Archive for 2004
Maybe it’s just been a busy seminar but that first reading exhausted me. It feels like high pressure, high action, high energy Christianity. Listen to it: Nothing; Only; All; Everything. Running; Captured; Strain; Racing; Upwards; Prize. Perfect; perfect; perfect.
It’s quite beautiful in its own way, quite enticing, certainly inspiring but to be honest I’m not sure I’ve got it in me this morning.
So the gospel stands as something of a relief. At least at first sight. What the gospel seem to require of us are passive virtues. To taste right. To shine bright. If the first reading is all action—what we do—this seems to be simply about who we are. Not doing but being. That is a relief!
But the degree of conversion called for runs if anything deeper. Not just to look busy but to be the salt that gives the world its savour. Not just to have our eyes on the prize but to make it possible for the world to see at all. To be not just do-gooders but the very reason in this world God gets praised or despised.
How do we get to be tasty disciples—bright shiny people? There’s a whole theology and spirituality at stake in that question and the categories of being and doing aren’t too helpful. But let me take a paragraph from Ignatius’s book and leave us with that. What makes all the difference is generosity—the willingness to be changed—eagerness even. Eagerness to share the life of Jesus here and now where it might lead.
February 29th, 2004
There’s a serious contradiction between our two readings today. If I might paraphrase, the first says choose life and the second choose death. That’s pretty stark. The first is offering a long life, a long stay in the land, and long prosperity. The gospel can only offer pain and death but with them companionship … if anyone wants to be a follower of mine … let him renounce himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.
Renunciation, loss, and the cross make no sense at all apart from Jesus and apart from his story. A cross for you and a cross for me would be blasphemous if there hadn’t been a cross for Jesus. What we need to ponder this Lent is why Jesus himself ended up on his cross. Where did the pain in his life come from? Why did it end for him the way it did? Was it because he chose death or because he chose life?
February 26th, 2004
Isn’t it a relief to know that, where God is concerned, not all change is instant? It is to me anyway. Otherwise I’d be looking at my life and wondering hard. This bit has been tidied up nicely. That bit I’m proud of. But over there, hidden behind the other stuff, well those bits are better left unmentioned.
Truth is we aren’t exactly the people we’d like to be. Worse than that—we aren’t the people we feel we should be.
The other gospels—and elsewhere Mark’s the worst culprit—paint a picture of change, of healing, of transformation that’s altogether too instant for comfort. You have a withered hand: stretch it out! You are lame: stand up tall! You are troubled in spirit: watch those demons flee!
Healing like that speaks so strongly of the power of God but reflects poorly upon our unhealed, unchanged, and untransformed lives. Have we missed our chance? Have we lacked in faith? Have we been blind about our blindness? Maybe there’s a touch of all three in all our lives.
But today’s gospel is the story for us. Most change takes time. Most healing involves trial and error. Most transformation we have to grow into.
So if right now our vision is blurry and we can’t see the people for the trees—take heart – we are in the middle of things and Jesus is going to go on touching our eyes and our lives until we see the way of things as plain as day. For as long as it takes…
February 18th, 2004
Why do we celebrate two Greek brothers from the 9th Century as patrons of Christian Europe? Because they pushed the gospel where it hadn’t been before and because they weren’t above trying something completely new to get it there. Even abandoning the language of faith. They wanted to speak the word of God in a language people could understand—in their case Slavonic rather than Latin. To let God speak, in a familiar tongue, new words to a new people. And they translated liturgy and bible to do so—against enormous opposition. But God must have liked the idea because their words bore fruit despite all the power plays that pursued them… A great example of inculturation.
Inculturation. I want to mention another example and let it pose the possibility of a third …
Why is this month called February? … In the pagan past this day, the 14th February, was celebrated in Rome as a feast in honour of the goddess Juno, Juno Februata in particular—hence February. Februata means fevered but the fever of this feast wasn’t illness but the fever of love. Juno Februata was a fertility goddess and the celebration a fertility rite in which men and women paired off by drawing lots for a wild night of revelry, debauchery and lust. Sounds much better than our version. And of course that’s because, when Rome became Christian, you couldn’t have a pagan fertility rite going on once a year without comment. The Church tidied the whole thing up, hiding Juno under St Valentine’s toga as it were. Gone was the revelry and the lusty drawing of lots was transformed into the sending of chaste love notes. Another example of inculturation, though a damp one.
…
The gospel we hear today has detailed instructions for how to bring the good news to a waiting world. The harvest is rich. But the instructions need inculturating. How do we honour the language of our contemporaries as Cyril and Methodius did and speak to them words of good news and hope?
One thing should be obvious on a day like this. Our culture is obsessed with romance, with love at first sight, love lost, love regained. Half the songs we hear are about love and all but a fraction of the rest are about sex. Is this a language completely beyond us? Have we to abandon Valentine to the pagan gods? Or can we learn that language, recognise its riches, and speak in it words of freedom and joy, sing in it the many songs of our God?
February 14th, 2004
Why do we come on retreat? Maybe we think it will do us good. Maybe like Jesus and the apostles we are exhausted with the demands of those around us and need a rest. Maybe like Solomon we are embarking on a new venture and seeking guidance. Or maybe our reasons are even now half hidden even from ourselves.
Have you found what you were looking for? Or has it been a surprise? Both our readings today speak of the surprise. Jesus is looking for a rest – and he gets one there in the boat – but it isn’t long before he surprised by the crowd who want even more of what he has to give.
Solomon thinks he will handle God with sacrifices in high places – and instead he meets an unexpected God he cannot deal with in the naked honesty of his dream. With no holocausts to protect him he has to speak from his heart and be open about his real need. And God blesses him with the gift of his real need – a gift of discernment – a wise heart to understand his people.
I think Jesus gets a similar gift in our gospel. He learns something when he sees the crowd waiting for him. He learns something about need and something about hope. He is given the heart to understand his people. More accurately he is given the guts to understand them. That phrase ‘took pity on them’ describes the turning over of the stomach, the churning in the bowels, when we see and know and have no option but to respond.
So where are we at the tail end of our retreat? Have we met a surprising God? Have we encountered the honesty of our need? Have we been blessed with wise hearts to understand our own people? Or has the gift been even more of a surprise?
February 7th, 2004
Why this bunch of stragglers? Why! I wonder? You’d think the Son of Man could have his pick … skim the cream of the crop … select only the best and brightest. So why these slow-witted, cowardly, divided, wrangling rag-bag?
Maybe these were all the choice he had? Maybe the good ones had already gone to Jerusalem to be scribes. Maybe the good ones have more sense than to up sticks and follow in a rabble-rouser’s doubtful footsteps. Maybe the good ones are all at home raising families and rows of beans.
So maybe these are all he has to choose from. Maybe it was only a little hill he went up when he did his choosing and appointing.
Mark leaves most of the details vague, apart from getting in his digs at Iscariot and the Thunder-Twins, but there is one thing he’s very clear about. ‘Jesus went up into the hills and he summoned those he wanted.’ He summoned those he wanted.
These are the ones Jesus wanted. Not just the ones he chose but the ones he wanted. Maybe I’m putting too much weight on a little word but I hear in it more than logic and performance and good sense. Here is human desire and human warmth. Jesus chose the ones he wanted, the ones he wanted to share his bread with and share his time, the one he wanted to share his preaching and his work. He wanted these twelve beyond calculation and commonsense. He wants you and me likewise.
January 23rd, 2004
‘A cold coming we had of it: the worst time of year for a journey and such a long journey—the ways deep and the weather sharp—the very dead of winter.’
Eliot’s poetry brings the journey of the magi alive in our imagination. No quick jaunt in search of spiritual thrills but a deep longing, long considered and painstakingly carried to a conclusion, with all the arts and sciences of the ancient world at their disposal.
So how did they get it so nearly right and yet so completely wrong? To come all that way in the heart of winter and then be off by nine miles.
I suspect its because they believed their own propaganda. Isaiah 60—our first reading—lays out the protocol for visiting dignitaries: when the light dawns, when the king comes, the nations will stream in caravan to Jerusalem bringing their gold and spices, bringing their trade goods, bringing prosperity and new honour so that this trivial city on its little hill will be lifted up into history once more. Good news indeed to bring to a king and his court and all his merchants—money is coming: riches and honour and glory.
But when Herod consults his religious advisors they don’t turn to Isaiah 60 for their text but to Micah 5. Not a merchant’s text, not a king’s—but a peasant’s blessing. Not prosperity and trade but a leader to shepherd the people, the poor, the folks in the field being ripped off by people in power and the imperial ambitions of neighbouring states.
All of which is beginning off-centre: nine miles down the road to the south in a dusty village with few pretensions. And even there it is all happening off-centre: in a cow-shed to a couple with shame in their past and asylum-seeking in their future.
Why does God choose Micah over Isaiah? Bethlehem over Jerusalem? The barn over the palace? Wouldn’t we like to know! Whatever the reason is, it seems to stretch to God’s way in all things. And that’s worth our remembering in retreat. Where will you go, in these days, looking for the signs of God in your life? To the usual places? Or will you take the risk of heading south a little, looking a little off-centre and seeing what’s being born in the cattle-barns of your own heart.
January 6th, 2004
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