thoughts on wet paint

SERMON (KAUWHAU) GIVEN at TE POU HERENGA WAKA o te WHAKAPONO

(SOUTH NAPIER)

ORDINARY SUNDAY 14 (July 9^th) 2017

Readings:

Genesis 24:34-48, 42-19, 58-67

Psalm 45.10-17

Romans 7.15-25a

Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30

We’re probably all reasonably familiar with the story of Adam and Even and the temptation in the Garden of Eden. What those of us who attend church probably don’t realize is that this story is  unfamiliar to the generations growing up after us. We, and our stories are far removed from public awareness these days.

That is a mixed blessing. But in any case, the story of the temptation in the Garden could have been told another way. God put Adam and Eve in the middle of Clive Square, and said, dudes, do anything you like, but don’t touch that bench over there. The paint’s still wet, okay?

Paul got that. Being Paul he used complex language. ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.’ Whatever, Paul. Just don’t touch the paint.

We’ve all been there, some more spectacularly than others. But the message of Jesus is very clear: the moment we  claim that we are above fallibility, we have fallen. ‘Don’t throw stones in glass houses.’

Paul often referred to what he called ‘the flesh’, sarx, or in te reo, kikokiko.[1] It is the place where we reach for the apple in the garden or touch the wet paint – though the latter may be stupidity as much as sin, and is there a difference?  I do it, you do it, even bishops do it, though some forget that they do.

Speaking of bishops, which I do with great caution, an Australian journalist wrote yesterday of the anger being currently directed at Cardinal Pell. Elizabeth Farrelly wrote ‘Is this really an argument about religion? Or is it something else entirely?’ The anger directed at Pell is righteous to a point, and if he as an individual has knowingly perpetrated or covered up evil then so let it be. But much of the anger is the same as that that threw Britain out of Brexit, and Donald Trump helter skelter scary into the White House. It is anger at institutions, and the churches are a particularly meaningless institution, to those outside, at which to direct anger, for it seems to many that we do nothing but spoil human potential for pleasure. 

I saw the same in my own situation over a year ago. When news of my dismissal hit the media my incoming mail went ballistic. I have on file more than 20,000 words of support sent to or about me at the time, and copies of many emails sent to Bishop Hedge (though for whatever reason no complaint sent to him ever received a reply). 

I took much strength from that outpouring of support, but it left me uneasy. Was this just another opportunity for friends and strangers to excoriate a church leader for the sake of dissing (disparaging) an unpopular institution that is seen as an oppressive killer of joy? It probably was. Hedge had taken a stand on events from 25 years ago, events that were not predatory or criminal, and the public saw a distinction. The public are more grace-filled than some in the church hierarchy, and would have none of the attitude. The comments make for good reading. 

This is about sin. We do the things we do not wish to do. Anger directed at Pell is because of the perception that he has led an institution that is pointing fingers at sinners while sinning itself. Interestingly in New Zealand, where most sexual abuse took place in government run homes, we are less sure where to point fingers. 

By and large, where the church and its leaders perpetrate evil, I believe we should point fingers – if our own noses are clean. They never are.

But the issue in government-run and church institutions was the abuse of power. Perhaps that’s what some people saw in my situation too, though it pales into insignificance alongside sexual abuse. Abuse of power is evil, and rather than the yoke of freedom that Jesus promises in the gospels, perpetrators of power-imbalance impose crushing weight on their victims. As Lord Acton saw in the nineteenth century, power corrupts. The more we have, the more likely we are to use it abusively. I am very suspicious of the use of power in the church: service, love, hope, comfort, joy, these are the tools that the Spirit gives us. Power is not.

We are called to a dance. We are called to dance a dance of the joy of divine aroha,[2] arohanui.[3] We are called to a dance of tūmanako[4] (tūmanakonui, if there is such a word!).  We are called to a dance of rangimarie[5] and of te rangatiratanga o te Atua,[6] not to corrupt imitations.

Our churches are often empty. The terrible miscalculations in the public statements and behaviour of church leaders like Cardinal Pell and others serve only to reinforce society’s scepticism about our institution. Perhaps our institutions have to die – certainly the vastly expensive empires like those of Tikanga Pākehā face the stern judgement of God. The dance of God’s children, that I have mentioned before in this place, will go on. We must learn to dance, not judge, to invite others to the dance, not tell them not to touch wet paint.

---

[1] Gal 5.24: Ko te hunga ia o te Karaiti, kua ripekatia e ratou te kikokiko, me ona hihiritanga, me ona hiahia /  Those who belong to Christ have nailed their natural evil desires to the cross and crucified them there.

[2] Love.

[3] Great/immeasurable love.

[4] Hope.

[5] Peace.

[6] The righteous justice of God.

an inoffensive small-c Christ

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI

SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

29^th June 2008

Readings: 

Jeremiah 28.5-9

Psalm 13

Romans 6.12-23

Matthew 10.40-42

 At the end of a brief but challenging teaching about priorities (I came not to bring peace but a sword) Jesus drops a handful of more conciliatory lines into his conversation: lines about welcoming, about hospitality, about prophets, but about welcoming and hospitality more than about anything.

Jesus’ words are at first difficult to apply to ourselves. They are spoken to the disciples, and we are normally associating ourselves with the disciples and their ministry. We can do little about those who are challenged whether to welcome or reject us and the message we bear as Christians – assuming we bear a message at all. The slow demise of Christian witness in the western world suggests that we are not altogether welcome. Are we then supposed to do no more than to say to those around us ‘tough luck guys … you didn’t welcome us so God is not going to have a bar of you’?

The disciples, of course, have the task of making Jesus known to their world. They did a good job – the very fact that we encounter Jesus in our lives is a sign that they got it right. Perhaps we do a little less well: in the cynical twenty-first century I don’t see a lot of converts to faith through my witness – and I would not dare to speak for you. But even if we are doing the job of proclamation well, we can’t exactly force others to receive our efforts with joy and enthusiasm.

What, in any case would we proclaim? Christians who trot old tired and sometimes inaccurate clichés about four spiritual laws or knowing Jesus as personal lord and saviour can – not always, but sometimes – end up doing more harm than good. Perhaps Jeremiah, grumpy prophet that he could be, provides a hint? As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet. But Jeremiah was speaking in a different culture, place and time. Certainly I tire of so-called Christian prophets who predict earthquakes in Wellington, hardly a form of rocket science – or flooding in Northland. Jeremiah was speaking of prophets who dared to speak out against a cosy dominant ethos, who would dare to dream a dream different to the dominant paradigm of his culture.

To proclaim peace, for example, in the heyday of George Bush’s war-mongering may have been a sign of God’s empowerment. To proclaim costly forms of love, and responsible sexuality, in a society of insipid so-called ‘rights’ me now and ask questions later may be a brave counter-cultural stand. As one who has far too slowly learned to speak out at the dark holocausts of abortion and euthanasia and the more insidious darkness of instant gratification I should take a hard look at myself: have I really learned the hard call of prophetic risk?

I speak often of being a counterculture. If we are to be a prophetic culture pointing to a peace that passes all understanding then we do need to be seen for values very different to those of the world we live in – different, that is, where society’s values are wrong. That is not always the case: the slow turning of gung ho public opinion against Bush’s war in Iraq has been a work of the Spirit inside and outside the community of faith. But we are not necessarily conspicuous for the quality of our proclamation. At a time when Anglican Christianity is threatened with schism, as we fight over attitudes towards sexuality, we should at the very least be speaking out against so-called Christian leaders in Nigeria who have called for the death penalty for homosexuals. Regardless of our views on sexuality, we are hardly witnessing to the God of compassion when we let such things be said in the name of Jesus, any more than were the Christians who failed to speak out as Jewish neighbours started disappearing in the dark days of the Third Reich.

In the end, then, I suspect our loose hotch-potch of readings this Sunday point towards credibility. Do we proclaim Christ at all? Do we proclaim an inoffensive small-c Christ or the scandalous, unsettling Christ of the Cross. Do we recreate God in the image of englishness, as so often Anglicans in particular have done, or do we dare to be seized by the unsettling, disturbing, but always compassionate and justice seeking God of the Cross? I speak as much to myself as to you, if not more so: do I really dare to proclaim, as Paul put it, nothing but Christ, and him crucified? I suspect not: and so again, like the psalmist, I cry out ‘I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me’ – a very formal way of saying ‘sorry Lord: I don’t think I’ve done as well as I should in the service of the gospel, but it seems you are putting up with me anyway.’ And thank God for that!

TLBWY

unravelling the heart of God

SERMON PREACHED AT ALL SAINTS’, CHARLEVILLE

AND AT St LUKE’S, AUGATHELLA

TRINITY SUNDAY (St Norbert’s Day)

(6^h June) 2004

Readings:       Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31

                        Psalm 8

                        Rom. 5.1-5

                        John 16.12-15

Is it worth holding on to, this bizarre doctrine? Centuries ago, in a document wrongly called the Athanasian Creed, the author reached into the heart of Christian belief with these revealing sentence “Such as the father is, such is the Son, and such the Holy Spirit: the Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Spirit uncreate, The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.” Many a believer – and many a curate forced to write a sermon on this most incomprehensible of all doctrines – has been tempted to whisper a heartfelt “amen” to the solemn words.

A week ago we heard of and reflected on the unsettling, troubling ‘enemy of apathy,’ the Spirit who takes us from our comfort zones and leads us on and into the Way of Cross and resurrection. Only after we have celebrated that feast is the Easter story complete: the one who is crucified on Good Friday bursts unexpectedly from the tomb of Easter day. The same one, revealed now as Son by his obedience to the One he confidently and familiarly calls Abba, slips from sight on that forgotten Thursday, Ascension Day. Pentecost Sunday whispers to us with the belief that these are not just some happenings from long ago and far away, but events that transform our lives – if we let them – today and tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrows, always and in all places. And finally this day, in all its mysterious languages, urges us to believe that the Man of Nazareth and the disturbing Enemy of Apathy and the creating, judging Father are all interconnected, one in essence, one in substance, yet able to be differentiated. Incompre­hensible?

Perhaps you noticed in recent weeks the footage of the mad rush of gap so-called wedding ceremonies that have been occurring in the United States. Many of these ceremonies were conducted not, as we might expect, in a civil court, but in a church. The churches, with perhaps one or two exceptions, were predominately Unitarian – a branch of old Testament influence religion that has powerfully influenced the United States and parts of Europe but never really gained a hold in the Australasian religious consciousness. Unitarians, where they believe at all, believe only in a creator God – sometimes too a sustaining and even a judging God – but not in the Trinity. Such a god would make conversation with our Jewish and Muslim cousins so much simpler. Such a God would make belief so much simpler. Such a God winds up the universe, perhaps even hears our prayers and directs our lives, but remains far out there, far removed from the messy actualities of day to day life.

Such a God may hear our prayers and even direct our lives but does this God enter our experience? I am reminded – since we are celebrating at this time the memories of D-Day – the stories of soldiers who entered battle led by fresh-faced, private school educated officers whose hands had never been dirtied. Foot sloggers tended to respond far better to the officers who had done it tough, who had felt the dirt on their faces, smelled the cordite and the sweat and the fear. Yet on the other hand a leader who knew nothing of the plans and directives of Central Command was of little use. It was no use heading aimlessly west when Head Office knew only too well that victory could be gained only to the east. Somehow the balance needs to be right: a God who sees the way ahead, yet one not removed from the day to day pains and joys of my existence or yours.

Then, as we saw last week, there is another problem: can the entering of God into human experience – the dirtying of divine hands if you like – be limited only to a few brief years in a country far away and long ago? Does Jesus of Nazareth know anything of life in a west Queensland drought or flood, or of life in a US prison camp, or life as a ninety year old or of life as a woman? Can such lives be transformed from the hell holes of Good Friday into the joy of Easter and Ascension if God’s connection with human activity is limited only to an outpost of a long dead Mediterranean empire? Surely this is what the Christ of John’s Gospel-account is saying when he speaks of one who “will declare to you the things that are to come.”

If not, can we truly with Paul cry out in joy that we have encountered God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand? Or that our hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us? Or are we alone and disconnected to the Creator?

I know many Christians who are keen to biff this incomprehensible doctrine of incomprehensibility into the too hard basket – or the waste basket. Yet it is a doctrine that we loose at peril of our faith. As we seek to be bearers of Christ-hope in an (arguably) increasingly direction-less world we can know that we are empowered by the spirit who is the Spirit of Christ, and that the Christ who is the unravelling – the revelation – of the heart of the Creator.

This is in the end a mystery, needing language beyond human ability, but to which we must cling. We can do no more than offer our triune God silent whisperings or stuttered words of thanks from hearts transformed by the Creator’s breath, from hearts offered hope that reaches beyond the deepest hells – or boredoms – of human experience, beyond our deaths and the deaths of those we love.

TLBWy

Haere mai, Kaiwhakamārie-Wairua, haere, haere

MIHIMIHI and KAUWHAU at TE POU HERENGA WAKA o te WHAKAPONO
(SOUTH NAPIER)
PENTECOST  (June 4th) 2017


Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
    Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa
ki te whare oranga,
te whare karakia te pou herenga waka o te whakapono,
                nau mai, piki mai, kake mai,

Ki te Atua - tēnā koe
Ki a Papatuanuku –  tēnā koe
Ki a Ranginui  –  tēnā koe
Ki te whare karakia  – tēnā koe
Ki te tipuna, ki te hunga mate
Ki te hunga ora
haere, haere, haere.

 Ko mihi ngā minita ko nga pirihi o te rohe
      o te whakaminenga tēnei
Ko mihi ngā kaumātua
Ko mihi ngā pākeke ko ngā tamariki ko ngā mokopuna

Nō reira
tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa
(waiata/himene)

Readings:

Acts 2: 1-21
Psalm 104: 24-35b
1 Corinthians 12: 3b-13
John 20: 19-23

         

Lord, Holy Spirit,
You blow like the wind in a thousand paddocks,
Inside and outside the fences,
You blow where you wish to blow. [1]

You probably have not come to know me well enough yet to know that I am a fierce fan of literature, and perhaps especially poetry. It is a love I have too little time or discipline to explore, but a love nevertheless. As a teenager I wanted nothing more than to be Hemi Baxter redivivus, to set the world alight perhaps with his eccentricities but certainly with all the power of his vision as a social outsider. He was a prophet in exile, dwelling on the fringes of Awa Whanganui. That is the awa that I identify with when I offer my mihimihi. Ko Whanganui toku awa. Though to be honest I should probably identify with the Thames: ko Thames toku awa. And there on the slopes of the Whanganui at Jerusalem, at Hiruhārama, Hemi Baxter pricked, irritated the Pākehā conscience, te hinengaro o nga Pākehā, and a teenager I became aware of him and admired him. And it was of course Baxter who penned the “Song to the Holy Spirit” that I just quoted:

You are the sun who shines on the little plant,
You warm him gently, you give him life,
You raise him up to become a tree with many leaves.

Baxter’s was an unorthodox but profound vision of the Spirit, Wairua Tapu, whose coming we celebrate today. He saw God’s Spirit in nature, saw Wairua Tapu as personal and universal, as the enabling presence of God in nature and in our own wairua. His was the same vision as Ezekiel, who saw the spirit revivifying dry bones. His was the same vision as that other great poet hero of mine, T.S. Eliot, whose vision takes readers from “rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their bones” to, after a long, long journey, a place where our bones begin to sing  again, now in the presence of God, beneath a Juniper tree. There the bones are “scattered and shining,” because God’s light transcends all darkness and death, not least our own. It is the job-description of the Spirit to carry God-light wherever the darkness dwells.

Whatever happened in the weeks after the resurrection Jesus, words were, as I said last week, simply not enough. John and Luke for example tell the story in different ways. In Luke’s Acts the disciples gather in an upper room, and the languages that have separated humankind since we attempted to ascend to the heavens by means of our own architecture, since we attempted to earn our way into God’s eternities by our own brain power, those languages separated at Babel are now united and as one voice tell out the mysteries of God. It’s a poetic image designed to tell us of new, unified beginnings, though over two thousand years we haven’t done too well at maintaining the vision of unity.

Similarly John too takes us back to the Book of Genesis, and tells us of the Risen Lord breathing new life into the disciples as God the Creator once breathed life intro the first human beings. Surely one of the great gifts of Māoritanga to the world is the gift of hongi, where we breathe in one another’s sacred space, breathe together the ha, the life force with which God empowers and enlivens us. God gives ha to Adam in the garden, Jesus gives ha nōu to the disciples on the lakeside. When we hongi in liturgy we exchange that life-force again, knowing it is God’s life force, the eternal energies of God in which we dwell.

But – leaving aside the impossible, incomprehensible mechanics of how trinity “works,” what, who is this Spirit we adore this day. What does she – yes, she because in Greek and Hebrew she is described as feminine and why not? – do, and how do we experience her?

You are the mother eagle with her young,
Holding them in peace under your feathers.
On the highest mountain you have built your nest,
Above the valley, above the storms of the world,
Where no hunter ever comes.

If in a sense the “job” of the Son is to make known to us in comprehensible terms all that we ever need to know of the Creator[2] (and, strangely, to make our experience known back to the Creator, but more of that another time), then the “job” of the Spirit is to make known to all believers throughout space and time the things of the Son. His love, his compassion, his justice, his peace, his entrance into darkness and death, his bursting into light and life.  These are made known to us by the one John calls Paraclete, “One Called Alongside,” Comforter, Kaiwhakamārie: “O Comforter draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it,  thy holy flame bestowing,” as fifteenth century mystic Bianco de Siena prayed: “O let it freely burn, ’til earthly passions turn / To dust and ashes in its heat consuming.” Her job is to make the things of Jesus known to us, and simultaneously, as we let her, to transform us to be more like Christ. Most of us will feel there is a lot of work to be done before that part of her task is complete, but eternity is a long time.

So it is the touch of the Kaiwhakamārie-Wairua when we feel the power of God in times of fear or suffering, or when we participate in the justice work of God in welfare or politics, or feel the peace of God that is beyond understanding in liturgy or nature or music or the closeness of a friend or a lover.  These are not the completeness of God-in-Christ, but glimpses that we are given of the eternities the work of Christ opens up to us, and the work of the Spirit is to engender them, birth them in our consciousness, our being. The little motivational moments that keep us moving more or less forward on our faith journey: these are the nudges of the Kaiwhakamārie-Wairua leading us forward. The transformation of bread and wine into body-and-blood-for-us – this is the work of the Kaiwhakamārie-Wairua.

 Lord, Holy Spirit,
You are the kind fire who does not cease to burn,
Consuming us with flames of love and peace,
Driving us out like sparks to set the world on fire.

Lord, Holy Spirit,
In the love of friends you are building a new house,
Heaven is with us when you are with us.
You are singing your songs in the hearts of the poor
Guide us, wound us, heal us. Bring us to the Father.

The language of the Spirit of Pentecost must be the language of poetry, not science, for this is the language of that which is way beyond human understanding. It is the language of mysticism and love, not dissection and analysis. But the Spirit is the one who enflames us, and to that enflaming we open our hearts anew.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.
Haere mai, Kaiwhakamārie-Wairua, haere, haere.


[1] The Baxter quotations are from James K. Baxter, "Song to the Holy Spirit," in Collected Poems (ed. John Edward Weir;Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 572.
[2] "Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image.  But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God ... and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled." John Damascene, De Image. 1, 16. PG 96: 1245-1248