with the future generations to whom they bear the responsibility of passing the land intact so that it may support those who come after.

So Ruth courts Boaz, who declares that he shall be her husband and protector.  But Boaz is not the relative who has the right to buy the land which Naomi must sell; Boaz is only second in line.  So he meets with the kinsman who holds that right, and before witnesses, tells him he must either buy the land and become Ruth and Naomi’s protector, or else forfeit the right of purchase to Boaz.  And the relative says he cannot buy the land without damaging his own inheritance, therefore he agrees before the witnesses to give Boaz the right to buy the land.

And here we see a second kind of economic relationship, a relationship that says less is more.  If the kinsman who had the right to buy Naomi’s land did so, he would also assume responsibility for Naomi and Ruth as well; but that would damage his own inheritance, because Naomi and Ruth would then be entitled to a share of what he had in the event of his death.  In other words, the kinsman’s existing family would have their share diminished; they would receive less from the kinsman than the kinsman received from his ancestors.    By declining to buy the land, the kinsman is not refusing to take responsibility for Naomi and Ruth; rather he is accepting his responsibility to his existing family.  He is accepting that becoming wealthier in the short term would be an act of long term impoverishment for his family.

And this leads to a third kind of economic relationship, the relationship of responsibility.  Acquiring land is not merely a matter of taking an asset off someone else’s hands; it is to ensure the other person is not left destitute as a result.  In other words, the purchaser bears an ongoing responsibility to the seller, especially if the sale was made in circumstances of financial hardship.  So if the kinsman had bought the land from Naomi, he could not then have made a will cutting Naomi and Ruth out of any share of his inheritance; the land, the inheritance, was not his to do with as he chose, to give to whom he chose.  To acquire an asset was not merely to engage in an exchange of goods for money; it was to have entered into a relationship, a relationship that carried responsibilities and obligations.

 So when the kinsman gives up his right to buy the land to Boaz, he enacts a fourth kind of economic relationship: the relationship of surrender, of giving up rights and assets instead of acquiring more.  This is an economy that is not based on endless consumption and endless acquisition; it is an economy that possesses a principle of ownership, to be sure – but that principle is not an absolute one, it is a principle that says to give up, to let go of, to not consume or acquire is to be as economically productive and responsible as to buy and to own. 

And so Boaz buys the land and marries Ruth, and they have a son who becomes the grandfather of David, whose House and line will eventually lead to Jesus of Nazareth.

And it is in Jesus of Nazareth that all the economic principles hinted at in today’s passage from the Book of Ruth come together and express themselves in the famous story of the widow in the temple.

At first glance, today’s passage from Mark looks quite straightforward: the rich people waltz into the temple, dump a load of surplus funds in the treasury, and bask in the admiration of those who observe them doing so.  A poor widow comes in, places all she has into the treasury, and departs unnoticed; but because she has given everything, her reward will be in the life to come.  It is a passage and an interpretation that has long been offered as a consolation for economic deprivation; we might miss out in this world, but we’ll get our proper reward in heaven.  Moreover, it’s an interpretation that justifies our envy of the rich, that enables us to dismiss the philanthropic as show-offs and braggarts.  In our conceit, we place ourselves in the position of the poor widow and imagine ourselves counted among the Blessed simply because of our economic standing relative to other people in society.

But this is not what Jesus was talking about at all; and to assume the message of this passage is “poor, good; rich, bad” is to make as grave an error as those who espouse so-called “prosperity theology” on the basis of Biblical passages in which the righteous are depicted as being blessed with wealth and power and privilege. 

Because what Jesus is talking about in this passage is established by his condemnation of the scribes as those who “devour widows’ houses”.  In saying this, Jesus is reaching back to ancient prophetic condemnations against those who acquire others’ land and then drive them off it in defiance of the kind of economic principles which the Book of Ruth exemplifies.  Because ultimately, all those principles were grounded in covenant, in the covenant between God and the People of Israel in which they are gifted the land, not as possessors and overlords, but as tenants who owe an obligation of care and responsibility.  The covenant between God and Israel is not a contract or a commercial arrangement; it is a relationship, one that means the peoples’ economic dealings with one another must reflect their relational covenant with God.  So those who mangle economics, who make it about the acquisition of wealth at the expense of others, mangle the covenant with God; and it is when the relationship becomes mangled that things go wrong.    

This is why Jesus condemns the scribes: not because they are wealthy, but because their means of becoming wealthy destroys the relationship of care and trust between the people.  The unjust acquisition of land, by alienating people from one another, from our responsibility to past and future generations, and by our responsibility to the natural world, ultimately alienates us from God, from our covenantal relationship with God.  When we mangle the economic relationship, so that it becomes soley about selfish consumption with no room for selfless giving, that is when disaster strikes, when financial systems collapse and the environment starts to decay.

And that is the meaning of the widow who gives the two copper pieces: not because she puts proportionally more in the collection plate than anyone else, but because her giving is an honouring of her covenant with God.  For the widow, economics is not about money, nor about making offerings in the hope of receiving blessings: it’s about entering into relationship with God, of acknowledging that everything she is and has, her very being itself, springs from God.  Her giving is the economics of surrender, not of consumption.

And this is why these passages are relevant to us today: not because they condemn the rich and eulogise the poor, but because they condemn our mangling of economics.  We should be careful not to romanticise the economic principles contained in the Bible: Naomi and Ruth’s financial vulnerability shows that ancient Israel’s covenant did not mean they possessed the perfect economic system. But those principles do point the way to an alternative – to an economics based on covenantal principles of relationship, of constraint, of responsibility, and of surrender.  Principles that do not require either a revolution by the working classes, or the privatisation of society in the interests of business: they are principles that require us to remember that we are not the authors of creation, that we exist in relationship with one another and with the natural world; and that if we forget these truths for too long, we will be the authors of one thing, and one thing only: we will be the authors of our own destruction.

I don’t know if any of you saw the program Foreign Correspondent a couple of weeks ago on the ABC – but those of you who did may recall that it concerned an Australian journalist who had recently returned from Sumatra, where he had been filming the dreadful aftermath of the earthquakes in that region.  But what made this episode special, more than just another story about horrendous suffering and destruction, was a single, brief image of hope; the kind of hope that is unique to faith.

As you are aware, the majority of the Sumatran population are Muslim; and one of the spiritual disciplines of Islam is a regimen of five daily prayers to God.  For most of us, caught up in busy lives and the pressing concerns of family, community, and work, stopping five times a day for prayer sounds like an impossibility.  But imagine if your world had been completely disrupted, your home destroyed, your loved ones killed or scattered or traumatised; wouldn’t praying once a day, never mind five, seem like the least of your priorities?

And yet this was the very image that made this episode of Foreign Correspondent special.  In a town flattened by the ‘quake, next to the shell of a devastated building, the journalist’s camera caught a man in the act of observing one of the five daily prayers to God.  Unobtrusively, unselfconsciously, kneeling on his prayer mat, surrounded by utter destruction: and in the very midst of that horror, a moment of grace, a moment of God’s presence – a moment of hope.

It reminded me of another image, one I saw many years ago and have not seen since.  It was taken during the Normandy landings on D-Day, and in the picture, a dead soldier lies on the pebble-strewn beach.  In the background, hazily, you can see the battle continuing: soldiers rushing past, shells bursting, the sky dark and fuzzy with smoke.  But in the picture, kneeling over the dead soldier, an army chaplain is administering the Last Rights; and the camera has caught him in the moment when he is making the sign of the Cross on the dead soldier’s forehead.  Amid the chaos and senseless butchery of war, a moment of grace, a moment of God’s presence – a moment of hope.

Today’s readings from Job and Mark are about hope, about the restoration of hope.  If they don’t appear that way, that’s because God’s love comes to us in surprising ways, and at the most unexpected moments.  We are rarely on the lookout for the signs of God’s presence among us, and so we often fail to notice the hope that exists, even in the depths of despair.  And just as often we fail to notice when hope has been restored to us, precisely because it is the nature of hope to touch us quietly, unobtrusively, and in the deepest places of our hearts.

Paradoxically, that’s why the Biblical authors were so often forced to use dramatic stories to illustrate this very point.  Hope makes a stark and unmistakeable appearance in these accounts, an appearance that announces itself in miracles and visions.  But if we listen carefully to the words, if we read between the lines, we see the subtle yet unmistakable point: that the Kingdom of God is not only coming, it is actually present among us in the gift of hope that dwells among us and makes God’s presence real in the world, even in this age of cynicism and narcissism and despair. 

What this means is that the coming and yet present Kingdom of God is not merely about endings, about the writing of the final words and the closing of the book.  On the contrary, the Kingdom declares the possibility of new beginnings, of life mended and made whole.  The Kingdom is present in our finite and broken world precisely because it declares that this reality is not the final reality, not the full expression of life and love.  The suffering and hardship and hurt we experience today points, not to pie in the sky when we die, but to the loving grace of God that embraces all things and all realities and makes of them a new reality, a new hope, a new beginning.

Job is the quintessential image of wronged innocence.  A good and righteous man, he suffers the horror of having his children killed, his servants murdered, his property stolen or destroyed.  In the agony of his grief he cries out to God that he has done nothing to deserve such a fate; let God therefore give an explanation of why this has happened, so that Job may prove his innocence and be vindicated by God.  In other words, Job possesses a theology of retribution: bad things happen to those who deserve them, whereas the just and the good are spared suffering.  So when Job’s theology is challenged by his experience, Job turns on God, accusing God of bad faith and not sticking to God’s side of the bargain.

Then three of Job’s friends come along, and in trying to comfort Job, they, too, articulate a theology of retribution: God does not strike down the innocent, therefore Job must be guilty of some sin.  Let him repent, and trust in God, and all will be well.  But Job rejects their theology, even though it is a theology he shares with them; he continues to protest his innocence, and demands that God make an accounting of what has happened.

Toward the end of the Book of Job, just before the passage in today’s reading, there occurs one of the most extraordinary passages in the whole Bible.  God appears to Job out of the whirlwind, shows him all of creation, nestling as it were in the palm of God’s hand, and says, in effect: Okay, Job, you think you’re entitled to answers: here’s the universe – explain it to me! And if you can give an accounting of creation, I’ll justify myself to you.

And confronted by the wonder and the terror and the majesty of the cosmos, Job realises his folly and backs off: I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. In other words, Job realises that his simplistic theology of retribution is hopelessly inadequate, that relationship with God cannot be summed up as a kind of quid pro quo.  Rather, relationship with God involves the risk that exists in all relationships: the risk of being hurt, the risk of making ourselves vulnerable to another.  In other words, engagement with God involves the risk of engagement with life: the risk of things going wrong, of suffering undeserved hardship, of experiencing grief and pain.  But within that risk lies the seed of hope: that hurt implies a capacity for healing; that suffering implies the possibility of relief; that grief implies the moment of joy. 

We humans make the mistake of thinking that God’s loving kindness involves only those things that make us happy or which suit our purposes.   But this is simply a selfish illusion; and God is greater than our self interest, than our desire for easy, comfortable, sheltered lives.  On the contrary, God is life, and life in all its abundance: the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

And we see this at the end of the Book of Job.  God chastises Job’s friends – who, in giving voice to their theology of retribution, presume to speak on God’s behalf – and restores Job’s fortunes.  Now take careful note of that word restores.  God does not bring Job’s dead children back to life; God does not resuscitate Job’s murdered servants; God does not return Job’s stolen and destroyed property.  In other words, God does not change the past, or wipe the painful memories from Job’s mind, or make things new as though they had never happened.  To suggest that God gives back to Job everything he lost as a kind of compensation or reward, is to utilise the same simplistic, inadequate theology used by Job and his three friends.  What God does is restores hope to Job: the hope of new life, of new beginnings; of new children, of a new household, of a new legacy to leave to future generations.   Faith, as I have said, is not a quid pro quo, an exchange of belief for prosperity; it is an engagement with the mystery and depth and risk of life, for which journey God supplies us with the coinage of hope.

And we see that coinage expended in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel.  Writing to an early Christian community stunned by the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, a community that saw itself as blinded by the calamitous loss of its spiritual focus,  Mark does not offer the reassurance of empty platitudes – he offers hope.  Remember, this passage occurs just after Jesus has predicted his own crucifixion, and just before his tumultuous entry into Jerusalem, the event that begins the countdown to Calvary.  So this is hope offered in times of chaos, of anxiety, and of change.

Approaching Jerusalem by way of Jericho, Jesus encounters the blind beggar Bartimaeus.  As usual, Jesus is surrounded by a large crowd, and when Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus – Son of David, have mercy on me! – some in the crowd try to silence him.  But he persists, and Jesus calls him over, asks him what he wants, and being told by Bartimaeus that he wishes to see again, restores his sight.  Seemingly, a straight-forward miracle story, a demonstration of power proving Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God.

But there’s more to it than that.  By calling Jesus “Son of David”, Bartimaeus was giving voice to the great hope of Jesus’ time – that a Messiah would rise from David’s line, drive the Romans out of Judea, and restore the ancient Kingdom as it had once been under David and Solomon.  And in using this title, Mark is identifying Jesus as that Messiah, as that hope made flesh: but not in the way that the people were hoping for, a way that reflected human political and national structures; but in a way that reflected the architecture of the Kingdom of God, an architecture that did not need buildings or cities, but which dwelt within the hearts of people. 

In other words, Mark was saying to his community: don’t lose heart over the destruction of Jerusalem.  God does not dwell in one place, but in all the earth.  The realm of the human passes; the realm of God endures forever.

And here the metaphor of sight restored reflects the surprising, unlooked-for love of God.  Because Bartimaeus does not return to his old life once he can see again; as Mark tells us, he follows Jesus along the way, that is, toward Jerusalem.  So no longer being blind is more than just the reversal of a physical affliction; for Bartimaeus, it represents a new way forward, a new mode of living – a new beginning.  In the depth of his suffering, reduced to begging and the precarious living it offered, new hope dawns, a new life makes itself apparent – a new beginning that arose out of the very suffering that seemed to represent a long, dark road to oblivion.

And here again, Mark offers hope to his community.  Yes, we live in a time of strife, a time of conflict.  Yes, we are surrounded by darkness and uncertainty.  Yes, everything we grew up with and knew and loved as familiar is changing.  But that is as it should be; the road is not easy because it was never meant to be easy; the journey is not about our comfort and security, it is about being open to the richness and abundance God offers.  Hope is not the same as certainty; it is deeper and richer and more mysterious; it is, as the English poet Andrew Marvell said about love: vaster than Empires, and more slow.

And who does not doubt that what was relevant in Mark’s day is still not relevant now? Threatened on so many fronts by so many dangers, how often does it seem that we are like the early Church, under siege and by no means assured of survival? But if we dare to take up the challenge of the future; if we dare to care for each other and for our world; if we dare to look for true strength in unlikely places – then the surprising love of God will always meet us, holding out the prospect of hope, of new life and new beginnings. 

God found Job and Bartimaeus when they least expected it, and the hope God offered became a real presence in their lives.  And that presence remains with us today, if we but look for it: in the image of a dead soldier receiving a final blessing; in the image of a man praying in the midst of his shattered town.  In the darkness that is itself the source of light.

A couple of years ago, the renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough was being interviewed by Andrew Denton.  Denton raised the issue of Attenborough’s agnosticism, and in explaining why he found it difficult to believe in God, Attenborough made the following revelation:

I frequently receive letters from people saying, in effect, “You’ve travelled around the world, you’ve seen all the marvels of nature, how could you not believe in a loving God who created the world”.  I reply to these letters by asking their authors to picture an eight year old child sitting by a river in Africa.  That child is guilty of nothing more than the usual childhood foolishness.  And yet there is a worm burrowing under that child’s eyelid, a worm that can only exist by burrowing under the eyelids of children, and it will cause that child to go blind and live out their life in disfigurement and pain.  How can you tell me that a loving God created that worm to do that to a child?

 This is a common response to what might be called “The Problem of God”: how can we reconcile a loving God, a God who cares for us and desires relationship with us, and whom we think of as holding out to us an invitation to salvation – how do we reconcile that image of God with all the terrible, seemingly arbitrary things that happen to us and to those we love?

It’s a question that’s been pressing us with unusual urgency in recent times.  The tsunami in Samoa and Tonga; the earthquakes in Indonesia; the typhoons in the Philippines; the flooding in India.  In all these events, thousands of people have been killed, tens of thousands left homeless, and perhaps hundreds of thousands traumatized by an experience of extreme suffering.  And to make things worse, all this hardship is completely unwarranted: every person who has been killed, injured, displaced, and traumatized was – in relation to these events – completely innocent of any wrongdoing.  Their only “crime” was to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when the ground shook, or a huge wave or a flood tide came along.

Where is God in any of this? Indeed, if God is present in these events, how can God possibly be understood as good or loving or caring?

Before we begin to explore this question, let me make one thing clear: I think it simply does no good to say that God has a master plan, that events happen for a reason that we can’t fathom, that some larger good or purpose is being served.  I not only think that this is a proposition that is fundamentally untrue, it is one that is profoundly cruel and inhuman.  It reduces human suffering to an instrumental level, making pain and loss and death nothing more than items in someone else’s agenda.  I don’t for a moment believe God operates that way; human beings might, but I don’t understand God as being prepared to let people suffer as casualties of some divine plan.

Likewise, I don’t think it’s appropriate to just shrug our shoulders and say: “That’s life”.  Natural disasters are a part of life, but pointing out the obvious does nothing to address the questions they raise.  If suffering, loss, hardship, and pain are “built in” to life, then what does this fact tell us about life, about creation, about God? More to the point, what does the expression “that’s life” tell us about ourselves? That when we are confronted by seemingly arbitrary suffering, all we can do is lapse into apathy and despair and the indifference of cliché?

These are questions that resound through the Book of Job.  Job, a righteous man, is overtaken by disaster: his children are killed, his servants are murdered, and his property destroyed or stolen.  More to the point, the text makes clear that it is God who causes Job to suffer: engaged in a cosmic wager with the Satan, God points out Job and brags about his righteousness.  The Satan responds by suggesting that Job is righteous only because he is well-to-do; let God strike him down with misfortune and he’ll change his tune.   And God says to the Satan: okay, do what you like to Job and we’ll see how he responds.

Well, the Satan does what he likes, and Job responds with what we might these days call post traumatic stress: he tears his clothes, covers himself in ashes, and sits on a rubbish heap lamenting his fate.  Then three of Job’s friends turn up and are shocked by his distress, so they try and comfort him.  But their idea of comfort is to resort to some very familiar platitudes.  God, they tell Job, doesn’t afflict the innocent and the righteous: Job must have done something to deserve his fate.  But let him repent, have trust in God, and everything will turn out for the best.

Reviewing these tactless remarks, we might be tempted to think ourselves greatly superior to Job’s friends; surely we would be much more sensitive and constructive! But I suspect that, in similar circumstances, our responses would be very much like theirs, because the idea of poetic justice, of someone getting their “come uppance” or “just deserts” is deeply ingrained in our psyche.   Even in the face of some patently undeserved hardship, we often respond with “how ironic” or “couldn’t happen to a nicer person”.  In other words, they mightn’t have deserved this, but they did deserve getting punished for something, so this will do.

Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, we see things differently, and Job reacts against his friends’ platitudes with dismay and anger.  I am innocent! he cries in anguish; God has done this to me, God has punished me unjustly! I don’t deserve this!

I…don’t…deserve…this! – the cry of outraged innocence down the ages.  But, of course, the point of the Book of Job is that Job is innocent.  And this innocence resonates through today’s reading: Job laments that if only he could find a way to contact God, then God could not help but agree with the reasonableness of Job’s position.  That being the case, Job would be vindicated and returned to his previous prosperity.

There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.  In other words, if only God would explain to Job why these things have happened to him, then Job would be able to convince God that he’s been unjustly targeted, and God – like a judge in a Court of Appeal – would say: yep, wrongful conviction, go free Job.

And it is this conceit that makes Job’s lament the mirror image of his friends’ inadequate platitudes.  Because just as they wrongly accuse Job of wrongdoing, so Job wrongly accuses God of a kind of spiritual breach of contract.  In his lament, Job effectively says: Listen, Lord, we had a deal: I be good and upstanding, and you protect me from hardship and suffering.  In other words, if God is good and loving and caring, then life should be a breeze and there should be nothing in creation that causes us harm or grief.

And this is the theme that undergirds David Attenborough’s hesitance to believe in God.  According to him, an innocent child suffering pain and disfigurement through infestation by a parasitic worm is evidence that either God doesn’t exist, or that God is cruel and arbitrary.  But what makes Attenborough’s position so astonishing is that, as a naturalist, he of all people should know better.  Having witnessed at first hand the intricate, complex relationship that binds all living things, he knows that life and death, disaster and opportunity, growth and decay are built into the very fabric of existence.  Far from been opposites, one positive one negative, they are, in fact, the very foundations of life. 

What this all means is that denying God because God doesn’t meet our demand for a sheltered, comfortable life amounts to a denial of life.   Life is rich and full and abundant; and part of that abundance is suffering and hardship.  That sounds counter intuitive, because most people instinctively want to avoid hardship, they consider suffering and grief to be abnormal, to be that which impoverishes us.  But the problem with thinking this way is that it leads people to construct a warped, one-sided definition of happiness: that happiness is all wealth and material goods and fulfilled ambition, and no sickness, or unemployment, or death. 

And this is a one-sided perspective we bring to our imaging of God: that God is all light, and peace, and granting wishes, as though God were some kind of over-indulgent parent or cool celestial guardian.  But God is none of these things; God is God.  And God’s caring and loving kindness and goodness can embrace and include situations and outcomes that, from the human point of view, involve injustice and unfairness and wronged innocence.

That, of course, is cold comfort to those in pain, and the cynical might suggest that it’s an easy theology for me, a comfortable, white, middle class male to espouse.  But the thing that I’ve noticed in all the media coverage of the recent disasters is that the people of Samoa and Tonga and Indonesia and the Philippines and India aren’t sitting around feeling sorry for themselves and saying: “God, where were you! Why didn’t you stop this from happening to us?” Yes, they are grieving; yes, they are traumatized; yes, they are crying out in anguish and despair.  But a lot of that expression seems to be taking place in their temples and churches and mosques.  Instead of turning away from or against God in their grief and rage, they are bringing their anger, their hurt, their outrage to God.

And isn’t it an interesting thing that the bitter, disillusioned rejection of God seems to be coming in large part from comfortable, white, middle class guys like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens – and from others like them.  Some might suggest that the people devastated by the recent disasters are responding with prayer and worship because they’re not sophisticated like us Westerners, and their worldview is simplistic and susceptible to religious manipulation.  But I suspect that, having lived with tsunamis and earthquakes and flooding monsoons for untold generations, they in fact possess a more sophisticated notion of life’s richness than we do, a notion that includes and involves life’s tragedies and sorrows. 

And it is this deeper notion of abundance that is present in today’s reading from Mark.  Jesus encounters a young man who seemingly has a good deal of richness, both in terms of his financial wealth and his moral credentials.  But Mark makes a point about the young man being rich and morally upright, not in order to take gratuitous swipes at the well-to-do or the pious, but in order to illustrate that if we think these things constitute spiritual richness, then we are in fact spiritually impoverished.   

Because the young man thinks that these human measures of abundance will earn him a share of eternal life.  It’s a presumption that is evident in his opening question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” As if eternal life was a matter of obeying the rules, of accumulating enough brownie points with God so that when you die God will check your record and say: “Yes, okay, fine – you’ve accumulated enough frequent flyer points, eternal life is your reward.”  But Jesus’ response informs the young man – and tells us – about his and our insufficiency: “You lack one thing”.  And that one thing is to enter into the abundance of faith, an abundance that quite often makes life more difficult for us.  An abundance  that, far from being a comfortable bolt hole in which we can hide from all the troubles and complexity of life, actually forces us to confront life’s troubling questions and deal with life’s tragedies – even when we don’t want to.

And it’s this image of abundance as difficulty, as hardship and suffering, that is implicit in Jesus’ instruction to the young man to go and sell everything.  Jesus is not romanticising poverty any more than he is demonising wealth.  But what he is saying is that, in faith, there is a richness, a wealth, that is greater than mere material well-being or mere moral goodness: it’s the wealth of encounter with God, with the One who is both creator and Lord of all, and who is present to each and every one of us.  In other words, it’s the wealth of relationship, of abandoning our own priorities and desires in order to be open to another.

But relationships are difficult, complex, and often quite fraught.  And in opening ourselves to someone else, we are required to make ourselves vulnerable to them, to run the risk of being hurt.  And we cannot expect to enter into relationship with God, with the One who is utterly Other, without experiencing pain and difficulty and hardship.  Because God, ultimately, is mystery; and the invitation to relationship with God is an invitation to explore the mystery of God – without any false promises or hopes, without any guarantees that our explorations won’t sometimes bring us to painful places.

In other words, Jesus is saying to the rich young man: don’t expect that faith will make life comfortable and easy for you, and that at the end you’ll get a first-class ticket to eternal life.  And Jesus is saying that to us today, and especially to the people who think that God’s goodness and love mean that we should be sheltered from hardship and suffering, or that our congregations should be full, or our youth groups overflowing with ardent young people, or that the media and society should be paying more attention to us and saying nice things about us.   Those kinds of desires are characteristic of what some philosophers call “the religion of comfortableness” – but they have nothing to do with the wealth of eternal life.

Rather, that wealth is present in Jesus’ reaction to the young man.  Jesus looks at him – and in the very moment that he knows the young man will fail him; indeed, precisely because he knows the young man will fail him – Jesus loves him.  Simply, completely, fully, and unconditionally loves him.  That is what is meant by grace: Jesus tells us what faith involves, what relationship implies, where real wealth resides; and then continues to hold us, even when we reject the invitation to love.  It is the grace that wounds us because we are vulnerable – which, in C S Lewis’ words, strikes us so hard that we can scarcely bear the pain – and which transforms us into healing.  It is the grace that caused Job to lament on his rubbish heap, and told the rich young man to give away all he had.

And it is the grace by which Christ willingly went to the Cross for all our sakes, to suffer alone the most horrendous and humiliating death imaginable.  It is the grace that affirms, in the squalor and injustice of Jesus’ crucifixion, the essential and unbreakable dignity of all life – and which therefore transforms the undeserved suffering we’ve witnessed recently into something more than meaningless and arbitrary death. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

One of the ironies of being a mature age theology student is that I find myself doing something normally associated with students of a much younger age: I study by day, and work a couple of nights a week at the local petrol station in order to make a contribution to the household finances.  My appreciation of the irony is deepened by the fact that most of my work colleagues are actually young people paying their way through university; but I am also keenly aware that there is something humbling in the fact that I switch between the sometimes lofty and abstract world of theology to the mundane, occasionally gritty, reality of work.

And indeed, it is humble work: tedious, routine, repetitive, and, during the peak hours, frantically busy.  And your humble status as a service station employee is frequently reinforced by the behaviour of some members of the general public: the impatient, the demanding, the inconsiderate, the arrogant.  The underlying assumption behind many of these behaviours is that you are just a service industry employee, and if you don’t perform your function properly – that is, immediately attend to their every demand and requirement – then you are not providing a proper service.  In which case, Heaven have mercy on you, because they will have none.

 Work, like much else in society, is divided by hierarchy.  There are certain jobs which, because of their status, or financial reward, or required qualifications, are thought of as highly desirable: and desirable not just in themselves, but because of what those jobs allegedly say about the people who hold them.  By contrast, there are jobs that are deemed less desirable; again, not only because of the conditions associated with those jobs, but because of what they, too, allegedly say about their occupants.  It is often assumed that a person in a highly desirable job must be at least in some measure intelligent, talented, industrious, and energetic; and it is as equally often assumed that those in positions lower down the pecking order are more than likely dull, unskilled, lazy, and apathetic.

 It is, of course, a kind of industrial snobbery; but there is more to it than that.  It is an indicator of the hallmarks which our society regards as valid measures of a person’s worth, the hallmarks that signify power and wisdom.   Of course, a person can be lucky, or charming, or well connected, and thereby manage to rise from humble to more exalted circumstances.  But the truth is, we’ve come to regard luck and charm and connection with a kind of begrudging admiration; afterall, if a person didn’t have something to them, how on earth could they be as lucky or charming as they are, or know as many people as they do?  In other words, whether from effort or fortune or nepotism, we’ve come to see success in employment – indeed, success generally – as indicative of value, as a measure of brains and capacity.

 But take a moment now to ask yourself this simple question: would our society collapse sooner if there were no brain surgeons, or if there was no-one to collect the garbage? I don’t think it will take anyone terribly long to realise that in order to survive, our society needs garbage collectors much more than it needs brain surgeons – yet why is it brain surgeons are paid so much more, and held in far higher esteem, than garbage collectors?

 I don’t mean to disparage brain surgeons; I merely want to put to you a stark example of the topsy-turvy nature of human thinking, of the wrong-headed way in which humans assess value and worth.  Perhaps a better example would be to ask: why is it that the cosmetic surgery industry – with all its face-lifts and liposuction and collagen injections – is booming, while the organ donor program struggles along in a parlous condition? I put it to you that cosmetic surgery is valued because it serves a selfish and individual purpose, a purpose that promotes what we want to the exclusion of others; whereas the organ donor program serves an altruistic, social purpose, a purpose that requires individuals to set aside their self-interest for the sake of others.

And the same applies to employment.  We value certain jobs and envy the people who occupy them because we perceive those jobs in terms of their capacity to satisfy our desire for wealth, possession, and status.  And we devalue certain other jobs, and despise the people who fill them, precisely because those jobs do not satisfy our desires, or because they require that we serve the needs of others.

 It is this topsy-turvy thinking that often makes Scripture appear radical and subversive.  But the truth is, if we were thinking with an adequate framework to begin with, Scripture would appear much more like straightforward common sense.  The apparently radical nature of Scripture is, in fact, a pointer to the inadequacy of our thinking.

 We see an example of this in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel.  Christ reveals to the disciples the mystery of mysteries: that God has not only humbled God’s-self to take human form in the person of Jesus, but this same Jesus will suffer a brutal death and then be raised into glory for the sake of all humanity.  But the only thing the disciples seem intent upon is arguing over who among them is the greatest.  It’s almost as though they see the resurrection not as God putting into effect the promise of salvation, but as the moment when one of them will be elevated to God-like glory.

 To be fair to the disciples, the text does tell us that they didn’t understand Jesus’ revelation, and are too afraid to ask him what it means.  But notice how their immediate reaction is to not argue among themselves over the question of what on earth Jesus was talking about; their reaction is to settle back into a squabble that clearly has been bubbling along for quite a while. 

It’s an almost comical scenario, worthy of Monty Python: Jesus, surrounded by his disciples and shining with the light of heavenly grace, reveals the great purpose of his ministry; then, in the slightly awkward silence that follows, the disciples look at one another, uncomprehending – until, someone says in a typically Pythonesque voice: “Anyway, I’m greater than you are; I’m his relative by marriage!”   And the disciples wander away, squabbling, leaving Jesus with arms upraised, looking like a slightly absurd parody of the Cross.

Make no mistake: this is an absurd scenario, and it’s one that Mark confronts us with in his typically blunt fashion.   He’s saying to us: hang on a second, just read that passage again; just read exactly what it is that Jesus has revealed to us; and then read how those nearest and dearest to him reacted to that revelation.  Because in that reaction you can see exactly why Jesus ended up being crucified: because people weren’t interested in what Jesus had to say; they weren’t interested in reversing their wrong-headed perceptions in order to realise Jesus’ radical sense.  The disciples, like the Pharisees – like us – are too preoccupied with their own concerns – with their own assumptions of the correctness of their understanding – to listen to the very message, the Good News, that Jesus has come to share.

One of the features of the service station where I work is that staff are subject to what are called “mystery shoppers”.  A “mystery shopper” is someone who turns up in the guise of a customer, but whose actual purpose is to assess the condition of the store and rate the performance of the employee on duty.  As it happens, I was on duty the last time a “mystery shopper” visited; and as it happens, I managed to score a very high rating.  As a reward for my “success”, the store manager gave me a gift voucher to a certain well-known Christian bookstore; knowing that I’m a ministry candidate, I think my manager assumed I avoid “non-Christian” bookstores! In any event, when I logged onto the store’s website and started browsing the online catalogue, I noticed that in among all the commentaries and apologetics and textbooks were page after page of books on the subject of effective leadership, building the church, and making Christianity relevant to wider society.  Likewise, there were reams of what I can only describe as “self-help” books: books that purported to show the reader how to realise their potential, maximise their effectiveness, and increase their well-being. 

What was truly astonishing about these books was that they all purported to be based on Biblical principles.  But as I prepared for today’s service by reading the assigned lectionary passages, I wondered: had any of the authors of those books actually taken notice of what was written in Scripture? These authors claimed to be following Biblical principles; but I suspected they were actually pandering to our desires, peddling easy answers that told us what we wanted to hear, not what the Scriptural authors actually wanted to say.

Afterall, who doesn’t want to build the church, fill the pews, and restore the church’s former standing in society? Who doesn’t want to be an effective leader, an achiever who turns potential into reality, a well-adjusted and fulfilled human being? But today’s passage from Mark confronts us with the challenging question: what does any of that have to do with the Kingdom of God? Does the Good News Jesus proclaimed depend on the size of our churches and the numbers who turn up on Sunday? Does the promise of redemption in Christ depend on the size of our bank balances or whether we’re socially popular?  Does the validity of Christian faith depend on our capacity to influence others or get the media to say nice things about us?

Or do all of these things depend on one thing and one thing only: the sovereign grace of God, manifest in Christ, present today in the Holy Spirit, to which we are called to give witness – not as an elite or a Chosen People, but as broken humans ministering to a broken world?

The wisdom of wealth and the wisdom of power is earthly wisdom, the kind of wisdom that says a brain surgeon is more important than a garbage collector, that saving our looks and attending to our ego is more important that saving life and attending to human dignity.  But the wisdom of humility and the wisdom of sacrifice is the wisdom of God; the wisdom that calls our understanding into question by declaring that real life, real wisdom, real power  only comes in and through the One who lived as we live, who died as we die – but whose rising overthrows our death and our sin, making both nothing more than earthly powers ultimately under God’s control.

It is the wisdom that suggests that perhaps theology isn’t so lofty and abstract afterall; if only because it calls us to stop distracting ourselves with earthly concerns and pay heed to the One in whom real power and real wisdom abide.   

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

PRESCRIPT: Recently, my wife Sandy and I were part of a group of theology students who travelled to the little town of New Norcia, Western Australia, to spend a week with the monks of the Benedictine Abbey there, sharing their lives as they sang the seven Offices of the day, as well as working on assignments and projects for our theological studies.  This was a blessed and grace-filled time, enabling us all to tap into the rich and ancient traditions of Benedictine spirituality, undergirt as they are by the Rule of Benedict, which provides a shape and a purpose for the monks’ lives.  Part of the students’ assessment criteria was the compilation of a journal; not a blow-by-blow account of the week spent at the Abbey, but a reflection upon the experience itself, its impact and meaning.  For my journal, I composed a series of short poems (with introductions) as a kind of impressionistic survey of my thoughts and feelings.  Now that the journals have been assessed, I feel I can now properly post my poems here to share with others.  I don’t make any claims for their quality as poems; but I have they will provide an insight into my own experience.

***

A Fat Man’s Reaction To New Norcia – Introduction

This was the first poem I wrote in reaction to New Norcia, and reflects one of my first impressions: the narrowness of the doorways into the guest house and common room area, which were usually half closed, and required me to step sideways through them (while breathing in at the same time!).  So the tone of this poem is intended to be deliberately comic.

But there is a more serious undertone in that the monastic life is often referred to as the “narrow path”, or as entering the Kingdom of God through the “narrow doorway”.  And so the comic metaphor of the narrow doors at New Norcia also comes to represent the difficulties and challenges of the monastic life, as well as the struggles of faith and wrestling with questions of vocation.  But it also attempts to capture, through the overabundance-poverty dichotomy, the theme that we deliberately place hurdles and obstacles between ourselves and God, for all that we may hunger for a spiritually fulfilled life.  Hence the narrowness of the doorway is often of our own making.

A Fat Man’s Reaction to New Norcia

Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation.  It is bound to be narrow at the outset.

(Rule of Benedict, Prologue: 48)

 They must be taking the piss!

All these narrow doors, and half-opened
at that.  It’s not as if
we’re in the cloister here;
no monk’s domain this, and yet
these narrow doors! these narrow ways!

Patience, the Saint said.  Do not fear or fret
if at first the way is thin.
All well and good
if you want to be a monk; but I’m
just passing through.  Who

are these Benedictines, that their God
told them to build houses
just the starved and poor can break into?
I’m too well off, too full
of stolen fruit, unworthy

of this place.  Perhaps Friar Tuck
was a lousy Benedictine, too;
or maybe just another balding slob,
holding captive a starved and
hungry wretch,

pining for God.

***

Vigils – Introduction

From my own perspective, the two Offices that had the greatest impact on me were Vigils and Lauds, the first two Offices of the day.  The fact that both were conducted early in the morning – Vigils while it was still dark, Lauds as dawn was rising – seemed to me to especially tap into the sense of “mysterious presence” that contemplative spirituality has always invoked: the presence of God in absence, in stillness, in silence.  So these were the two Offices that touched me the deepest, left me with the greatest sense of the power of the contemplative life.

However, there was also an element of difficulty, in which making the effort to attend these Offices was hard work. This was also bound up with the hour of the morning in which they were held; and Vigils was especially onerous in this respect.  This was brought home to me during a conversation with Brother Bernard in which he said: “I hate getting up early in the morning, and I’ve hated it for fifty years!”.  This illustrated a powerful reality: the life of the monastic community is by no means an easy or comfortable life; that it requires dedication, persistence, and commitment.  In short, a true vocation to the hardships and inconveniences involved.  It is why this poem is dedicated to Brother Bernard.

But it was this very fact of hardship, and of the profound commitment of the monks to this hardship, that ultimately made this Office one of my personal highlights of the visit to New Norcia.  That the monks of the community – every day – arise, as it were, before the rest of the world to pray for the world I found deeply moving.  It seems to me that there is an incarnational, embodied ministry occurring in this Office; a ministry of taking up a burden, a hardship, on behalf of, and for the sake of, the rest of humanity.

I have tried to capture these sentiments in this poem.  

Vigils

for Father Bernard

Stumbling from our beds,
catching breath in shock at cold,
we curse the bell that calls us
from our rest
and thus to prayer.  Absurd
to be awake when the world –
at least, the world in this hemisphere –
is still asleep!

And yet we rest assured,
knowing that we sleep while monks,
absurd in their absurd ritual,
bless the night
and consecrate the dawn;

setting up the day
on struts we cannot see,
which, nonetheless,
hold us in their love.

***

Lauds – Introduction

In the Introduction to the poem for Vigils, I have indicated why the Vigils and Lauds Offices were, for me, the most powerful and engaging of all the daily Offices we shared during the New Norcia trip.  However, the Office of Lauds had its own grace, which came about quite by accident.

From the outset, I had decided that with each Office, I would sit on the opposite side of the chapel on which I had sat during the previous Office.  I did so in order to experience being on “different sides” of the various responsive prayers and psalmodies that made up each of the Offices.  And it so happened that during the group’s first Lauds session, I was seated on that side of the chapel that provided a view of the breaking dawn through the windows.  Despite there being not much to see, it was a beautiful sight: the gradually lightening sky that ended in a crescendo-like sunburst; and the dark silhouetted branches of a tree outside that by its very darkness made the rising dawn all the more apparent.  I was so taken with the sight that, for each subsequent Lauds, I broke the pattern of swapping sides; I would sit on the same side of the chapel at Lauds just so that I could see the sun rising.

However, with each subsequent Lauds, a sense of dissatisfaction, of disappointment began to creep into my consciousness.  The sunrise was always beautiful, and on an aesthetic level, I was always stirred by its loveliness; but somehow it always seemed diminished, lesser than what it was the first time I had experienced it.  Then, on the day before our departure from New Norcia, it occurred to me – I am tempted to say “dawned” on me! – that what was missing was not my appreciation of the beauty of sunrise, but my understanding that what I was looking for was a kind of “false dawn”.   It was as though I was looking at the metaphor and not the reality to which it pointed; that the splendour of the dawn sky was but a reflection of the splendour of the “light” within the chapel, the “world without end” which Christ enacted, and which the Office commemorated.

And so, for the final Lauds of the trip, I broke my pattern again: I sat on the side of the chapel facing away from the rising dawn, hoping to catch something of “the greater Light” to which I refer in this poem.

Lauds

Fed and fuelled,
we step with lighter feet to Lauds;
lightly, we let the psalmody
wash back and forth.

But my eyes have strayed
beyond the text, toward
the window where,
etched against the sky,

a darkened silhouette,
trees announce the coming dawn.
Yellow-gold, seeping, bleeding
out the dark, the Sun comes,

summoned by the psalms of monks
whose lowered eyes
adore a greater Light:
world without end, Amen.

***

New Norcia Ikon – Introduction

In some respects, this is the most personal of all the poems.

I came across the ikon in the New Norcia gift store, and was immediately drawn to it, even though there were other – arguably better – ikons on the shelf of the Virgin and of Christ.  But the boldness of the colours drew my eye initially, and then the imagery of the ikon spoke very powerfully to me.  St George slaying the dragon did not seem to me to be a romantic story only tangentially associated with the Christian faith; at that moment, and in association with my experience of the lectio divina session dealt with by the poem relating to it, the notion of having dragons to slay seemed especially apt. 

This may seem contradictory given the lectio divina session produced a sense of allowing the weeds to grow with the wheat, trusting that, through the process of faith, the negative won’t destroy the positive; but what this ikon spoke to was the element of contest or struggle which the weeds/wheat metaphor alluded to.  The weeds won’t simply disappear or not overrun the wheat by being ignored; they had to be contended with, struggled against, kept from becoming rampant.  And that is what this ikon seemed to be saying; George was not so much slaying (as in, permanently divesting himself of) the dragon, as encountering and subduing.  The final slaying belongs to God; in the meantime, we are commissioned by faith to engage with the dragon and struggle against it.

But this struggle is not just in the negative sense of suppressing our vices and appetites; rather, it is about the struggle that is faith itself, that is the engagement and encounter of faith with which we must wrestle constantly.  And so the ikon is ultimately hopeful and encouraging; through its focus the struggle can always be renewed, even after a mistake or a lapse.  The point is to try, to engage and contend.

And it is in this call to contention that we are “chosen”.  Christ was the Chosen One, the Messiah.  We are “chosen”, not because we are god-like, but precisely the opposite: because our struggle is the struggle for humility, to overcome the conceit that our imago dei confers upon us any “godliness”.  On the contrary, we are made in God’s image because God wishes to engage us, to join with us in relationship; and so our struggle is to resist the temptation to turn our backs upon that invitation, to imagine that our capacity for creation and destruction means we can exist without God.  The dragon is the dragon of pride and brokenness; and the “slaying” is not the triumph of conquest, but the durability of hope and faith.

New Norcia Ikon

A person never chooses an ikon; the ikon always chooses the person.

(Popular maxim)

Did I choose you – or you me?
Did you know I was the One
from the moment of your birth,
the moment when the grains of wood
mixed with paint
and gave you form?

Did you wait patiently on shelves,
in storerooms, in cargo holds, on shop displays,
knowing that after years and months
and weeks and days
I’d be along?

Did you gleam anew, bright colours
through years and ages shining,
drawing your Chosen One to you?
My eye and hand reaching like a lover
for the loved,
saw not dust but sanctity,
not age nor faded shades,

but only truth.  All the fear and need –
the battles to be fought,
the dragons to be slain -
these your image captured in a glance.

Was it then you went to work,
articulating need,
articulating every prayer
your Chosen had to put to God
but could not speak?

And in your silent prayerfulness,
wood and coloured pigment – ikon writing -
did you speak: healing, bridging Void,
bringing your fallen Chosen One
closer to God?

***

A Lectio Divina Communion – Introduction

If there was one particular moment in the New Norcia trip that was a “standout” or “highlight” moment, it was the session of lectio divina reading and prayer which Abbot John shared with the group.  I have practiced lectio divina reading in a group setting before, but never with such effect and power; and I think this was due largely to Abbot John’s stewardship of the session, and his own deep understanding of, and immersion in, lectio divina as a discipline within the contemplative life.  Hence this poem is dedicated to him.

The evolution of this poem is complex, and I’m not sure I completely understand the process by which it came about.  The poem begins with words which formed part of the prayer I shared with the group during the prayer period at the end of the lectio divina session, and which were themselves inspired by the reading that Abbot John used (and which form the epigram to the poem).  The use of “soul” in the negative sense in the poem stems from impressions I formed from the Scriptural reading during the lectio divina process: the passage referring to the “enemy” suggested the enemy within myself or that was myself – my weaknesses, my failings, my derelictions; but the passage in which the weeds are allowed to grow up alongside the wheat suggested the passage from the Rule of Benedict in which the members of monastic communities are counselled to bear with one another’s failings with patience and generosity.  So there was a sense of “soul” engaged in a dual process: of the negative, even destructive attributes of our being counterpoised against a generosity and forbearance that enables the “wheat of God’s love” to grow in us, despite our brokenness and failings.

And I think this is where the connection/crossover to Communion occurs.  Wheat, of course, suggests bread, which suggests Eucharist.  And Eucharist embodies and remembers the ultimate crossover: the human-and-divine Christ who was Jesus of Nazareth, bridging the void of alienation and breaking the power of sin and death.  But this is also the purging that occurs at the end of this passage from Matthew’s Gospel: in judgement we are not condemned but redeemed, made whole and fully, properly human through unification with God in Christ.  The weeds are destroyed (not individuals but that which destroys our humanity) and the wheat harvested, resulting in the full fruits of salvation.

A Lectio Divina Communion

for Abbot John

…an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.  So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.  And the slaves of the householder came and said to him: “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?  Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered: “An enemy has done this.”  The slaves said to him: “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied: “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest…”

(Matthew 13: 25-30, NRSV)

The wheat of God’s love…

These words I pray,
hoping that God will harvest in me
the fruits of faith:
the ears of grain that feed not mouths
nor bellies nor appetites,
but only the gnawing hunger
we know as soul.

Soul, which reaches out to God
to devour, to consume with hungry mouth
the bread of life,
the breath of all creation,
the wine of blood sacrifice.

Soul, which cannibalises heart and mind,
leaving just the gristle of our days
to chew upon like cud.  A child,
I used to pluck up weeds and
munch the stem, waiting
for the tang of foreign flesh:
vegetable,
cellulose and chlorophyll,
plant and Sun solidified.

But now,
in the quiet of monkish chant,
in the still silence of an ever-present Ghost,
my soul sticks out its tongue to take
this small wafer of Love,

this tiny seed of hope.

***

Black Crosses – Introduction

This poem recalls a particularly moving moment when Abbot John was showing the group through the enclosed area of the monastery, and was escorting us through the monks’ refectory; at one of the spaces at the dining table was a small black cross, which Abbot John explained was placed in memoriam of a member of the community who had died recently.  Whenever a member of the community dies, a cross is placed at their space at the table for a period of thirty days as part of the mourning process.  Abbott John recalled that at one stage earlier in the year, there had been two crosses at the table, marking the closely occurring deaths of two members of the community; for such a close-knit and small community, this represented an especially difficult period of loss and grief.

This poem touches on those issues of loss and suffering, drawing on Walter Bruggemann’s exegesis of Genesis[1] as well as the experience of Job to explore the theme of pain inflicted by love, and how in the wounding that results hope nonetheless also rises.  The crosses are thus both reminders of loss and symbols of mourning for the departed, as well as pointers toward hope, for the Cross leads to resurrection, that hope which surpasses even the totality of death.

Black Crosses

Every contact leaves a trace. 

                                                   (Henri Locard)

Poignant in their silent speech,
small black crosses mark the place
where souls now stilled
gentled time and space:
soul-shaped holes filled with memories. 

(Who feeds the soul, nourishes with grace
that part of us that touches God
and mortalness? Did Jacob,
wrestling at Peniel, bless
the One who wounded him with love

and broke his hip? Did Job,
filing suit against the Lord, speak
of Joy: that strange light
filled with pain and peace,
that strikes and shatters us

and slips away,
leaving us the trace of hope
called woundedness?)

Poignant in their silent speech,
small black crosses mark the place
where souls given up to God
rest in peace:
soul-shaped holes, love’s blessing/mystery.

***

Codex Vaticanus – Introduction

This poem recalls, what was for me, one of the most delightful events of the whole trip: the escorted visit which Father David provided myself and Sandy to the monks’ library to view the facsimile copies of the Codex Vaticanus,  which form part of the monastery’s collection.  The facsimiles date from the early 1800s; but for me, the real interest in these documents relates to the fact that, along with the Codex Sinaiticus,  the original CV is the earliest known collection of texts of what was to become the canonical Bible.  The New Norcia copies take the form of eight folio volumes; and the facsimile reproduced the original with all its lacunae and other manuscript features.  But the most fascinating aspect of the text was the fact that the script was written (in Greek) without breaks or punctuation to distinguish words, phrases, or sentences from one another.  I wondered what it must have been like to have had to read this text aloud, never mind silently to one’s self!

But the pleasure of this experience was heightened by the fact of Father David’s generosity which enabled us to see these documents; for only the day before, as the whole group was being shown through the monks’ enclosure by Abbot John, we had encountered Father David as we left the reading room; and he had looked none-too-pleased to see us traipsing through what was, afterall, part of his and the other monks’ home.  And yet later that same day, a conversation with Father David had lead to his unhesitating offer to show the copies of the Codex to myself and Sandy.  To me, it was an extension of the unstinting hospitality we had been shown the whole time, the hospitality which in the Rule of Benedict calls the monks to view all strangers as Christ. 

This poem is dedicated to Father David for extending to Sandy and myself that hospitality.

Codex Vaticanus

for Father David

I know it’s not really real:
a copy, a facsimile made
fourteen hundred years
after the date.  But to have
this book beneath my hands -
it’s touch, it’s feel, it’s shape -
oh, the joy, the rapture of the thing!

There the text.  The Cyrillic, in capitals,
line on line, unbroken,
word merging into word.
Phrase conspires with phrase to confuse,
to reduce Scripture
to a stream of consciousness.

In the beginning was the Word.
Perhaps – but this ancient text,
lacunae where time and rising damp
and overuse
punch holes in thought;
perhaps it’s just the middle ground
where we and God
standing face to face, marvel
at what the other’s wrought.

***

Profession (of Faith) – Introduction

This is the poem which I shared with the group on the final morning of the New Norcia trip – the poem which, in many respects, sums up the essence of my experience of the community and conveys the pre-eminent image of the monastic life which formed in my mind.

The title is deliberately ambiguous.  It can either be read as a statement (“profession of faith”) or as a title with a subtitle (“profession: of faith”).  This reflects both the commitment to a verity that is involved in any profession of faith, but also the ambiguity of that verity given the limitedness of human comprehension – there are some things which we cannot “know” are true, which we literally have to accept as matters of faith.

The subtitle “of monks and vocation” further reflects this ambiguity, because it seems that vocation involves commitment to the very uncertainty and contingency that faith embraces.  But it also touches on the strange duality of human nature: the isolation of our individuality over/against the social and communal nature of our being. This was reinforced by the observation of one of the monks that communal life in a monastery was not a cozy, secluded club; it was to be thrown together with other people with whom one often does not get along, and with whom relationship is difficult. In that respect, monastic life was much like family life: we can choose our friends, but not our families; and in both monasteries and families, the relationships that result are things that have to be worked through.

And it is in this context that personal loneliness arises: the sense of being in a community and yet isolated.  All human beings are called to a certain loneliness, the isolation that is their unique and unreproducible experience of life.  But vocation itself – whether the vocation of faith, or work, or ordination – also involves a loneliness, a “setting aside” that can be shared with others, and yet which is impossible for others to completely enter into and “know”.  And yet it is by this loneliness that we are brought into community: we are the communion of the lonely, the isolated, the alienated.  And it is in this communion that Christ meets us, overcoming the ultimate alienation of sin and death; but also, through faith and the koinonia of faith, overcoming our existential loneliness. 

Profession (of Faith)

of monks and vocation

I’m always separate and apart.
There are hints, sometimes,
suggestions of fellowship:
but always the wall,
the coming in between.

We are who we are.  But

it’s hard not to feel lonely, now and then;
to look up at the stars –
far apart in time and space,
but patterned nonetheless –
and envy them their congregation.

Except –
once in a while,
rare and precious,
sacred luminosity conspires,
brings the cosmic loneliness together,
gathered in His name –
and makes them One.

The American historian, Shelby Foote, is perhaps best known as the pre-eminent historian of the American Civil War, that terrible conflict fought between 1861 and 1865 between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy, and which resulted in the abolition of slavery in North America.  Foote wrote three seminal books on the subject, and of the many colourful characters who inhabit the pages of his work, Foote later declared that the two who were most difficult to speak of were also the two most famous:  on the one hand, the great Confederate general Robert E Lee; and, on the other, the revered US President, Abraham Lincoln.

Foote referred to Lee as “the marble man”, because most peoples’ image of him bore a greater resemblance to the heroic military statues that were later erected in Lee’s honour than they did to the reality of the man himself.  Likewise, Foote observed that Lincoln’s memory had become so “smothered in tales of his compassion” that people were often shocked, indeed offended, when it was pointed out to them what a shrewdly calculating, unsentimental, and intensely pragmatic politician Lincoln actually was.

Foote’s dilemma points to a reality about human memory: our recollections tend to gloss over the truth; and when it comes to those we admire, we tend to lionise them to an extent unwarranted by the facts.  As the great German novelist, Erich Maria Remarque, cynically observed in his book The Black Obelisk, reading funeral notices in newspapers would give you the impression that human beings were absolutely perfect, for there “you would find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish, self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, business men in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi was an infinite egotist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers – in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one’s having been aware of it.”

You may be surprised to learn that a similar rose-coloured distortion infects most peoples’ understanding of Jesus .  Most of us have seen at one time or another images of Jesus in which he stares wistfully at us, eyes deep and soulful, while the pure light of sanctity radiates from him.  This is an image of Jesus as all divinity and no humanity; indeed, one of the heresies of the early Church was that Jesus was entirely divine and only “appeared” to be human.  But Christians confess that Jesus was both “fully” human and “fully” divine; and so the one-sided picture presented by the “all divine” image of Jesus is inadequate.

But in what sense was Jesus “fully” human? Christians confess that Jesus was human in every sense except one – he was without sin.  But in every other respect, Jesus lived the life we live: he breathed as we breathe, ate as we eat, felt as we feel.  He could experience cold, and hunger, and pain; he could know moments of despair and grief and temptation.  Jesus was, in every sense of the word, alive.

But if Jesus was without sin, then what are we to make of passages like today’s Gospel reading, when we encounter Jesus behaving less than perfectly? Well, if you define sin as doing something that is wrong, and you accordingly define sinlessness as never doing the wrong thing, then you find yourself in a bit of a bind.  Because, clearly, in today’s passage from Mark, Jesus does do something wrong: he treats the Syrophonecian woman with appalling racism and sexism.

He treats her with utter contempt.

If we find this suggestion shocking or even offensive, it’s because centuries of popular piety have helped us to construct an image of Jesus the meek and mild, Jesus the holy and saintly bringer of peace, Jesus the good and caring shepherd who is also the innocent Lamb of God.  It’s an image that helps us ignore or gloss over those passages from Scripture we might otherwise find disturbing: Jesus cursing and reviling the Pharisees and Sadducees; Jesus violently expelling the money-lenders from the Temple; Jesus losing patience and upbraiding his disciples when they fail to understand.  Confronted by these episodes and their less-than-flattering implications, we can either try and ignore them or explain them away; or we can try and discover what it is the Gospel writers are saying, discover why they included such events in their text.

In today’s reading, Jesus leaves Galilee and goes to a region along the coast in what is now Lebanon.  He enters the large and ancient city of Tyre, a stranger in an unfamiliar location, hoping to pass unnoticed.  It’s as if he wants to get away from it all: from the crowds, from all the demands for a miracle, perhaps even from the disciples as well.  But even here, one person manages to track him down, one woman who wants Jesus to release her daughter from possession by spirits.

And in response, Jesus loses it.  And we all know what that’s like: when the demands of others become too much, when the task of journeying with them becomes too difficult, and all we want is time alone – to have someone come along and impose upon us makes us want to lash out.

And lash out is exactly what Jesus does.  Indeed, he doesn’t just tell the woman to go away, he calls her a dog.  Now – you ask any woman what it means to be called a dog, and she’ll tell you all about the humiliation involved in such an insult.  But can you imagine what it meant for this woman, desperate for her daughter’s sake, to be dismissed in such degrading terms?

Because Jesus’ words involve not merely an insult to her personhood, her gender, but also her ethnicity.  Jesus is saying: You are not of the household of Israel; you are just a dog, not worthy to be fed as the people of God are fed.

Put yourself in this woman’s place.  You’re daughter is consumed by possession, you’re at your wits end about how to heal her – and then, suddenly, out of the blue, you hear a rumour that this great healer is in town, a healer renowned for driving out spirits and curing the sick.  And so you go to him hoping he’ll respond to your pleas for help – and instead he rejects you in the most insulting, degrading manner possible.

How would you feel? What would you do? How would you react? I don’t know about anyone else, but if someone treated me like this, I’d be pretty angry.  I’d want to lash out, to give the person who did this to me a dose of their own medicine.  I’d want to get my own back.

But this woman, who wants nothing more than for her daughter to be healed, doesn’t lash out; she doesn’t get angry, she doesn’t return insult for insult.  Instead, she takes Jesus’ words and turns them against him by agreeing with him.  She says: yes, I am a dog; but even dogs get fed with the same food that nourishes the least of their masters.

What’s the point of all this? Why on earth did Mark include this episode – with its less than flattering implications for Jesus’ attitude to foreign women – in his Gospel?

Mark’s Gospel was written at a time when Christianity was still a sect within Judaism.  As such, the first Christians, who were Jews, were fiercely debating the question of whether or not non-Jews could be admitted into the faith; and if they were, whether or not they would have to adopt Jewish religious practices and customs.  The attitude displayed by Jesus toward the Syrophonecian woman symbolises the attitude being displayed by many Jewish Christians toward hopeful Gentile converts.  They were saying: You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, you’re not entitled to be part of God’s salvation. 

But in the figure of the Syrophonecian woman, Mark is describing the attitude Gentiles should take: say, yes, we are not part of God’s People; but God promised Abraham that the Chosen People would be a blessing to the nations – and through Christ we have come to faith in God, we have come to participate in the salvation promised to the whole world. 

In other words, the point of this episode is that it is a message of encouragement and hope.  Mark is saying to Gentiles that the way is not easy, that to seek God is to encounter difficulties and hardship, often at the hands of people who imagine themselves to righteous and God-fearing.  But if faith is a journey then persistence is the key: persist in seeking God, as the Syrophonecian woman persisted, and the journey will take you in some extraordinary and blessed directions – directions very much like the ones in which the Christian community to whom Mark was writing were also being taken.

But as Christians reading this text 2000 years after it was written, this episode also contains a warning.  Mark’s Gospel is about “insiders” and “outsiders”: the “insiders” who think they’re the model of religious fidelity; and the “outsiders” whom they shun, whom they think are not only beneath their notice, but God’s as well.  But Mark’s Gospel says this is not so; it is their very status as “outsiders” that makes sinners precious to God. And by making Jesus the “righteous one” who treats the Syrophonecian woman so shabbily, Mark is giving us images of the “ultimate insider” and the “ultimate outsider”.  And he is warning us: remember, we were “outsiders” once, too; when others come to us, let us not reject them because they don’t come up to our standard of acceptability.  Let us remember instead that they are just as acceptable in God’s eyes as we are.

It will probably come as no surprise to learn that there are people in the US who still idolise the Confederacy: they gloss over its association with slavery and remember only its military glory.  But they would be shocked if they realised that the shining hero who stands at the centre of their fantasies – Confederate General Robert E Lee – profoundly disapproved of slavery and only joined the Confederacy out of a misguided allegiance to his home state of Virginia.  Likewise, the people who revere Abraham Lincoln and imagine he was the American equivalent of the great English abolitionist William Wilberforce, would be shocked to learn that Lincoln initially had no intention of ending slavery; he stated more than once that if the Union could win the Civil War without freeing any slaves, he would be happy with victory on those terms.

Likewise, Mark casting Jesus in a role we normally associate with the Pharisees is a shocking reversal of our normal expectations.  But it is a necessary shock to throw us out of our complacency, out of our tendency to dehumanise others by romaniticising them.  Mark did not romanticise Jesus: Jesus was the Son of God, the One who came to live a human life as a human being.  And because Jesus was God among us, God as us, Jesus could be portrayed doing and saying terrible things – even if he was without sin.

All or nothing.

If there’s an overall principle by which the media is apparently guided, this appears to be it.  Either we’re drowning in a sea of facts and figures; or else were starving in a drought of silence.  Indeed, it mostly seems that while one or two stories grab all the headlines, other matters, equally or even more important, receive little attention.

We’ve had a good dose of that in recent times.  First, it was the tediously named “Utegate Affair”, with its allegations of political favouritism and forged emails; then it was the death of Michael Jackson, and a reportage that has ranged from the highs and lows of Jackson’s career to the frankly ghoulish details of the autopsy report.  It’s been a coverage that has been at times nauseating in its intensity; an intensity that has often had me wondering what else has been going on in the world, what else has happened that we haven’t heard about.

All – or nothing.

I know it’s a slightly artificial exercise, but imagine for a moment how the modern media would have approached today’s Scriptural readings.  I suspect the events depicted in today’s reading from Second Samuel would have received lots of attention; afterall, a royal coronation is a big deal.  There’d be in-depth coverage of the king-to-be’s background; reams of analysis by self-styled “royal watchers” and various other experts; endless speculation on the subject of the new king’s likely policies, and their implications for the nation and the world.  Long before the crowning itself, we’d be subject to hours of “royal specials” and “coronation exclusives” as the networks vied with each other for the biggest story or the most sensational angle.

I suspect, however, that the same could not be said about the events depicted in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel.  What, afterall, could the possible headline be? Preacher Rejected By Congregation? Twelve Homeless Men Tell The World To Repent? Hardly anything scandalous or salacious in that! Not at all the sort of thing to sell newspapers or boost ratings.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? For I suspect that were the media to be at all interested in the events recalled by Mark, it would be in the sneering, cynical fashion that has become the hallmark of a certain kind of journalism – a journalism which has pretensions to scepticism and moral righteousness, but whose real objective is to expose others to ridicule and denigration. You can picture the story – would-be village prophet and decipherer of Scriptures turns out to be working-class charlatan.  Group of preachers and miracle workers revealed as a band of scruffy beggars.  Hidden camera footage shows a trouble-making Jesus causing a fuss in the synagogue; similar footage exposes Jesus giving instructions to his followers about how to successfully welch off others. 

It would be so easy to do.  The text which we interpret as a metaphor for Jesus’ rejection by the world, a rejection that forms the very basis for the proclamation of the Good News, can be used to paint a very different picture altogether.

All – or nothing.

It seems like we’re always stuck at one of those extreme ends of the pendulum swing, doesn’t it? We’re either riding the dizzy heights of ridiculous good fortune, or we’re being cut down to size by unrelenting bad luck.  The spectacular wealth and privilege of industrialised nations is counterbalanced by the extreme poverty and suffering of the developing world.  The years of stunning growth and declarations by economists that we’ve at last found a way out of the boom-bust cycle are followed by extraordinary market collapses and heart-rending misery and hardship for millions.  The technology that has lifted untold numbers of people out of poverty, by also being the agent of climate change, has become the very thing that threatens our species with extinction. 

Earlier this week, perhaps as many as one in two Australians took a punt on winning the Oz Lotto jackpot, a punt given added poignancy by the fact that we are struggling through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Of the millions who had a flutter, only two entrants walked away with $53 million each – leaving everyone else to contemplate what might have been.

All – or nothing.  We’re desperately locked into the mindset that says unless we have it all, we have nothing.  Unless we’re a celebrity, we’re a nobody.  Unless we have publicity – any publicity, even bad publicity – we’re invisible.  I read recently that one of the celebrities who appears regularly on the covers of the so-called “gossip magazines” said that unless she saw herself in the media on a constant basis, she would feel as though she didn’t exist.  I recall a former work colleague telling me that she had spent $500 in text messages voting for her favourite in Australian Idol because she couldn’t bear the thought of that person not winning.  And even Michael Jackson, despite the pitiable circumstances of his death, and the sad and all-too-public dysfunction of his private life, even he was to be envied – afterall, he had made it.  He was rich, he was famous – he had it all.

King David came from humble stock.  A shepherd boy, his moment of glory came when he stepped from the battle line to engage the Philistine champion, Goliath, in single combat. Then he rode the roller-coaster of fame, until King Saul fell from grace and he and his sons died in battle.  After a short period of anarchy, David emerges as the popular choice as king – as we read in today’s passage from Second Samuel, the people come to David and literally beg him to be king.

So, in conventional terms, David has made it.  He has power, he has wealth, he has renown.  His happiness seems based on his ascent from humble obscurity to royal prestige.  Except – if you read the Psalms that are attributed to David, you get a very different picture.  These texts express very human fears and anxieties, concerns that are in no way alleviated by the power of kingship.  For example, in Psalm 3: O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying to me, “There is no help for you in God!”  And in Psalm 86: Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.

That’s an astonishing thing, isn’t it – that a Psalm that says “I am poor and needy” should be attributed to a king.  But that’s because these texts reveal a profound truth: that “making it” – as Michael Jackson “made it”, and as our fame and wealth obsessed society dreams of “making it” – is just an illusion.  Not because being famous or wealthy are in themselves necessarily bad things – it’s simply that they will not affirm life.

It’s not a case of all or nothing – it’s a case of all and nothing.

The reception which Jesus receives in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel is, by contrast, starkly different.  Here’s this bloke from a humble artisan background, whose mother and family are known to everyone in the district – here he is, going around performing miracles and presuming to teach in the synagogue!  And as the text says, the people took offence at him, because they could not reconcile the power of his words and deeds with the obscurity of his background.  Surely such things are the preserve of kings and prophets and priests?

It’s almost as if the people have forgotten that David came from as humble a background as Jesus.  The mystique, the aura of the long-awaited Messiah has replaced the substance of who the Messiah is and what the messianic project involves.    Because the Messiah is not a king projecting power and glory, as David projected the political and economic power of his kingdom.  The Messiah is not a celebrity prophet, revered for their sayings and righteousness, as Moses and Elijah and Isaiah were revered by later generations.  The Messiah is not a wealthy “pillar of society” surreptitiously letting it be known by their good works and philanthropic enterprises just how wealthy they are. 

No, the Messiah is this obscure man from a backwater district of Judea who can be amazed by the unbelief of his nearest and dearest, and who can only ruefully comment on the lack of appreciation for prophets in their own time and place.  But what sets Jesus apart – what makes him the Messiah – is his response: instead of rejecting the people because they have rejected him, he sees this as the very indictor of the urgency and necessity of his ministry.  Jesus understands that the longing for a Messiah, and the aura of majesty and power in which the Messiah has been clothed by popular imagination, is, in fact, emblematic of a deep malaise.

The people lack the very thing that affirms life.  They lack hope. 

The people desperately desire someone to bring hope to them – they want the Messiah to come and rid them of all their troubles and anxieties.  And because they want someone else to do these things for them, and because that someone else has yet to appear, they have succumbed to despair and cynicism.  Just as we, in our desire for wealth or fame or celebrity – or for churches that were full, or had large youth groups, or were once again the dominant voice in society – just as we are inclined to lapse into hopelessness and despair because our desire for these things remains unfulfilled.

And this is the radical importance of Jesus’ message as set out in Mark’s Gospel: the hope for which we long is already present among us in the Kingdom of God – if only we open our hearts and minds to that fact.  Jesus enables us to see that presence in the world; and the Holy Spirit helps us to remember the hope it represents. But the truth that Jesus proclaims is that the Kingdom of God has always been with us – because the Kingdom of God is not a remote, distant realm, it is part and parcel of creation, it springs from the same overflowing love that brought creation into being, and which continually invites us into relationship with God.

That’s why Jesus sends out the disciples on their mission calling the people to repent.  Because repentance is not grovelling guiltily before an angry God; repentance is rediscovering hope.  Repentance requires us to trust in the redeeming love of God; it requires us to surrender ourselves to God’s grace, to the uncomfortable knowledge that God loves us unconditionally, in spite of ourselves. 

And that’s why the image of the disciples shaking the dust of any place that rejects them from their sandals is so powerful; because it’s not an image of condemnation, it’s a symbol of how we have forgotten what affirms and sustains life.  The dust that falls from the disciples’ sandals is the very image of our futile search for life in the desires and expectations that are the source of our despair.  It’s a reminder that all or nothing does not and cannot provide life; it can only trap us in a cycle of fear.  It’s a reminder that life can only be affirmed by connecting ourselves to the Kingdom of God that is already present among us. 

It’s a message that we have to re-learn how to hope.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

One morning, a couple of weeks ago, as I was walking down the busy main road that leads from my home to the local train station, a large black dog bounded up to me and began to enthusiastically make my acquaintance. He looked like a cross between a black Retriever and a Doberman, and despite his size, I could tell that he was still a pup – a pup astray in the chaos of the morning rush hour traffic.

Fortunately, he had a tag on his collar, which had his name and a phone number. Unfortunately, when I dialled the number, the owner informed me that he was on the other side of the city at work. So I agreed to return the dog to his home which was located nearby.

But as, dog in tow, I approached the house, I could see that it stood in stark contrast to its neighbours. The politest thing I can say was that it was unkempt. Old and seemingly disused cars were parked in the driveway and front yard; what grass there was, was overgrown and choked with weeds; and the house was in a state of considerable disrepair. As I approached the gate to the back yard, I could see that it was in an even worse state: completely overrun with weeds and cluttered with junk. Moreover, the yard was tiny, far too small for a dog of this size and liveliness; and the fences were hopelessly inadequate to the task of preventing him from escaping.

As I lead the dog through the back gate, he began to cry and whimper, clearly distressed at the prospect of being left in this squalid little yard. And when I reached over the gate to snib the lock, he reared up on his hind legs, placed his front paws over my hands, and rested his head on his paws, as though begging me not to leave him.

I can tell you, it was very hard to withdraw my hand and turn away from the pleading clearly evident in his beautiful, intelligent eyes.

But as I turned away, I noticed a woman pull into the driveway of the house next door, so I went across to explain my presence and let her know that I had returned her neighbour’s dog.

“That poor dog!” she sighed, her face softening into an expression of sorrow. “That’s the second time he’s escaped this week!”

I explained that the dog was probably bored.

“Yes,” the woman said, her voice harsh with anger. “Bored and lonely.”

Eventually, I made my way back to the station and caught a train that would take me into the city and my morning lecture at university. But as the carriage rattled along, it seemed to me inevitable that the dog, driven by boredom and frustration, would once again escape; and it seemed to me equally inevitable that in doing so, he would eventually come to a bad end, most likely under the wheels of a car on the busy main road. It did not seem likely that my having to rescue the dog on this occasion would make his owner take his responsibilities any more seriously. There just seemed a terrible certainty that the neglect would continue – with tragic and predictable results.

You’ll understand that the last thing I felt like was someone who had done a good deed.

Sometimes, life seems to have a remorseless, pitiless quality. Even something as apparently trivial as an encounter with a stray dog can make us feel helpless before the forces of the universe or the seemingly random strokes of fate. There are times when it seems that no matter what we do, the best we can hope for is to delay the inevitable; or simply watch in impotent resignation as our best efforts come to nothing. There are times when we feel small and insignificant, abandoned by any power for good; times when you can understand why some people feel there is no God – or that if God exists, then God cares nothing for humanity or for creation. We are on our own.

I wouldn’t mind betting that more than one of the disciples felt this way on the day of the Ascension. It must have felt as though they were being abandoned, as though fate were playing some kind of cruel trick on them. They had been through an emotional roller coaster of unimaginable proportions: first, witnessing Jesus’ brutal death; then, as they were hiding themselves away, terror stricken, the unbelievable news of the Resurrection; then the various appearance events, such as at Emmaus; and, at the last, Jesus himself coming and standing among them. Can you imagine what that was like – to go through the emotional back and forth of despair and euphoria, to struggle with the choice between believing the incredible and giving it all up as a bad joke?

In the passage from Luke’s Gospel immediately before today’s reading, we are told that the disciples were terrified when Jesus stood among them – they thought they were seeing a ghost! And Jesus names their fear: he says, why are you afraid, why do you doubt that I am real? And he invites them to touch his flesh and watch him eat food so that they may understand that he has, indeed, risen and stands among them, solid reality and not an illusion.

But even as joy begins to take hold, doubts linger, fears surface. This seems too good to be true. There has to be a catch, a rider, the cosmic equivalent of the fine print that life always seems to throw up at us and which we never get the chance to read. You can almost hear the disciples thinking: What cruel trick is going to be played, what practical joke that will dash our hopes and make us look stupid?

As it becomes apparent to the disciples that Jesus is taking them to Bethany in order to say goodbye, I’ll bet more than one of them thought: So this is it – this is the end of the great adventure, the great story. This is the bit where you tell us it was good while it lasted, but now you gotta go, leaving us stranded in a cold and hostile world. What point faith they must have wondered: what point discipleship; what point believing?

We’ve all had experiences like this, times when our hopes have been dashed and our expectations have lead only to bitter disappointment. Sometimes our naivety is to blame; sometimes it is because we are deceived by others. But so often it seems that there is no reason at all, no reason whatsoever, why the good thing for which we have hoped is snatched away from us. And it is in these moments of hurt and anguish when the temptation to lapse into despair looms large, when the appeal of cynicism and wallowing in a sense of our own misfortune is hard to resist.

It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I can quite easily imagine that these words were ringing in more than one disciples’ mind, even as they ring in our own minds when our dreams come to nothing, when our hopes collapse into ashes and heartache.

But it is precisely at this low point, when joy and despair are still battling for possession of the disciples, that Jesus meets them and holds them. Not with pretty words and false promises, but simply by speaking directly into their situation. Jesus explains that his life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection have all been the fulfilment of prophecy; but that is not the end of the great story, that is not the point at which the Good News falls silent. Because the reason why Jesus is the fulfilment of prophecy is so that the next great story – the story that involves you and I and all humanity – it is so this story can begin.

That story is the story of salvation. And it is a story with a simple and powerful and dramatic plot: repentance and the forgiveness of sin, for all the nations.

And we get a glimpse of this story in action in today’s reading from Acts, concerning as it does the selection of a new disciple to replace Judas. For this passage tells us something interesting about Jesus’ ministry: that beyond the disciple group who followed Jesus from place to place, there existed a wider group of believers, people who lived in Galilee or Jerusalem or other places – people who had heard Jesus’ teachings or witnessed his miracles and recognised him as the Messiah. And it is from this wider group of believers that the new disciple is chosen. So even during his lifetime, even while he is bringing the old story of prophecy to its conclusion – and laying the foundations for the new story of salvation – Jesus gives us a glimpse of what that new story will look like. It’s a bit like the Prologue in The Lord of the Rings, in which JRR Tolkien gives us a quick look at the hobbits; so the presence of this wider group of believers gives us an idea about the shape of the story of salvation.

And the word to describe that shape is inclusion. Even during his own lifetime, Jesus has been drawing people into the Kingdom. But the task of the disciples, the great story established by Jesus that draws in the whole of humanity, is to extend the Kingdom throughout the earth – beginning with Jerusalem, then all of Israel, and finally, the whole world. Because the great story that Jesus creates is not just about the fulfilment of prophecy; it is about hope, it is about the possibility of being drawn into the orbit of God’s grace – it is about us.

It comes as a surprise to many people to discover that we are the story which Jesus creates. We’re very good at reminding ourselves that we are not worthy of God’s love and redemption, that by our own efforts we cannot hope to be saved. But we’re not so good at remembering that, in Christ, God has declared that, our unworthiness aside, we are nonetheless acceptable to God – that God desires us and our salvation, and accordingly invites us into relationship with God through the experience of faith. You are the witnesses Jesus says to the disciples, a group of people who have denied him, who have deserted him, who have failed to understand him; you are the witnesses – not because you are perfect, but precisely the opposite. Because you are imperfect, and it is in your imperfection that you are acceptable to God – because the whole of the sacred history of Israel, reflected in the Old Testament, is the record of God working through humanity’s imperfection, making us greater than our limitations, making us more than merely human.

You are the witnesses. This is the title of the story of salvation. And like all great stories, it covers the whole spectrum of human experience, from the joyous to the tragic. And like all great stories, it does not end with a neat conclusion, with a happily ever after; its conclusion is ambiguous, and open. It is a story that continues beyond the words on the page.

Earlier, by way of introducing you to today’s readings, I read to you from the closing passages of The Return of the King, the final part of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But I didn’t read you the final passage of all, which reads as follows:

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

This is a story in which there is no neat, happily-ever-after ending. Because after his great adventure, Sam has to go back and resume the business of life, with all its uncertainties and unpredictability. But what we are not told is that all the words that make up the story of The Lord of the Rings is simply a prelude to Sam coming home; the real story begins when he says Well, I’m back. And that is the meaning of the story which Jesus creates; it can only begin once he has left us, when, like Gandalf and Frodo, he has departed the shores of this earth. Not because we are being abandoned, but simply because it is we who must tell the tale. You are the witnesses, Jesus says to his disciples and to every one of us; you – we – are the ones who must proclaim, who must take up the tale where the Gospel writers leave off.

And we do not tell that story unaided, for in both of today’s readings we are told that the Spirit will be – and has been – sent: to guide us, to council us, to be our friend and companion on the road. And just as Merry and Pippin stood with Sam by the shores of Middle-Earth and in their ministry of presence provided him with both comfort and strength, so the Spirit, in its ministry is present in our lives, holds us in the compassion in which Jesus held the disciples as he blessed them and said farewell. Go in peace! Gandalf says; I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. And even as the disciples returned to Jerusalem in great joy, do not imagine for a moment that they were not also weeping; for as Tolkien’s great friend C S Lewis reminds us, joy is not about euphoria or ecstasy – it is about holding together the great sorrow and the great delight that are the truth of all existence.

Jesus knew this; and so he did not lie to the disciples. There are no false hopes, no easy promises, no guarantees that faith will shield them from suffering or make them immune to tragedy. Jesus tells his disciples Peace be with you and reminds them of the promise of the Spirit as he commissions them in their ministry of witness. But he does not promise them that their lives will be easy, or that their days will end in comfort and veneration. Because what Jesus is offering them is something richer, and fuller, and greater: it is life in all its abundance – the good, the bad, the indifferent -, met through the experience of faith.

And it is what Jesus offers us today. Even as we look around and seemingly behold nothing more than a Church which is withering away under the impact of diminishing congregations and increased hostility to faith within society, we are reminded again that the great story of which we are a part is greater than its participants. The Church will – and is – changing, is becoming something other than what it was; but whatever form it takes, it will still be the Church, and You are the witnesses is still the great story which Jesus created and which we proclaim.

There are, of course, some things that are inevitable, which we cannot change. Like stray dogs who go astray because of their owners neglect, there are some hurts which we cannot avoid. But, just as the disciples after the Ascension did not succumb to despair, neither should we: for all that faith requires is that we surrender ourselves to the possibility of hope. Hope that is to be found, not in empty promises or in easy answers; rather, it is the hope that is the covenant of Christ, the ministry of the Spirit, and the undying love of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The great 12th Century Persian mystic and poet, Shamsuddin Muhammad Hafiz wrote the following short poem, of which I am very fond:

God
and I have become
like two giant fat people living
in a tiny
boat.
We
keep bumping into
each other
and
laughing.

I am very fond of this poem because it is one to which I can relate.  God and I have been bumping into one another for all of my life.  Or, to be truthful, I have been trying my best to avoid God; but God, like some persistent, divine dodgem car, has always ensured we were on a collision course.

And I think that that’s why I am today a candidate to the ordained ministry; I am the fissionable remains of constantly being impacted by God.  And yet I still feel as though I’m living on a tiny boat (even if I don’t quite deserve the description of a “giant fat person”!), bumping into God at unexpected moments.  And sometimes I’m tossed overboard, into the bracing waters of grace; but always I scramble back on board again, for I have discovered that even if the encounters are occassionally bruising (and why should Jacob at Peniel have had all the fun?), without them I am simply not whole.

Who would have thought it possible?

In the past couple of weeks, many of you may have read or heard in the media the story of the nine-year-old Brazilian girl who was recently discovered to be pregnant with twins – a pregnancy that allegedly resulted from sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather.  Those of you who have been following this story will know that the girl’s mother authorised doctors to terminate the pregnancy, with the result that the local Catholic archbishop has pronounced excommunication on both the mother and the medical personnel involved in the termination.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that this matter has become hugely controversial, both with respect to the termination of the girl’s pregnancy and the pronouncement of excommunication.  There are passionate advocates on both sides of the debate, as well as a welter of thorny questions.  Was it wrong to terminate the pregnancy; or was it justified under the circumstances? Was the archbishop right to excommunicate the mother and the doctors; or was this an overreaction? Do the rights and needs of potential life take precedence over the rights and needs of actual life?

I’m not going to give you the answers to any of these questions, because, quite frankly, I don’t have any.  More to the point, I suspect there aren’t actually any definitive, all-encompassing answers to the kinds of questions this situation raises.  Not, I hasten to add, because I’m a relativist and believe that all answers are equally valid; but because it seems to me that moral-ethical questions like this confront us – as few other things in life do – with the limitations of our humanity; with the strictly provisional nature of our knowledge; and, above all else, with the need for humility, for grace, for compassion, for a love that embraces a humanity as broken and limited as our own.

But, human beings being human beings, our inclination is usually to the exact opposite, dig our heels in, to stubbornly insist on both our rightness and our righteousness, and to condemn those who disagree with us – or with whom we disagree – as misguided at best or positively dangerous at worst.

Depressingly, Christian history is filled with innumerable examples of this kind of fractiousness. And in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we have one of the earliest recorded examples.  For Paul was writing to a community riven by faction and dissent, split between competing interests proclaiming the superiority of this or that leader, and ascribing to those leaders competing virtues of outstanding wisdom or miraculous power.   Some were proclaiming: “I belong to Paul”, others: “I belong to Apollos”, or “I belong to Cephas.”  Some were even proclaiming: “I belong to Christ”, as though Christ were nothing more than a factional leader in their dispute.

Now, Paul could have tried to re-assert control over the church at Corinth.  Afterall, he had founded this church, it owed its existence to him, and if anyone had – by human terms – a moral right to the loyalty and obedience of the community, it was Paul.  Had Paul tried to re-assert his authority, he would no doubt have succeeded.  But Paul actually does no such thing; on the contrary, he does the exact opposite.  He does the thing which, by human standards, makes him look weak and foolish and most un-leader-like. 

Paul gives up authority.  He refuses to enter into the power games, he refuses to enter into the personality politics, he refuses to put himself forward as the person in charge.  And he does it by placing all claims to power and authority and leadership in the context of the Cross, by placing all claims to knowledge and rightness and righteousness in the light of the Gospel of Christ crucified.

It’s foolishness, of course; it’s absurd, it’s a joke.  Paul’s strategy for dealing with the division within the Corinthian church is not to ally himself with the strongest faction and overwhelm the rest, and then take control of the victors.  Rather, his strategy is to get everyone – even his own followers – offside by saying, your claim to wisdom is false, your claim to miraculous power is an illusion, because you make these claims not in Christ but on your own behalf.  You have turned away from faith toward egotism, away from God toward self.

As a strategy for restoring order and unity, I doubt it’s one of which Machiavelli would have approved.  But it’s precisely because Paul grounds himself in the scandal of Christianity that he makes this foolish, un-political appeal: he’s not interested in earthly power, he’s interested only in the Good News which the apparent absurdity of Christian faith proclaims to all humanity. 

And that scandal, that absurdity is this: that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God became incarnate in human form, suffered an abhorrent death usually reserved for traitors and criminals, and then rose from the dead in eternal and decisive victory over the power of sin and death – a victory in which we, by the unmerited grace of God, are included.

When you strip Christian faith back to its bare bones, when you reveal this central essence of the Gospel, you can see why Christianity has always been accused of absurdity and foolishness – and not just by the Johnny-come-latelys of fashionable, militant atheism; but throughout all of the Church’s history, by people who considered themselves to be wise or thoughtful or insightful.

Certainly, Christian faith was absurd to the wise and thoughtful and insightful of Paul’s time: it was, as he says, foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jew.  And Paul knew this, because by his birth and upbringing, he had a foot in both the world of Jewish Messianic expectation, as well as the world of detached Greek philosophy.  The former waited for the Messiah to come in glory, to liberate the Jews and make of them a great nation as they had been in the days of David; the latter argued that God was remote and unconcerned with humanity, and that all people could do was resign themselves to fate and live as morally as their reason and their circumstances allowed.

And in the face of these competing viewpoints, these Christians had the gall and the temerity to say that the man Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable, who lived as an itinerant preacher moving from place to place, and who was executed by the Romans as a troublemaker – this was the Messiah for whom the Jewish people longed; this person who could be seen and touched and heard and killed was also the incarnate God responsible for the stupendous wonders of creation!

When you put it like that, the conclusion almost seems inevitable that Christianity is a kind of delusion, a cruel confidence trick to hoax people into believing the impossible.  You can see why the detractors of Christianity often mocked it as a refuge for those too weak or to impatient to face up to the harsh realities of existence.  You can see why the scandal of Christianity has always attracted hatred and ridicule.

But it is in this scandalousness that Paul bases his appeal to the Corinthians.  They have forgotten the very essence of their faith, and have instead tried to reduce it, one the one hand, to a series of logical rational philosophical and theological precepts; or, on the other hand, to a kind of supernatural magic show highlighted by miraculous healings, speaking in tongues, and prophetic utterances.  What is more, they are doing so in order to serve their own agendas, to claim leadership of the community, to bolster their own egos, to be the person in charge.  They are creating these false divisions in order to serve themselves, and not Christ.

In other words, Paul was telling the Corinthians that they had forgotten the foolishness of Christ, who had often said some apparently absurd things – an example of which we have in today’s reading from John’s Gospel.  In reading this Gospel, you and I have the benefit of hindsight: like the Gospel’s author, we know in advance that when Jesus says he’s going to tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days, he’s talking about himself: he will be torn from life and resurrected on the third day.  But imagine that you’re one of the people in the crowd: you’ve heard about this Jesus of Nazareth; you’re not quite convinced, but you’re curious.  And then you hear him make this astonishing claim about the Temple, a claim you have to come to terms with right there and then, without the benefit of hindsight or the advantage of prior knowledge.  Wouldn’t you actually have a good deal of sympathy for the people who say: “What on earth are you talking about, pal? This Temple took forty-six years to build, and you reckon you’re going to tear it down and rebuild it in three days? Pull the other one, Jesus of Nazareth – it recites the Psalms!”

Tellingly, the author of John’s Gospel writes that even the disciples didn’t get it until after the Resurrection; so you can imagine them hearing this and scratching their heads and wondering what kind of foolishness this is.  And the foolishness that Jesus is giving voice to is the foolishness of love: the kind of extravagant, abundant, gratuitous love that is given freely and with total inclusiveness; love that manifests itself on the Cross in an act of inconceivable solidarity of the divine for and with the human; love that, though we are utterly undeserving, nonetheless makes us acceptable to God. 

And that is why Jesus clears the Temple: because he is telling the people, “You have forgotten the love of God.”  You have made all these processes and procedures, such as money changing and the selling of sacrificial animals – processes which were meant to help the Chosen People approach the love of God with humility and thanksgiving – you have made them the reason for coming to Temple, you have forgotten the One to whom they point, the One who in love entered into covenant with you. 

And this is the same message that Paul delivers to the warring Corinthian factions: “You have forgotten the love of God.”  You have forgotten that, in Christ, God humbled God’s-self for our sake, God entered into our humanity and suffering that we might at last be free of sin and death, so that we might live as the Body of Christ on earth in service to one another and to all humanity.  Paul is telling the Corinthians that they have made themselves the centre of their life and community, not the One to whom that life and community point, not the One on whose love and grace they are utterly dependent.

And this issue of love brings us to other, equally thorny questions.  Is there enough love to forgive a man who rapes a nine-year-old girl and impregnates her? Is there enough love to forgive a humanity so broken that it puts that girl and her mother in the situation where they must decide between running the risk of having that pregnancy go to term or else terminating two potential lives?  Is there enough love to forgive a community that claims to be the Body of Christ on earth, and yet which time and again through its history forgets the foolishness of its faith, the Gospel of Christ crucified? We have already today received the assurance of forgiveness – but it is an assurance that comes to us, not through our own wisdom or our own power, because human knowledge and human strength are insufficient to answer these questions and provide these assurances.  On the contrary, the answers and the assurance come to us only in the shadow of the outstretched arms of a broken and bleeding body, nailed to a Cross, whose circumference encloses all of creation.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.