NO END IN SIGHT

 

NO END IN SIGHT

I was five years old and remember talk of the end of the Japanese war that year, 1945, but if there was mention of the liberation of the death camp in Southern Poland, I knew nothing of it. And many to this day do not know of the systematic killing of millions of people, mostly Jews, by the Nazis in the terrible war of that period. Perhaps that is why such publicity has been given this week to the discovery, by Russian soldiers, of the many emaciated people awaiting death in Auschwitz eighty years ago.

The Northern Irish reporter, on a recent visit to the camp, was close to tears as he showed us the ordinary looking railway lines that carried millions to their death, the block houses and the gas chambers. How could human beings devise a complex efficient system of deliberately killing millions of people? Even after eighty years it still sounds unbelievable.

And eighty years later, we are in the midst of the long-drawn-out re-assertion the Jewish people have been pushing ever since that terrible time. With international backing, they carved out a foothold in Arab lands without the agreement of the people who had lived there for centuries. The result was tension, violence and war. The Holy Land is now an armed camp with both peoples locked in a bitter struggle with no end in sight. Thousands have been killed, homes destroyed and lives of survivors blunted forever. This week has seen a truce given joy to a few on both sides but no sign of a lasting peace.

Also this week, we commemorate another event involving Jews. Following custom, every first born male Jewish child was brought to Jerusalem and ‘presented to the Lord.’ So Mary and Joseph took the child Jesus up to the temple and ‘offered in sacrifice a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.’

Is there any connection between these events? Jewish history was supposed to be about hope. Abraham was the father of a movement that would see his descendants as numerous as the sand on the sea shore – impossible to count. The child who suddenly appeared in the temple was the fulfilment of the longed-for promise, a pilot project that would multiply and create a new world where everyone would be a new born son and daughter. A light would appear in the darkness and each would look at their neighbour and say, ‘brother, sister’.

It hasn’t happened – yet. Paul’s ‘sorrow and unceasing anguish’ because ‘my brothers – my own flesh and blood ... have not recognised God’s saving justice and have tried to establish their own’ remains.

2 February 2025   The Presentation     Mal 3:1-4    Heb 2:14-18    Lk 2:22-40

THE WORD

 

THE WORD

When I went to Mhondoro to learn Shona many years ago, I was astonished how much people enjoyed talking to one another. I saw two people approach each another on a path and they started talking before they met. They stood for a while talking and then moved off in their different directions still talking until they were out of earshot.

People could listen to Jesus for hours, even days – ‘these people have been with me for three days’ (Mark 8:2) – and not get tired. The early church circulated his teaching by word of mouth but as time went on, and those who listened to Jesus began to die, they decided they must write down his words and deeds. We have all benefited from this.

This week our readings record Jesus himself relying on the written word - from Isaiah. The first reading tells us of the return from exile when, frankly, most people had forgotten their own history and the promises God made to them in the desert. So when Ezra found the book of the law and read it to the people ‘from early morning until noon’ they ‘were all in tears as they listened.’

When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah – ‘The spirit of the Lord has been given to me ... to proclaim liberty to captives ... and the Lord’s year of favour’, his hearers in Nazareth were astonished and ‘he won the approval of all.’

And now it is our turn to draw life from the written word. We are celebrating Sunday of the Word of God and it is a moment to remember what a rich treasure we have in the bible. It contains in written form the whole story of God’s gradual revelation of his purpose to the human family. The church has instinctively preserved the early texts through centuries of war, fire and floods. The original languages were put into Latin in the fourth century and, in modern times, in every language under the sun.

In the days before books, the monasteries developed the practice of lectio divina, holy reading, by which a person was invited to ponder, relish and express their thoughts in personal prayer. There would be lots of pauses in the reading to allow the meaning to sink in like water on arid soil.

This is accessible prayer for us all. But we can also realise, in our secular age, that the written word by any good writer can also convey a message to us. We can be nourished by the words of Shakespeare and also Chinua Achebe or Charles Mungoshi.  If we ‘listen’ attentively, the written word can be a partner to us in a dialogue about our world.

26 January 2025           Sunday 3 C                  Neh 8:2...10       1 Co 12:12-30            Lk 4:14-21

 

THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES

 

THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES

As Christmas disappears into our rear-view mirror, we are invited to begin the new year by listening to the letter to the Hebrews which is a meditation on what Jesus did. ‘He has purged sins away’ (1:3). I find myself asking how did he do it. From our earliest years we learn that Jesus ‘died for our sins.’ But what does that mean? How did that help us?

Well, one answer must surely be that he took responsibility for sin despite the fact that he was sinless. I remember as a small boy we were all herded into a classroom and the teacher announced no one was leaving the room until the one who had committed some crime owned up to being the culprit. He didn’t and we were kept in that room a long time. But I have since fantasised, ‘what if I had owned up, even though I was not guilty’?  I would have enabled the others to go free though I might have brought some punishment on myself.

They would have gone free but that might not have solved whatever the issue was. There are always consequences. Many innocent people bore the cost of the liberation of Zimbabwe. We attained freedom through their sacrifice. But that does not mean the root causes for the conflict were wiped away in a day. The consequences remain.

We have to work through the consequences. Even though we might say we were not responsible for ‘the system’ that existed in Southern Rhodesia, we have to engage in a new struggle to remove the ‘sin that clings’ to quote Hebrews again (12:1). What Jesus has done is clear the ground so that it is much easier for us than it was for our ancestors to build a just society which reflects the ‘hidden purpose of God’.

We can do this, first, by accepting our responsibility and becoming engaged in this building. Second, by enduring the consequences of failure when we have done all that we can – even if it means the cross. Edmund Campion tried to engage with Eizabeth I of England in 1581, in the days of persecution with these words:

If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to commend your case and mine to almighty God, the searcher of hearts, who sends us his grace, and sets us at accord before the day of payment, to the end that we may be at last friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

19 January 2025    Sunday 2 C           Is 62:1-5     1 Cor 12:4-11       Jn 2:1-11

O KEY OF DAVID!

 

O KEY OF DAVID!

‘O key of David ...what you open no one else can close.’ So sings the church at evening prayer on 20 December. God comes to dwell among us and open up the store of energy locked away until ‘the time is fulfilled.’ The time is now fulfilled. This is the time. That is why we rejoice. No one knew, until modern times, the energy locked away in the oil under the ground. Nor did anyone guess we could produce electric power to generate light and heat.

These are images, parables, of the energy locked away in each of us – waiting to be released. The coming of the Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, the key of David, releases energy on the world. We have only to think of Saul of Tarsus, locked up in his Jewish zeal for the law, frustrated it wasn’t leading anywhere. Then he is overcome by whatever it was that happened to him at Damascus. It was like releasing a pent-up spring. He taught, he preached, he travelled, he wrote and he suffered.

His influence and that of his companions spread everywhere, transforming late antiquity so that within a few centuries, the key was unlocking doors until the desert and the sea put a temporary halt to their reach. Over subsequent centuries, the key of David reached the furthest lands.

The process continues but now it is a call, no longer to go further, but to go deeper. Each person has gifts, even the poorest and most disabled. But often they are unknown, hidden. As we celebrate Christmas, we can search, as the wise man from the East did, for this key to our own hearts and to our hidden gifts. And the key to the hearts and gifts of others. What is stopping us unearthing these treasures, ‘hidden in a field’, we carry around with us every day?

These are gifts, not for our own enjoyment – although that too - but to be shared. One who knows their gifts and can share them, transforms the world.   As we kneel in our imagination before the crib, it is a great sorrow if we cannot unwrap our gifts. Something prevents us. Our fear of failure or ridicule? Or our circumstances which block our freedom to be who we are. Jesus, the Key, stands there waiting to help us. That’s why he came.  He is creating a new heaven and a new earth. But he can’t do it without us.   

22 December 2024          Advent 4C   Mic 5:1-4    Heb 10:5-10       Lk 1:39-45

SING A NEW SONG

 SING A NEW SONG

As Advent gathers momentum the theme of joy dominates. All this Sunday’s

readings announce it. Zephaniah: ‘Shout for joy ... have no fear. Paul: ‘I want

you to be happy’ and Luke, ‘a feeling of expectancy had grown among the

people.’

Just this past week the people of Syria breathed freedom again after more than

seventy years of oppression. Hopefully they can build on it. And there was

another moment of hope to raise our spirits last week. The first stone was laid

for the building of the Cathedral of Notre Dame (Our Lady) in Paris in 1163,

that is 861 years ago. The huge cathedral that rose on that island in the River

Seine which runs through Paris, became the symbolic heart of the nation.

And today, when many French people are paying little attention to the liturgical

practice of their faith, Notre Dame remains a sign of pride and cultural identity

such that when it almost burned down five years ago, it was like a death in the

family. People wept in unbelief.

The President of the Republic promised it would be rebuilt in five years and so

it was. It was revealed to us in renewed splendour last week such as it must

have been eight hundred years ago, before the candle wax and smoke of

centuries cased it in grime.

Watching the re-opening, one could not but wonder! First at the joy of rebirth,

this time enhanced by modern lighting from floor to distant ceiling. Then by the

organ peeling out in an abandonment of triumph. But then also, by the coming

together, for once, of people of varied views. For the active Christians of France

it was a thrill they will never forget. For the retired Christians it was a moment

awe, they will surely ponder. And even for the politicians, who perhaps looked

for a little leverage from the occasion, it must have made their rivalries seem

trivial.

But in the Christian tradition, cathedrals only have the role of a memorial.

Ultimately, they are not where God dwells. However beautiful, they cannot

compare with the human person, the true residence of our God. ‘He came to

dwell among us’, says St John, and it is the hearts and lives of his people that

the Lord has made his home. This is why, the Church shouts, ‘Gaudete!’

‘Rejoice!’ ‘Your servitude is at an end.’ The long imprisoned in Syria have

stepped out into the sunlight, blinded by it for a moment, yet hopefully ready to

begin a new life. In all sorts of ways, this is also our joy.

15 December 2024 Advent 3C Zeph 3:14-18 Phil 4:4-7 Lk 3:10-18

 

A DOSE OF HOPE

 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

 

W. B. Yeats wrote these words a hundred years ago and it seems each generation feels the same about the times in which they live! The poem continues:

 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

That fits our time, we say; only today I heard these sentiments applied to our country and the speaker added they could be said of the whole world. There are good reasons why someone might lose all hope as they see wars and famines, droughts and floods, migrations and abuse. Each generation thinks their parents’ generation has made a mess of things and they will do better.

 

Advent is the season of hope. The varied images of Isaiah flood into out consciousness. ‘Every mountain shall be levelled, every valley filled and all humankind will see the salvation of God.’ Are these all false promises, fake news? Our faith tells us the opposite. God is at work. We may not see the results but we are on the way – despite appearances - to build a better world. Take just one event in the twentieth century: the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Much work has been done – and continues – to realise this ideal.

 

A friend sent me the first of the BBC Reith lectures this week. The speaker, Dr Gwen Adshead, spends her life in studying violence. She is able to help victims and perpetrators of violence to understand and she is helping us all to move beyond blanket punishment, like imprisonment, to building new relationships and harmony in the community. When we talk about ‘seeing the salvation of God’ we are not talking about God sending an angel from heaven to restore a broken bond between people, we are talking about people like Adshead – and they are many like her working quietly day in and day out – who painstakingly pick up the broken pieces and make something new.  

 

Remember, the cry of Advent is above all, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’. We are on the way and, like seamen navigating the oceans, we do not see ‘the distant scene; one step enough for me’ (J. H. Newman, 1801-90). ‘I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil (Jer 29:11). So can we see this time as one where we all receive a ‘dose of hope.’                                                                                                                       8 Dec 2024.        Advent 2C               Bar 5:1-9                Phil 1:4…11            Lk 3:1-6

 

‘THE COLOUR PURPLE’

 

‘THE COLOUR PURPLE’

Most colours are easy to make but purple…? It took centuries to discover. That is why Lydia (Acts 16:14) was somebody of note. She was in the trade. It was so rare it was reserved for emperors. Why did the Church choose it for Advent? I don’t know; but it might be something to do with the approach of royalty. The Messiah revealed himself in Bethlehem – so we use purple in Advent. And he revealed himself even more in his death and resurrection – so we use it in Lent.  

Whatever the reason purple is a combination of red and blue. Red stands for violence. Blue for peace. Our life is actually a combination of the two. We long for peace but Jesus said, ‘I do not come to bring peace but the sword’. Peace can only be achieved through violence – not to others – but to ourselves. ‘Unless you overcome yourself, you cannot be my disciple’.

What is different between this Advent and last Advent? Is it all vanity, as the writer, Qoheleth says; ‘What was will be again … there is nothing new under the sun.’ That was a bleak moment in the Old Testament. The underlying message of both the Old and New Testament is that we are involved in a process towards a goal. Paul appeals to the Thessalonians, to make more and more progress in reaching it.

The goal of all our efforts is to bring justice and peace to people everywhere. (Alice Walker wrote a novel, The Colour Purple, about the sufferings of African-Americans in the early 1900s in Georgia, USA).  The struggle for justice is the plan of God from the time of Abraham and it has to be achieved by human sweat because God has given us freedom and it can be hard to work to use our human freedom to achieve his divine aim. Thy kingdom come! But God cannot take short-cuts; that would be to disrespect our freedom. But we, humans, put up huge resistance and that is why the Church gives us these periods – Advent and Lent – to change, to overcome ourselves and let God in, so as to reach the goal.  ‘Watch yourselves or your hearts will be coarsened … and the day will spring on you like a trap,’ warns our gospel.

There is a homely image in Shona about strength oozing back into a tired person like milk intro a cow’s udder. Perhaps that is what Advent is – a time when we are renewed by the promise and joy of Christmas which comes to us once more. We are renewed after the tiredness of the passing year and, like footballers, enjoy the interval before the second half.

1 December 2024  Advent 1 C  Jer 33:14-16   1 Th 3:12-4:2    Lk 21:25…36