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