LIFE - HUMAN AND DIVINE

The thinking behind this Sunday’s readings occupied Paul, in his letter to the Romans, when he was grappling with explaining how we are torn between slavery and freedom, the Law and the Spirit. We all, when we reflect, are aware of the tension he describes: ‘for me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side … I see that acting on my body there is a different law which battles against the law of my mind’ (Romans 7:21ff). He cries out, almost in despair, ‘who will rescue me from this?’ Well, this sets the scene for the rich chapter 8 where he eloquently describes the role of the Spirit in not only rescuing us but opening up a whole new world.

This had all been announced, in oblique language, long ago in the desert. Moses told the people; if you follow the laws God has given you, they will lead you to ‘possession of the land’, that is, the fullness of the revelation that would come with Jesus. But they didn’t. They could not rise above the ‘law acting on my body’, that is, all the cravings for happiness that take short cuts through hypocrisy and exploitation of others.  Jesus is really angry with the scribes and Pharisees who are holding the people in their grip. He quotes Isaiah:

This people honours me with their lips;                                                           Their hearts are far from me.  

We are invited to feel this tug of war within us. What is preventing us listening to this new law of inner freedom, given to us by the Spirit of Jesus? Are we slaves to habits, acquired over years, which take the gloss off our daily joy? Unexamined habits that, in effect, are simply new versions of the ‘law’ we claim we have grown out of, but which, in truth, still have a deadly hold on us. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, it is not that Christianity has failed; it has not been tried! ‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.’

This Sunday’s gospel is a huge challenge to us. Are we ready to ‘get serious’ about the inner work we have to do to welcome the good news of freedom Jesus offers? Or are we content, at the end of the day, with our own version of the way of the prophets of Baal who ‘hobbled first on one leg, then on the other’ (1 Kings 18:21)?  

29 August 2021       Sunday 22B              Deut 4:1…8     James 1:17…27            Mark7:1…23

 

 

 

 

 

DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?

 

DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?

As a teenager, my peers taunted me; ‘his mind is made up, don’t confuse him with facts!’ It is an old saying and I felt the injustice of it. I was a rational youngster and open to evidence, or so I thought. The trouble is there are beliefs that get hold of us and they slip through the sieve of reason. Doris Lessing, in her forward to Lawrence Vambe’s An Ill-Fated People, writes, ‘I had spent fifteen years arguing, day in, day out, with my family and almost all the white people I knew, about the monstrousness of the (Rhodesian) society we lived in. All that argument had not changed anybody’s mind by a fraction. People’s minds are not changed by argument…’

What can sometimes change minds is taking people out of their environment and exposing them to different ideas and experiences. Air-lifted into Africa in my mid-twenties, I had the good fortune of leap-frogging white prejudices when sent to teach at a school for black students. I was able to see immediately the ‘monstrousness’ but, with the passing of time, I have also modified my views and understand better how whites came to their beliefs, given the circumstances of their arrival in Africa. They would have needed the imagination, courage and patience of a saint to have so acted as to pre-empt the catastrophises that overtook us from the 1960s onwards.

And now we are grappling with our lack of the same imagination, courage and patience in dealing with the catastrophises of our time – whether it is the particular tragedies of Afghanistan and Ethiopia or the general ones of climate and Covid. I recommend a two minutes meditation on the Google version of the song from Les Miserables that is the title above. A groundswell of feeling stirs a revolution. The obstacle to action that always seems to lie before us is an inability to see ‘the signs of the times.’ We can’t seem to understand, whether in our personal lives or our life as a community on this planet, that the forces we are vaguely aware of can, if ignored, grow until they become ‘monstrous’.

We are always free. The readings we have this week, whether from Joshua 24 at Shechem or Jesus by the lakeside in John 6, present us with people showing vague curiosity which is not deep felt and they give up after a while. Are we so saturated with ‘words’ that we hear nothing?  Or can we really hear and catch the word in flight? 

22 August 2021            Sunday 21 B     Josh 24:1…18             Eph 5:21-32            John 6:60-69

THE FLUFF AND THE THREAD

 

THE FLUFF AND THE THREAD

Cotton is the second most important cash crop in Zimbabwe and its production is on the rise. It gives an income to thousands of smallholder farmers in the hottest areas of the country, for example, Binga, Muzarabani, Gokwe and Chiredzi. But what is cotton? It is described as a ‘soft, fluffy, staple fibre that grows into a boll or protective case…’ It is the most widely used natural fibre for clothes and fragments of it have been found in India and Peru dating back 6,000 years. The invention of the gin - cotton engine to separate the threads - has revolutionised the production of clothing, making it widely and cheaply available.

Like so many gifts of nature, cotton provides us with something basic but it also gives us an image: fluff has to be sorted to provide a thread. As the media assaults us with pictures from Ethiopia and Afghanistan, we are dismayed and saddened beyond measure. How is it possible we cannot sort out what is happening and solve our differences without forcing our own views on others? Has it ever happened that violence has succeeded in permanently reducing people to slavery? Have we yet to learn that no state can oppress its people forever?

It seems we are reluctant to think things through; to see the strands, the threads, that run through history and teach us lessons. We go on repeating our mistakes. We admire great people but what is it that makes them great? Is it not the ability to follow through to the end the thread of something deep within? We can mention names, people that stand out for us. They are men and women who have listened to their head and their heart and they have set out on a journey.

If I mention Mary, the mother of Jesus, she may sound remote from the twenty first century and all its catastrophes. But it always strikes me that history moves forward at the behest of individuals, people who grasp the thread and follow it without deviating. She is one of those. They take the joys and the blows as they come. ‘They are despised and we take no account of them. And yet ours are the sufferings they bear, ours the sorrows they carry. They are pierced for our faults, crushed for our sins.’ There is so much fluff in our world. Can we draw out the threads that can lead to peace? This Sunday we celebrate Mary’s triumph. She knew all about joy and suffering and she can help us.

15 August 2021       Mary’s Assumption    Rev 11:19…12:10     1 Cor 15: 20-26         Luke 1:39-56

DRAWN BY THE FATHER

 

DRAWN BY THE FATHER

 

You may have seen the story on the net of the man, competing in a race, helping the winner to win.

 

‘Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was only a few meters from the finish line, but got confused with the signs and stopped, thinking he had finished the race. Argentinian runner, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was going on, started shouting to the Kenyan to keep running. Mutai did not know Spanish and did not understand and, realizing what was going on, Fernandez pushed Mutai to victory.

A reporter asked Fernandez, "Why did you do this?" And he replied, "My dream is that one day we can have some sort of community life where we push ourselves and also others to win."

The reporter insisted "But why did you let the Kenyan win?"

Fernandez replied, "I didn't let him win, he was going to win. The race was his."

The reporter insisted and asked again, "But you could have won!"

Fernandez looked at him and replied: "But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honour of this medal? What would my mother think of it?”

 

This kindness, this frame of mind, this world view, can only exist where a person is awake and sensitive to something beyond self-interest. They are able to listen to something deep within them that calls them to build community among people. How we long for this in a world where self-interest seems to run unchecked! Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani wrote a novel full of warmth and wit, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, about a Nigerian who is lured into what the blurb on the cover calls, ‘the fast-moving world of email scamming where he discovers a profitable talent for persuasive story-telling.’ As he becomes hugely wealthy the reader is led into a pitiless world of fraud and corruption that affects the lives of millions. (I am one of those for my email was hacked last month!) You feel the anger rising in you at the ripples of iniquity fanning out to touch the lives of so many.   

 

‘No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father.’ We read these words of John this Sunday. Our world is divided between those who hear the good news somewhere deep within and are drawn to it and those who live on the surface and give free rein to their natural desires with no thought for the damage they do.

 

8 August 2021             Sunday 19B    1 Kings 19:4-8        Eph 4:30-5:2       John 6:41-51