CAN WE ABOLISH MANGERS?

 

CAN WE ABOLISH MANGERS?

It was in a manger he was laid, a place of dried grass for cows to feed in harsh climates. From the moment he appeared in our flesh, ‘he had nowhere to lay his head.’ He was one of the countless children born in strange places, railway stations, back streets and migrant camps. It was all a long time ago and the world has moved on. We now have modern hospitals, air travel and instant communications. Our progress has been rapid and all embracing.

 

Yet we still have mangers. For all our progress, we still have the heavy burden of poverty. We have never bridged that divide. In some ways it is worse today than ever because today it is structural, built into the way power and wealth operate. Joe Biden may preside over the wealthiest country in the world and he may want to solve the issue of migration but he seems powerless to do so. Developed countries say they cannot open their doors to migrants as they did a century or more ago.  They would be overwhelmed by the problems created.

 

Nor, it seems, are they able to come up with a policy to eradicate poverty in the countries from which the migrants come. (No migrant willingly leaves their country. They do it because of war, civil unrest or the relentless poverty arising from an economic vacuum).

 

The first response is good, even heroic; relieve the immediate suffering of the migrants by at least rescuing them from the sea and giving them a place to stay and food to eat. That is charity and there will always be a need for it. But it does not solve the problem More is needed and this we call justice. And when we are faced with systematic structural injustice what do we do? The issue is now linked to the big Cs: Covid and Climate.

 

Just as the big Cs do not just affect some parts of the world but not others, so the migrant question is rapidly becoming unavoidable and will simply have to tackled. It speaks in a loud voice about our postponement of the Beatitudes. They were nice words Jesus spoke on the hill by the lake all those years ago. They were all about opening our hearts to others and not counting the cost to ourselves. The fact that they were spoken on a mountain, echoing Moses’s words when God first announced his covenant, and that they were a highly developed version of the Ten Commandments, can easily pass us by.  

 

Each year, at Christmas, we return to the question: are we creating a world that reflects the values of the Kingdom of God or are we waiting for God to do it somehow from on high? He has handed the world over to us. He cannot interfere with our freedom.  It is up to us. He was born in a manger to help us get rid of mangers. As with Covid, as with Climate, we ask; what can I do? There is no simple answer. But when we look, we will be shown the way.

 

25 December 2021   Christmas Day          Is 9:2-7           Tit 2: 11-14    Lk 2:1-14

 

      

 

BELIEVING THE PROMISE

 

BELIEVING THE PROMISE

‘Our hearts are restless’, says Augustine. We yearn for something beyond our reach. Yesterday, I spent time with a young family. The two older children, 8 and 10, were already ‘serious’ about ‘doing the right thing’ at home (helping Mum) and at school (speaking English – no Shona allowed!) The youngest, aged 4, had no such agenda; she just loved exploring everything. She had not yet developed that ache we have for what we want, what is expected.

Israel had that ache. She had been told many times; ‘come to the waters you who are thirsty … I shall make an everlasting covenant with you’ (Isaiah 55:1-3). God has always wanted to fill us with his good things. Long ago, he planted a yearning in our hearts. Israel carried that yearning, that restlessness. Her whole history is one of striving and failing, moving forward and falling back again. In Advent we remember that movement and we feel it in our own time.

We too are restless, longing for something beyond us. We have the words of those who were close to God to encourage us. Take Micah, whom we read today. ‘Out of you, Bethlehem, will be born the one who is to rule over Israel … His origins go back to the distant past. … When the time comes for her who is to give birth, gives birth … a remnant will come back … and he will be their peace.’ Micah’s contemporaries would not have known what he was talking about.

They could not have grasped that God was promising to come and live among them in a human body of flesh and blood (our second reading today, from Hebrews). It was beyond their belief. They could not have grasped it and many people today can’t either. We scarcely can ourselves.

But there was one person who could, even then. Luke tells us today, Mary hurried to ‘the hill country of Judah’ bursting with the news. She had to tell someone, someone she felt would at least begin to understand. She chose her cousin. We are let into their conversation which ends with Elizabeth saying, ‘Blessed is she who believed the promise …’ It all comes down to that. The yearning, the restlessness, the longing – they will all be fulfilled. The most wonderful part of what it is to be human is now going to be realised. God is going to come and live in us and we in him. If we can welcome him – even if our heart is more like a stable than a hotel – he will come and make his home in us (John 14:23).    

19 December 2021       Advent Sunday 4C                   Mic 4:1-4         Heb 10:5-10     Lk 1:39-45                  

 

 

FRANCIS ON LESBOS - FEAR AND JOY

 

FRANCIS ON LESBOS - FEAR AND JOY

An open-eyed smile and look of wonder on the face of a Syrian child greeted Pope Francis on Lesbos last week. The Mediterranean island receives many migrants fleeing their countries because of war and poverty. That smile cut through all the fear and calculation with which many in Europe greet refugees. We can imagine the frustration and anger behind closed doors in Europe’s capitals towards a pope who speaks inspiring words but does not have the political obstacles the continent’s leaders would have to face if they opened their doors.

But is this not the nub where safety and risk meet?  The sensible, prudent and practical thing to do is to close the door, build fences and walls and patrol the roads and seas. ‘We cannot handle all these people.’ But in our hearts, we know this is not a solution. It is like apartheid in the old South Africa or the karabha (colour bar) in the old Rhodesia. We are ‘safe’ behind our walls. But for how long? And at what cost?  Those who built walls then were not safe and those who build them now are not either.

Yet the risk of opening doors fills us with anxiety.  Strangers in our midst, who do not know our language and hold to foreign customs and faiths, unsettle us. Some of them might even have hostile intentions, coming to plant bombs and kill people.

So Francis makes us feel uncomfortable because he is really saying, ‘You of little faith, why do you doubt?’ He is asking us to step out of the boat and do the ‘impossible’. And is it not because we cannot take these steps that our freedom is so much postponed? The kingdom, or reign, of God is ‘kicked down the alley’. We don’t want to deal with the toughest questions. There is a ‘big gulf’ (Luke 16:26) between what we call security and the world of the Beatitudes. And the hardest thing is that we actually have the power to solve this issue of migration, but we do not have the will.

In the third week of Advent our theme turns to joy. ‘Shout for joy’ (Zephaniah), ‘I want you to be happy, always happy’ (Paul). And John the Baptist, ‘if you have two tunics, share with one who has none’. There is joy in sharing. If we can get over our fear of reaching out to others, we will discover great joy.

12 December 2012    Advent Sunday 3C    Zeph 3:14-18   Ph 4: 4-7   Lk 3:10-18

ANDREW AND SARAH

 

ANDREW AND SARAH

The ‘news’ at this time of the year, if we can let it enter into us, is astonishing. ‘Every valley will be filled in, every mountain and hill laid low.’ As usual, it is hidden parable language – saying something simple, even silly, but unlocking a world view that is life changing.

I came across the story of Andrew and Sarah this week. Andrew is an English prince, born into privilege, money and fame before he has actually done anything. He doesn’t have to work. He can just enjoy himself. He doesn’t have to ask, ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ He can put that off. True, he served in the navy for a while but not as a total commitment for life. He doesn’t have to make that kind of choice. He can make the most of his position and opportunities. His future is secure. Eventually he settles on one person whom he asks to be his wife. Sarah comes from a family close to the royals but it is a broken family and gives her few guidelines for life and certainly not life in the public eye as wife of a prince.

All goes well for a while but gradually the lack of something solid in their lives leaves them both chasing the frills of life rather than its substance. As the story unfolds, they both go their separate ways, seeking satisfaction in shadows and illusions. Their marriage fails and they divorce and the Queen, Andrew’s mother, calls the year it happened ‘horrible’. The public turn against the couple who, in their different ways, go deeper and deeper into the dark valley of disaster.

But the story ends on a bright note. They have both kept up contact with one another and their children, and have both tasted the bitterness of knowing they have brought all their troubles on themselves. Having reached this low point, like the story of the prodigal son, their eyes are opening and the suggestion of the storyteller is that they are ready to come together again, to ‘remarry’, to make a new start, this time much wiser people, people who have tasted the worst and are now humbly ready for the best. The mountains have been lowered and the valleys filled.

The royal family in England perform a great service. They are up there, like a mirror in a washroom, where we can see ourselves and adjust our ways without anyone noticing. Like the actors in a Shakespearean tragedy, their lives are open for us to inspect and maybe draw some conclusions for our own lives. What Advent tells us is, if we search, we are certain to find. But our choices have to be authentic, that is, we find ourselves in serving others. If we only think of ourselves, we are lost.

December 5, 2021               Advent Sunday 2C              Bar 5:1-9               Phil 1:3…11                         Lk 3:1-6

 

TWO ADVENTS

 

TWO ADVENTS

There are two Advents; the one we know about and is thoroughly written up, especially in Isaiah, and the one we don’t know but we are racing towards. This second one is where we are involved and, in a real sense, have a say. We are not just in the stands, watching, but influence the unfolding of this Advent by the decisions we make. The timing is up to us: the sooner we succeed in making this world in the image of the One who designed it, the sooner that One will be able to ‘gather’ all his people into the peace he has planned for them.

But we keep postponing this universal community of peace. We run away from the implications. One story in the news is of an Iraqi family driven out of their home by the IS who sought refuge in a camp where they had to stay for seven years. They struggled to get to Europe and a better life only to be hounded on the Polish border, sent back to Iraq. The report ends, ‘and there is worst to come.’

The Isaiah reading for the First Sunday in Advent says; ‘I will make a virtuous branch for David who shall practice honesty and integrity in the land.’ It is poetic hidden language but it expresses the times that are coming when God, working with people, will bring truth in relationships. God cannot do it alone. Maybe the people of the first Advent who were looking forward to a Messiah, thought the Messiah would do everything for them. We know they had a narrow focus on Israel. Few had any thought for the ‘gentiles’.

But the first Advent did bring us a Messiah and that is what makes our hearts rejoice this 25 December. Yet this Messiah can do nothing without us. The whole plan is that we wake up and take steps in our lives to bring about community in the world. Sending the Iraqis back to where they came from, washing our hands of them, is certainly not building community. What should we do? Well, it is easy to be an arm-chair strategist and there is no avoiding the problem. But some kind of follow up of the lives of these people, some kind of support for them in their own countries to help them get settled, would be better than sending them back in despair.

We cannot wait around for this second Advent. It calls for our full engagement in doing what we can. If this sounds starry-eyed, one thing we know: if we decide to do something we will succeed, one way or another, and we are not alone. Our five loaves and two fish quickly grow.

28 November 2021       Advent Sunday 1C    Jer 33:14-16   1 Thess 3:12-4:2       Lk 21:25-28, 34-36  

A WORLD VIEW

 

A WORLD VIEW

The feast of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an antidote to the rising secularism and nationalism of the time. The forms these movements took threatened the dignity the Church saw as an integral part of the vocation of human beings as children of God destined to develop their own gifts and so find their way to the Father. The feast announces a world view very different from one that sees human beings as sufficient in themselves.

‘No one is free until everyone is free.’ We used to say this about South Africa and, truly, it was obvious then that white people lived in fear of the ‘black peril’. They were not ‘free’ in any meaningful way. And, of course, it is also true with regard to Covid and climate change, ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’. Long ago, a war in Viet Nam or Ethiopia did not greatly concern those not directly involved. It was far away and we could get on with our lives without taking much notice. Something similar could be said about famine, droughts, tsunamis and floods. They were localised and the relevant governments would deal with them.

But Covid and global warming changed all that. No one is safe. Literally everyone on the planet is involved and Biden and Xi have to wear their masks too. Is this not an entirely new phenomenon? These two modern threats, whose effects have peaked in the last eighteen months, have made everyone take up a position in response. Some have chosen to ignore them and pretend life can go on as usual; others have got deeply engaged in facing these threats and doing something about them.

It is now clear that Covid will not be banished easily. We cannot put it behind us as we did the flu of 1918-19 which killed millions. No sooner have people begun to relax than a new Covid wave hits them – and there is no end in sight. Similarly with climate change. The Glasgow summit, recently ended, achieved some success but left many people deeply disappointed by the lack of compassion, imagination and courage displayed by many nations.

One lesson stares us in the face: these are global issues not local ones and humankind is painfully learning that pursuing local agendas and short-term benefits is like building on sand. This week-end the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Christ the King. Everyone on the planet has had a chance to see the 30 meter high huge statue of Christ the King dominating Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, because of the Olympics in 2016. It dominates a huge panorama of land and sea. It symbolises something far beyond our limited interests. Can we see it as a sign that this world is God’s world and he has made its fruits available to all of us that we find our way to him?  He invites us to reach out to one another and recognise, at last, that we are one people of God and we are to rise above our divisions and strain for his justice.

21 November 2021, Christ the King   Dan 7:13-14         Rev 1:5-8     Jn 18:33-37

THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED

 

THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED

It is a strange way to begin. The first person to write a gospel starts by describing the end of the world. ‘The sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from heaven’. This, eventually, becomes Chapter 13 after Mark goes back to write the earlier chapters. What are we to make of this? Perhaps we imagine something like the worst outcome of the climate crisis? In 1982, Annie Dillard wrote an account of her experience of a total eclipse (cf. Google).

 

            ‘… I turned back to the sun. It was going. The sun was going, and the world was wrong. The                     grasses were wrong; they were platinum. Their every detail of stem, head, and blade shone                         lightless and artificially distinct as an art photographer’s platinum print.  This colour has never been             seen on Earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte.’

This is a taste of a long description of the effect of the eclipse on her. It is a taste too, perhaps, for us of what it the end could be like. Dillard writes of the disorientation and horror of our natural world in convulsion. Another quote:

            ‘The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. … My    mind                was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. …   You have                   seen photographs of the sun taken during a total eclipse. The corona fills the print. All of those                  photographs were taken through telescopes. The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more                cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity             of internal experience. … You see the  wide world swaddled in darkness; you see a vast breadth of             hilly land, and an enormous, distant, blackened valley; you see towns’ lights, a river’s path. …

 

            “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.” Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the    long run he                 was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The                                mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world,                 and all eternity, and God.’

 

The whole article is worth a careful read. It opens our consciousness to all that is beyond our imagination and comprehension. It is an awesome thought, both frightening and joyful. Frightening, because the onset of the end of the world seems set to be a time of unimaginable turmoil. Joyful, because we know that the gospel message is one, ultimately, of hope. The end will not be a catastrophe. It will be the moment when the ‘Son of Man’ will reveal the final triumph of God and the long foretold ‘gathering’ of his people. It is a message of consolation to close a difficult year.

14 November 2021      Sunday 33B     Dan 12:1-3      Heb 10:11…18            Mk 13:24-32

 

NIGHTMARES AND DAYDREAMS

 

NIGHTMARES AND DAYDREAMS

A nightmare is described in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a female monster sitting upon and seeming to suffocate a sleeper.’ I know a little boy in Ireland who was so traumatised by his primary school teacher’s description of the advance of Communism in Europe, and the way its enthusiasts brain-washed those who opposed its beliefs, that he had a nightmare. He woke up screaming at a vision of Stalin’s divisions marching down O’Connell St, the main street in Dublin.

Well, Stalin’s divisions came – not to Ireland but to other places – and now they are no more. Hitler’s divisions marched through Europe and North Africa and now they too are no more. The colonial empires pegged out territories for themselves across the world are also no more. The cold war – from the 1950s to the 1980s – is also no more. And the threat of MAD – mutually assured destruction by opposing nuclear powers - is, if not no more, at least unthinkable.

While we have the power to make life miserable for others there is always a push- back when those oppressed rise up. As I write, delegates of the human race are gathering in Glasgow to ‘push-back’ on global warming. The media heightens the tension telling us of the many battles lost across the globe: forests destroyed, habitats eliminated, sea levels rising and global temperatures relentlessly going up. We wonder what kind of world we will leave for our grandchildren. Already, in Kuwait for example, life is almost unbearably hot.

But history tells us that human being always resist, always fight back. I met a man the other day who grows ‘essential natural oils’ and he helps others to do likewise. He is adamantly optimistic. ‘We will win this thing.’ The ‘thing’ is, of course, climate change. Uniquely, it is not about war or famine or disease. It is about the human will. It is not about science. We know the science. It is about morality. It is about doing the right thing – not the selfish thing.

‘Now that you know these things, blessed are you if you do them’ (John 13:17). Jesus knew this was the crux of the matter. We know what to do but we lack the will to do it. We have won many battles before. Are we going to win this one? The answer – based on our past success in building a better world and our present exponentially growing awareness of the threat to our survival - is, ‘yes’.  We need the will of a Churchill or a Martin Luther King or even a Merkel to get there. Or perhaps it won’t be one individual who will convince the world; maybe it will be a globally shared now consciousness which is so strong it will overwhelm the delayers and begrudgers.

When Jesus was on the mountain, giving his inaugural address, he included these words; ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right.’ Their number is increasing.

November 7, 2021                  All Saints        Rev 7:2…11        1 Jn 3:1-3         Mt 5:1-12

 

STOKING THE FIRE IN THE HEARTH

 

STOKING THE FIRE IN THE HEARTH

If you have ever watched a chick breaking its way out of its shell or a new born calf struggling to stand on its feet or indeed an infant emerging yelling from the womb, then you have some idea of what Paul is talking about when he says creation is ‘groaning in one great act of giving birth’. Essentially, that is what our planet, our universe, is doing; and each of us, throughout our life, is always coming to birth in our unique individual way.

There was a time when Christians understood the Lord’s command, ‘Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations’, as literally baptising every person in every place. After two thousand years of often heroic missionary work, it is now clear to us this is not going to happen. What is happening, in ways that we do not see (Mark 4:27), is that ‘of its own accord the land has produced its crop’.

I remember an old German priest at Christmas, in the downtown Detroit parish of Holy Trinity, telling his congregation, ‘The world is a far better place than it was on that first Christmas night’. Although the baptised are in a minority, the influence of Christianity has been like yeast in society spreading its values wherever it is found. Many argue that the influence of religion has been harmful and held back the flourishing of human freedom. There is no way of winning this argument and it is a waste of time to try.

What is indisputable is the flourishing of good will and self-sacrifice in so many places. The instinct and immediate impulse of so many people is to help without much thought of ‘What do I get out of it?’  There was a time when our teachers used to solve the problem of why so few are actually baptised by saying good people express in their lives a ‘baptism of desire’, implying that they would be baptised if the circumstances were right.

I do not think anyone would hold that view now or even its more recent equivalent of speaking of ‘anonymous Christians’. The implication is that all good people want, even if they don’t know it, to be Christians.  They don’t.

But, despite all our anxieties about life today, there is goodness, honesty, courage and kindness waiting round every corner to show itself. The priests and prophets of this age are those who stand out and are recognised for their courage in seeking truth in every area of life: poetry, music, literature, sport, politics, economics, the social sciences and so much more. Some are actually priests as we normally know them, but most are not.

The role of Christians and all other believers is to journey with people, whoever they are, in their searching. The person of faith will say it is ultimately a search for God and his rule of justice. The person who holds no particular belief, in what transcends reason or science, will also say it is a search for justice and integrity. The two converge. You may climb the mountain by different routes but when you get to the top you meet. The role of the Christian and all people of faith is to stoke the fire in the hearth, though others with no particular beliefs in what is beyond sense and reason may dispute this. Yet, if they love others, as so many do, they love God, even if they do not know him.

October 31, 2021        Sunday 31B                Deut 6:2-6       Heb 7:23-28       Mk12:28-34  

WHEN THE ARCHBISHOP CAME TO BREAKFAST

 

WHEN THE ARCHBISHOP CAME TO BREAKFAST

 

It was the early 1960s and the archbishop was visiting his parishes. The parish council would select one member of the parish to host him for breakfast after Mass. The choice fell on Mr Mushore and in the course of conversation the archbishop told him he was trying to encourage multiracial education in Church schools and would he be prepared to send his children to what was then a school predominantly for whites. Mr Mushore, recognising this was an opening for his children to have many opportunities out of reach in the local school to which they were destined, readily agreed.

The result was that the two children, a boy and a girl, received an education which fast tracked them into careers that up to then were matters for dreams. Leaving aside for a moment the inequality of the system that then pertained, the point here is simply that Mr Mushore grasped a moment that might never come again. His choice instantly changed the life of his children and allowed them entrance to a way of life that would have a ripple effect on their families and on the community.

Blind Bartimaeus was stuck in his drab routine of sitting daily by the wayside until, one day, a large crowd of people passed by seemingly following some renowned person. Curious, he asked who it was and, being told, he began to cry out for help. The people were annoyed at him causing a disturbance and told him to be quiet. But that only spurred him on and he cried out even louder. He got what he wanted and, we’re told, ‘followed Jesus along the road.’ The story ends there but it is not hard to imagine what must have happened later.

They say, ‘learning never ends’, but we can get stuck in a way of thinking that says, ‘there is nothing I can do’. Bartimaeus must have often thought so as he sat by the road. But he did not give in to that thought. He was alert and ready when opportunity came by and he instantly grabbed it. People told him to accept his situation. It was hopeless. But he refused. He ‘threw off his cloak and jumped up and went to Jesus.’

We do not need to say more, except perhaps to remind ourselves that things do not have to be the way they are. We can get so stuck and maybe discouraged. But there is always something we can do. That is the beauty of being a human being. We can always grasp the moment. We are getting towards Christmas, or more specifically Advent, and our readings for the next month are going to hammer us in different ways with the simple message, ‘Be alert!’ Watch! The buck in the bush is alert for danger. We are to be alert for opportunity.    

24 October 2021         Sunday 30B                Jer 31:7-9        Heb 5:1-6        Mk 10:46-52      

 

FEELING OUR WEAKNESSES

Today, October 14, Weaver Press is launching a book[1] called, The Color of the Skin doesn’t Matter. It tells the life of Sr Janice McLaughlin in her own words. The title comes from the greeting of Josiah Tongogara when he welcomed her at the airport in Maputo during the Liberation War in the 1970s. Janice died earlier this year after a long struggle with a lung condition: it was the last of the many battles she embraced in her life of seventy nine years.

Born in the United States, she always wanted to come to Africa and become engaged in the process of liberation of a continent emerging from the shadow of colonialism. Her entry point was teaching journalism in Kenya and Tanzania and from there she was invited to Rhodesia. Without calculating the risks, she threw herself into the struggle and soon found herself in Chikurubi prison. Expelled from the country, she returned to live in the refugee camps in Mozambique before engaging in education programmes in the new Zimbabwe.

What leaps out from every page of her memoir is her generosity in giving herself, ‘welcome or unwelcome’ (2 Tim 4:1). In the process, she gives us a rapid run through of the history of Zimbabwe in the past fifty years. She too ‘gave her life as a ransom for many’ to quote the last words of this Sunday’s reading from Mark.

When we read or hear the lives of outstanding people, there is, I think, a tendency to compare ourselves with them. They seem so great; we seem so small. This can be a distraction. It is surely important to recognise that, mostly, we do the best we can in our circumstances. Each day we can try to improve, a bit at a time, the actual ways in which we live our lives. We may not make the headlines. We may never go to prison for our beliefs. But we can enjoy little victories each day as we struggle to live with integrity and kindness.

The letter to the Hebrews, which we also read this Sunday, has a phrase about ‘feeling our weaknesses’ and it is used in the context of Jesus himself doing just that. He felt his human limitations. These are not handicaps to be somehow ignored and denied. They are the very stuff of our life with which we are to make friends and use as our particular raw material for achieving small conquests each day. Our biggest enemy in all this is what I have recently heard called ‘pleasurable noise’, referring to the constant presence of words and sounds in our lives. These obstruct the power to reflect and can leave us no space to be in touch with our victories and defeats. So perhaps a key victory, to begin with, would be to turn down the volume!

October 17, 2021            Sunday 29B            Is 53:10-11      Heb 4:14-16    Mk 10:35-45

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84174906540?pwd=U2l4UjZ2Y3ZuYkFScmFMNUdOR2k4UT09

Meeting ID: 841 7490 6540     Passcode: 421620        4.30 Zimbabwe time. October 14

 

On Thursday, October 14^th at  4.30

 https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84174906540?pwd=U2l4UjZ2Y3ZuYkFScmFMNUdOR2k4UT09

 Meeting ID: 841 7490 6540

Passcode: 421620

 

 

SELL EVERYTHING…

I met a man who obtained a small gold snuff box in Italy. He was proud of it and liked to display it in his living room. He had a habit of checking, every time he entered or left the room, whether the box was still there. Perhaps a visitor, or a relative, had pocketed it. 

Someone came to Jesus and said, ‘I’m doing well. I have ticked all the boxes.’ Jesus looked hard at them with love, and said, ‘yes, but you are missing one thing. Go and sell everything and give the money to those in need, and then come and follow me’. But the person couldn’t take it, and left. 

‘Everything’ has multiple meanings. It can literally mean wealth and possessions and there are people who have left these to follow Jesus. But it also means an attitude which seeks security in possessions, qualifications, status and a general sense of who a person is.  We have a hard time learning what Jesus mean by his opening words in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’.

Ruth Burrows, now well into her nineties and frail, often wrote in her books how we keep ‘a deadly hold’ on ourselves. We find it hard to ‘dance on the shore’ like Zorba the Greek, when our plans, literally in his case, come tumbling down.

‘Letting go’ is difficult. We hold on to so much because we feel, if we get rid of it, it will leave such a hole in our life that we can’t go on. ‘Emptying self’ is all very well in the scriptures (Phil 2:7) but let it stay there. Don’t get too close to it. It is a fire that will burn. But it will also simplify, purify, as we see in St Francis whose feast fell this week. It will open spaces. Taking a deep breath and swallowing hurts and slights, frees us to welcome the bigger picture. ‘Selling everything and giving to the poor,’ has a literal and a much wider meaning.

The Church herself has spent decades, maybe centuries, defending her image of herself. Now that has all come tumbling down. News that the French Catholic Church has released the results of her examination of conscience, documenting case after case of abuse, mainly of boys in their early teens, adds to the horror and sadness that has hit us from so many sides. But we can also sense the relief that, at last, the truth is out. Now we can deal with the issues. We are free of pretence. Free to build something new, something closer to the original, the source. Losing our life we can begin to find it. Both collectively and individually.

10 October 2021           Sunday 28B     Wisdom 7:7-11      Hebrews 4:12-13     Mark 10:17-30

WHAT GOD HAS UNITED

 

WHAT GOD HAS UNITED

Human beings have organised themselves in many different ways; in tribal groups, monarchies, republics and the United Nations. Yet the one basic structure they did not choose - it was given to them – is the family. This Sunday we read the description in the Book of Genesis of its origin. ‘A man leaves his mother and father and joins himself to his wife and they become one body.’ They create something new. This is now their doing. But it is also God’s doing. The new couple are fulfilling God’s plan. They bring children into the world – each child a new and wonderful individual, a child of God and a child of its parents. No wonder there is excitement on their wedding day and all their relatives and friends gather to cheer them on.

A new family is a new creation, a capsule of God’s plan. His people are made up of countless families, stamped with the divine image of the Trinity and setting out to reflect his glory in the beauty and integrity of their lives.

That is the plan. Alas, the reality is often different as men and women toss and turn and find themselves in unhappy marriages and want to get out. The Church is slowly learning to be more compassionate and helpful to those who cannot go on in their marriage. She still insists on holding up the ideal of marriage as Jesus gives it today in the gospel of Mark. But she is also quietly putting aside rigour and dealing gently with her sons and daughters.

But there is much to be said. While being compassionate the Church also calls us to believe. A marriage may look impossible from the troubled explanation given to a priest or counsellor, but the Christian message is always one of believing even when we cannot see, even when things look impossible. That is the faith, the risk and the joy of marriage. Abraham set out ‘without knowing where he was going’ (Heb 11:8), and sometimes we are asked to trust that a marriage can survive the turbulence of the present in the belief that a deeper level of union among the partners is just round the corner. There are no rules to govern this. Each case will be different. But we should not rush to seek the easy solution.

This is where prayer and the cross come in. We cannot say, ‘this is your cross’ quickly or easily. We are called to be highly sensitive and discerning. In the end it will be a matter of conscience, of really listening to my heart. Maybe I really should get out of this marriage for a number of reasons. But maybe the Lord is asking me to believe and persevere and the light dawns and a new joy appears.

3 October 2021           Sunday 27B                Gen 2:18-24    Heb 2:9-11      Mark 10:2-16       

 

POLICY RATHER THAN POLITICS

Angela Merkel, leader of Germany for the past 16 years, is stepping down. Much is being written about her legacy to Germany and the world but one comment, by Matt Qvortrup of Coventry University, is eye catching: ‘She has turned German politics into a discussion about policy rather than politics.’ Policy is about what we should be doing here and now to respond to the needs of the people for whom we are responsible. Politics is about what we should be doing to get the votes of those who support us. The others, for whom we are also responsible, can be ignored. Policy is focused on the common good and builds community. Politics is about responding to sectional interests and is divisive.

Another female leader in Europe in the last forty years was Margaret Thatcher. She too sought for a policy that would work for the UK but she did not mind being divisive in the process. While being prepared for a meeting with someone new to her, she would ask, ‘Is he (she) one of us?’ As if to say, ‘Do they share our (my) views?’ The Germans call Merkel, ‘Mutter’ (Mother). The British called Thatcher, ‘the Iron Lady’. Which would you prefer?

Some five years ago the flow of migrants was seen as a threat to many European countries. Angela Merkel understood this but she put the interests of the migrants first and welcomed around a million of them. It was the thing to do. Even if it would be a huge strain on the country, ‘we can manage’, she said. And they did.

Self-interest, to the exclusion of others, is a powerful urge. ‘They’ are different; they are strangers, poor, handicapped, of another religion, gender, etc. They threaten us because they will disturb our comfort, our security, our way of thinking. If we welcome them, we will have to change. Self-interest is there in the Hebrew and Christine scriptures. Moses had to rebuke Joshua when he complained about prophets who were not ‘with us’ prophesizing. And Jesus did the same with John when he complained about people who were not ‘one of us’ acting in his name.

John’s eyes were still closed and he could not learn from the example of Jesus himself who welcomed ‘tax-collectors and prostitutes’, foreigners, people with leprosy, handicapped people, poor widows, noisy children and so many others. All these people ‘disturbed’ the Pharisees and, seemingly, Jesus’ own disciples. And when we look into our own lives, no matter how generous we try to be, we know that people who are ‘different’ are somehow a challenge to us. Yet we also know that if we respond to that challenge, it opens doors, not only for them, but for us.        

26 Sept 2021               Sunday 26B                Num 11:25-29       Jam 5:1-6        Mk 9:38…48       

KEN SARO WIWA

 

KEN SARO WIWA

Ken Saro Wiwa was a Nigerian campaigner for the human rights of the Ogoni people in the Niger River delta who was executed by dictator Sani Abacha’s regime in 1995. The Ogoni are a minority group of one million in a country of 200 million, so his focus on his own people did not make him a national figure in his life time. But his rigged trial and execution - together with eight others, making ‘the Ogoni Nine’ – outraged international sensitivity and made his name known. Saro Wiwa was also a writer and a broadcaster, so his campaign was not just focused on one issue but developed a wider consciousness of civic awareness, particularly in the way the Shell Oil company was allowed by the Nigerian government to exploit the rich oil reserves of the delta without attending to the environmental impact on the lives of the people. Mark Dummett, of Amnesty International, says that while the company claimed that in one area of Ogoniland, only 1,640 barrels of oil spilled into the environment, an independent estimate put it at 100,000 barrels. Shell saw its Nigerian business as ‘the jewel in the crown of its exploration and production division’.

The result is that Saro Wiwa is now remembered principally as a prophet of ecological justice, something that is becoming increasingly relevant today. In his speech at his trial in 1995, he said;

‘We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live in a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalisation and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and decent living and determined to usher in to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilisation, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.’

His courage and commitment are echoed in the readings we have this Sunday: ‘Let is lie in wait for the virtuous man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life.’ The Book of Wisdom is a scene setter for the gospel words; ‘the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of man; and they will put him to death.’ We can see the deaths of Ken Saro Wiwa and his eight companions in this tragic tradition of a world ‘groaning on one great act of coming to birth.’ Their deaths repeat the death of the Son of Man and set off an explosion of revulsion across the planet. But it also forged a conviction among many, especially the young, that the struggle for justice was the one worthwhile cause facing humanity today.[1] 

19 September 2021       Sunday 25B                 Wis 2:12…20        James 3:16-4:3        Mk 9:30-37

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[1] Material for this piece comes from: Fallon, H, (ED), I am a man of peace, Writings inspired by the Maynooth University Ken Saro Wiwa Collection, 2020

DESTINED TO SUFFER

 

DESTINED TO SUFFER

Life oscillates between a desire to avoid pain and welcoming the sense of achievement that suffering often brings. We know, in our bones, that there is ‘no sweet without sweat’ and yet we are surprised by suffering. It is an unwelcome intruder. Just after a peak moment in the gospels where the disciples recognise who Jesus is – ‘you are the Christ’- Jesus pours cold water on their euphoria with the words, ‘the Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously.’ When we hear of read of the lives of great men and women, we know there is something just round the corner, waiting to happen. Beethoven will suddenly go deaf; Martin Luther King will suddenly be shot.

We also know that this diminishment or death mysteriously enhances the work and reputation of the person. Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the Union but he was also assassinated. All three events go together to forge his place in history. Martha Quest is an autobiographical novel by Doris Lessing about a teenage girl monitoring her own moods and thoughts in an environment of constant rebellion against her parents on a farm in colonial era Zimbabwe. She eventually breaks free and takes a job in town but the luta continues. It is a struggle to find herself. Who is she? Who am I?

Every life, in one way or another, faces this question. The struggle and the pain is to stay with the question until there is peace. This peace, or consolation, is described by Jerome Nadal, one of Ignatius of Loyola’s closest followers, as ‘an inner joy, a serenity of judgement, a relish, a light, a reassuring step forward, a clarification of insight.’ It is sad when we get stuck along the way and give up. This was Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees. They gave up the search and settled for something seemingly secure but ultimately lifeless. The whole of Jesus’ life was, in Paul’s words, a ‘groaning in giving birth’. He announced the coming of the kingdom but that was only the beginning. The struggle was yet to intensify; it had started with the beginning of creation and would go on until there is true peace on earth.

I wanted to call this piece ‘Fashion or Fission’ but decided it was too catchy, too cheap! Still, ‘fashion’ – what others do - is what we settle for when we can’t face the pain of fission. Fission means division, splitting and exploding. It means energy, even atomic or nuclear energy, the energy we feel when we ‘split’ off from our parents, our home, our security and start something new. The prophet Joel announces, ‘your young people will see visions and your old people dream dreams,’ and Peter kicks off Pentecost with these words. They are echoed by poet T. S. Eliot; ‘old men ought to be explorers.’

Children are born explorers too and it is a great sadness when this spirit is drummed out of them by the demand to ‘conform.’ The desert is blooming with flowers, unseen.

September 12, 2021    Sunday 24B                Is 50:5-9          James 2:14-18         Mark 8:27-35  

Nadal, cf The First Jesuits,p83.

INDEPENDENCE 1980. FREEDOM 20?

 

INDEPENDENCE 1980. FREEDOM 20?

‘The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.’ This reflection of Joshua Nkomo alerts us to the slow process by which people become awake in a civic sense. Painful as it was the long struggle for independence in Zimbabwe was only the beginning of the process. Sometimes it seems as if there is even harder work ahead and that work centres on the task of waking up.

How do we open our eyes and our ears to the reality that eludes us? How do we come to a sense of confidence as a people? Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist, wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, ‘Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness. Fathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith and this will not be a dream. I've been struck all my life in our great people by their dignity, their true and seemly dignity.’ Have we not also been struck by the dignity of the great people of Zimbabwe? Yet this dignity seems to take time to bear fruit in civic consciousness, in salvation.

On one of his tiring journeys, the people brought a deaf and dumb man to Jesus. He took the man to one side, away from the crowd, and said, ‘Ephphatha!’ ‘Be opened!’ His ears were opened and his tongue loosened. Why did Jesus take him ‘away from the crowd?’ Probably because they would misunderstand. Like crowds everywhere, their first instinct would be, ‘We have a miracle worker among us, one who fixes things instantly.’ But Jesus didn’t fix things instantly. 1980 didn’t fix things instantly. Jesus wasn’t that kind of Messiah. He had to ‘set his face towards Jerusalem’ and suffer there terribly before he could bring a lasting solution to humanity.

They took ages to understand that – even his closest followers. But they did in the end. Their eyes and ears were opened, at last. Ephphatha! We face exactly the same process. How can our eyes and ears be opened? In just one word, prayer. Every prayer is valuable; the invocation of the Supreme Being, the repeated prayer of the Indian holy man, the Jew in the synagogue, the Muslim in the mosque or any other place, the Christian saying the rosary in their home or participating in the liturgy in their church. All these are precious. But they are not enough. They all have to find their fulfilment, not in many words, but in an openness of the eyes, ears and heart; ‘Ephphatha!’

 

There is nothing wrong in asking God for what we want so long as we remember it is far more important to listen to what he wants. Alas, we are not good at that. We far prefer talking to him rather than listening. If we could listen to him and to each other we would quickly develop a sense of community and civic awareness.

5 Sept 2021          Sunday 23B          Is 35:4-7     Jam 2:1-5         Mk 7:31-37

 

 

 

 

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