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Modern Existence and Christian Existence
3. ‘It’s the Economy. stupid!’
The devil’s own work  . . .
The radical distortion of economy in Modernity
Community, Economy, Technology, and Creation

‘He [Adam] moved contrary to his nature, madly (ανοητ0ς) and of his own initiative, making a bad use of the natural faculty which had been entrusted to him in his constitution with an eye to the unification of what was separated, so as rather to separate things united’ Maximos the Confessor. Quoted in ‘Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses’ Jean-Claud Larchet Volume I, p65

And let’s begin by once more drawing Christian Existence – The Crucified Man – the place of Reconciliation – held in the hospital of the Church (I shall return to this in the last lecture), betwixt the Creation and the Creator, and neighbour and neighbour.

So last time we ended up considering the abstract nature of shared life in the world today, under the label of ‘Society’ or ‘The Public’. Of how life was largely mediated to us, and increasingly experienced as either Private (individualistic), or Public (abstract).

In this respect of the unReality of ‘Society’ we quickly considered the work of Søren Kierkegaard, and we might also think of an influential distinction made by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies between ‘Gemeinschaft’ – Personal sociality – in which we know and and are known to each other – usually rendered ‘Community’, and Gesellschaft – the realm of impersonal and indirect relationships – usually rendered ‘Society’. We might think also of ‘The State’ in those terms. We do not encounter The State personally, in so far as it might be said to exist we cannot Know it – personal knowledge, merely know about it. So, what we might say has happened is that a word which once carried a concrete meaning, Society – that is deep rich human shared existence – or Community for our purposes, became increasingly abstract as human existence became more and more individualised. So it is sobering to ask young people if they are independent – and they say that they pretty much are. They have no sense that their existence depends on many many people and places they have no sense of. For Food, for clothing, for the raw materials which make up their consumer goods, for the fuel in their cars . . . We can only say we are Independent if we have lost touch with the truth of our existence – woven together . . . and of course in these things I am moving towards todays them, that of economy, or rather its contemporary distortion ‘The Economy’ For as Society became abstract, so too did economy and the shift in the two are inter related

. . . and here I am going to push my argument perhaps to what might be seen as an extreme position, but as I have spent time pondering these matters it seems a not unreasonable position to hold for all that. ‘It’s The Economy, Stupid!’ as Bill Clinton famously called out George Bush Senior . . . and we are SO attuned to The Economy, that we may well have applauded his profoundly impersonal indeed murderous words (if we take Jesus at His Word) ‘The Economy’ is the one thing we are so terrified of that all over the world we elect people who are ‘strong on ‘The Economy’, not realising that this is a death blow to our Human existence.
For ‘The Economy’ is profoundly abstract, inhuman and that it is nothing less than a demonic distortion of true economy which I would say is in Reality Κοινονια, this shared existence which I suggest is Christian Existence. Put slightly differently if we understand ‘economy’ correctly, we will find deep similarities with Κοινονια, that is the profound integrative nature of true Human existence. And we will understand how The Economy is in reality Anti-economy, that nothing is more destructive of true human flourishing than ‘The Economy’

Now a couple of points up front. Firstly as they say ‘I have skin in the game’ here. Like it or not I cannot but at some deep level participate in ‘The Economy’ – like The Matrix, I cannot touch it, but it is quite literally Everywhere. What is more that ‘skin in the game’ extends to my own kin for my son in law is a research economist. Clearly when we next meet, I am going to have some explaining to do 🙂

But secondly and perhaps counter intuitively in naming ‘The Economy’ as a truly demonic distortion we may perhaps have a key clue to Redemption, for as we note from our Scriptures, it is the presence of Jesus which reveals the demonic – which flushes them out. Not I must add that that means that we can redeem ‘The Economy’, for also like Society, it is an abstract, and a philosophical abstract which has profoundly inhuman presuppositions built into it. There is a Real sense in which is does not exist, in the same way neither do demons. The Economy is as we shall see both a significant part of the cause and also the product of our profound Alienation, from Creation, from one another and from God, and thus from our own selves. Remember our picture of The Human?

In this radical alienation – There is for the Economy no way back to the garden – after all it is protected by an angel with a flashing sword – BUT there is a way for us to come to know True economy in and through Jesus Christ and in the church. For as St Paul says, when someone is ‘in Christ’ There is New Creation – we may well say there is Κοινονια, there is indeed economy . . . but that will have to wait for a week or so. Firstly we need to understand how bad our plight is, to own up to our own place in Modernity 🙂

And I want to take you back – not all the way back to the Great Schism this time, but to C16 England. And yes, as one ponders the roots of Modernity, then ‘the home country’ has a lot to answer for. As one person put it, ‘Only England could have produced Richard Dawkins . . .’ and one might add Christopher Hitchens and other prominent atheists. And the English language which has been radically shaped by ‘Modern’ existence is very comfortable and ‘creative’ in this regard.

At that time, around the time of Henry VIII, something happened which had not been seen before – suddenly in Rural England chimneys started sprouting everywhere . . . not those of William Blake’s ‘dark Satanic mills’, we are still about 200 years short of that, but chimneys on houses. Suddenly LOTS of chimneys on big houses, where previously there had only been one . . . Yet as we shall see, the multiplication of chimneys on houses leads us to those smoke belching creations of Blake (and indeed Tolkien as he speaks of Isengard, the domain of Saruman, the deceived White Wizard. The arch pragmatist)
But why more house chimneys? Why might that be? Well put simply, growing wealth had meant that Lords of the manors were now following a fashion of wealthy aristocrats on the European content and in London, of installing inside what were Common shared living spaces, where ox and ass and human lived in ‘close’ proximity, separate rooms . . . each of course needing warming – hence the sudden proliferation of chimneys!

Prior to this, existence had often been shared both within and also outside of the house. You might hear an echo of last week when we spoke of the Inuit and how with all ‘indigenous people’s’ their perception did not lead them to think of an as it were ‘hidden’ interior life at odds with the exterior. Inner and outer were one. So the feudal system meant – and we heard another dim echo of this in my story about my grandmother’s childhood last week – a way of living of sharing in the proceeds of the land, and also that the Lord of the Manor had obligations to those who worked his land. Simply if people were ill etc etc rents were OF COURSE held back or reduced etc. If children were orphaned, they became the wards of the Lord of the manor. There was a deep sense of Obligation – noblesse oblige we might say – towards those further down the ladder. As Andro Linklater puts it in his work on Land Ownership – ‘the idea of the manor as a social contract was more important than its physical form’ The House, The Manor, a place of living under one roof was a way of living in the world, one might say. But under one roof or out on the Land – it was Life Together.

Rooted in? Well at the end of the day, Christian existence. For The Lord of the Manor Knew himself to be part of a hierarchy and he wasn’t the top!! For he was ‘under’ God and answerable to God for those in his care.

Now we see signs that as this order begins to crumble, The Church trying to hold it together. Witness this prayer of the 1553 Prayer Book, the first revision of the first prayer book of the Church of England (1549) “The earth O Lord is thine, and all that is contained therein; we heartily pray thee to send thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures and dwelling places of the earth that they, remembering themselves to be Thy tenants, (not at the top of the ladder) may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes after the manner of covetous worldliness, but so let them out to others that the inhabitants thereof (those lower down) may both be able to pay the rents, and also honestly to live to nourish their families and to relieve the poor’
And remember how those to whom the prayer referred were sat in church  . . . You may wish to reflect on the rather abstract and bland wording of our prayers in church nowadays!! (For of course we work from the assumption that those in authority are NOT answerable to God . . . etc etc)
‘that they may be able to honestly live’ Marylinne Robinson in a book of her essays makes the astute point that no nation may call itself Christian where people literally cannot earn enough to live without theft . . . Indeed we may well ask ‘who really is the thief here?’. I’ll return to this at the close.
‘that they may be able . . . honestly to live to nourish their families and to relieve the poor’ For this duty went straight down the line, as I illustrated even form the recent past of my grandmother’s life last week.

Everything is God’s – and to be used for human flourishing within the care of HIs Creation. The Lord of the manor looked after those in his care who looked after the poor – for The Lord is God, and all things are His

So to comeback to Linklater’s observation that the manor, or ’house as social contract’ is PRECISELY where we get the word ‘economy’ from . Quite literally it is the οικο – νομοσ [oiko nomos] the law, or perhaps better the guide, the Way of the house – the oikos. How we are together in the house. Economy is the How of life together in the descriptive sense. Indeed it links us directly to the Life of God – not only in the phrase, ‘the economic Trinity’ meaning how are the three one and the one three . . . ‘Love one another as I have loved you . . .’ says Jesus ‘in my Father’s οικοσ . . .’

So I want to suggest that in this division of the oikos, what we see here is the beginning of the end of a way of life in which labour and social care went hand in hand in a shared existence we might call Community, economy, Κοινονια. And it involves a human disconnection from one another. Think how ‘Normal we think it that in a family ‘each person’ has their own room, whereas communal sleeping has been for all other cultures the norm – think Marae.

And that personal disconnection [breaking the one body] is also accompanied by a disconnection from Place. The shift from shared ‘feudal’ land practices, to the growing practise of turning the land over to sheep which removes people from the land – echoes here of Wendell Berry and his complaint that ‘the powers that be’ say “there are too many famers”. Flocks of sheep require less people, less care than the land, and as a happy coincidence might give a better economic (???) no let us be clear, not and ‘economic’ return for the oiko nomos (social contract we might say) is being taken to bits – this is to give a better financial return . . . The Landowner having lost sight of his place before God (as we shall see in fact subtly encouraged by the Church no less 0 now just looks at Land – field joined to field . . .
[Actually as many studies show if you really want to destroy an ecosystem, our ‘house’, then sheep are as good a way to do it as any . . . – think The Lake District]
As this is going on – Listen to the words of Sir Thomas More  from Utopia – “[the powerful magnates] enclose all in pasture; they throw down houses; they pluck down townes (villages by our standard); and leave nothing standynge, but only the church, to make of it a shepehouse . . .The rich men not only by private fraud, but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living . . . I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of commonwealth.” Now that reference to Common Wealth is of course rooted in the idea of a common ownership of things, the Earth is the Lord’s!  – Yet note how the 39 Articles of religion, in their final form 150 years later have changed this  – Listen for the contrast with the prayer of 1553

‘Article XXXVIII Of Christian men’s goods, which are not common. The Riches and goods of the Christian man are not common as touching to the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally give alms to the poor, according to his ability.’ And, we might say, so say all of us . . .

A couple of things to note here – first there is no sense in this Article that ‘everything actually belongs to God . . .’ and also secondarily there is no shared practise. This is a move from Shared Life to the realm of the Private – simply a moral enjoinder to the individual conscience of each. Something you ought to do – but not of necessity do. Note also to come back to More’s tirade in utopia – with the moral outlook, we do not ask whether the law is a good law. The Lawyer merely dispenses the law. So it is ‘by common laws’ that the powerful increase their holdings of land and drive off those further down the scale. And anyone who knows the history of this land will recognise in this C16 colonisation of the Land by the powerful a pattern for the legalised colonisation of lands globally. As I was reminded by an American friend this week, one of the strength s of the American legal system strangely enough is that the Judge may well decide that a Law is a bad law and throw a case out . . .
The move was from Shared lIfe with mutuality of obligation especially to the most vulnerable to privatised matters of conscience and the Law, with its move to individualistic piety.  In this regard it is worthwhile considering how ‘private’ is the so called Christian Ethic of the Anglican Church. So we have no practise which we share in together of giving alms to the poor as a special discipline in Lent. So we have moved away from the economy of the manor, towards The Economy of the powerful magnates who no longer live under the same roof, nor and this is fundamentally important do we Share the same table with the poor . . . I shall return to this when we come to look at Christian Existence in its fulness in the final lecture
And this change – a move away from a shared life of mutual obligation, to that of individual be it all so religious and moral, self interest – maps out not only the changing culture of the West but also of course its dominant religious outlook . . . ‘you in your small corner and I in mine . . .’ or as Fanny Alexander put it – ‘he died to make us good . . .’ plenty for the moralists there! Jesus did not die to make us morally good, he died that we might SHARE Life, This is the Christian Message – that we are born again into a living hope which is nothing less than a sharing in the divine nature . . .

To jump ahead slightly this is a very important point. So many complain about the collapse of the family as a moral issue – but the reality is that it is a Life issue – The Economy has all but destroyed Family existence. And I see this all around. So children are brought up by strangers, parents by carers, for The Economy has an appetite for life. You cannot even begin to have life as a family where both parents have to work every hour to keep a roof over your heads and children are drilled in the skills to make the matters worse,Educating them for ‘life in the Economy’

Let us return to our Picture of Christian Existence and explore what is happening as true economy – shared life, family, good work for observable ends – disintegrates. And we only have time to  look at this briefly – what happens to to that inter relation of Work and Place and Relationship. For of course we are under no illusions about the supposed relationship between Work and The Economy. As the Story goes, “we”, men and women go to work which builds or contributes to ‘The Economy’ . . . (And I think also that there is a significant connection between this ModernWorldview which we so comfortably seem to inhabit, such that it might have been made for us, by us, AND the language so common in the Church nowadays of ‘Building the Kingdom of God’. Both highly abstract, and both at least on the surface highly anthropocentric.)

Let us just start with that idea of ‘going to work’. What we note immediately is the shift of the focus of work. So people are removed from the land (in England – a sort of test bed for Scotland in the C18 – the notorious highland clearances, and of course here in New Zealand. Globally the infection of clearing people from the land has spread – of course many of those who set off to ‘find a new life in the New World or in Aotearoa, radically infected with this germ of disconnection from Place being either the descendants of or indeed the very people cleared from the land, became those who cleared others from the Land. Cf Tangata Whenua)

Initially people had work on the land and there was much to do. Not only of course all the eyes caring for it – for one could See the Land from where your food came – a practise of engagement – but also because it takes somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the energy we get from food, to grow food 🙂

We’ll come back to energy shortly. BUT we note that we worked in proximity to where we ate and slept. Place was Home was the arena of shared work and existence. yet following the clearances more and more people had to leave ‘home’, often a richly storied place of many generations ’to go to work’. Work thus becomes something dislocated from Home and Place, from Roots. ‘Going to Work’ unravelled this even further.
As it is in our culture, so we go home to get away from work, which suggests that our relationship with work has changed. (although as many might ruefully note work has a habit now of invading the home) This I suggest is how we might rightly distinguish between what we have in ‘The Economy’ which is ‘a job’, and truly human work which is engaged in in place and in relationship. Put another way so many of our jobs who I am with my history and roots etc etc are entirely irrelevant. Work in The Economy is nor respecter persons or place, or lest us forget, God. Thus I suggest we should be very very wary of attempts to justify work in this regard. Such justifications I only here from those who sit astride The Economy. ‘Work makes you Free!!’ they may well declare as train after train loads commuters to take them into the place of work, disconnected from house,home, family etc.
We cannot know who is benefitting, or where – and what is more our work and our consumption of goods are radically disconnected. So there is no connection between what our work is and what we consume. ‘Consumer goods’ are highly abstracted from place. We do not see the land from whence the raw materials have come. We do not experience the alienation of the land experienced by those for whom either ‘by private fraud, but also by common laws,’ have been removed from the land.
What is more this disengagement opens the door to the significant increase in the significance of MONEY. Now you no longer are working with others to grow food, you have to buy food (echoes of Egypt . . .). Buying food is a perilous business and out of your hands. The disconnection introduces all sorts of troubling possibilities, not least your own disconnection from the land, from the producers of food and so on.

All technologies are things that come between the human and the human or the human and the Creation. They are forms of Alienation. So the technology Money is about Alienation. We no longer share the fruits of our labours with others. The value of food is transferred to what it has financially cost us – to it nutrient value – not to place to shared life or increasingly shared meals as the hurried and harried worker – grabs something on the way home.

In The Economy ‘Work’ is a thing of alienation – it may be ‘the job you have always wanted’ but its connection to people and place has been largely lost. Its impact on others is largely irrelevant. It has no obvious place in connecting you to people and places you know and in which arena you share in Life together. In this sense we may well say that Work is no longer Good Work.

Because Economy has come to mean now ‘Money’ (and here I use a simplification for the sake of clarity) We work to live, to eat, to have money. Because of the collapse of true economy, you cannot live without money. We do not grow and make things that we share with one another without money.

‘The bottom line’ is no longer a purely financial expression, it describes anything that is fundamental – in other words, money has become what it is all about. And thus it is about radical alienation, separation from one another and the Land and God, as we serve Mammon, both rich and destitute alike

The monetisation of everything reaches deep deep into the modern Culture – a culture of things in separation. Every Thing is for sale – even the human body when the desperate sell themselves – for labour which kills, down to the selling of organs or the renting of wombs  . . . or worse.

Money is at base a technology and all technologies as we shall explore next time come with a story about what it means to be human

This monetisation of seemingly Everything – comes in the age of what one might call, the Total Economy. So in a terrible indictment on our thinking we are taught to believe that ‘Economic Independence’ is a Good thing . . .

Indeed the Economy might seem to so dominate everything – for example which government of late has ever been elected without a strong economic programme of one sort or another – that it might come as a surprise to hear that ‘The Economy’ only came into being as a political aim in the . . . 1950s . . . the beginning of The Great Acceleration

As we observed last week – of course there have always been forces at play which have sought to separate humans form each other, from the Land and from God – The prophets inveighed against those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land! . . . For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
But now it happens at an unprecedented and still accelerating rate

Following the Second world war , the great industrial machine lay idle as did many men who had fought  and we came to the Great Acceleration of all this the Modern World grew to dominate which it did with the mass use of fossil fuels. Firstly coal, mined at great human expense in so many ways – allowed the steam engines which took work from the home weavers. A true home industry became something to be done in the factories, the dark satanic mills. Places of Work efficiency studies as the human was more and more conformed to the machine. (By the way, I am not letting the Western Church off the hook here, clocks were the invention of the post Schism Catholic Church to make sure the monks prayed, like machines.)

Then at lesser cost in human terms gas and especially oil – at the end of the C19. Wendell Berry again noted the changes that came over farming and rural life. Firstly that machine which did more to actively destroy human community than any other perhaps the motor car. His novel ‘Jayber Crow’ speaks of the life of a community much like his own in Tennessee where the car starts to appear. Then one day a central character suffers the loss of a child as they walk down a lane and are hit by one of these cars – then how people stopped associating together as ‘entertainment’ was available in the town several miles along the road, and people could go to the big stores in town to by any number of wonderful goods not available at the local store which rooted in the reality of Creation could only sell what the land could bear to grow.

But chemical fertilisers, the product of Oil, increased the ‘productivity of the soil’ for a season. Soil has its own life. Its relation to a small number of grazing animals and the decay of some of that  which grows upon it – of communities who manure the fields, was a closed system. Chemical fertilisers ignored Place. More energy was pumped in, but as we are now beginning to see, the soil cannot bear it – only 60 years left at current levels of degradation – like a person living on endless cups of coffee – the body cannot ultimately handle it (and indeed those who work under those endlessly fuelled by coffee cannot either).
But it wasn’t just fertiliser of course, it was the tractor.

If we go back to the medieval era – people lived close to the land – in sympathy – hard hard existence (as it is for so many still today let us not forget) – but there was a sense of things being connected. Ploughs were not to be pulled by more than a pair of ox, for the violence done to the land was considered a sacrilege. Consider the enormous rose power of the tractor in comparison. Berry’s novel track all these changes as farmers with an eye to more money began to look at land not as a place of variety and distinction. With certain acres and corners better for certain crops than others. A work which required too much mental work and care for the land. Land now was just dirt in which things could be grown. Hedges were torn down to ‘make the land more productive’ – or more truly to abuse it and enslave it – to feed it supplements to make it do things it was never meant to. A development which we echoed in the dehumanisation of so much work – the adoption of the language of efficency, and Human resources (with their grim echoes of Auschwitz) the fortunate few have ‘the job they always dreamed of whilst so so many others hire their labour to whatever for whatever they can get. The fact that their is even any discussion of a living wage only reveals that.

And so it goes on ‘The Global Economy’ continues its destructive work. Nothing and nowhere is to be allowed to escape its clutches. So to take on simple example which we could replicate over and over again – On Valentines Day in the UK millions of red roses are sold, at a very reasonable cost, CHEAP especially when you consider that people were cleared from the land in places like Kenya, from their substance way of life, then invited back on to farm land which now ‘by common laws’ belongs to a corporation to grow roses. For which they obtain a pittance in money and have to go and buy food, often produced by the same corporation – far less food and often far worse food than they would have grown – and that also ignores the theft of water from a water stressed country. As I said, The Economy is no respecter of anything except Wealth

What is revealed in the end is that ‘The Economy’ is nothing more nor less than a system of legalised theft . . .’ For all things are God’s and not ours. In not sharing liberally with one another, in taking land from people for our own good, in putting people in a position where they have no option but to turn to crime to feed themselves and their family and I have encountered this myself here, we are taking that which is the Lord’s and stealing from his sheep . . .

Oh comes the cry, but if we paid people more then food would become more expensive – yes it would – for it is. The Food we enjoy has come to us at a cost hidden from us, but that cannot much longer be borne. And the Earth will have its say – all because we have exchanged economy, for The Economy

It has been sobering these past weeks to be reading Jeremiah at morning prayer – it is notable how the theme of ecological devastation runs through that book, as it also does in Isaiah. The reason? For they have broken the everlasting covenant. they have forgotten who they are and the earth lies ruined. The everlasting covenant is the Connection revealed to us in The Crucified God who is The Crucified Man – the true economy – the Koinonia – the Sharing in Life, and in all good things . . .

Well  . . . next week  – the place of technology and we shall be looking at Money, The Light bulb, the Clock, the Car and of course, the cell phone 🙂  In Week 5 we shall consider how The Modern Way has turned the message of Christian Existence inside out – before considering some of the riches available to us in the our story which might be seeds of the recovery of such Existence.

Modern Existence and Christian Existence
2. ‘There is no such thing as Society . . .’ Why Margaret Thatcher was correct
The Erosion of Community and why it matters
Community, Economy, Technology, and Creation

 

‘He [Adam] moved contrary to his nature, madly (ανοητ0ς) and of his own initiative, making a bad use of the natural faculty which had been entrusted to him in his constitution with an eye to the unification of what was separated, so as rather to separate things united’ Maximos the Confessor. Quoted in ‘Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses’ Jean-Claud Larchet Volume I, p65

So last time we stood back in a sense from where we are to look at the historical developments which led to the developments of Science in the West – we should I think note that its deeper roots lie in the Arab World, and that coming into contact with Islam in the world of ideas in the C13 in Europe was part of the background to that which we talked about last time.

And my assertion is that the Modern Philosophy, the presuppositions upon which ‘Modernity’ is is one of ‘things apart’. To take but a single example form the life the the Church – our Synods. Here a list of Issues are discussed. That they may be somehow interconnected and that we cannot understand any of them is isolation, not only from each other but indeed from the wider culture we inhabit – either does not occur to us, or trained as we are to think in a manner of disconnection we don’t even go there, putting it in the two hard box. I can imagine a way in which we might progress better in this regard which is to consider everything at once and ask – well how do these things mutually inform one another? How might our consideration of Baptism – to pick one example from our last general Synod – affect our understanding of the Clergy Care document we also considered. For me one of the most frustrating things about the Synod was that we discussed Baptism with one set of presuppositions and philosophical arguments, and Clergy Care with another set – both of which were actually mutually contradictory . . . The Clergy Care document in a sense undid the best intents of the discussion of Baptism . . . but we didn’t notice 🙂

Well over the coming weeks I want to explore Technology, Economy, our relationship with the Creation, and Community. But if we are to think about these things better, it is going to be a bit messy for they are in Reality deeply woven together. Technological change affects our relationships with one another = Community – and also affects Economic things and of course impacts on the Creation. Things Are woven together. So although over the next few weeks we will major on one theme – the others will come into play.

But before all that – to root our conversations we need to say from where we start. And an aspect in wider conversation about the state of things that is missing is this ‘What does it mean to be a human being?’ What is a Person? If we live in a world where it is apparent that people are highly significant, after all almost everything we see and hear is some form of human artefact, and what is more that anything we do affects people – what Are people??

Now I put out there a couple of contemporary examples of why this is a very pertinent question and perhaps no moreso than Now. First let us think about AI – Artificial Intelligence – one of the if not the fastest developing areas of not only research but technological applications. Elon Musk the owner of the Tesla Corporation which is into driverless cars says ‘Humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in the AI age’ Put another way, some humans are making things which will do away with the need for humans. Musk says ‘[a] more immediate threat is how AI, particularly autonomous cars, which his own firm is developing, will displace jobs.’ So clearly to be human is not to be responsible for anything . . . As I suggested last week – the Modern Age is profoundly inhuman, despite some seeing it as the age in which the Human having thrown off the shackles of ‘superstition’ is coming of age.
I was discussing this with someone a few weeks ago who said – well obviously humans will need to move into the caring professions – yet as I told her, initial feedback from research on robots in care homes is that the tiny amount of empathy that they appear to show is more than enough for people who have lived in virtual isolation. In other words their sense of sociality is so weak that a robot appears to fit the bill . . .

Or another example – that of the human pig chimera or hybrid. This development was announced in January and involved injecting human cells into a pig embryo. the human pig hybrid was grown  to about four weeks old. Now I read about this in the paper – but what struck moe even more forcibly than my horror at this, was the almost total lack of horror expressed in the comments under the article . . .

Just What is it to be human? It would seem that the Anglican solitary Maggie Ross may possibly be correct in her assertion that “the human race is sleepwalking towards extinction”

Yet, There IS HOPE – Christ and Him Crucified, if we will but attend to what is. As I suggested last Time – Christian Existence is the most profound expression of what it is to be human. That we may look at cultures down through the ages – with the possible exception of our own and find common forms of expression of what it is to be human – a Truth revealed to us in Jesus Christ. The God-Man. Revealed in Glory upon the Cross. Held in position between God (more broadly – the divine – Spirit) and that God’s Creation (or The Earth, the soil – Adam let us not forget means ‘mud-man’ 🙂 ) AND is also held between Neighbour and neighbour.

I think that this IS a great starting point for discussing Christian Existence – the question ‘What is you account of the human – or more personally, ‘Who or What do you think you are?’

And it is that horizontal dimension which I want to focus on today – or ‘Community’ – whilst gently insisting that we cannot begin to comprehend Community without understanding that in some sense the Creation is also our neighbour. (There will also be a brief comment here in the context of Dairy Farming about ‘Pastoral Care’ 🙂 )

and I wish to do so by telling a few stories

Firstly to recall something I read a few weeks back – and I cannot for the life of me remember where!! 🙂 It was an account of those ancient people, the Inuit who inhabit the Northwestern part of what we call North America, and their existence upon the Land. When the Inuit go out to hunt they do so in The Wilderness. The Wilderness is a place of Reality and Truthfulness. It is Red in tooth and claw. The Wilderness can kill you. Yet this is  also Home to these people. They are not disappearing into the bush for a weeks tramping – their lives depend on this PLACE and on each other. It is Context for their lives and unlike we Modern people – their sense of being One with Creation is very strong – as one writer puts it, their inner and outer worlds are woven together – we might use the word – Sacramentally. Somehow the Place is part of who they are (as is the case for pretty much all non-Modern cultures) Only we hyper mobile Moderns are people who imagine we might know ourselves apart from Place. (cf mihimihi and whakapapa)

When they go out to hunt, they are of course alert. The Wilderness of course is Other, it must be approached with a degree of reverence and Awe and over thousands and thousands of years these people have used their senses to alert them to what is happening around them. And this knowledge they share – indeed they MUST share, to stay alive. Not around the camp fire after a successful hunt, but through apprenticeship AND most critically when out hunting.
To think you have noticed something ‘not right’ – ‘out of place’ – a potential source of danger and not to tell those with whom you are, for fear of being thought a fool, is thought amongst these people to be akin to murder. It is to put the psychological safety of your inner self ahead of the physical safety of the others, separating yourself out, denying your own truth which can only be known with others in place – and can be punished by exclusion from the community – cut off from the people, to use the language of the Tanakh. And to be so cut off as we know from the scriptures is a sentence of Death. Life was experienced as a profound Sharing of everything. Which we might call a profound self-forgetfulness.

So you are out there and you think you may have seen something – So the prophet Ezekiel “O Son of Man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one of their number as their sentinel; and if the sentinel sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people; then if any who hear the sound of the trumpet do not take warning, and the sword comes and takes them away, their blood shall be upon their own heads. They heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; their blood shall be upon themselves. But if they had taken warning, they would have saved their lives. But if the sentinel sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any of them, they are taken away in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at the sentinel’s hand.”

‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire.’

Jesus says that the Great Love is to Lose your life for your friend. Not to open one’s mouth for the sake of the others, because one fears for oneself is as Jesus says to try and save your life, and thus lose it . . .

I think that it says something for the individualism of this age that these texts do not resonate – I think the Inuit might understand them better than we do!  And we may think regarding the history of these isles how Maori whose lives had been richly and often violently interwoven, HEARD the gospel – and were staggered that the modern europeans they encountered seemed not to understand the message they delivered . . .

And as a measure of how far we have perhaps come from this – how odd the gospel of the forgiveness of sins sounds to us – indeed we have to try and rework it, not because it is untrue, but because we do not live lives of mutuality where we are dependent on one another. So as i have said before, the Orthodox ahead of Great Lent forgive every other in the Church for all the sins they may have had committed against them. One commenter was bold enough to express his befuddlement – ‘but I can not really think of anything I need to forgive others for . . .’ To which the response came back ‘that is because you do not live close enough to them to Love them.’ Love is unclose and personal – it is Real it is NOT an idea. it takes on flesh in the substance of our shared existence. (It is interesting at best to notice how it is used in such an abstract manner nowadays – not sharing bread, but social revolution . . . ) Without at least a degree of mutual interdependence  – forgiveness is a meaningless word to us. So we look for another gospel . . .

Now just to point out – in that story we have a profound interweaving of people with one another in a life or death mutual interdependence and in relation to the Land

Well lets move on and my remaining stories illustrate something of what has happened in the Modern era, this era of disconnection.

First, I want to read you something from Wendell Berry. Berry is an essayist, a former English Lecturer who gave it up to go back to The Land. And he farms in Kentucky. He is best known for his essays, but his novels are also very well worth reading for their accounts of lives in Context – people in Place

The extract I’m going to read is from an Essay called, perhaps unsurprisingly ‘What are people for?’ 🙂 [From the book of the same name. Pub North Point San Francisco First Edn 1990. p123]

And as I read you may wish to pay attention to how the themes of community, Creation, Economy and technology are woven together.

Note the UnPlacing. Decisions made far away apart from context, ‘in government offices, universities, and corporations’ “There are too many people on the farm” I’ll return to that “Too many people” in a moment

A second unPlacing – urbanisation – “millions of Rural people moving from country to city” – In 2009 the human race statistically [because we’re Modern] become Urban – for the first time in the human story – although with roots in the Rural communities had felt this change form afar off. It is getting harder and harder to say this, for those with best access to the media all live there –  but cities do us no good. Individuals may and do thrive there, but not Shared lIfe  the scriptures do not speak well of cities. What is more it seems that as humans, the Mass is not what we are made for.  Research on the size of primate brains shows that humans cannot live a meaningful existence in a community of more than 150 and before technological change made such a difference this seemed to be the natural limit on sizes of communities – one in which shared existence was possible – which of course has an impact on what we mean by the size of a healthy church, one in which life together is a real possibility . . . perhaps why larger churches ending up having small groups. The loneliness of modern urban existence amongst so many may well be a psychological response – we cannot cope with trying to make so many connections – also of course the ‘loneliness of Facebook”
but note also the unPlacing of people with respect to ‘The Land’ . . . so the abstraction that is ‘the environment’ – or the way in which hardly anyone grows their own food . . . That these then become as it were ‘issues’ is part of the problem . . . food and its production and the care of creation become largely abstract things. Ideas, Causes, campaigns etc etc – this in itself is another  form of disengagement. Berry talks with great knowledge about the specificity of The Land – every inch different – needing different care, suitable for different crops etc.

Note next the language of economic efficiency and how accustomed we are to this – as if being human was about being efficiency – and also the primacy of the financial economy in determining the Good. Both forms of Alienation – this time from ourselves – We’ll return to this next week
And with that depopulation – the loss of ‘care’ takers. My brother did some research a few years back. It’s results were not convenient to prevailing ideas about ‘the economy’ and so have not been worked through. He was interested in the relationship between how well a farm did and the number of its employees. Now we all know that the most expensive component of a system is the human 🙂 As a teacher we were regularly told by the powers that be, that our salaries were the chief financial problem the city council faced. Fewer teachers, more resources of reaching . . . or so we were told . . . But what Richard found was that the more people a farm employed, the better the condition of the land, the healthier the cows and lo and behold the more income generated . . . Why? Because as he said – their were more eyes . . . I’ll come back to this story next week – but for now, you may wish to ponder the question of pastoral care in the church . . . the more eyes, the better the care 🙂

To a story about my Grandma. My grandmother was born in 1913 – in the village of Kirkby Lonsdale, then in Westmoreland until the people in London thought it inconveneint. When some years later my father’s work meant we came to live in Kirkby Lonsdale, this was quite helpful to me, when I was accused of ‘not being local’ for unlike some, I could point to the house in the village where she was born and the hotel and stables where my great grandfather worked for a time. Yet it was not long before his own father released the family farm in South West Cumberland, and so my grandmother moved to The Green, a tiny settlement on the edge of the town of Millom, a centre for iron production, due to its proximity to fast running water and the sea – which was a significant means of transport of the raw materials even as late as the 1920’s. Note the account of Place

Life in that community was explicitly hierarchical. To her dying day she could tell you who sat where in church – from the Lord and Lady of the manor at the front, to the labourers at the back. Grandmas family – yeoman farmers, owning their own farm were towards the front of the middle 🙂 this was a close knit community in which place in community conferred on the one hand deference, but also on the other obligation. Whenever anyone in the village was ill, the Lady of the manor would visit, taking round a basket of vegetables, for often illness and the cost of doctors would mean  insufficient food for a family. And every Christmas the whole hamlet was invited to a big party at The Big House.
Similarly, in the midst of the three farms in the hamlet, there was also a small ‘tied’ cottage. Owned by the iron works, it housed the man who looked after the water pump which carried water from the fell to the works. He had seven children and as my grandmother put it, they were poor as church mice. But they never went hungry – which would have been a source of something unknown to us now – social shame – something we are well adjusted to flee from. Rather fresh eggs, milk and butter as well as vegetables were regularly given to the family. it was a form of truly Social Security. The Social, Community dimension provided the security.

Now of course life was not an idyll. My grandmother also NEVER forgot a neighbour coming into their kitchen one morning – ‘Bill! My girls off ill, can I have your Betty to make the butter!’ And off she was sent without a by your leave, for several hours of hard labour . . .’

but then Life in community is not a dream. It is a reality in which we are held in place and thus might grow as human beings – but its hardship means if we can we seek to avoid it . . . and so to the unreality of our modern existence and something I think I’d never hear myself say, I agree with Margaret Thatcher . . . Speaking to Woman’s Own October 31st 1987

“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
Now Margaret Thatcher was in fact right regarding society. Where IS society? Where might I encounter society – what is its human face?? Surely we can do better than the poor hapless soul sat behind the counter at WINZ?? Of course, it doesn’t exist, it is a set of arrangements at best.

This problem of the abstract form of human relating, called society has been recognised for over two hundred years!! [Tonniës – Gemeinschaft – Gesellschaft] Here is the Danish philosopher and observer of the urban scene – Søren Kierkegaard – “only when the sense of association in society [for the purposes of this argument ‘Community’] is no longer strong enough to give life to concrete realities is the Press able to create that abstraction ‘the Public’ [Society after MHT], consisting of unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation” Now Kierkegaard’s argument is rooted in a further argument about the necessity of hierarchy. So he says “In order that everything should be reduced to the same level, it is first of all necessary to produce a phantom, its spirit, a monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage – and that mirage is the public.” This present age p33 This disappearance of the hierarchical means no one is responsible any more – for the King in ancient times was responsible – see how for example Moses had EVERYONE coming to him to sort out their problems . . .

Because we can only talk about the abstract, because with Kierkegaard ‘the sense of association in Community is no longer strong enough to give life to concrete realities’ then to say ‘my life is with my brother – or we are all mutually interdependent is only an idea, an abstract in a world of abstracts. . . .
Now again, in a sense Margaret Thatcher was also right when she said ‘It’s our duty . . .to look after our neighbour.’ We would all nod in agreement – but perhaps today unlike any other we may well ask ‘But who is my neighbour?’, or perhaps better ‘WHO is my neighbour?’ In a world of the Abstract other – Society – The Public – The poor – The hungry – where do we meet the neighbour??

Christian existence has nothing to do with the Abstract. ‘My life is with my brother’ is no mere idea – it is Reality and if we do not have Life with one another in a way in which our mutual interdependence takes on flesh, Where it becomes visible to The World that not to Live Together is death – then we have no gospel – indeed we have become people ‘cut off from’ one another. This is Not to become ‘political’ except in the deepest sense that polis is of the people  – that sharing bread with our friends (the hungry we encounter) is giving flesh to Gospel – not as an abstract idea but a Fleshly Reality.
This is one of several reasons why ‘talking about issues,’ so common in Church circles, is a modern distortion or indeed a rejection of that Existence. ‘I was hungry and you formed a committee to discuss my plight’ as one writer puts it. The problem of hunger, the problem of Climate change, the problem of marriage – etc etc etc – all in the abstract and an exercise in avoiding the other which is so very very easy in the city where money divides rich from poor, the advantaged from those who would benefit from their help. As we will see next week money is a huge part of the issues – Money is both an instrument of division and then it is the tool of sustaining that division – things apart.

Communities are places of obligation and entitlement woven together – or where we learn to love our neighbour as ourself – to see to use older expressions that our lives Are woven together – not in an abstract way – as in ‘If we all don’t start living differently then the Climate will collapse – this is to us where we are in our place, intangible – it is just an idea – it is abstract.

Hardship and difficulty  – the fact that when we seek a life in connection we find it not at all easy – are if you like the crucible in which Community – or Shared human existence – or Koinonia may well form. Our existence as humans is cruciform – Christian existence is necessarily in ‘Community’ where our mutual obligations to one another reveal our inner poverty and through the suffering of this, Life is born – the healing power of Christ is released

Next time – Economy and the move away from Community – Money and Work

Brett is the curate here at St John’s, Roslyn, and is preaching through Lent to Easter

 

Matthew 5:21-37

1 Cor 3:1-9

 

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

 

When I was leaving the Vicar factory – I had to meet up with the man who was to be my training Vicar to consider my curacy. Whilst I was in his kitchen his teenage daughter strode in and said ‘Absolutely Ridiculous!! At youth group tonight, they said ‘being angry with someone is like murdering them.’ This was my first encounter with Naomi – and you might say it was her first encounter with the words of Jesus. . .

 

Jesus is the one who calls Lazarus from the grave – out of the darkness and into the blinding light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And like those mornings when someone bright and full of good cheer strides into the bedroom and flings open the curtains to let the Sun in, we want to get back under the covers and hide. The words of Jesus are like that freezing cold shower that reminds us we really do have a body – a wake up to reality call . . . and how we need it – perhaps moreso than any generation, we have surrounded ourselves with layers of unreality, almost entirely cut off from the Truth about the World and our existence. We are Unaware . . .

 

Technology is of course one of those ways in which we have become unaware. We place something between ourselves and the world around us – the more complex the technology, the wider the gulf between our lives and the Reality we inhabit.  Just a couple of weeks ago there was a fascinating story about the English Rugby team and a problem with technology.

They employ a coach for nearly everything so it seems and their ‘Vision and Sight coach’, a South African woman – had a bucket of cold water for them – ‘you need to get off your smart phones – your ball handling skills and Awareness of where other players have eroded in the last five years as you have started to use them all the time’ The water was even colder for England than for most rugby teams because they are sponsored by the UKs largest Telecommunications provider . . .

 

Smart phones have two effects – they get us even further out of our bodies, so we get less used to using them, our eyes barely move at all when using them – as if we weren’t disabled enough already – and they lessen our awareness of what is happening around us. We see this all the time – people not noticing their surroundings as the screen captures their consciousness.

And what is more these affects are cumulative and may possibly be irreversible. We are losing our awareness of our surroundings, and for we Moderns that only compounds our disconnection from our existence. We grow nothing we eat, we make nothing we use, we largely live in urban environments, totally man made, live surrounded by human artefacts – and within these environs we live in what historically speaking is total isolation from one another. Cocooned in the convenience and comfort of our illusory existence, when reality does break in, we are ill equipped to deal with it.

 

So my Vicar’s daughter was being thoroughly modern as Jesus through his Word crashed into her life. ‘If you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement – indeed the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount is the most profound assault on our sense, the Full Light of Day, when we thought we were awake, we realise that we must have been asleep. Blessed are the Who? The Meek shall inherit the Earth???!!! Blessed are those who mourn????

 

And so it goes on. I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire . . . Wake up!! Says Jesus

 

And it is such a shattering awakening that, with the disciples when the rich man turns away from Jesus, we are left asking ‘Whom then can be saved?’

 

Over the last few months from time to time we’ve been pondering the reality of the Eucharist – this Act of Worship – that one might say is like a river of Fire flowing from Heaven to Earth, transforming, purging, transfiguring our Existence. Do we begin to See?? Do we begin to Know what it is we share in Sunday by Sunday?

 

Jesus wakes us up to the Reality of fractured lives – and then urges us to live in the light of it – if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So [in the light of reality] when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

 

There is an urgency to Jesus’ counsel. Come to terms and Quickly . . . This stuff is Life and Death – don’t treat it lightly. ‘You are caught up in something which you barely perceive yet which has eternal consequence . . .’

 

Sometimes as Anglicans I wonder if we are as poorly equipped to handle this Reality as any other Christians. We have this treasure of the Eucharist which is central to our worship – but there is something deep in our Anglican DNA which is about coming to be here to ‘do our own private business with God’ Many of us baulked when the Peace was introduced into our Worship – but if we do not come reconciled one to another, as far as that lies with us, how can we approach the table?

 

It is not that the Eucharist is a symbol of our life together – that the REAL thing is the meals we share etc. etc. Rather the other way round that the life we do or do not share together is a sign pointing to the reality or otherwise to us of the Eucharist. How can we approach the table?? For there is but One Bread and One cup – so we must come ‘as one body’ (And of course this was at the heart of Paul’s concerns with the Corinthian Church which explicitly was divided – one following Paul, another Apollos etc.)

 

But this is why we have our liturgy – In part we might answer this question ‘how CAN we approach the table?? How Can we be saved??’ with regard to our confession – those ‘sins of ignorance’ .

 

Our lack of awareness means that we commit many many sins of ignorance . . . as I have said before we have little or no sense of the impact of our lives upon others. Spider photo 🙂

Some months ago I was brought to my knees by the realisation that as a Modern Western person, I had used my fair share of the world’s resources by the time I was 20 . . . and now I am well on my way to my third time through.

 

We HAVE sinned in ignorance . . . like God’s ancient people, the Jews we make provision for this in our liturgy – they through the sacrificial system, as Job the most righteous man who ever lived made sacrifice for the possible sins his children had committed – so we ask for mercy and forgiveness for those sins which through our blindness we have committed

 

I turned 55 this week and I think that puts me in that most widely despised category, an old white man – and as such I am responsible for the sins of the whole world. Yet I should not complain – from of old we have been told that in some sense we are all responsible. Jesus does not take just some sin upon himself but that of the whole world, and takes it to the cross. If we are to be found in Christ, where shall we stand so that we might say ‘well at least I am not guilty in this or that respect? Stand apart – in judgement of others. As Jesus parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee humorously helps us to see – ‘Well at least I’m not like that Pharisee!!’ To stand apart in the muck and the mess of human existence is to find ourselves separated from Jesus who was the Meek and the mourning and the lowly and the humble – who emptied himself.

 

‘If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.’

 

When we wake up to this reality we realise that in human terms our case is hopeless. And we have one of two options  we either give in to despair – and much of contemporary culture it seems has given in in different ways to such nihilistic despair — or, in faith, we cry out Lord have mercy. In Faith

 

We cry out Lord have mercy in faith – for we realise our fragility, but more we realise that we cry out to the one who from the Cross cries out – Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do

 

The freshness of the Cold Water – shocking to our bodies is the Reviving of our hearts and souls, it is The Water of Life. The Brightness of the Son, searing our eyes, conveys the Deepest Warmth, the Passionate Love of God for his children, the objects of his Sheer mercy

 

 

The feast of the naming and the circumcision of Jesus – 2017

 

‘And you shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins’

Why are we given the names we are? Usually nowadays for no better reason than these are names our parents like. But that is no bad reason – for our name always reminds us of our parentage – those through whom we have come into the world. The desire to change one’s name – to name oneself is not something we should encourage. For how would we name ourselves aright?

 

I know that for many years I struggled with my own name – I was named after an uncle who died in infancy and it seemed to me that everyone called ‘Eric’ was OLD. It was only in my later years when the French footballer Eric Cantona strode the stage of my beloved Leeds United that I began to think differently about my name. Latterly I have come to understand it as the most significant link to my parents, of blessed memory – they named me.

 

But in earlier days I began to wear it with a little more pride as I learnt it was an ancient Norse name given to Kings – most significantly Eric the Red, or Eric Bloodaxe 🙂 All of a sudden I had left the arena of old men in flat caps and had entered the stage of Norse Saga and myth 🙂 Of course, having the name Eric neither made me an axe wielding Viking, nor a great footballer . . . and one feels for those children named in a prophetic sense – Grace, Charity, or as many of the boys at the Catholic high school where I taught were named, Christian. It seemed to have the opposite effect!

 

Today in our gospel we hear how ‘After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.’ Jesus is given his name in the prophetic sense – in response to the words of the angel to Mary and Joseph he is named Jesus.

 

The name Jesus was not all that unusual amongst Jewish boys of the time. In Aramaic, the language of Jesus, it would have been Jeshua – another form of the name Joshua, which literally means ‘The Lord Saves’. A name which linked Jesus to God’s actions in bringing his people into the promised land – a name with close associations with the prophetic tradition. Jesus is of course proceeded by John the Baptist, who is ‘the elijah who is to come’ Elijah – My God is The LORD! Elijah’s successor is Elisha – Literally ‘My God Saves!’ or God is Salvation! In other words Jesus as he is named is part of the long story of God’s people – and is circumcised on the eighth day as required by the Law of Moses.

 

And the name, given by the angels to Mary and Joseph means – ‘The LORD Saves’ for as the angel said to Joseph – ‘you shall name him Jesus, for he shall save His people from their sins’

 

Matthew links this announcement to the word spoken through Isaiah – ‘and they shall name him Emmanuel – which means God is with us’ The name Jesus is given for he shall be with his people, to save them from their sins. He comes to be with His people, to save them from their sins.

 

When we ponder, or utter the name of Jesus, we are reminding ourselves of our need to be saved from our sins. Why does God send Jesus to identify with his people? That he might take their sin upon him and save them from it.

 

And it must be said, that this is an element of the Christmas story which in the carols excepted seems to be lost from the telling. Jesus comes to be with his people, yes,

To save them from their sins? . . . this element gets lost in the telling or has been of late.

 

A few months ago I was with someone who asked as it were to the wind, ‘what has happened to Sin and Salvation in this Church’ We had been sat through hours and hours of this and that or the other seemingly pressing matters at General Synod, but not one word about the heart of our Faith, or better the Reason for the coming of Jesus amongst us, to save his people from their sins. And the question was a good one. Why in this age has the centre of the Gospel of Jesus  – the one who shall save his people from their sins – disappeared pretty much from view?

 

Well the reasons behind this are multifaceted – yet a not unimportant part of the reason is the collapse of Community in this day and age. When you are living in such proximity to others that you are aware that your life depends on them, and theirs on you, not just in extreme situations, but for day to day living – the breaking of relationship which is the fruit of sin is of utmost importance – Life or Death in some circumstances.

 

Yet, ‘Relationship’ has become such a light word in our culture – meaning less and less. Yesterday I was speaking with a young man, what we are calling a ‘millenial’ – he spoke of how ‘Trust’ was not part of the meaning of modern friendship. ‘Nowadays one knows that people are only friends until something more interesting comes along’ – a dynamic I have seen worked out countless times in the life of those children I know well. We have fewer and fewer strong connections – and thus less to break – or to use the language of our tradition, less obvious Sin.

 

My grandparents grew up in tightly knit societies where one knew ones place – and more, ones obligations to others, not least the poor. Held in place in this way, Sin was often a public matter. Now we live lives with no local consequences – our purchasing decisions don’t seem to affect anyone in our immediate circle. Our lives are lives of disengagement – lived out virtually – disconnected. Sin is alien to our consciousness . . .

 

And in this arena of nothing really mattering, not only Sin seems to disappear, but also Jesus himself. We have less time for him as Saviour, rather he becomes a wise teacher, in a Private spirituality – our faith no longer specifically about Him. For it is not only Sin and Salvation which has disappeared from the life of the Church, but ‘Jesus’ is now reduced to a rhetorical tool to justify this or that or the other agenda of our own. His words ‘no one comes to the Father except they come through me’ seems a strange throwback to that age in which Sin and Salvation were what it was all about.

 

Witness for example the very strange language of our confession from the 1928 prayer book (a watered down version of the 1662 whose name it bears) If we compare it with confessions from ‘A New Zealand Prayer Book’ the language of Sin and Salvation are much more to the front. They are a cry for HELP! We are in big trouble – Sin threatens to overwhelm us! Save us! Jesus, Save us!!

 

And of course – this is the Prayer he LONGS to answer – for He Is the One Named Jesus – so named for he shall save his people from their sins.  This is why He Came – that we might be reconciled to God in and through Him. It is of course the meaning of Confessing our Sins – it is the meaning of Our Baptism, It is the meaning of the Eucharist. All of which focus on Jesus – and Who he is – the one who shall save his people from their sins.

 

We are still in the season of Christmas – a season of 12 days in which amidst the feasting we meditate upon the Gift of Jesus to us. Let us take time to mediate upon the Name of Jesus – so named because he shall save his people from their sins.

 

You and I know each other by our names – let us in the same way Know Jesus.

 

Amen

 

2 Sermons for the Fourth Sunday of Advent – Ss Joseph and Mary

‘Male and Female he created them’

One

St Joseph and the Fatherhood of God

Matthew 1:18-25

One of the great difficulties for us as Christians, especially in our day and age, is that we are completely unaware of the great biases we have. The logs in our eyes. Believing that we ‘know everything’, we are even more profoundly disabled by our ignorance. Like a stubborn older person who won’t use a walking stick ‘because people will think I am old . . .’ our pride leads us into terrible problems – not least when it comes to Knowing our faith as it has been passed down to us.

‘We know better nowadays’ is the mindless mantra drilled into us from our first encounter with what is falsely called ‘knowledge’. That the generation which knows so much is watching as the creation collapses around us, whilst simultaneously checking out pictures of cats on Facebook, betrays our deep ignorance of anything in the Real world. Hence the significance of The Tradition which Roots us in Christ and the Church and thus, anchored in Reality.

Our faith is Traditioned, it is handed down to us – we are given sight and understanding through the Grace of God by His Spirit, and don’t make it up for ourselves. And sight and understanding are embodied in a language. Christians when we are speaking truthfully speak differently to those amongst whom we live.

But, like anyone living in a strange land – we are tempted to try and fit in – we are too easily  embarrassed by the things that make us seem odd, which make us stick out. The dominant culture shames us more or less subtly for our foolishness in thinking and speaking in such and such a way, not least when it comes to how we address God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for ever praised. Indeed our own NZ prayer book, seeking to fit in and hiding shamefully behind the fig leaves of cultural relevance, invites us to name God for ourselves. the Power to name is the power to define – our Gift is to name all that which God has set under us, to seek to name God is no less than to make ourselves God.

The final Sunday in Advent is traditionally the Sunday when we as we prepare our hearts and minds to receive the fullness of the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus, and consider the Mother, Mary the one who is the God bearer – the one who holds the One who is uncontainable. However, we are in Year A, the first year of the three year cycle of our readings and so our gospel reading comes from Matthew. Matthew directs us in passing to the Unique circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy ‘When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.’, Yet Matthew is more concerned to draw our attention to the forgotten figure in the drama of the birth of Jesus, the male . . . St Joseph. St Joseph, the male who is not the Father

Every year around the world in Western Churches two difficult questions are asked in preparation for Christmas – the first is ‘whose turn is it to play Mary in the Nativity??’ , this is difficult for there is never a shortage of willing girls to take this most prized role, and we MUST make sure that every girl gets a go! The second question is less politically tricky, more the sort of question we all too often face in the church, ‘who can we get to . . .’, in this case ‘who can we persuade – challenge – bribe – or if it comes down to it, Force to be Joseph?’

Finding volunteers to be Kings – or even shepherds? No problem! Good strong male characters, but Joseph? Everyone knows that Joseph is just a bit part in the story – he just has to tag along and look after the main player. All the photos afterwards are with the mother – babe in arms. For frankly who would want to be Joseph – indeed Joseph himself in all likelihood wasn’t terribly struck by the idea. Upon realising that his betrothed is inexplicably with child, his first response, ‘being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,’ was to resolve to ‘dismiss her quietly.’ Let us not suppose darker motives – for Matthew tells us Joseph is a ‘righteous man’ – such a description is not to be taken lightly. What might be in view here is simply to quietly and privately ‘write her a certificate of divorce’ – rather than go to public trial over the matter, and thus ‘expose’ her, for he is a good man. The Woman is not to be exposed.
Whatever, he is in a very difficult situation – but perhaps that is nothing compared to a deeper matter – that he is not the father. He is a little more than an extra – having no agency. like the unwilling boy in the nativity, told where to stand – Joseph is told by the angel what he must do – a passive player in the drama of the birth of Christ.

The theologian Karl Barth puts it like this ‘“Born of the Virgin Mary” . . .from the human standpoint the male is excluded here. The male has nothing to do with this birth. What is involved here is, if you like a divine act of judgement. To what is beginning here man is to contribute nothing by his action and initiative. It is not that humanity is simply excluded, for the Virgin is there. But the male, as the specific agent of human action and history, must now retire into the background, as the powerless figure of Joseph’

Removing the male from the action when God sets about his most profound work, is a common theme in Scriptures First Adam is asleep as Eve,’the mother of al the living’ is created, then Abraham is asleep as God pronounces his covenant, and I could go on – Joseph of course only gets his orders, whilst he is asleep, only the men see visions and dream dreams – when God speaks to them they are asleep – Joseph is told, there is no conversation, his agency is purely to do as he is told. And again as he must take the infant Jesus to Egypt, the instruction comes not whilst he is at work, but whilst he is asleep . . .

Perhaps it is no surprise that little boys aren’t eagerly queuing up for this nativity play role. But I suggest that both the feminine eagerness and the masculine lack thereof both point us to something deeper. As I said we shall contemplate Mary this evening – but Joseph . . .

You see, the issue is quite plain at one level, he is not the father. Joseph is not the father – he must bring one up as a father but without being the Father – The Father.

As I’ve already mentioned – our modern western culture finds the name of God as traditioned – as handed down – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – embarrassing. A throwback to ‘a patriarchal and therefore oppressive way of seeing gate world from which we have now been liberated’. But this is a profound and tragic error on several levels.

Jesus as we know refers to God as his ‘Father’ – he teaches his disciples to pray ‘Our Father’. Of course if one was of such a will one could dismiss this under the ‘patriarchal’ argument – except for this. Jesus teaches us ‘call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.’ ‘call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.’

Put another way – you cannot define God by your earthly understanding of ‘father’ – to be ‘Father’ is something that can only be known in reference to God.

God in moving Joseph to one side reveals the utter inadequacy of the human male as a reference point for fatherhood. If we are to know what Father means, we must look to God, only in Knowing God, do we Know the Father.

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

I had been a Christian for some time before I began to notice how I addressed God. In prayer and in my daily life I found myself crying out ‘Father’ – a spontaneous habit which only seemed to recede in those darker periods when I found myself rebelling against his Love. To Know Him is to Know The Father

Those sad cases one sometimes comes across in which a man (usually) says he cannot relate to God as Father because of his poor relationship with his own father only further highlights the essential point – that we cannot understand the Fatherhood of God from a human point of view. They are pointing right at the Fatherhood of God, for As one writer puts it ‘a strange discovery awaits every human being; the fact that a man does not possess the paternal instinct in the same was as a woman possesses the maternal instinct – there is nothing immediate in a man’s nature that corresponds directly to the principal of fatherhood’ for you have one Father, the One in heaven.’

Amen

 

 

 

Two

Woman and the Salvation of the World

Genesis 3:1-20
Luke 1:26-45

This morning we considered Joseph – so in the interests of equality it is only reasonable that tonight we consider Mary. I say ‘equality’, but it is notable that neither the Scriptures nor the Tradition treat Mary and Joseph as if they were equal . . . and as I said this morning we are wired by our culture to read texts in a certain way. If I say that ‘the Scriptures do not treat Mary and Joseph as equals’, then if we did not know any better we might fall into a lazy and easy assumption that Joseph as the man is held in far higher regard in ‘these patriarchal and outdated Scriptures’ than the ‘mere woman’ Mary, except of course, we know that is not so. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth.

Joseph is that oxymoron – a ‘passive actor’, more fully a passive male – in the drama of the birth of Jesus. The birth of God into the World does not include Joseph – He does not speak a word. He is told what to do whilst he is asleep – in a dream. It is worth asking whether, because we live in a society which is profoundly masculinised, we fall too readily for the suggestion that the male is central to the Scriptural account and so fail to See, and be amazed by how marginal the male is in this narrative of the birth of Jesus.

Indeed as we explored this morning, do we miss the force of Jesus’ words ‘call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.’ That is, there is no earthly referent with regard to Father? When God reveals himself as Father, actually we are told not to try and interpret Father with reference to the male human?? The man Joseph gives us no clue to the meaning of ‘Father’, the Name Father by which the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. We Know God as Father, but that is a profound divine mystery for He is in heaven and there is not earthly example – not even St Joseph.

How different to Mary! This morning we contrasted what happened at nativities. Children as I so often say get it – they are in spiritual terms ‘thin places’ that is they are Open. In some respect this is MOST hazardous – children in this age as much as any other are exposed to many and terrible things – they are utterly open and we are utterly careless. We are all about protecting children, for they are utterly vulnerable and, in the next breath in the name of ‘education’ we put devices in their hands which which are doorways for much that they are not able to comprehend or worse which can literally destroy their souls – to Know everything – Good and Evil. Yet, at the same time, whilst there are still children in the Church, by grace they come to know God in Jesus, and Mary his mother.

How interesting it is that whilst boys are often grudging to play Joseph . . . Kings, YES! Shepherds . . .OK, but Joseph? Girls queue up to ‘be Mary’. The paternal instinct is absent from the male – it is not instinctual – but the maternal is instinctive within the female. They instinctively want to pick up the doll. They Know. Watching our own girls growing up – Sarah and I have so many photos of them ‘holding the baby’ Whereas the male is the one who is only awkwardly ‘left holding the baby’

And that maternal instinct finds its correlative in the role of women in the faith who faithfully pass on Life in the Tradition. It is interesting to note that in the latter part of the C19 in Russia, some of the saints of the Church gave themselves unstintingly to instructing women in the faith. When the Church then endured the horrific suffering under Communism, as we all know it was the women who bore the faith, who carried it within them and transmitted it. What after all is it to become a Christian than to be ‘Born Again’ . . . the question of Nicodemus at this assertion not perhaps without some weight . . .

It is an observable principal that whilst the male teaches the dogma of the faith, it is the woman who passes on the Essence of The Faith, its Being, The Mystery of Faith – in a far deeper instinctual way – the way of Mystery. At my daughter Rose’s wedding I made reference to those who were missing – including Sarah’s mother who kept faith alive in her family and passed it to her daughter, and then through her mother, Rose and indeed all of our children. Life passes through the female. The female is the life giver – so, rather than equality – compared with Joseph and indeed Any other Saint, The Church has exalted Mary – calling her ‘Theotokos’ – literally the one who bears God. The frail finite encompassing the consuming Fire of the ‘infinite’. Frail human flesh bearing the One who is a consuming Fire . . . Our God, incomprehensibly contracted to a span within a Woman.

 

 

In front of you you have two icons of Mary, The upper one  is called ‘the Hodighitria’ – Mary points us to Jesus, she posts us to the Way, and Christ blesses his mother – As the Father speaks from Heaven ‘This is my Son, the beloved, Listen to Him, so Mary also directs us to her Son. At the wedding of Cana, ‘Mary said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’’ This icon is so significant that mariners of Old would place it in the bow of the boat  The Virgin Mother pointing us to Jesus, ‘the Way’. Within her occurs the incarnation – the weaving together of heaven and earth – thus as as heaven is woven into Earth, so Jesus is The Way in toto.

Yet – Supremely it is Mary’s assent to the Will of the Father which is the gate of Salvation for all of humanity – for all of those, as Jesus calls us ‘born of woman’. Her assent becomes the human vehicle for the Life of God to enter into the World Incarnate – In flesh – and again when Jesus ascends to the Father who sends the Spirit – there on the day of Pentecost, St Luke names 1 woman present amongst the apostles – Mary the Mother of Jesus. (See the lower icon)

As Eve is named for she was ‘mother of all the living’, so Mary is the Eve of the New Creation – it is her ‘Yes’ which is the doorway for the life of God into the world, the Spirit of Jesus, that we might be born again. It is perhaps not going to far as some assent, that Mary is The Church – for the Church is the body of Christ – she is the one who within herself holds that body – she is the one who gives of her flesh that God might be born into the world. So in the second Icon as is customary we see Mary seated in the centre of the Church, our Mother.

Now it may have become apparent that I have been weaving together the story of Mary with that of Women in the Church, perhaps a note that we have lost. As The Church has forgotten the way in which the story of Joseph (and indeed many other men in the Scriptures who have to be asleep for God to work) puts the male out of the picture – so there has been in the Western tradition of the Church an approach to Mary which has divorced her from Womankind, and allowed the dominance of the male – to the point where as many say ‘it is a man’s world’. Neither Joseph not Mary conform to the way we are told the world is – which is a Sign to us that we are failing to See the World as it truly is – as God created it to be.

Deep in the story of Creation we come upon the story of the Fall. Why should the Serpent tempt Eve? Of course, if we wear the glasses modern thought has put upon us we would say ‘well here is an example of a Patriarchal text! The woman is being portrayed as weak, so Satan goes for the weak point’ This however is not how the Deep tradition of the Church reads it at all! No! The Woman is Receptive – that is at once her profound Strength and also the Potential of weakness. Of Glory, or of Shame. As the Ancient story of Achilles tells us, the weak point is always found in regard to the Strength.

Rather the Woman in the Story is portrayed as the pinnacle of God’s creative work. God’s Creative act culminates as he puts the man to sleep that he might do his most mysterious work – this is a Hidden thing. It is something which we can only begin to know in the Church in the Body of Christ. It cannot be known from outside of faith. The Serpent takes on Eve precisely because he knows that She as Woman is the source of Life for the human – both physical and spiritual. If he can deceive her, then all of humanity is lost. Eve receives the apple – she takes it into herself, and so the knowledge of Evil enters the world. How might this be redeemed, by the Woman taking Good, The Good into herself, in her ‘Let it be to me according to your Word’ Mary receives the Word of God into her being for the Salvation of the World. As Karl Barth put it, ‘here the Woman stands absolutely in the foreground.’ Yet this is hidden – it is a veiled truth for it is the stuff of mystery, the essence of Life and the feminine.

JRR Tolkien, a man versed in the deep myths and of course the Tradition expressed this well in the person of Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings – she ruled Lothlorien with her husband Celeborn, and she is the one who gives to Frodo the Light which busts forth in the Evil darkness of Shelob’s lair. Frodo, the male, hesitates before her Mystery and offers the Ring to her, the Ring of Power. “And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.

But she survives the test – the Ring is a thing of Evil and she will not receive it – lest the Old Magic be undone – and then ‘for all shall love me and despair’

This Truth is veiled. It is in the secret places that Jesus is woven together – it is the hiddenness of the humility of Mary that God comes into the world. It is only with the eye of faith that this young Jewish girl might be known as the Queen of heaven, it is not now public fact – the one who’s yes to God was for the Salvation of the World. And it is this profound mystery which is at the heart of the Eucharist – for because Mary received Life in and through her Yes to God, so the One born to her feeds us with His Very Life in the Eucharist.

We are in Advent – waiting for the bread of Heaven – which comes to us through Mary’s echoing the divine Yes – she is the one who calls Jesus to his Passion – ‘When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’’

In her ‘Let it be to me according to your Word’ – the Wedding Feast of the Lamb comes into being.

Alleluia

Amen

 

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

Matthew 3:1-12

‘Awaken to the Theo Drama’

‘Just what’s going on in here??’ A question which brings back the presence of my mother, of blessed memory. Ususally addressed to me whilst ‘partying with my friends’ in my room, and to my memory, not after the age of about 10 – I got out of partying pretty quickly 🙂 But it is a Good question for us as we gather together today, ‘Just what IS going on here? Today? In this space?’

Just the other evening we were visited by the Roslyn Cub Scout troop. As folk will possibly remember, I enjoy having groups like the Cubs visit – for me, it is a sign that children are far far more alert to the realities of belief than adults, even adult Christians.

And when I use a phrase like the realities of belief we need to understand that in our culture these words, belief and reality, are largely disconnected. What do WE as the Church mean by ‘the realities of belief’??

Lets think for a moment about the word ‘believe’ – Like many word sin our shared language it can mean many things. I can believe in things in very different ways, even things that are true. But which way of believing brings me into the realm of Reality?? I can and indeed do believe that Lima is the capital of a country called Peru in South America. But this is just a thought, most of me is not engaged in that belief. I’ve never been there, I only know one person who has visited there. I have no ‘connection’ to Lima, my belief in Lima has no impact on my existence apart from a few flashing neurones.

This morning I came closer to a belief rooted in reality, because it affected me physically. My alarm went off, I Woke up – I believed that I had to get out of bed to conduct worship at 8. Now my belief has an affect on my actions . . . but note this, it doesn’t have to. Actually I didn’t have to – it was an act of Mind over matter. My belief forcing my unwilling body to do what it needs to so that I can conduct worship. ‘Well’, we might say ‘THAT is what we mean by ‘the reality of belief’ – I believe something in my head and so I direct my body in a certain direction to do the things that I believe my faith requires of me, like coming to Church’. For the vast majority of folks that is what we mean when we talk about faith and action, or the reality of faith. Does What you believe in your head affect what you do in your life – but I suggest that that is NOT the reality of Faith as the Church teaches it, and to which I introduced the Cubs.

Rather Faith goes much much deeper – it engages us to the point where ‘thinking about it’ is almost after the fact element of faith. That we have been caught up in something over which we are not the central players.

To give you an example of what I mean, lets conduct a thought experiment. Imagine yourself if you will stood near the top of a very very very high cliff, and in your thoughts you walk closer and closer to the edge. Notice how your body responds!! NOW you are believing. Your belief in Gravity now Really matters – it matters in the arena of what is REAL. Faith has moved from a thought, through a thought controlling an action, to an Action. Faith is Enacted – you in your Being are believing. THIS is what we mean by Christian Faith – ‘the reality of Faith’. our whole being is caught up in it.

So to come back to the cubs and their visit. How did we as it were engage with faith in their visit, Well I simply treated our worship as that which it is, the very centre of our faith, in the edge of a cliff way – that when we come here we are Entering into the depths of our faith, we are participating in what God is doing among us. I spoke of how we come through the door and are confronted by the font – that we beomce Christians when our bodies are immersed in the water of baptism. (I think that this may be why quite often folk want a second baptism, not primarily because they want it to be THEIR decision, but because they want a faith that involves all of who they are – a bodily faith)

I spoke of how we become Children of God by this baptism in which we are immersed in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are changed into new people, like new born babies. Now of course I could have taught them a whole load of Christians believe this, that and the other, but if we come back for a moment to our considering ‘believing’ then we see that this is at best like believing in Lima, or believing I have to get out of bed – most of who we are is disengaged. But when I declare the truth of our Baptism that through it we are included in the Life of God and become his children – that is believe in the deep sense of impacting our whole life. When we speak of our whole life we as Christians do not primarily mean ‘our work life or our family life or this or that aspect of what we label our lives, but we mean it is whole life in that our LIFE is engaged . . .

And so I spoke to the cubs of how they were entering a Theatre, where every week Chrstians come together to engage in like a Great Play – but not as audience, but as participants. Not in the sense that ‘someone prays, and someone reads etc. but in the deeper sense – That we are participating in what God is doing here – That God is Active in our worship – and we are being changed in who we are, and this starts with baptism. We are entering the Drama of God. We are HEARING him speak to us directly through his Word – which comes down from Heaven and into the body of the people, as I explained last week – and as I told someone this week, this is not a Symbol – it is NOT something we do to help us THINK better about our faith – it IS our faith. In Worship we are participating in what God is doing in and among us. As we confess our sins He is active and coming to us to forgive us, the Father of the prodigal children delighted to see his Children coming home!

The Word of God, Jesus the Son, Comes to us in the Gospel, to stand amongst us, We stand, we hear, we consider together what he is saying, we respond in prayer, we embrace one another in the Peace that he has announced and so made real amongst us – and then we come together to the banquet he has set for us, and God feeds us with the life of his Son, and so we grow more and more into the likeness of his children . . .

Not once in my talk with the cubs did I say ‘Christians believe’, nor did I try and couch it in the worlds terms about religion with which we are all far too comfortably familiar. Go speaks to his children, God listens to His Children, God feeds his children with his very life in this bread and wine – and we SING to him, and for him . . . and that through all of this God blesses not just us, but the Whole world, that through what we are doing here, God is holding all of Creation together, and their lives are affected and blessed

I must admit I have never encountered such an engaged group of youngsters – utter and complete Silence, in the best sense.

Human existence in the age of Virtual reality has become a thing that is almost unbearably thin -humans have been so reduced that the soul cannot even bear the slightest slight – someone has a cold and we call it flu and the whole internet is alerted to the fact and crowds rush to wrap the poor soul in cotton wool . . .  It reminds me of CS Lewis’ allegory, where people cannot bear to go to heaven, because it is TOO REAL . . . It is Too In your face 🙂 And then up steps John . . .

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

There is no arid philosopher here – he’s not coming to offer 10 tips to help us cope with life – rather he is the Herald of The Living One. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters remembering his Key Role in this Drama of God, call him not John the Baptist, but St John, the forerunner – He is the herald ‘The Voice echoing own through the ages from the prophet Isaiah – Crying out in the wilderness – Bellowing – ‘Prepare the way of the LORD’ God is coming – Repent! Get your lives, your ways straightened out – He is coming. Re Direct your Life – your whole being!!

Repentance is not about getting our thoughts straight, rather it is the result of the Encounter with the Herald of God – and to meet John is an Encounter! In powerful resemblance to that Old prophet Elijah – the Hairy clothing, the food of the wilderness, locusts and wild honey. The encounter with John is visceral – it is cliff edge stuff – we can feel our whole bodies either drawing back or running to him to be baptised.

I remember a friend who was converted under the preaching of a man like John. Eric Delve, A docker from Liverpool. Bob was a gentle sensitive man – and Eric preached about the ghastly horror of the crucifixion of Jesus, and at the mental level Bob was going – I am NOT going to respond to this, but his LIFE was at stake, and although his mind rebelled, as he said later, something took hold of me and walked me to the front of the hall and THEN I understood. His body said ‘I am not letting you get away with running away any longer.

So John’s message is perhaps to suitable for a culture of minor aggressions – I can see him up in front of the various varsity boards telling him to sort his act out, this Herald of the very life of God. And perhaps he might have used the same language for them as he used for those protectors of the religious niceties, the Scribes and Pharisees, “You brood of Vipers!”
For this, this message, THIS worship –  is about Life and Death – it is about our whole existence, not our bourgeois niceties – John is utterly in our faces, because to paraphrase, if you think I’M too much you have no idea of The One who comes after me. You do not Know Him.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Are you ready??

Advent is our opportunity to prepare ourselves. When we consider that when we drink the Cup we consume the Life of the one who is The Living God, who baptises with fire, who is consuming fire – how do we come to the Lord’s table? How do we prepare, for worship?

The Orthodox prayer at the reception of communion is “Behold: I draw near to the Divine Communion. Burn me not as I partake, O Creator, For Thou art a Fire which burns the unworthy. Rather, cleanse me of all defilement.”

As the crowds come to John in preparation they divide into two streams, those who bodily enter into the Life of the preparation to meet with God, and those who stand to one side – thinking it through, not bringing their very selves to this transforming act – those who seek to be cleansed and made ready to meet with God. As we come week by week may we prepare well – may we desire above all the Life of God which is a consuming fire that we might be cleansed and transformed. This is our Faith – This is what we believe

Sermon for Advent Sunday, 2016

Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 25:36-44

‘The Quiet Apocalypse’

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America, has caused many who have a concern for Climate Change to despair. This despair is I suggest ill-directed. The despair, if it is an appropriate response should be directed at human beings in general, and their insatiable desires for more and more. We know more than enough about Climate Change to know that our lifestyles are its prime drivers – taking the brakes of American Industry will only have an adverse affect if people buy more and more stuff. Climate Change denial is much closer to home than we would like to imagine . . .

One group of folk who didn’t need any persuasion about Climate Change and saw it coming were the old farmers amongst whom I lived an worked in England. I’d been teaching it for a long time, but some of these farmers had known something was awry for much longer. Sensitive to the smallest changes in the smell of the air, or patterns of weather or the subtle shifts in the seasons, these men Knew what was coming. But their wisdom is increasingly lost as farming moves more and more towards total industrialisation. A sensitivity to the Land is ‘unhelpful’ in ‘economic’ terms and  these are the terms which must be obeyed, the god which must be placated.

Well with mention of Trump and the Farmers we might imagine that theme of what I have to say today is about what Rachel Carson noted in her book, ‘The silent Spring’ one of the first books to bring the evidence of Climate change to a wider audience.

The Apocalypse is happening and no one is paying much attention – but Climate Change is not the Apocalypse, the Apocalypse is much more difficult to discern than that. ‘No one knows the hour,’ not even the scientists . . .

For Apocalypse is not primarily about the end of the world, only secondarily so. The word ‘Apocalypse’ means what we translate it as in the last book of the Scriptures, Revelation. Apocalypse is not Catastrophe, nor is it a swarm of US helicopters swarming over the horizon the the playing of The Ride of the Valkyries – for those who know their Vietnam War Cinema. No Apocalypse is a Revealing – and is Quiet, it is taking place under our noses – it is hidden – no one knows the hour . . .

To get a better grasp of The Apocaylpse, and why it concerns us as Christians so much, we would do better to think about Noah. Noah is the archetype of the Quiet Apocalypse. ‘as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man’ As the days of Noah  . . . ‘For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,’ –  people just getting on with their lives, going about their business. This Apocalypse, this end of the world revealing seems to quietly happen in and amongst the stuff of everyday existence – and it does, but look at Noah.

There is Noah, in the midst of everyone who is ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage’ and what is HE doing?? While everyone is ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,’, Noah is building an ark.

Noah’s life, and that of his family, his sons Shem and Ham and Japheth, and their families are taken up in what can only appear to be a project of utter irrelevance. In terms of the world in which he lives, Noah’s actions make no sense whatsoever, and popular retellings of the Noah story have those amongst whom he lives mocking and deriding him – and Noah warning them back.

The Ark is utterly pointless to these people ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, – shopping holidaying, working’ And it looks like a huge Joke, as does Noah, and we might imagine Noah saying ‘A great flood is coming!’ and everyone laughing at him. But we would be wrong to do so.

The Noah narrative is utterly bereft of such details. No mention is made of him being laughed at. No mention at all of him rushing around telling everyone to save themselves from the coming flood and build an Ark like his. Just The Command of God, ‘Make me an Ark’, and Noah’s obedience, ‘Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.’ And the command of God, “Go into the ark, you and all your household,’ and Noah’s obedience ‘And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him’ and ‘after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.’

In the midst of all that  ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage’ – there is a quiet Apocalypse taking place – a revelation for those with eyes to see – but as far as the Noah story is told, no-one saw – as Jesus says ‘they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away’.

And while it may be tempting to make parallels between that flood and the forecast inundation due to climate change and sea level rise – such that even here in Dunedin the long term security of parts of our city are called at least into question – that would I suggest be an exercise in missing the point.

What is the command of Jesus in this respect? What does he call US to? ‘Keep awake therefore’ – pay attention. If we are alert to our story, our story as the Church, the story of God’s people, then we will know that in the Tradition, this Noah story plays a role far more important than ‘a story to keep the children entertained’. From the apostle Peter on, and so we might presume from our Lord Jesus himself, this story spoke of the Church, the Ark . . .

Noah’s building of the Ark points us to our response . . . not that stereotypical running around declaring ‘the world is coming to an end!’ (not least because if we know our faith well enough we know it already has) – not in the publication of lots of books in ‘the left behind’ series – but in a long slow patient work lived out in response to the Word of the Living God. Building the Church

It takes but a moments reflection to see the parallels in our day. ‘As in the days of Noah’ The building of the Ark made no sense to those around him. It was a work of seeming utter irrelevance – so too the Church today. Frankly it makes no sense.

In the many myriad accounts of ‘where the church is going wrong’, or ‘how we need to rethink God for the modern world’ There is no account given of what the Church actually is’ I grew up under the ministry of a Vicar who spent all his time telling us that we needed to abandon the old ways of thinking about God. He told us with abandon about how at theological college he and his fellow students had crossed out verse after verse after verse which no longer fitted with ‘the truths of the world as we have come to know them’ At this point I was a highly impressionable youngster, but I liked being in the choir, which increasingly seemed to be the only reason for me to be there. Shortly after leaving home, I also left the church, for frankly what was the point? God loves everyone – whatever we do we will end up in heaven, if there is one – why waste a perfectly good Sunday morning when you could be sleeping off Saturday night’s hangover?? Church made no sense to this rationalist, who still instead on calling himself a Christian, much as it doesn’t to many amongst whom we live . . . which perversely was how Jesus got hold of this lost sheep – but another time.

 

Why bother with Church when there are so many life enhancing things you could be doing? Playing tennis, tramping, worshipping god in your own way should you be so minded up in the hills? Church?? Who needs it?

In the midst of the continuing travails of the Church in the West – of which our Diocese is at the leading edge – one thing which seems to be missing is any account of the necessity of the Church. If its all a matter of being nice to one another and having a spiritual side, ‘who needs the Church for that?’.

The point of the Church, like the point of the Ark is that Quiet Apocalypse – The Quiet Revelation. The Church is the body of Christ and the business of the Church is to build up that body. As St Paul puts it ‘The gifts [Christ] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, . . . for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.’

What is the Church about? Why does it exist? That Christ might be revealed – that we might come to the full stature of Christ, ‘grow[ing] up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,’ That all the nations might See . . .
The Creation bears muted and increasingly Silenced witness to its dying – but the world carries on in denial ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, – shopping holidaying, working, driving here and there’ as if the Creation was utterly irrelevant. Yet still it bears witness

Noah built the Ark – and all around him they were ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,’ as if it was utterly irrelevant that this huge Ark was being built when the weather seemed set fair. Yet it bore witness to a deeper Truth

Jesus is coming to his Church – coming to meet his bride. Is the Ark prepared? Or do other things seem more relevant too us?

This business of Church, of quietly and patiently – like Noah with a simple obedience to the Word of God – building the Church, clear in our minds that this is why we are here – this IS the Quiet Apocalypse – it is the Revelation of the Son of Man.

Let us stay awake – let us not be distracted from our task – ‘For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed’

Sermon for Evensong, Christ the King, 2016

1 Samuel 8:4-20
John 18:33-37

Of Kings and Kingdoms

Usually our Sunday evening readings follow on from the usual weekday lectionary – but not this week as the Church marks the end of our liturgical Year with the celebration of Christ the King. However our morning readings this week have had a very strong emphasis on Kingdoms and Kingship which would not be out of place as we have followed the book of the prophet Daniel (and the Revelation of St John)

Both of these texts are examples of ‘Apocalyptic’ literature – stories and readings which sound strange to our ears – yet which were very much part of the Jewish culture of the time of Jesus, the years preceding his birth and afterwards for some two or three hundred years. Daniel may well date from the mid 2C BC. The Revelation given to John, although traditionally dated quite late in the 1C, may actually be one of the earliest pieces of Christian Scripture, and several other writings such as the books of Enoch had a strong place in the Christian culture really until the time of St Augustine not long after the conversion of Rome. Let us say that Apocalyptic texts, replete with references to the Rule of God, weren’t terribly conducive to the business of running an Empire 🙂 Early Christians were only taught The Lord’s prayer at the last moment before their baptism – it was and is so subversive to ‘business as usual’ to pray ‘Hallowed be THY name – Thy Kingdom come . . .’

So these texts were marginalised and many were not included in the final canon of the Scriptures as we have received them – which does give us a rather lopsided view of the milieu into which Jesus was born – and this whole question of Kingship.

There is in every age a legitimate desire for what we would now call ‘stable government’ – Earthquakes as events in the US suggest to us, can be political as well as geological and potentially every bit as much if not more destabilising. Texts which at the very least placed human authority under notice – such as the Daniel stories, which tell of Nebuchadnezzar exalting himself and thus being exiled to live amongst the wild animals as a judgement – or the narratives of St John the Divine, seeing the fall of the great trading power ‘Babylon the Great’ – these texts declare the provisionality of all human rule – and are so powerfully prescient in terms of their descriptive power – of how the meek and the poor suffer endlessly under ANY rule, so it seems – and of how nations rise against each other.

When Jesus says ‘nation shall rise against nation’ – he could be speaking of any time in human history – wars and rumours of wars. Daniel Sees in a dream a great Ram with two horns fighting against a great Goat with a single horn  – he sees these animals as it were charging back and forth across the world. Like Kingdoms, or competing trading blocks exerting their influence, across the face of the Earth. This vision and its interpretation to Daniel left him utterly ill and exhausted – like someone perhaps caught up in the terrible anxiety which seems to beset us at present. It is, I suggest the smallest of jumps to get from Daniel to Trump and Putin, To the USA and Russia and China – and of course Britain and France etc before them. Kings and Kingdoms do not generally get a good write up in history, once we look beyond the pageantry which is of course carefully crafted to deceive our senses. Or to use the Revelation motif – Babylon the Great can be discerned in this and every age

YET this is true throughout all of the Scriptures. We do not need to read long before we find a profound critique of Kings and Kingship. God’s people suffer terribly under the harsh economy of the Pharaoh who brings all of Egypt under a form of economic enslavement – and repeatedly the message is given to God’s people – remember from whence you have come. The Ten Commandments open with the words ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt . . . we can if we have an ear to hear, hear THEREFORE . . . the Ten Commandments as a framing for Life irrespective of the rule of any human king in a human Kingdom, and thus making these things at best highly provisional . . . The Kingdom of God is not to be found under the reign of any human authority

Yet that message is, to say the least slow to sink in, and people still seek ideological utopias through political systems and the people of God are not now, nor were then immune to such fantasies. So as we come to one of the most significant parts of the Old Testament for us, 1 Samuel Chapter 8 – the people, who had in the wilderness complained about their lot, their freedom, now, in the land of promise, hanker after a king, and come to Samuel, the prophet of the LORD asking for a king, for Samuel’s sons don’t follow in Samuels paths, looking for some kind of human certainty, rather than have to deal with the Living God – and Samuel tells them what it is like under a King – always . . . –

‘‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

Rulers take some to enforce their military power – others to accumulate the wealth of the earth – militarism, economics, taxes etc etc it is always the same . . . down through the ages people say ‘If we just got the right rulers, all would be well . . .’ And in a democratic system of course . . . A choice between Donald Trump about whom we all know so much, and Hilary Clinton, whose campaign was funded by 11 of the 12 largest armament manufacturers in the world . . . Utopian visions of Egypt led the people to want to return – down through the ages there is either autocratic rule or rule based on utopian visions of making this or that or the other country ‘great again’ (Certainly this was in part what swayed so many in England over Brexit . . . Utopia, a word invented by Sir Thomas More to describe  place which doesn’t exist – literally ‘no place’ Which is a sign of the failure of Google, by the way, for strictly speaking, if you put Utopia into a search engine, it should come back, ‘Your search returned no results . . .’ 🙂

Which brings us to this feast day – Christ the King. And Israel has not learned after all these years. Her blindness is ours as well. She still believes in this Utopian vision – led on by an overly glamourised picture of the reign of David, who committed Murder and adultery and whose son, Solomon enslaved his people with his imperial pretensions. And Jesus’ encounter with Pilate brings it all to a focus in that Jesus will not take upon himself the mantle of King. To all of Pilate’s questions Jesus refuses a direct answer. ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king . . .

Part – perhaps the biggest part of the danger with calling Christ the King is that we are still looking for a King. Yet as Brett showed us this morning, Christ is the King who subverts kingship – the one who announces the reign of God which instead of the hard work of rule over us, opens the door to something at once more wonderful and far far more challenging. God’s Reign in Christ is to live in the freedom which he brings – the Truth is the Life of God embodied in Jesus. to live as God’s children is to Love hIm with heart soul mind and strength and to love one’s neighbour as oneself – if your neighbour has no food and you have food . . . how difficult is this? This is the Truth . . . but we prefer Kings . . .

In crucifying Jesus we reject the demanding liberation of living in the pure, simple uncreated Light of the Command of God. We still hold out a hope a government or ruler who will put it right, rather than Live Right with relation to our neighbour and God. What doe this command say? If your neighbour is hungry, seek to change the government? No, King Jesus says, ‘if your neighbour is hungry, feed him, if your enemy is hungry feed him’ This is how Love works in and through the world to transform it – it is the only way, but it challenges us and faces us with our own lack of Love, and calls us to change, to conform ourselves to God’s King.

Reminds me once more of that moment at our last synod, when it was suggested that if parishes were having trouble with paying their share to the diocese, they could speak with other parishes around them, they could Love one another, they could as it were ignore the formulas handed down from on high and love one another as Christ has loved us – yet the idea of doing this, of living under the reign of Christ rather than the rule of formulae handed down from on high seems to hard for us . . . so we ask for another formulae, another ruler, another bishop another King . . . anyone but God’s King . . .

So today is the feast of Christ the King, but remember it is Christ the King. Christ qualifies and subverts our meagre imagination – and calls us into a freedom apart from the World’s Kingdom’s and utopian projects which continue to crush and enslave. The Son, and only the Son sets you Free indeed – let us live in his Freedom