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