GOOD NEWS

 

GOOD NEWS

Someone once said there is one thing harder to accept than bad news and that is good news! Perhaps we are not used to good news. We don’t get enough of it. What is the ‘good news of great joy’ the angel announced on Christmas night? Each one of us will have their own version and down the ages we have sought to puts words to it. Poet John Milton, four hundred years ago, wrote;

The stars, with deep amaze,                                                                 Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,   

                   Bending one way their precious influence…

 

Even the stars are astonished by the event at Bethlehem. The good news is, first of all, about hope. When lost is a forest, we long to see some familiar landmark to give us our bearings. We may have a long and tough way to go but at least we know where we are going.

 

So hope, especially vague hope, is not enough. We must know what we are hoping for - in detail. It is Christmas and we are in Zimbabwe. What exactly are we hoping for? That ‘they’ would sort out the power shortages? Introduce a stable currency? Rescue the health services? Pay the teachers? Mend the potholes? All these – and many more. Above all, allow freedom to breath.

 

But even these ‘hopes’ can remain vague and ‘out there’ – someone else’s responsibility. Something more radical is needed to put flesh on hope. That ‘something’ has to do with our mentality – our way of thinking. Just to take the last, and least important, of the examples given: there are countries where a pothole would have a life expectancy of twenty-four hours at the most. We have potholes, where you could bury a cat, that have lasted months. Why? Because the consensus of people is that nothing can be done.

 

Hope will find no fertile soil until we begin to change our way of thinking, our way of looking at things. We are good at waiting; we are patient and that is a virtue. But to wait too long is to give in to hopelessness, to shrug and say there is no hope, there is nothing I can do. There may, indeed, be nothing I can do for now but I can still look at my mentality. Am I passive and just ‘going with the flow’ or am I trying to influence the flow? Develop a way of thinking that could be contagious and lead to a new consensus among people.

 

There is nothing revolutionary about this; it is simply healing our hope. From being a limp formless feeling, it becomes a searching expectant attitude ready to grasp every moment that offers a new outlook, a new vision, a new way – a hope that has flesh. That really would be good news. 

 

                                            

INTERPRETING THE SIGNS

 

INTERPRETING THE SIGNS

Meteorology as a science is growing better all the time. Our ancestors were accurate enough at a local level, as Jesus recognised (Mt 16:3), but now we can predict cyclones anywhere in the world. Interpreting is our way of advancing. As we approach Christmas we read of the unusual birth of Samson as a herald of John who was himself a herald of Jesus. Samson slaughtered the enemies of Israel and this was interpreted as ‘salvation’ (Jud 13:5). By the time we reach John, salvation meant condemnation and judgement (Lk 3:7). Then Jesus comes along and announces compassion and forgiveness.

There is a shift in interpretation. One more example. Isaiah wrote in Hebrew in 736 BC that ‘a young woman will conceive’ (7:14). By the time the Greeks came to translate the text some five hundred years later they chose a word which could imply the woman was a virgin. Then Matthew got hold of the text in the time of the early Christian community and he expressed the accepted interpretation of the Church as it had evolved after the Resurrection, ‘the virgin is with child’ (1:23). The interpretation of what God was doing shifted and developed over time.

Moving into the history which brings us to our own time, we see how the interpretation of how humans see themselves has also shifted. We used to be welded to ‘the group’. Both in sacred and secular history our ancestors did not think for themselves; they constantly referred to the chief or king – whether it was David of Israel or Lobengula of the Ndebele. When Prestage tried to introduce the plough in Empandeni Mission, south of Bulawayo in 1887, the people waited for Lobengula to turn the first sod. He never did. The people were locked into the will of the ruler. They had no will of their own.

This ‘group responsibility’ persisted, and persists, up to today. Yet, more and more, ours is a time of individual choice and responsibility. To the confusion of many parents, young people often make wild choices which the parents know will land them in trouble but they are powerless to prevent. Individual responsibility is our interpretation of what we are meant to be and clearly this is a great advance in human history. People feel free to explore and make amazing choices which benefit humanity. There are examples too many to mention: the railways began with the choice of one person, so did flying, so did the internet.

What is the good news of Christmas? Every year it comes round and there is a tendency perhaps to concentrate on family and fun. That is good and a blessing. But perhaps we can also rejoice in the growing realisation of who we are. Despite all the pitfalls, it is truly wonderful and ‘good news for all the people’ (Lk 2:10).

18 December 2022          Advent 4A  Is 7:10-14   Rm 1:1-7     Mt 1:18-24      

THE DESERT BRINGS FORTH JONQUILS

 

THE DESERT BRINGS FORTH JONQUILS

With heightened emotion, people across the world are watching the triumphs and disappointments of the World Cup. The camera gives us the thrill and skill of the players, the tight concentration of the managers and officials and the ‘agony and ecstasy’ of the supporters. The game, as it is often said, brings the world together. Differences of wealth and culture, belief and custom, fade as people engage on equal terms on ‘a level playing field’. The mighty tumble and the weak lift their heads. At the time of writing it is even said Morocco could win the cup!

The ’beautiful game’ gives us news that can lift or deflate us in an instant. The scriptures, in contrast, gives us news that may take months, years or even millennia to come true. ‘Happy Christmas!’ is a greeting that means different things depending on who says it and who receives it. You can give the greeting to a person poor, sick or in prison and mean it. It is not an insult. Your greeting carries hope – not in the immediate future but in a time which will definitely come – if giver and receiver want it.

The third Sunday of Advent is known to some of us as Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for joy. The readings are full of impossible wishes, ‘Let the wilderness exult and the wasteland rejoice. Let them bring forth flowers like the jonquil.’ This yellow flower grows in fragrant clusters, the last thing you would expect in a desert.

The message is clear. There are no instant solutions to our broken world. Just look at the present politics of Zimbabwe! But there is hope, not a wishy-washy hope that is just words but a real deep-down hope, buried in the wasteland of our dreams. The jonquil, or whatever beautiful flower we come across in unlikely places, is a sign. Jesus gave us signs: a deaf man hears, a blind one sees, a woman bent double for years straightens up. The gospel is littered with jonquils. But we have to want to be healed and do something about it.

Peter Prestage was a Jesuit priest who walked to Zimbabwe in 1882 and died, still walking, twenty-five years later near Masvingo. He spent years trying to persuade King Lobengula to give permission for him to teach and preach. He met disappointment after disappointment. But he just kept going. ‘What was great about him was his working and hoping for so long ‘without hope’ and finding in the end that his hope had not been in vain.’ (Francis Rea, The Shield, 1966).   

11 December 2022      Advent Sunday 3A       Is 35:1…10      Jam 5:7-10       Mt 11:2-11

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

 

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

There is one line that is central to the three rich readings we have today, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ Don’t let this familiar sentence slip away. Try to tease it out. What is it saying? All three readings huddle round it and support it.

First, the kingdom of heaven is something new. Before John the Baptist, the Jews thought of ‘kingdom’ in terms of the restored kingdom of David and Solomon. ‘Make Israel Great Again’ might have been their slogan. But Isaiah doesn’t buy that. For him the kingdom is about truth, integrity and justice, about ‘not judging by appearances or hearsay’.  And it is just around the corner if we grasp the moment. And he gives this poetic fable about the lion and the ox, tsuro and gudo, Jew and gentile; they no longer compete but feed and lie down together.

This is the vision too of Paul. He says we should never give up, never lose hope, that this vision of truth and integrity will come true; the patriarchs and the pagans will share the same inheritance.

Then we come to the gospel. All the drama – ‘you brood of vipers … the axe is laid to the roots of the tree’ – is an explosive warning about something new. It is good news but people need to be shaken up before they can receive good news. Someone once said, ‘people can handle bad news, they are used to it. Good news is much more difficult to receive.’ Well, the good news is about the kingdom and it does not make the headlines. People yawn and move on.

But, actually, the joy of our vocation as Christians is that we are building a new world through all the actions of creativity and kindness that we do each day. God is doing it and we are doing it. We are doing it together. He takes our water and transforms it to wine.

Finally, the word ‘repent’. What does that mean? Repent of our sins? Well, maybe, but that is not the main meaning. It comes from a Greek word needing five English words to translate it: ‘Change your way of thinking’. Change how you see people and things! If before you are self-centred, open up to others. If you look down on the poor, the handicapped, the migrant, any person who is ‘different’, change how you see them.

When we all do that the kingdom of heaven will have arrived.  

4 December 2022   Advent 2A     Is 11:1-10   Rom 15:4-9     Matt 3:1-12

THE COLOUR PURPLE

 

THE COLOUR PURPLE

I do not know why the acclaimed novel, The Colour Purple, was so named. Maybe it is because of the cruelty and violence? Or maybe purple is an ‘in-between’ colour – neither blue nor red. Maybe it is suggesting the country in which it is set, the United States of America, is itself an ‘in-between’ country – neither free nor enslaved – but somewhere in-between? 

Whatever the reason, purple is the colour of Advent, an ‘in-between’ season. It recalls the trouble history of Israel, sometimes free and often times enslaved. Israel looked forward to a Messiah, someone who would free them once and for all, and Advent is a time when we remember their long wait and how they spent it. Not a very edifying story. But a story spotted with words of hope. ‘The nations will stream to Jerusalem’, because it is the great city where their desires will be satisfied.

We recall that looking forward and find our focus in what actually happened: a child was born in Bethlehem. We surround that moment with joy and celebration because we grasp the first inklings of what it means. There was no ‘streaming to Jerusalem’ though a few wise men from the east did make the journey and, for a moment, represented us all. But the leaders didn’t like what they saw and heard and in time they killed the child.   

Yet a remnant got the message and spread the word throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. This was the second part of the ‘in-between’. Advent looks to Christmas but that is only the beginning. It goes much deeper. Advent looks to the final fulfilment of the whole story of the world. The enigmatic words used are: ‘a new heaven and a new earth’.  Something final, complete and totally fulfilling is about to happen.

But for this to arrive, the main actors, us, we have to make choices. And there will be a reckoning. The way Luke puts it is, ‘then, of two men in the field, one is taken, one is left; of two women at the mill, one is taken, one is left.’ Our cyclones today, in giving us a literal physical picture of this, are a searing parable of what Jesus means. The more people make good choices the closer we get to overcoming evil and the final triumph.

The words Jesus uses are, ‘stand ready, stay awake’.  The opposite of ‘awake’ is ‘asleep’ and we live in between these two states – in a purple zone. This applies to us as individuals but we can see it clearly when we look at the great events of our world. It is surely obvious by now we drifted into the Ukraine war because, for the past three decades, all the main participants were asleep.

27 November 2022         Advent Sunday 1   Is 2:1-5       Rom113:11-14          Mt 24:37-44

THE SALVATION OF THE WOLVES

 

THE SALVATION OF THE WOLVES

Gondla is a play by the Russian poet Nikolay Gumilyov, written at the time of the Russian Revolution (1917). Its theme is a clash of worldviews portrayed in an allegory about wolves (pagans Icelanders) and swans (Christian Irish people). (It has nothing to do with the actual people of Iceland or Ireland). Neither wolves nor swans are common in Africa but the former represent savage power drawing blood with their sharp teeth and claws while the latter, large white birds which spend their time gliding gently on lakes and rivers, stand for grace, calm, beauty and peace.

Gondla is an Irish prince who is drawn to a royal Icelandic princess, Lera, but she is in two minds and surrounded by cruel warriors out to destroy him. As the story unfolds, Gondla is increasingly cornered and everyone deserts him including Lera although she has a lingering feeling of love for him. The climax of the story comes when Gondla sacrifices himself as the only way out of the dilemma. The wolves gather round his dead body and realise the transcendent power at work in him and become converted. Lera has the final word;

We are going away

to a swan place, a place not of this earth,

Love’s open sea, the open sea of love!   

 

This Sunday we celebrate Christ the King, a feast instituted by the Church at about the same time as Gondla was written. The aim of the celebration was to remind us of Jesus’ words to Pilate, ‘I am a king. For this I came into this word.’ And to remind us that he spoke these words as he was going to his death. In Luke’s version, which we read today, his death leads to the conversion of a wolf even before he expires; ‘In truth I tell you, this day you will be with me in paradise.’

 

The kingship, the leadership, of Jesus is manifested on the cross where his torn and twisted wolf-lacerated body is exposed to the world. This sight is the fundamental announcement of the gospel message. Our world is a world of pain and it will only be saved by people who ‘carry’ this cross, one way or another, in their lives. As the Church closes its year, this is the one message we take away.    

 

20 November 2022       Christ the King             2 Sam 5:1-3                  Col 1:12-20      Lk 23:35-40

PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

 

PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

It is hard to be patient with the constant requests of the poor. Are they genuine? If I give to one, why not to all? Then a woman comes. She says she has four children and has the youngest with her. Her husband is in prison, the rains have come and the roof of her shack is leaking. Could she have $25 for some plastic to cover the leaks? It so happens we too had a leaking roof. We spent a good deal more than $25 repairing it. In fact we put on a new roof as the old was rotting. Ours is one of those countries of the excessively rich and the grindingly poor.   

For centuries, people in poor countries have migrated to richer ones: the Irish to England, Italians to America, Turks to Germany, Zimbabweans to South Africa. It was quite acceptable when labour was needed in the rich countries. Suddenly, in recent decades, the rich are closing their doors on the poor. Mexicans can’t get into America, Afghans can’t get into Australia, Africans can’t get into Europe.

But they try anyway. They risk their lives in flimsy boats in the hands of unscrupulous go-betweens or they climb fences or walls. They do not give up. Anything is better than the wasted lives they live at home. There was a time they were welcomed for economic reasons; they provided labour. Now they are refused for moral reasons; they are too many and we are afraid. They will take our jobs, our benefits; they are a nuisance. The tightly pressed spring of colonialism is let loose and is bouncing back. The colonisers were happy with what they could get at the time. They never thought there would be a price for their descendants to pay.

Well, those descendants don’t seem – yet – willing to face the issue.  There is a report just out from the UK entitled, A Callous Disregard for the Vulnerable lies at the heart of the UK government, which begins;

On Wednesday, we learned that our government has taken refugees it had held at the camp at Manston on the Kent Coast and left them on the streets of London late at night. They were not told where they were, where they could go for safety or given any money.

This does not seem to have been an anomaly involving a few people – 50 were dumped from a bus near London’s Victoria Station. These people had been forced from their homes and had struggled here in hopes of safety. Abandoned in a strange place by those who were supposed to protect them, it is fair to imagine they were confused, disoriented, and afraid…

This is the tail end of colonialism and it is not pretty. There is not even a hint of understanding that these migrants are the desperate victims of a world order designed to favour the powerful. The word compassion, leave alone justice, seems far from the minds of those who deliberately exploit the weak by dumping them in a strange place without help.

Compassion is not a soft cuddly word. It is hard courageous work to think out the demands of justice at whatever cost to ourselves. We are being urged to combat global warming but ultimately, we can understand that combat will benefit us and our children. This combat, justice for migrants, seems to carry no obvious benefits for us. But, if we can stretch our minds and our hearts, reaching out to others will bring unimaginable benefits to us too as well as to them.                                                                                                  13 November 2022

 

   

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

 

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

ZANU believes that the common interests of the people are paramount in all efforts to exploit the country’s resources, that the productive processes must involve them as full participants, in both the decision-making processes, management and control (of those resources). (ZANU Election Manifesto. 1980).

In 1980 ZANU presented an obvious - and noble - proposal to the people of Zimbabwe: Vote for us and this will be our policy: the interests of the people will be paramount. The link with the people was fresh in the minds of those who conducted the war of liberation. They depended on the people to protect them and feed them as they moved around the country. After the elections, when ZANU was safely in power, they no longer depended on ‘the people’ and could govern with diminishing reference to them.

This process of ‘de-linking’ between governing and governed also happened in Ethiopia after the victory of Emperor (King of kings, Neguse Negest) Menelik II over the Italians at Adewa in 1896. Up to that time Ethiopia was held together, according Tsehai Berhane-Selassie, by the chewa, a self-trained army with definite links to the ordinary people. She writes:

Modernity ‘failed to bring with it the chewa spirit of two-way communication between state and population and to uphold the impersonal working principles that a ‘modern’ civil service was supposedly meant to apply. The gradual centralisation of power in the hands of ‘modern’ state monarchs eclipsed the status and crucial role of the chewa. For the salaried officials of the ‘modern’ structure land was a peripheral structure for their administrative services. The development of banks, ministries and other ‘modern’ state facilities, and resources with which the state could employ salaried administrators, effectively marginalised the long-standing role of rural people in local political matters. While the ‘modern’ state took over from the chewa it failed to adopt their idealised spirit of participation in local decision making by ordinary local people … and so paved the way for despotism (Ethiopian Warriorhood, Defence, Land and Society, 1800-1941, Tsehai Berhane-Selssie (2018) p 4 ff).

The belief that democracy is inevitably attainable by every people under heaven is looking more and more fragile as we view the increased sophistication in methods of control of those who govern us. In China, thirty years after Tiananmen Square, the government is fixed in a determined mindset that seeks to control every aspect of life and yet it was in China, almost 100 years ago, that Mao pioneered the idea of the army and the people are one.

Listening to the people – rural and urban – and making their interests ‘paramount’ is not a simple matter. But if the determination to at last set out on that demanding journey were begun, we could again begin to hope. 

 

 

 

WHERE THE DIVIDING LINE RUNS

 

WHERE THE DIVIDING LINE RUNS

The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector is one more of those simple parables told by Jesus which has an obvious meaning - and a not so obvious one. Here the person who feels secure in their position and way of life, ‘despises everyone else.’ It is obvious this is one more scene of division between those who have and those who do not have, between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor – the very kind of divide Jesus came to remove.

When we draw out the story from its original stark setting, it is less obvious where the dividing line runs. Is it so clear who are the rich and who are the poor? Who live comfortable lives and who precarious ones? Augustine gives us some poignant words about what he gradually came to understand:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and, in my ugliness, fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all …

Every person is a mixture! We are all Pharisees and tax collectors! We are conscious of how much we rely upon ‘those lovely things’. Yet we are drawn, pulled, pursued, by that inner voice that will not leave us alone. We are ‘kept from you by those things’. Our struggle is always going to be to ‘pierce the clouds’ as Ben Sira puts it. ‘You were with me and I was not with you.’ God is always ‘with us’. Our problem is that we are not with God.

‘Give us this day our daily bread!’ Our daily bread has to be our permanent attention to the inner struggle to be ‘with God’. To see things with the eyes of God, to sense the Spirit moving across our waters, our consciousness, and to courageously follow the Way. This is behind the wisdom of the ancients about ‘examining our lives’ so highlighted in Christian times and emphasised – popularized? – by Ignatius of Loyola. (i) Be grateful for all ‘those lovely things’. (ii) Expand your horizons. Review. Where is God in my day? (iii) What to do?

23 Oct 2022                Sunday 30C                Sir 35: 12-18     2 Tim 4:6-18        Lk 18: 9-14

THERE IS NO CIVIL SOCIETY

 

THERE IS NO CIVIL SOCIETY

 

Russia's problem is our system. A system was created here that created such a person [Putin]. The question of the West's role in creating this system is a very serious one. The problem is that this system didn't create a society. There are a lot of very nice people in Russia. But there is no civil society. That's why Russia can't resist.

 

These words, this week, of Steve Rosenberg, writing from Moscow, are alarming. ‘…the West’s role in creating a system … (that prevented) the creation of a (civil) society … (so that) Russia can’t resist.’ My particular interest is in ‘the West’s role in creating this system’. Even a distant observer can have an opinion and mine would be that the West never developed a generous and imaginative attitude towards Russia. Here you have an ancient Christian, cultured, society that has struggled with its identity at least since the time of Peter the Great (c.1700). Three times since then it has been invaded by western countries and, after the Second Word War, it built an enormous shield.

 

The Americans were tempted to break through that shield but wiser heads prevailed and we had a ‘cold’ - in contrast to a hot – war for forty years until 1989. It was then that ‘the centre could not hold’ and the Russian empire simply imploded and all the vassal states on its periphery became independent, including Ukraine. That would have been a moment for wise restraint in the West but instead they gloated that they had won and America was now the only superpower. Someone even went so far as to write a book called The End of History. The Russians were humiliated and have spent the last thirty years preparing to bounce back. Now they have done it in an unpardonable way but at least the West should acknowledge that they, the West, are partly to blame. Instead of reaching out to Russia and doing everything possible to help them build a ‘civil’ society in a respectful way, they simply continued to gloat. Now the West has to pay and pay big.

 

I did not mean to wander into politics, if that is what I have done, but we are not good at sustained study when things seem to be going well. We only use our brains when things begin to go wrong and we ‘know how to fix it’. But we should never have allowed them to go wrong in the first place. All this may sound like a far-off reflection on today’s gospel but when Jesus praises the poor widow for insisting against the ‘unjust’ judge, he is teaching us of the need for sustained effort and prayer if we are to find our way in this complex world that we have fashioned.

 

16 October 2022         Sunday 29C    Ex 17:8-13      2 Tim 3:14 - 4:2          Lk 18:1-8

 

 

AS MUCH AS TWO MULES CAN CARRY

 

AS MUCH AS TWO MULES CAN CARRY

Naaman the Syrian comes up with a seemingly weird solution when Elisha refuses to accept any payment for curing him of leprosy. He asks for as much earth from Israel as two mules can carry. His idea is to worship the God of Israel in gratitude but he can only do this on the soil of Israel. So he takes the soil of Israel with him and transfers his thanks from Elisha to the God of Elisha.

Behind the story is one more hint that God is going to reveal himself, not just to Israel, but to all the nations. Naaman gets it, which is more than the people of Capernaum do when Jesus reminds them of this story. Gratitude is the doorway to recognition. Naaman learns this when he persists in trying to reward Elisha and the prophet puts him off and points elsewhere. Naaman is a foreigner with an open mind.

I am always struck when, without warning, people are asked to say a prayer. Their spontaneous response is often to begin, ‘Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life…’ This is a profound reaction because life itself is the greatest gift of all. God went on to give us a planet and a universe in which to dwell and grow. He gives astronomers the gift of piercing the universe for knowledge, doctors the gift of diagnosing and healing our physical wounds and journalists the gift of seeking, day in and day out, the truth about war, injustice and abuse.

We are grateful to these people and so many more who help us to grow in beauty, justice and truth. They are Elishas. If they are wise, as he was, they will not take credit for themselves. They will know they build on the work of others and, while they may accept acclaim and Nobel prizes, they will know the meaning of the words of Georges Bernanos, in The Diary of Country Priest, ‘All is grace’. Everything is a gift.

The first lesson a new born child experiences, though they cannot reflect on it, is that they are dependent. They are dependent on their parents and family for food, warmth, bathing, hugs - in a word, for love. We grow to be independent and think we can be but Jesus tells us to learn the lessons of childhood if we are to be part of his kingdom. The world is too much for a little child to take in, so they cry for their mother.

It is no different for us who are ‘grown- up’. The suffering we encounter, the wars we start, the injustices we perpetuate, the global warming we ignore – all are too much for one individual to take in and respond to. Jesus knew this and so gave us himself, his presence among us. The Eucharist is the moment we gather and celebrate his presence and recognise he shares our suffering and holds out to us the promise of the fullness of life through victory over pain and death. We take our bare earth home into our hearts and there worship the Lord who is making all things new (Revelations 21:1-5).

9 October 2022     Sunday 28 C         2 Kings 5:14-17    2 Tim2: 8-13      Lk 17:11-19       

ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE

 

ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE

People can be very patient. They sit by the road and wait for a bus for hours. Or they can be very impatient, dodging across traffic lanes, overtaking on the left as well as the right. Some of us are good at waiting. Others, with the prophet, say, ‘we cry for help and you do not listen.’

But the message is: ‘Wait! Even if it come slowly, it is sure to come.’ I belong to two countries; one by birth, one by adoption. The one gives me hope for the other. One waited seven hundred years for freedom and does not have it fully even now. The other waited seven decades for freedom and it too does not have it fully even now. Both, in their frustration, resorted to violence but the violence only yielded a partial solution. You cannot force solutions, unless you are a mechanic. But people are not machines. They cannot be fixed.

Waiting does not mean you sit on your hands and do nothing. But it does mean you trust a solution is on the way and we do all we can to allow the solution to emerge – even if it comes slowly. It is like the farmer. They are quite different from the mechanic. They work with vigour to sow their crops but they cannot force them to grow. They have to wait.

The poet WB Yeats wrote, ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone / It’s with O’Leary in the grave.’ Those leaders, who, like O’Leary, had a romantic optimistic view that goodness and truth would triumph, are now being challenged by the men of violence who want to force a solution. They did force a solution but it didn’t satisfy the people.

So they had to go back to waiting. And now, after a hundred years, a solution is finally in sight. So it is with them. So it will also be with us. ‘We are only servants.’ We do what we can. We cannot force the river to flow faster. 

All this is common sense but it is hard for us to wait. We want solutions and we want them now. We need the gospel to tell us: authentic permanently satisfying solutions only come through patience. And patience is a word that comes from the Latin patio, meaning suffering. A patient in a hospital suffers in the hope of healing. So it is with us; we suffer but our suffering is not useless. It is the raw material of a solution.

2 October 2022    Sunday 27 C          Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4      2 Tim 1:6…14    Lk 17:5-10

 

A SOUND LIKE THE RUSH OF A VIOLENT WIND

Pentecost is remembered and celebrated this weekend. It is the final act in the drama that started in Bethlehem with the birth of Mary’s child. The seed that he sowed felt on rocky ground but it also fell in fertile soil. His closest friends gathered in Jerusalem, hesitant and fearful, behind locked doors. They had learnt much and had high hopes but they did not know where to begin or what to do. ‘Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the whole house. … All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.’

Robert Bridges adapted the twelfth century Amor Patris et Filii and put it into modern English with words that included, ‘who formest heavenly beauty out of strife’. The Spirit forms beauty out of our terrible human mess. Here is an example of ‘strife’ I read some time back: Two Guinean boys, Yaguine (14) and Fodé (15) stowed away in a plane to Europe and were discovered dead in the luggage hold. A letter was found in the clothes of one of them which read in part:

Excellencies, leaders of Europe. We have the honourable pleasure and great confidence in writing to you about the reason for our journey and sufferings, we the children and young people of Africa. But first we send you the most delightful, charming and respectful greetings. Be our support and our help. We beg you for the love of your beautiful continent, your feeling towards your people, your family and especially the closeness and love of your children whom you love like life itself. And also for the love and friendship of our Creator ‘God’ the Almighty who has given you the background, ability and wherewithal to build well and organise well our continent so as to become a beautiful and respected friends among others … So if you see that we sacrifice and expose our life, it is because people suffer too much and we need you to fight against the poverty and to put an end to the wars in Africa … We beg you to excuse us very very much for daring to write to you les grands personnages to whom we owe great respect. Yaguine Koita et Fodé Tounkara.

I do not think anyone can read these words without a tear coming to their eyes. The letter was written more than twenty years ago. It seems at first sight a hopeless task; two young boys facing a mighty continent. And yet who knows what tiny ripples of hope this letter set off? The Spirit is at work all over the world connecting the hopes and sacrifices of children and adults everywhere. No journalist can capture what is really going on. The situation is not hopeless. People are finding their voice. It may not be the rush of a violent wind – how we would love that it was – but ‘a sound of silence’ such as Elijah heard (1 Kings19:12). Can we hear it too?

June 5, 2022          Pentecost    Acts 2:1-11 1 Cor 12:3…13     Jn 14:15…28

THE SPINE OF THE EARTH

 

THE SPINE OF THE EARTH

Peter Frankopan has written an astonishing book, THE SILK ROADS (2015). It has been described as ‘history on a grand scale’. His central theme is the flow, each way, along the spine of the greatest land mass on earth, stretching from eastern Asia to western Europe. One of its earliest expressions was the trade in silk but Frankopan goes on to say there were many ‘silk roads’ over the centuries linking the great empires of Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome. Later, other countries – Portugal, Spain, Britain, France and the United States of America joined in their search for raw materials, especially oil. The roads acted as conduits for trade, culture, religion and linked people for centuries through a string of cities. ‘For the vast majority of people in antiquity’, he writes, ‘horizons were decidedly local with trade and interaction between people being carried out over short distances. Nevertheless the webs of communities wove into each other to create a world that was complex where tastes and ideas were shaped by products, artistic principles and influences thousands of miles apart.’ (p.25).

Looking at this positively, we can see a great urge all over the planet to know about other people; their customs, their inventions and their way of life. At its best, it was a move towards coming together, learning from one another, rising above local frameworks of reference and celebrating the diversity of cultures. If there is a mountain that we climb from different sides, as we get closer to the top, we get closer to one another. Flannery O’Connor wrote a book she entitled EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE. At our best, we want to be at one with each other. When the United Nations was founded, it struck a chord.

But, of course, there was a dark side as empires fought, triumphed and died. Silk was replaced by furs, slaves, gold, silver, oil and wheat. Much of the book is about the brazen competition between empires and the misery of people as they were trampled on in the greed for riches.

The 521 pages of text (and 94 of footnotes) astonishes as it describes this negative side. American power today is seen as just the latest in a long string of displays of power that is centred on immediate gain at whatever cost. ‘The US’, the author tells us, ‘Was more than happy to provide weapons in large quantities to this dubious ally (Pakistan): Sidewinder missiles, jet fighters, B-57 tactical bombers were just some of the hardware sold with the approval of President Eisenhower. It seemed the necessary price to pay to keep friends in power in this part of the world. Laying the basis for social reform was risky and time-consuming compared to the immediate gains to be made from relying on strong men and the elites that surround them. But the result was the stifling of democracy and the laying down of deep-rooted problems that would fester over time’ (p. 431). The book gives us a dose of hope as we reflect on the inborn urge of people to come together, while tempering that same hope with the realisation that desire for power and wealth continue to frustrate our coming together as one people on one planet.     

This week the Church celebrates the Ascension, a symbol of rising. And each year maybe, just maybe, we are also learning slowly, painfully to converge.

May 29, 2022        The Ascension      Acts 1:1-11      Eph 1:17-23    Luke 24:46-53

BEYOND LOCKED DOORS

 

BEYOND LOCKED DOORS

‘It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials…’ These words, from Acts 15:28, could easily slip by us as we read them this Sunday. The writer is explaining they had a meeting in Jerusalem to discuss the vexed question whether new converts should follow the traditions of the Jews or not, and they came to a decision. The decision itself was radical but what was even more astonishing was the confidence with which they made it.

We are talking about a group of fishermen, tax collectors and other folk who, up to a few months before, didn’t know their right hand from their left. The idea of making a decision that broke with centuries of custom was beyond their imagination. Yet here they are doing just that. What has happened?

Well, we know what happened and it has been played out over these weeks of Easter. We have seen these men and women emerge from behind locked doors and go out and proclaim a message that is shaking up the comfortable status quo the Jews had settled for. For weeks they had been reflecting and listening in their prayer to ‘all that has happened in Jerusalem’ and gradually they gained the courage to get up and move out. As they did so their confidence grew and grew until we come to this point of making a radical decision that would ‘open the door to the gentiles’.

As we think of what happened to them, we realise the locked doors are a symbol. There is a whole world out there waiting to be explored and yet our tendency is to seek the safety of continuing as we are. We imprison ourselves. Change can be so unsettling. We don’t like emerging from the shell in which we were hatched. And yet this is our glory: to go beyond everything that is familiar and trust that we can do something new. Jesus told his disciples at one time to ‘go out into the deep water and throw out your net for a catch.’ That seemed crazy to Peter at the time; ‘we have fished all night and caught nothing.’ Yet even in those early days Peter had an inkling of what was possible. ‘If you say so, we will cast the nets.’

The early church learnt to listen to the Spirit and gain the courage to act. They unlocked the doors. The same gift is available to us. 

22 May 2022   Easter Sunday 6C       Acts 15:1…29       Rev 21: 10…23       John14:23-29

IMPRISONED BY HOPE

 

IMPRISONED BY HOPE

Probably we notice the dynamic running through the forty days of Easter. First, there is the time of apparitions when Jesus consoles his friends by showing himself to them risen from the dead. Then there was the ‘consolidation’ phase when the disciples exercise their faith by going out, ‘starting from Jerusalem’, and proclaiming the good news in the cities around the Mediterranean. Finally there is the period we are entering now where we notice promises on the way to fulfilment. The disciples ‘give an account of what God had done and how he had opened the door of faith (Acts), was making ‘all things new’ (Revelations) and the suffering Son of Man was ‘glorified’ – not just in rising from the dead – but in the total fulfilment ‘soon’ of the plan of God for his people (John).

I was reminded of this dynamic when I read a sermon preached by the late Fr Gilbert Modikayi Chawasema at the state funeral of Leopold Takawira on the 11 August 1982. Modikayi used the expression, ‘Imprisoned by Hope’ more than once. Let me summarise his words. ‘Takawira was a distinguished Zimbabwean patriot who, together with other nationalists, tried to change the socio-economic situation. This led to great personal suffering and considerable material loss. He put at stake everything and died as result of restrictions and imprisonment.’

‘His death’, Modikayi continues, ‘remind one of the “futile” death of John the Baptist.  Back in 1970, one can imagine Takawira and his family wondering whether it had been worth his while to stake everything for social change, which, at the time of his death, seemed remote.  Takawira, like many others, became a prisoner of an ultimate hope for better things. He was a follower of the one who said, “Greater love than this no man has than that he should lay down his life for his friends.” This Christian way of life involves a self-forgetful concentration on the true well-being of others and so to live and love in the agelong purpose of transforming the world towards ever more perfect humanization and divinization.’

‘The danger to which we are all open’, Modikayi concluded, ‘is that we may fail to be fully dedicated to the wonderful Christian vision of the dignity of man and the purpose of the world. As we gather here to commend Takawira, we are challenged by that ultimate hope which imprisoned him and made him dedicate his life for his countrymen. To be a Christian is to be alive, and to be human in this world and to help other men and women to see what we are.’

May 15, 2022              Easter Sunday 5C       Acts 14:21-27       Rev 21:1-5       Jn 13:31-35

 

ME AND THEM

 

ME AND THEM

I do not think we will ever rest from wondering, as the ancient Greeks did, what is the relationship between the one and the many. When I was starting out in my studies, eons ago, I did not understand the question and I hardly do now. We experience ourselves, starting perhaps at the age of three, as relating to others; parents, siblings, uncles and aunts. We grow very conscious of our finding our place in the family, the school, the society. It’s a matter of survival, at least at a basic level.

But at the same time we discover ourselves as ‘I’ and we sense that there is no one in the whole world – there never was and there never will be – like me. I am unique. I enjoy the fact that I am me! I have my own feelings, my own thoughts and my own way of doing things. But I am not able to manage alone. There is no way I could survive on my own. I need others.

So I am somehow in tension between being an individual and being a member of a community of some sort. How do I live this tension? It is not difficult to relate to like-minded people, friends, peers, ‘one of us.’ But it is not so easy when people are different, of another race, ability, age, religion or whatever. They are not ‘one of us.’

It is very easy to say but quite difficult to practice; we are ALL brothers and sisters on a journey to a home of total unity, of comm-unity. This Sunday’s readings use a stark word: ‘stealing’. ‘No one can steal from the Father.’ What would ‘stealing from the Father’ mean? To my mind, it means diverting a person from the path an individual has chosen, a path that leads straight to God. If one is fixed on God, nothing can hinder them, no one can ‘steal’ them. You can kill them if you want but you cannot steal them from their purpose. The martyrs have shown us this and there are millions of martyrs all over the world, unnoticed, uncelebrated.

So there is a bedrock of individuality for which we are each responsible and if we are faithful to it, the community is built up. If we allow ourselves to be ‘stolen’ the community is debilitated.

Sorry, if this is all very theoretical. But the point surely is: if we are faithful as individuals the community blossoms. If we mess up as individuals, the community suffers. You have only to look at Ethiopia, Yemen or Ukraine if you want to see what it means in practice. And you do not have to go that far away to see it. It is on our doorstep.     

8 May 2022                 Easter Sunday 4C       Acts 13:43-52    Rev7: 14-17    John 10:28-30

FREEDOM CANNOT BE TAKEN AWAY

 

FREEDOM CANNOT BE TAKEN AWAY

The book-size page-a-day diaries, that organisations give to people to advertise their wares, begin to annoy with their daily words of wisdom. The sayings are wise but they are also obvious. They annoy because they constantly remind one of ideals that seem all but impossible to live up to. Take this one, ‘It is in moments of decision that your destiny is shaped’, (Anon) or from Viktor Frankl, ‘Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.’

Eminently wise sayings, but to throw them at one at the foot of each page is literally to ‘cast pearls before swine.’ How can one possibly absorb and live such ideals? Frankl came to his wisdom AFTER years in a concentration camp where ‘everything he possessed had been taken away.’ He learnt through hard experience.

Peter had been coasting along, thinking he was doing fine in a good position as Jesus’ right hand man and that the fruits of his closeness to the Master would sooner or later fall into his lap. But everything collapsed. He failed miserably, lying that he never knew Jesus, not once but three times. Then Jesus ‘looked’ at him. That’s all Luke tells us. But it was enough. Peter broke down. He was like a shard from the potter’s workshop.

But he was not discarded as potters do with shards. He was reinstated and confirmed and asked not once but three times ‘do you love me?’ Now he affirmed his love, insisted on it. It was the beginning of something new, something on a higher level of being and it happened AFTER he had reached the depths of crisis. The uneducated fisherman from Galilee appears in Acts as a new man. He stands up before the Jewish elders and boldly tells them; ‘If you are questioning us today about an act of kindness to a cripple… you must know, all of you, and the whole people of Israel …’ and he goes on to proclaim in the clearest terms his belief in Jesus, ‘whom you crucified …’.    

Instead of having 365 sayings in these diaries, I wish they would narrow it down to one! Something like, ‘the one who loses their life, finds it.’ The trouble is, as Ruth Burrows constantly reminds us, ‘we keep a deadly hold on our life.’ The last thing we want to do is to lose it.  

1 May 2022    Easter Sunday 3C   Acts 5:27…41   Rev 5 11-14      Jn 21:1-19       

 

GALILEE OF THE NATIONS

Why do Matthew and Mark speak so much about Galilee? And why does Jesus say, in reference to his rising from the dead, ‘I shall go before you into Galilee?’ It seems a distraction when we are talking of Easter and the Resurrection. Haven’t we left Galilee behind?

There is a clue, perhaps, in John’s gospel where Jesus tells Mary, ‘Do not hold on to me’, as she was clearly hugging him, ‘but go and tell my brothers and sisters I am going to my Father and your Father’. In other words, he seems to be saying, I am now able to build this relationship with the Father but you have to go and tell people about it and I will be with you. In fact, I go before you.

But go where? Galilee is the place where Jesus laboured. And we know it was a crossing place for trade. ‘All’ the nations passed by. Geographically it was a good place to start. But even more so, theologically it was the place to begin. ‘Recall all the things I did and said in Galilee,’ he seems to be saying, ‘but this time do so with rinsed eyes!’ In other words, let the reality of who I am, which you have now at last learnt in the resurrection, sink in as you remember all those things.

Understand the meaning. Realise that what I was doing was reaching out to all the nations, starting with the Jews, and opening for them the way to the fulness of life. When we read the history of the world, we realise that this work has been going on ever since. Every nation, every culture, is straining forward towards something. Often, they are on the wrong track and they end up in disaster. But overall, if we take a hard look at what is happening in the world today, we see people ‘groaning in one great act of giving birth’ to use the imagery of St Paul.

We are trying, for example, to make sense of this invasion of Ukraine by the Russians. We can find no reason, no justification, for deliberately killing thousands of people and destroying their homes and places of work.

Galilee, if you like, is the workshop of the nations where the carpenter is working away day after to day to carve a people presentable to the Father. Time and again the work turns out wrong and the carving has to be discarded. But each time something is learnt and progress is made. The destruction, waste and loss of life is terrible. Sometimes it is unbearable and seemingly senseless – like Calvary. But the great work goes on. No one can stop it. They can only delay it for a moment. The momentum, from the beginning of time is inexorable. Deep down, this gives joy to the human spirit. ‘Doubt no longer, but believe’, Jesus says to Thomas.    

24 April 2022, Easter Sunday 2, ‘Thomas’ Sunday.

THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

 

THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

‘The sun rises; the sun sets. The wind turns and turns again. The rivers flow into the sea but it is never filled.’ Qoheleth finds the repetition of days and years futile and ‘chasing the wind’. ‘All things are wearisome. There is nothing new under the sun.’

So, it is Holy Week again. So it is Easter again. So what is new? We have heard it all before. Perhaps some weariness comes to us as we see the same things repeated. Nothing seems to be new.

It takes attention on our part to stop and ask; ‘Is this really so? Is it really all weariness and repetition?’ Each Easter, each day, each moment is something new that we can explore, attend to, rise to. Everything is alive with freshness if we look hard. Easter is a door that opens on a new world if we can be explorers. ‘Unless you become like children …,’ says Jesus. Children are explorers. Everything is new to them. Can we be explorers this Easter?

Can we explore, for instance, what Jesus has just done in his Passion? We are told by Isaiah that ‘He made no resistance.’ This does not mean he was passive, like a ball, kicked this way and that, by opposing players. He submitted, yes, to his captors but we quickly sense that he is always in charge. His words to Caiphas, to Pilate, to the women, to Peter, are always the words of the Master. Everyone is silenced by him. There is a great strength about hum. He shows this by submitting. But all the time he is pushing back against lies, hypocrisy, fear, darkness, sin and death. He fights them to his last breath. And, although his body dies, his spirit triumphs. The person we call Jesus triumphs.

This is something new, staring us in the face: we can pass through the closed doors of sin, darkness, lies, hypocrisy. We can burst them open, discover our true selves, our new selves. If we are to follow him, we do not resist in one sense but we fight vigorously in another. Easter means we become new people. We don’t achieve it in one Easter alone. We have to return, Easter after Easter, each time coming closer to our goal. Each time opening the door wider and wider

It is a task far from chasing the wind. We have a goal, an end to which we are striving. We have a longing within us straining to be fulfilled, ‘striving towards the goal’ (Phil 3:11). ‘You are fighting the same battle which you saw me fighting’ (Phil 1:30). Each Easter brings us closer to our destiny.   

17 April 2022, Easter Sunday.

DESPISÉD, REJECTED

 

DESPISÉD, REJECTED

Once more we ‘go up’ to Jerusalem with the Jews of old to celebrate ‘the Pasch’. We do not go by foot or bus or plane and it is not for that ancient Passover. But we are invited to make the journey nonetheless. Once again, we will see him, in George Handel’s words in the Messiah, ‘despiséd, rejected’, (there are three syllables in both sung words of the aria) as he goes to his Passion, but this time in his people; mothers and children sheltering underground in Ukraine – or some girls in Zimbabwe schools.

Fr Lawrence Daka has cited a witness in a collection of essays on child protection whose report makes for disturbing reading.

         'On 15 March 2019, 145 secondary school girls from a renowned nun- owned Catholic girls’ mission boarding school in Zimbabwe, mobilised    themselves as early as 4am and walked seven kilometres to a nearby   police station to report rampant girlchild abuse in the school. … the story         sent shockwaves … some were shocked at the girls’ courageous action.         Others condemned the girls who they accused of tarnishing the image of       the school and the Church. … The local Church responded with silence     … symptomatic of the ills and challenges that have bedevilled what is       desirable of responsible, transparent and accountable leadership in the     Church and in society.

In another case of a school principal being convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl, the local faith and civil community was angry and said the girl, the police and the health professional were all lying and the women in the community were more aggressive than the men in condemning the girl.'

Abuse and cover-up. The words ring around the world but there is still resistance to responding to the pain and ruin caused to so many young or vulnerable lives. Victims still have to live their lives as best they can while carrying their untended wounds. Too many of us are not prepared to change our way of thinking.

The Passion of Jesus is not ‘something out there’ – a painful event that we remember for a while each year and then pass on. It is a searing reality of our human condition today which we can find hard to accept. It touches, if we allow it, the limits of our daily consciousness and invites us to reach further, beyond our comfort and security, to that unchartered territory where our own fragility is exposed.  Then we are really in the Passion, sharing with Jesus and our wounded sisters and brothers, the experience of being despised and rejected.     3 April 2020

  

COMING TO OUR SENSES

 COMING TO OUR SENSES

Few things are more moving than to see a family not giving up on an errant son

or daughter. The parents have brought up their child but when he or she

becomes a teenager, the parents have to stand back and leave them to make their

own decisions. Often, in the absence of strong family tradition, the young

person loses their sense of direction and lands up in desperate trouble. The

parents are shocked and distressed but there is little they can do if the young

person refuses help.

The point of Jesus’ story about the errant son, the prodigal son, is that the

parents do not give up. They wait. Anxiously, hopefully and prayerfully, they

wait for the moment when their child ‘comes to his (her) senses’, sees that the

mess they are in is self-inflicted and that the way out can also be self-activated.

The young man in the story has abandoned his family, his country and his

religion (he ends up working with ‘unclean’ pigs), but the father has not

abandoned him. He waits for him, his eyes glued to the horizon, watching for

his return.

The common assumption might be that the father scolds him, demands an

explanation and maybe disinherits him. But this father embraces him, says not a

word of condemnation and invests him with a robe, a ring and sandals –

symbols that he is now in an even high state in the family than he was before.

Luke is telling us Israel has torn up the contract made in the desert, wasted its

inheritance and abandoned its destiny. In the accounts of Jesus’ trial before the

Sanhedrin this is precisely what the high priest does. But God has not

abandoned Israel. He waits. When Ukraine jumps out at us every time we

consult the media, we feel the anguish of the people – particularly the children

and the mothers who try to care for them in the absence of their menfolk,

fighting on the front line. (The media chooses to bring Ukraine to our attention

but we constantly need to remember that there is a bitter war also continuing in

Ethiopia.)

We pray. But, in a sense, even God has to wait. He cannot intervene if his

‘teenagers’ fight. He has given them freedom and wants them to use that

freedom to find a way out of the mess. In some mysterious way we cannot

understand, he does help them to open their eyes and see a way forward. But

this help is dependent on a real desire on the part of those involved to be helped.

Finally, we hear that the story ends with a celebration, a win-win event of great

joy. It is not a reward, not a victory parade. It is a moment when everyone

rejoices as they recognise the father does not judge but welcomes his son who in

his turn has learnt so much that you feel he is now twice the man he was before.

27 March 2022 Lent Sunday 4C Josh 5:9-12 2 Cor 5:17-21 Lk 15:11-32

THE PROPHECY OF PRESENCE

 

THE PROPHECY OF PRESENCE

Each day I read the news and view the pictures coming out of Ukraine in the hope of some glimmer of movement towards a resolution of the conflict. And each day the situation just gets worse. There was a time when Europe was a theatre of constant war but we thought that ended with the 20^th century. Yet here we are again, in a war that has no reasonable purpose and which brings untold suffering to millions. Cardinal Michael Czerny has been sent with a colleague to visit Ukraine and express Pope Francis’ sorrow and closeness to the people.

Czerny says, ‘I go above all to meet people, to be with them: this is the prophecy of a presence and a closeness that may appear weak, even insignificant according to the logic of the world and the force of arms. But this is not the case: being close to his people, to his children who suffer, is the way that God has chosen to enter into the history of the world. Even at the cost of ending up on the cross. A symbol of this way of God is the great wooden crucifix that, in recent days, was moved from the Armenian Cathedral of Lviv and taken to a bunker in the hope of saving it from the fury and madness of war. In bunkers, cellars and improvised shelters there are many people who address their prayers to that crucified Lord.’ 

This is an agony for the Ukrainian people. And since it is up there, the first item on the news, every day we are constantly reminded of it. And we are utterly puzzled and saddened by the madness of it. Militarily the Russians are advancing but there is no way they will win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. So why do they even try? They cannot win this thing in the long run. No one ever accepts the loss of their freedom – even if they are forced to for a while.

The cardinal reminds us, ‘being close to his people … is the way God has chosen.’ A mother by the bed of her dying child can do nothing but be close to them. She shares in the suffering and our belief is that sharing and suffering is not in vain. Mary stood by the cross, weeping. But the time came when everything would become clear and her tears would be turned into joy. That time is still far off, it seems, for the people of Ukraine, of Tigray or anywhere else where people are suffering so much.

But we can ‘be present’ to them in the only way we can.

March 13, 2022      

MECHANICS AND GARDENERS

 

MECHANICS AND GARDENERS

Life goes on. We know the Russians have invaded Ukraine but what can I do about it? I can pray and that is good. But it is usually all I can do in such moments. Yet it helps to think about it. Our screens show burning buildings – not from some accidental fire but by the deliberate intention of people who do not seem to care about human life, about the suffering of children, about mothers becoming widows, about people starving and unable to keep warm in that harsh climate.

How is it possible, after all we have gone through in wars over the earth, that we still don’t put an end to war and solve our problems by listening and talking round a table? If we do listen, we learn that the Russians do have some reasons for their actions. They do feel threatened by the western alliance that has now extended to their borders.

After the Second Word War which ended in 1945, the Russians seemed intent on expanding westwards and the Americans and Europeans dreaded another war where they would have to fight, not Germany, but Russia. An American diplomat in Moscow, called George Kennan, understood the Russians and that they had always felt threatened and wanted to expand their influence in order to feel secure. Kennan wrote a famous ‘long telegram’ to his superiors in Washington proposing the Americans display their power but hold back from any threat of action.

Later he explained,  

‘We must be gardeners and not mechanics in our approach to world affairs. We must realize that we did not create the forces by which this process operates. We must learn to take these forces for what they are and to induce them to work with us with understanding and sympathy, not trying to force growth by mechanical means, not tearing the plants up by the roots when they fail to behave as we wish them to. We do not need to insist that change in the camp of our adversaries can come only by violence.’

These have always struck me as wise words. To be a mechanic is to impose your will on a machine and make it do what you want. To be a gardener is to recognise the built-in nature of the plants and work with them in the hope of producing the results you hope for.

The Russians do have a problem. But we can lament that they did not ‘work with’ the people they considered threatened them. It is not my wish to start an argument over the rights and wrongs of this crisis. It is too sad for words. As we enter this precious period of Lent, we can lament this tragedy and try in our own way to be gardeners in all the relationships in which we are engaged.     (6 March 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

 

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

The doctor’s waiting area had four entrances. The wooden floor was old but polished. Nurses and patients came and went, all intent, in a steady unpredictable flow. They shared a common purpose of healing or being healed and a common humanity. They formed a temporary community of transitory connections. Without saying so, they wished each other well. They got on with the silent thoughts or their texting. The atmosphere was charged with unspoken anxiety. Like waiting for exam results or the verdict of interviews.

It was a provisional community. In another place, at another time, they would have chatted and learnt each other’s business.  They would have broken the silence and allow connections to develop. They would have revealed who they are and what were their hopes.

          The orchard where the tree grows is judged on the quality of its fruit,

          Similarly a person’s words betray what he feels.

 

So speaks Ben Sirach and he goes on: we cannot praise a person until we hear them speak. Words are like those daubs of paint that build up the whole picture. And they reveal whether the picture is full of promise or threat. When Jesus came, he spoke extraordinary words, words that penetrated the meaning of this planet. Yet they were simple words, easy to understand, like the instructions on a medicine bottle. ‘Lose your life and you will find it.’ They were words full of hope.

 

Easy to understand but so hard to learn. The Russians have invaded Ukraine. All the words they used in the build up pronounced they are acting in self-defence. A powerful country attacking a weaker one in self-defence? It is overwhelmingly sad. There is now so much anger at this situation, so much pain and sadness. It forces us back to the words of Jesus and calls us to pray. In quiet personal prayer or in public or on the internet or whatever way. People are losing their lives and those who remain live in fear. All because we ‘cannot lose our life – in the sense Jesus means - and so find it.’

 

Can we imagine what the world would like if we could live these words? All our doctors’ waiting rooms, sports grounds, musical venues and theatres of war – are the raw material of our relating to one another. There are so many opportunities to choose to reach out to others or, on the contrary, think only of ourselves. This attack is a huge step back for humanity. After all we have been through, we cannot see it, even ‘through a glass darkly’.

 

27 February 2022

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

 

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

There are many ‘shocking’ passages in the gospels: Jesus healing lepers, forgiving sinners, calling tax collectors and washing his disciples’ feet. But the one thing that must have stuck in their throat was the call to ‘love your enemies’. After all the oppression they had been through – from the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Persians, the Greeks and now the Romans – how are they expected to have even a kind thought towards their enemies, leave alone love them?

Jesus came to announce the kingdom, a new world of fraternity (the word covers sisters as well as brothers, as Pope Francis points out in Fratelli Tutti). Paul interpreted it as a world without boundaries: ‘Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barriers of hatred that divide us’ (Eph 2:14).

In the Old Testament reading today, we see David sparing Saul’s life when he could have killed him. But David did not act out of love but out of fear of God’s anger if he killed ‘the Lord’s anointed’. David was a calculating politician!

Jesus, on the other hand, is urging us to remove the ‘great gulf’ referred to in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus at his door (Luke 16:26). Jesus calls us to go to the frontier where we cannot bring ourselves to say a kind word to some people who irritate us beyond endurance! They could be in our own family, in our work place or in our society. ‘If you love those who love you what thanks can you expect?’ our gospel asks us today.

Jesus wants a breakthrough in our world; between Russians and Ukrainians, Tigrayans and Ethiopians, migrants and those who close their doors to them -and all the other divided people in the world. And with us, is there a message too? Who is my ‘enemy’? Who am I called to reach out to? To love? 

I know it is easy to ask these questions and they can remain theoretical or abstract. We can also give thanks for the barriers we have overcome. I often think of how I came to view people who are mentally handicapped in a completely different way. It was a gift for me. And I am sure you have had similar experiences. We are called to go on breaking down these barriers wherever they are. The kingdom is ‘among’ but it is not yet fully there!

20 February 2022         Sunday 7C       1 Sam 2:62…23           1 Cor 15:45-49             Lk 6: 27-38

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

 

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

A reader, so disappointed by the ending of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, decided to read the book again in the hope that the ending would be different! So the story goes, and whatever the truth of it, it illustrates our disappointment over tragic endings. I was one of the many who turned to the news last Sunday morning in the hope five-year-old Rayan, who had fallen down a 100-foot deep dry well in Morocco, would at last be rescued safe and sound. Hundreds had kept vigil during the five-day rescue attempt and now the moment arrived when he could be safely extracted from his little prison. Jubilation! But, alas, only for a moment: the child was dead.

People on the spot, and watching around the world, went numb. They knew it might turn out that way but they hoped ‘against hope’ that there would be a happy ending. There was consolation in the show of human solidarity across boundaries and Pope Francis pointed to the ‘beauty’ of this. But there was no escaping that awful feeling of pain and disappointment. How wonderful if he been found alive! But he wasn’t. The world moved on and the story dropped from the headlines.

Yet knawing questions remain. Is that really the end of the story? Is tragedy just what the word means; an awful human disaster and it ends there. Herbert Chitepo and Thomas Sankara are assassinated. Josiah Tongogara and Princess Diana die in road accidents. Cyclones and tsunamis kill thousands and destroy homes and livelihoods.

We are caught between wanting our planet, our only home, to be a place of happiness and happy endings and realising that it has never been that way and tragedy is our constant companion. I often go back to St Thomas Aquinas: ‘God does not want evil but he permits it. And that is good.’ When I first heard these words, I was shocked. It is good that God permits evil? I do not know if Thomas elaborates. I suspect he doesn’t because who can? You cannot get your mind around the reality of evil being ‘good’.

Yet we often get hints that tragic events lead to some good result. I won’t try to give examples: There is a starkness in the concept that does not bear too much analysis. We just have to stay with the paradox. We see ‘good’ people suffering tragedies and we see ‘bad’ people seemingly enjoying life without suffering. But tragedy, pain and disaster are like the shards in the potter’s workshop. They are the price we seem to have to pay in order to create a wholesome humanity. 

13 February 2022  Sunday 6C  Jer 17:5-8    1 Cor 1512…20    Lk 6: 17…26