A GRINDING STONE AND A WINE PRESS

 

A GRINDING STONE AND A WINE PRESS

In the beginning of the Christian story there were the ‘Jesus followers’, who, when they spread to Antioch in Syria became known as Christians. In the letters they wrote they referred to one another as ‘saints’, that is, holy people, and they found their shared following of Jesus drew them together into communities which became known as ‘churches’.

In the Celtic church in the 700s, the custom grew of celebrating all the saints, all, that is who are with God now after their death. It was a way of encouraging the people who were about to enter the long dark cold northern winter that after darkness comes the light of spring and summer in the new year when the sun would return. This was what our Christian journey is like. Dark periods are always followed by light.

In 1511, German painter Albrecht Dürer gave us a picture of all the saints gathered in heaven and what immediately strikes the viewer is that they are all gathered round the Cross on which Jesus hangs. The centre and focus of glory of the saints is the crucified Lord. St Paul tells us this was a scandal to the Jews and sheer nonsense to the pagans ‘but to those who have been called, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God.’

The first Jesus followers, all Jews, found themselves caught between persecution by their fellow Jews for their belief in this crucified Messiah and persecution, later, by the Romans for refusing to worship their gods, particularly when the practice developed of calling the emperor ‘God’. But they quickly realised that by suffering for their faith in Jesus and even dying of this faith, they were following him on his way to the cross.

This all-the-way-to-the-cross faith is the badge, the uniform, which the saints rejoice to wear. The woman grinding at the mill and the man treading the wine-press, were acting out symbolically what the Christian life is all about. When we use the word ‘grind’ or ‘press’ it is usually in the sense of something hard that has to be crushed into shape. That is what a saint is.

And the Eucharist is the heart of it. For it is there that we receive the crushed grain that has become the body of Christ and the pressed grapes that have become his blood. So the following of Jesus can be tough; but if we find it so we are touching the heart of the matter. You do not have to be a Christian to know that facing opposition can be the making of a person. Any suffering can purify a person when accepted patiently. Our Christian faith gives us the power to do this.    3 November 2024                   All Saints                Rev 7:2…11            1 Jn 3:1-3                Mt 5:1-12               

      

   

HIS EYES WERE OPENED

 

HIS EYES WERE OPENED

Mark writes in a fresh engaging style that draws us into the scene. Take the Bartimaeus story. It’s Jericho: so the place where the Jews first entered the promised land. He is a blind beggar: so he is utterly poor. But he has one thing: curiosity. ‘Who is this one passing by?’ It is Jesus of Nazareth! He starts to shout! ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.’ And many told him to keep quiet. But he shouted even louder.

It is drama as Mark tells it. Jesus responds, ‘Call him here’ and the fickle crowd change their tune and say, ‘Courage! He is calling you.’ Delighted, he throws off his cloak (a precious possession) and goes to Jesus who cures him, ‘Go, your faith has saved you.’ And he follows him along the way.

So much for the story. What does it mean? Jeremiah gives us a clue in the first reading. ‘Shout with joy for Jacob! Hail the chief of nations!’ For some weeks now, we have been reading, implicitly, about the passion – ‘He have his life as a ransom for many’. Today, again implicitly, we are reading of the resurrection. It is not Jesus who spells out its meaning. It is the apostles in the Acts.

‘Everyone was amazed and perplexed … what does it all mean?’ (2:12ff) ‘Then Peter stood up, ‘Make no mistake and listen carefully. ... The whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. … the promise is for you, for your children and for all who are far away, everyone who the Lord our God calls to him.’

Paul will later rejoice, just like Bartimaeus, ‘because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss’ (Phil 3:8). Paul was the most insistent announcer of the news that the hope of Israel was fulfilled in a crucified Messiah. He had been zealous in persecuting Jesus’ first followers but, like Bartimaeus at Jericho, his eyes were opened at Damascus and he entered a long period of ‘formation’ – fourteen years he tells us – before he began his ministry.

And we? Where do we fit into the story? Well, it is all for us too. We have our own blindness in our day. We have only to think of what goes on in our world. And Jesus is there too with us. He can pass us by and leave us in our blindness. Unless! Unless we are curious and searching and cry out to him. He will open our eyes too.

27 October 2024   Sunday 30 B          Jer 31:7-9   Heb 5:1-6   Mk 10:46-52

HE OFFERED HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS

 

HE OFFERED HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS

Our short text from Isaiah today is repeated - and fulfilled – in the last words of the gospel: He offered his life for others.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian writer, puts it this way:

At some thoughts one stand perplexed – especially at the sight of men’s sins – and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

But it is a hard lesson learn. ‘Loving humility’ sounds so weak, so spineless. Can you imagine Netanyahu approaching his neighbours with loving humility? We glorify the heroes in war ‘who lay down their lives for their friends.’ Their sacrifice is certainly not useless and in the long run God can bring a new world out of the horror of war. The declaration of human rights and decolonisation followed soon after the end of the Second World War.

Yet the gospel calls us to eschew violence. ‘Put your sword away’ (Mt: 26:52). Jesus pointed to a higher way, one that is hard for us to believe in. It is so contrary to what we experience. ‘Offer no resistance to the wicked … set no bounds to your love, just as your heavenly Father sets none for you’ (Mt 5:39ff).

The disciples, at the time, found this too much. They were still caught in the values of ‘the world’. ‘We want to sit on your right and your left in your kingdom.’ The only ones on his right and his left were the bandits crucified with Jesus on Calvary. James and John declared their desire to follow Jesus but at the crucial moment in Gethsemane, they fell asleep.

Every page of the gospels speaks of the loving humility of Jesus. He is always the servant ever attentive to the demands people make on him, always ‘losing his life’ so that others could find ‘life to the full.’ In the end he is ‘handed over’ (betrayed) and is battered, this way and that, until he finally dies on the cross.

It seems like an impossible ideal for us to follow. But we all know countless people who, in small ways and sometimes big, reach for this ideal. It always takes courage, that noble human quality which overcomes our selfishness. Reaching for this ideal of ‘living for others’ is the gateway to the fulfilment of our deep desires.

20 October 2024   Sunday 29 B         Is 53:10-11  Heb 4:14-16    Mk 10:35-45           

 

SELL EVERYTHING

 

SELL EVERYTHING

‘Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor … then come and follow me.’ Some people took this literally, like Anthony of Egypt in the third century and Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth, but these words of Jesus are addressed to everyone – though not literally. A clue is given in our first reading from the Book of Wisdom, ‘compared to wisdom, all gold is a pinch of sand.’

The words of Jesus above refer to wisdom, that unexplored word which has been central to every culture. When we study Shona, we are soon introduced to the collection of proverbs which reflect the wisdom literature of the Scriptures. The wisdom Jesus speaks of is a fulfilment of that wisdom – indeed of all wisdom.

Jesus did not simply speak about it. His whole life was an expression of it. ‘He emptied himself and became as we are and was even more humble, accepting death, death on a cross’ (Phil 2:7). He ‘sold’ everything.

It is painfully difficult for us to ‘empty’ ourselves. Yet it is the core of our growing into the fullness of life. If we reflect on our daily life, we know that we cling desperately to our own ways. How we see ourselves in view of others, how we come across to them, what we say, how we iron out the challenges without facing them! Basically, we run away from who we are and hide behind a variety of stances we adopt. A lot of the time we are on show. We put on an act.

We will never come to the truth until we ‘empty’ ourselves of all these false poses. Jesus is knocking on our door and we don’t allow him in because there is too much clutter in our ‘house’ and there is no room for him.

It is easy to say these things. It is more difficult to face them and act. Yet, these words in today’s gospel are words of wisdom; a gentle invitation to face our poverty and pretence and ‘sell’ all our avoidance of the cross. It is an invitation to freedom. We are to come out of the prison we have made for ourselves; a prison which may give us a sense of security but which, in truth, prevents us enjoying the freedom that comes with letting go of our pretended self and emerging into our true self. It is risky, adventurous and life-giving to the full.   

13 Oct 2024          Sunday 28 B         Wis 7:1-11  Heb 4:12-13    Mk 10:17-30

MARRIAGE

 

MARRIAGE

Marriage is the subject of our readings this Sunday and one, who has not married, might be hesitant to speak of it. Still, there are many ‘experts’ in football who only watch from the stands.

The Church celebrates marriage. It is a risky affair with no sure outcome and for this reason mirrors God’s relationship with us. Jesus used scriptural images of the bond between bride and bridegroom but they do not always describe a happy relationship. Still, John chose to begin his account of Jesus’ ministry by describing a wedding feast and commentators have been quick to draw parallels between this event and the marriage banquet in Isaiah, an image of heaven.

Marriage in the Church has always been surrounded by this enlivening imagery and the ideal of marriage is of a perfect society. And the union in marriage – they become one flesh – results in new life coming into the world. All this is very beautiful. But then we have to enter into the world of actual marriages as we know them. There are people close to us, perhaps in our own families, whose marriages have ‘failed’. Let us come back to that word in a moment. Here we just need to note the intense suffering that can result when two people lose the desire, for a variety of reasons, to continue to struggle to hold their marriage together ‘for better or for worse.’

Traditionally our Church has stuck to ‘the rules’ in the literal belief that ‘what God has brought together, no one should divide.’ Many of us will know people in ‘impossible’ situations where a divorced person enters a new and happy relationship but because of their fidelity to the Church, they cease going to the sacraments for years.

Gradually we are discovering that exceptions to the rules do not undermine the ideal. ‘The Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.’ Jesus wants his people to strive for the best but he also wants them to be compassionate, not rigid. Western thinking, and the Church is still dominated by western thinking, says something is either right or wrong. As we move forward, particularly as we follow the synodal way, we are discovering how to take each case as it comes. One rule does not fit all. We are moving into a more discerning, compassionate Church. It may be hard going in the short term but in time we will have a much more inclusive welcoming Church.

‘Failure’ in marriage is not necessarily failure in life. For two people to end their marriage may be an act of great courage ushering in a new beginning. And also, to stay in a marriage, when each day is a torture, while admirable in one way, could also be seen as a want of courage.