crumbling expectations

This series of postings are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page

Tuesday in Holy Week

April 7th

READING: John 12:20—36

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”  Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”

After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

REFLECTION

Jesus, understandably, was not totally chilled out in the days leading to his death. He didn’t need a crystal ball to know that his subversive proclamation of a Reign greater than that of Caesar was coming to a pointy end, nor that this pointy end was likely to entail either his execution or a less formalized assassination. He’d been there, done much of that already, but the odds were shortening for his survival. So he’s not a little troubled. Reading the biographies of the great martyrs of human history it’s no surprise to find this as a common theme. Jesus was deeply human.

John treads a tightrope: he is aware that Jesus, while utterly human, is bearing the immeasurable weight of “chosenness.” The Hebrews knew this syndrome well. Jesus is facing death, and his death has, as we might put it, cosmic ramifications. Bizarrely, to his listeners, Jesus speaks of some sort of connection to the Creator, of an ordained vocation to die, of conquering darkness with the light that he represents. John was writing decades later: who knows the exact form of Jesus’ words, but John reports the gist of them.

He reports, too, Jesus’ desire for solitude.

As church (I’d prefer the old-fashioned, capitalized “Church”) we are called into those divinely-warmed footprints. As Holy Week and Covid-19 brutally combine, we with all humanity feel the pain of disorientation, of disturbed expectations and uncertain futures. We though as church are forced by the Spirit (who has been warning us for some time) to retreat to a place where we can slough off our distractions, where we can become authentic bearers of Christlight in darkness. We are called to sit with the pain of crumbling expectations—called to find our total reliance on the Crucified God.

In that place of painfilled awareness may we find and proclaim the resurrection touch of the risen Lord. 

mad, crazy-devoted, socially responsible

This and the postings that follow are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page

Monday in Holy Week

April 6th

READING. John 12:1-11

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

REFLECTION

It’s a peculiar scene. No eyebrow raised at the presence of Lazarus, who’d been thoroughly dead a little earlier. John is not interested in the peculiarities of that story any more. Nor in the sibling rivalries of Martha and Mary. Something greater is here. Mary and Judas: they represent something greater. Judas: dour, fiscally responsible social activist. Mary: lover (no matter how we choose to define that), dreamer, idealist. John places a knife deep in the gut of Judas, but there’s history there. Judas was long dead when John wrote. Mary? Probably not. John tenderly remembers Mary’s act of love. Conspicuous, mad, sensual, irresponsible love. Love, overflowing love, poured out for the one they called Lord. Not that I recommend irresponsible love in a time of Covid-19 (though I thoroughly recommend Gabriel García Márquez’s remarkable novel Love in a Time of Cholera which might just speak to us of love and dedication and fallibilty and grace); but utter, crazy, mad devotion to the one who we know will break out of the darkness of Holy Week and Covid-19 and every darkness and explode Easter light through our lives and his universe. Let’s continue to be mad, crazy-devoted, in our socially responsible bubbles, to the one who will breathe light into every darkness, hope into every despair, and life into every death ... Because he has been there.

no more plastic tombs*

* Some may recall a book published in the 1970s, entitled No More Plastic Jesus

SERMON PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM

TO A COMPUTER AND TO AN INTERNET

PALM/PASSION SUNDAY (April 5^th) 2020

READINGS:

(1) (the Liturgy of the Palms)

Matthew 21:1-11

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

(2) (the Liturgy of the Passion)

Isaiah 50: 4-9a

Psalm 31: 9-16

Philippians 2: 5-11

Matthew 26: 14 – 27: 66

Back in the day, when I was still “hands on” in faith communities, I wouldn’t preach on this day of the year. Apart from anything else the long reading of the passion had far more dramatic impact than I could ever summon in a sermon or homily – and the silence after would speak far more than any additional words. I have since the late 1980s, when I had charge of my first parish, used the (I believe unsurpassed) British Lent, Holy Week and Easter rites. This resource, based on the ancient rites of fourth century Jerusalem, provides the liturgy of the eight holiest days of the Christian Year. It’s been a few years now since I left full-time parish ministry but in any case, we are all locked down and away from the rites of the church this year, so times have changed.* I don’t recommend attempting to do the whole Lent, Holy Week and Easter rites in lockdown. Let us do it this t-year in other ways. But let us feel the pain.

So a sermon, on-line, in printed form only, it shall be. By the Wind of God may these words be a word for you.

*But may I just add that I have no truck for those perpetrators of idiocy who believe that churches should disregard lock-down orders. These orders, in this context, are not persecutions of Christians and our faith, but preservation of human life. Last time I checked God was quite keen on nurturing and preserving human lives.

~

Reading the Passion year by year is a powerful faith experience. In my tradition it is read twice: once on this Passion/Palm Sunday, and once, five days later, on Good Friday. I have tended, for various reasons, to have the Sunday reading read in several voices, and the Friday recitation in one voice.

So let us imagine for a moment we have heard masterful, brilliant actors deliver the Passion according to St Matthew. Voices like those of David Tennant, Hugh Jackman, Emma Watson, the best voices of world drama, have delivered Matthew’s crescendo-ing tale, closing with the resounding words “they went with the guard and made the tomb secure.”

And that’s it.

For now, that is. Of course, most of us know the story, and our memories allow us to take a sneak peak at Easter Day. Some frightened but loyal women turn up, and the storyline changes.

But let’s stay with a sealed tomb. Becsuse it hurts. If we were reading in the Year of Mark we might hear an additional sentence, for Mark is a master of the hint: “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.” In the Year of Luke we might end “all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things,” or perhaps tiptoe a little further: “they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.” John’s, too, though we use him in different ways in liturgy. He ends “the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

In any of these cases we are left with a resounding silence. We are left with a hushed world, in the biblical authors’ hands. Hushed, like the streets of today's surreal Covid-19 world. Hushed, surreal. 

But more so.

In literary terminology there is a thing called a radical caesura. It is often a break in an established rhythm, an expected closure that never happens. 

De dum de dum de dum de dum … 

De dum de. 

In great literature this is often achieved … most famously, perhaps, by James Joyce, who ends his Finnegans Wake in the middle of a sentence with a non-conclusive word … riverrun, which just happens to be the word that began the book. In music imperfect and interrupted cadences achieve the same effect - Mahler and Pink Floyd, Wikipedia tell me, have used this technique to effect. No doubt Krzysztof Penderecki, who died this week, did so as well, though ironically his magnificent St Luke’s Passion utilizes thwarted tonal expectations throughout, then closes with a majestic completed cadence. Perhaps that is an uncharacteristic but a fitting “amen” to his creative life and, in God’s hands, all life.

But that’s the point. The gospel writers, liturgical writers, many creative artists across genres use techniques of thwarted expectation to give us glimpses into the heart and the purpose of God. Elsewhere I am writing of St Paul’s remarkable skills with language, by which he catapults his audiences into deeper encounters with the meaning and purpose of God. The gospel writers do the same. As, let us imagine, Hugh Jackman solemnly intones “they went with the guard and made the tomb secure” a light begins to flicker. Was a secure tomb able to contain Christlight?

But let us leave the tomb and its door for a minute. It is tightly shut. Matthew wants us to get that, so let’s not fast forward. 

No peaking. No spoilers.

Let us stay instead with the death of hope. Not an ersatz death, but death. Real death. Death like the deaths of those countless souls dying, separated from loved ones because draconian regulations now forbid basically all human contact while victims are dying of coronavirus. Death mind you like a myriad other forms of death: death like those died in the hell-holes of war. Death like those died in concentration camps. Death like those died in the Black Death. Death like the early waves of HIV-Aids. Not romantic “turn your eyes upon Jesus and beam a beatific smile death” but death like the tormented death: those of NZ's obscenely high suicide and domestic violence rates. Real death. Your death, my death, either of which may or may not be peaceful.

The habit of Christian communities to deny the realities of existence and non-existence are an obscenity. For some time now I have predicted a different death: the death of the church. Not a romantic, easy death, but a struggling for breath death. Perhaps Covid-19 is another struggling last breath in that process. For those of us who happen to love the church and its comforts this is deeply distressing. 

Death always is.

Other deaths, too. The strangling struggling for breath death of our planet earth, Papatuanuku, Gaia, call her what we will. She will outlive us, but not in the form we have known her. The death of her species – countless species, and while some are dying in the natural cycles, others are dying because we have accelerated death. The loneliness of the last white rhino or the last Hector's dolphin is a hideous state to imagine.

Death of hope. That’s where Matthew and the other gospel writers leave us at the end of the Passion.

Except they don’t. But in this week of hellish death, as we engage with the absence of rites and patterns and hopes and normalities that we have loved, let us engage with that death. For it is only when we enter it that we find the first breaking of light’s reddening dawn.

God, amidst dry bones and viruses?

SERMON PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM

TO A COMPUTER AND AN INTERNET

LENT 5 (March 29^th) 2020

READINGS:

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

These are strange times. Apocalyptic even … not in the sense that “the end is nigh”, but in the sense that has been the sense of every apocalypse, that “an end is here,” that so much that we took for granted is no longer, and that, nevertheless, as a people of God we seek to find divine footprints to navigate our way through. So I share these thoughts as a sermon, as I always have on my sermon blog, not necessarily knowing who you are or where, how you are, even, but hoping and praying that there may be here a case of  le mot juste or even un mot approximatif for you on this day in this changing world.

Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of lifeless desiccation has inspired artists and poets through hundreds of centuries. The vision can – and should – be writ large, speaking to society’s desiccations. The vision can – and should – be writ small, speaking to the desiccations of our own lives. Can we be agents of new life?

For three years at least we have seen the world reeling as it encounters the Orwellian US leadership that calls truth lies and lies truth – perfect truth no less. There is a sense in which we have received what we deserve. Western society, in particular but not exclusively, has deified greed, deified capital, pushed golden towers to the sky and mocked ancient fables about a tower of Babel that an invisible god destroyed in an ancient tale. Trump’s careless focus on reopening economic markets against epidemiological advice demonstrates the degree to which Mammon can usurp the place of good sense, let alone the place of God. The Western world has the leader it deserves, and may yet pay more dearly even than it is today.

There remain of course many who celebrate Donald Trump as a chosen servant of God. Perhaps they are right – but not in the way they think they are. They are right, because we have what we deserve: disregard for planet earth, disregard for the wretched of the earth, admiration for corporate greed, adoration of the dollar as the measure of meaning,  sclerosis of compassion towards those who fall by the wayside. We, not as individuals (though we all participate in corporate sin), but we as western humanity have received what we sought. We have a valley and the bones therein are desiccated.

Of course many of us know this story. God comes a long, puffs a bit of gas into the bones, and all is well again. It’s a cosy story of hope. Except if we read it with an eye on its happy ending then we read it as cheats. We have not recognized how dry these bones are. We pay lip service to the greatness of the God but also to the deadness of death. In these apocalyptic times we are reminded that death is a vast and cruel pronouncement on the vulnerability of humankind. Tales especially from Spain of the many elderly who are dying inaccessible to their loved ones, many only be foreshadowment of the harsh road ahead.

Christians have too often wallowed in a sense – indeed variations of a sense, that we are an entitled people. The various forms of Christianity have their own demons. Anglican Christianity, at its worst, has relied on status and privilege to inoculate itself against reality. Pentecostal Christianity has emphasized the spectacular and sensational, and focused on individual happy times with God. Many forms of Christianity have confused civic, human kingdoms with the Reign of God: “I vow to thee, my country.” We all have our shibboleths, false gods that replicate as if they too were viruses, blinding us to the simple demands of the gospel. Love God with heart, mind, strength. Love generously, recklessly, expansively. Judge not, that you be not …

History has had many apocalypses. This may not be the last, and certainly is not the first. Wars, plagues, natural disasters; they are brutal in their lack of discrimination. They have inspired greatness, and we are seeing it again today: medical and first response coal face workers, trying to bring hope to the dying, and healing to those not dying. The likes of Dr Fauci in the USA, trying to breathe sanity into Trump’s Orwellian world. The likes of our own Prime Minister, striving to bring both discipline and comfort in the surrealistic chaos of our every day. The anonymous sparkers of light: fetching groceries for the housebound, creating music across interwebs, checking on the well-being of friends and strangers. The image of God in humanity is not dead. The stirring breath that revivified Ezekiel’s dry valley still stirs. The onus is on us is to aid and abet that stirring: how can we be bearers of Christlight, as Richard Gillard expresses it in his Servant Song, how can we hold our hand out in the nighttime of human fear?

The answer for those of us who name Jesus as Lord begins and ends with prayer. Not prayer that we and ours should be saved from this apocalypse, though we might be, but, as Jesus put it, that we may have strength to withstand the time of trial. Jesus does not operate as a magician, airily waving away the harsh realities that surround us. Simon Magus, in Acts 8, reminds us that attitudes that exploit human vulnerability by offering false hope are utterly evil, utterly anti-Christ. Far too many are committed in the name of the God of the Cross. One US pastor who airily claimed that coronavirus was a Democrat lie designed to bring down God’s chosen servant Trump has paid with his life. In his arrogance he may have spread the virus that killed him to many other vulnerable human beings. Such is not the Way of the Cross.

To play games with the gospel in this way is to use the Lord’s name in vain. The God of Jesus Christ challenges us, and by God’s Spirit assists us, to cooperate with common sense, to cooperate with agencies that offer hope and healing, to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world around us.

Amidst the shock we are seeing – and as this pandemic hits the camps of the world’s most vulnerable it will, if I can put it this way, exhibit even more exponential horror than it has already – we are seeing good news, seeing remarkable acts of hope and compassion. We as bearers of the Good News of Jesus Christ are challenged to be amongst the perpetrators of hope as best we can with the gifts God gives. Beginning and ending in prayer we are called to offer ourselves and our gifts in any way that shines Christlight. Above all we are called to pray, like the psalmist, engaging in that strangest of all Christian (and other faith) disciplines. We are called to make our lives available as the answer to our prayers, though our prayer will often be all that we have. We are called to surrender the false gods and shibboleths that have often been the trademark of Christian existence.

For as we genuinely join others in throwing our lives back in the service of goodness, and as Christians, in the service of the Good News that transcends evil and suffering, we may yet be the revivified bones of Ezekiel’s stark valley.

May God be with us and through us, Emmanuel, in this valley of dry bones.

I was a snot of a kid ... but

SERMON PREACHED AT ALL SAINTS’ GLADSTONE

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (1^st March) 2020

READINGS:

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4: 1-11

I don’t want to dwell heavily on this day on the interrelationships between sin, torah, death, those myriad deep concepts that underscore the readings. Most of us are familiar with the concepts – Paul would argue and does elsewhere that all humanity is basically saturated with the concepts of wrong and right that dwell at the heart of human sin. While some forms of psychology, and some forms of theology, too, want to dismiss the language of sin, most of us get the concept that we humans are not as good as we ought to be, that the human race is deeply flawed, that planet earth and its inhabitants, humans and other species are living an increasingly precarious and damaged existence. We only have to turn on our various forms of news feed, or lean in the bar in a pub, and very soon we will hear the latest examples of flawed human behaviour and its impact on human neighbours and indeed all animate and even inanimate ingredients of the earth.

So let’s put that safely away in the parking space. I’m not going to spill my guts over my flaws, or make public confession – though acknowledging and addressing them in an appropriate sphere is an important part of growing into a deeper humanity and, as servants of Christ, a greater likeness of him in whose footstep we plant our stumbled shuffles.

My sins aren’t particularly spectacular anyway. The times I have succumbed to temptation, sinning in weakness, ignorance or my own deliberate fault, these are all a bit passé, really, and it’s possible you have a  few of your own. Let me instead tell a couple of stories from a little bit long ago – examples of temptation, perhaps – with which we might relate, and in which we might find the footsteps of our Lord.

So, yes, a long time ago. These are both stories from my experience, but I don’t think for a moment I’m the hero in the narrative. Far from it. But let’s see how we go.

Some of you may know Whanganui, and know that one finger of the town spreads a little way up the Whanganui River – my awa! – to an almost disconnected suburb called Aramoho. In the winter it can be a damp, foggy place, in the summer a rather mosquito-blighted place, but not without some beauty. There is still, about forty years later, a motor camp / Holiday Park in Aramoho, and that’s where our simple tale takes place.

I might add that as a boarder at an elite private school I was always mortally embarrassed that my mother, by the time of this story a widow and sole parent, stayed in such a place. All my friends had parents who stayed in flash motels or the grand hotels (one indeed called the Grand Hotel)  that were the backbone of accommodation in a town that spent a lot of time accommodating the families of young males with over-developed senses of entitlement. I was mortified. Mortified, too, that my solo mother was a widow, was driving a Vauxhall Viva, and staying in a … well, if asked where she was staying I would cough something about “friends out of town” and change the subject.

I was a snot of a kid. I was also a rabid atheist. And one night as my mother backed the Viva out of the car park she collected one of the power outlets, on a pole, that were the electrical feeds for parked caravans. Minimal damage if any, to the car – which I wished to hell anyway as I hated it for being embarrassing – but the power stand was decidedly ex. Decidedly horizontal. And the night was dark and damp, for it was winter, and no one was around.

And said mother wrestled out loud with her conscience. No one was there, no one had seen it, all was quiet.  She was, I knew, a pious Christian. That was embarrassing, too. And slowly conscience won. Ugh. She took herself off to the motor camp office, confessed her embarrassing sin, and returned, grinning. The proprietor had run the place for years, lost power plug poles to errant drivers weekly, and had never before had someone ’fess up.

For a moment I wasn’t embarrassed. For a moment I was proud. I was of course a horrible son so I didn’t tell her that, but I was. Only for a moment of course, before I slumped back into a stormy teenage stupor. But it was a moment and I have never forgotten it.

Years later I was at a student party in a Palmerston North flat. My motorbike was parked in at the time I had to slip out. I glared at the snazzy looking Ford Escort that was in my way – then realised that I had just enough room to squeeze the bike between the house and the car. Or would have done, if I had had a drink or many. The bike leaned to far, I lost control, fought it, regained it, but heard the clutch lever scrape the side of the car. The night was dark, the party was raging, no-one had seen.

And so I wrestled, by then incidentally a convert to Christianity, with my conscience. No one knew. The owner would see the scratch in the dark, wouldn’t know how it happened. I moved the bike the rest of the way down the drive, went to start it, and paused. Could I really go without ’fessing up? Slowly I decided, and slunk back to find the owner. I ’fessed up. He came out with a torch but never found a scratch. As it happened the time the expedition took was long enough for me to realize I shouldn’t be riding anyway, and I stayed the night.

In both cases a tiny microcosmic form of Temptation was battled. By – and I would argue at least in my case only by the grace of God – conscience won, and wrongs were righted, situations resolved. Neither would make the news of the world. But each represented our everyday battle. Lead us not into temptation.

I haven’t always lived up to those lessons. But pray God you and I are slowly being moulded to the place where the voice of truth and justice is far louder in each of our souls than the place of deceit or injustice. May God strengthen us through the Spirit of the Christ who resisted temptation to be bearers of integrity in our every wrestle.

another airwave: epiphany

some thoughts and music of Epiphany

Some epiphanous thoughts 

first return to the airwaves

An experiment


Link to my first broadcast on OAR-FM, Dunedin Community Radio. My first pre-recorded, scripted broadcast since ABC days, and my first air-waves tickle since COW-FM days in Casino.

Good fun ... another one goes to air this Sunday (19th January), and I shall link to it on this blog as soon as it's available after broadcast..