Loosing and gaining power

 If we are given power and authority in our faith journey to what end do we use it and if it is taken away how do we cope? This is the question that the scriptures lay before us today and for us they are extremely important as we begin to progress into the future. They are important at a parish level, at a diocesan level and at the level of our secular communities to which we belong. The latter most particularly as we move into a time of elections within local and national government. It actually boils down to who has power and authority and are they the right people to have it, if not what will happen when we take that power and authority away from them?

The Church overall acts as a community of love or rather it should. We are however only human and bring into our faith groups our own understandings. Yet, one would think that irrespective of our own expectations we would live up to the expectations of our faith having embraced it. This is often not the case, which ultimately means that we do not live out the expectations of others and inevitably cast a disruptive light on the whole community. The classic example here is when we express that we will obey the commandment to love our neighbour and then immediately turn around and deny justice and love to those who are different either because people have said that this group / person is not accepted or because a core belief of ours suggests that they do not belong. This would be like Christ rejecting the pleas of the synagogue leader just because someone has said the child is dead (Mk 5:35). Our core belief should be our faith belief not what others say.

If this is the case, then when we are in positions of power our use of that power should be determined by our core belief, our faith. If it is not then we are in danger or are committing our lives to a life of hypocrisy by stating our faith beliefs. Christ does not allow power to be squandered and yet at the same time he is aware of how costly such power is by being attuned to its loss and the reasons for such loss (Mk 5:30). Yet he is not afraid to lose the power for a worthy result that is consistent with love. If we were to look at a similar situation with ourselves we would undoubtedly complain should we lose one iota of power even if it was for a benefit consistent with our beliefs. We are hoarders of the power given to us by God we are not among those that are free with the power given to them. Unlike Christ we will debate every singly jot of power that has been disseminated within our authority to ensure that it is given to empower our own wants and needs rather than someone else's.

Letting go allows for love and freedom to enter in as opposed to doubt and anxiety

We are rich in the things that God grants to us and yet we so often squander those gifts on our own selves and not on others. The gifts that God gives are not meant for us to hoard and dole out when it suits us or when there is an advantage for us. The gifts that God gives are for us to shower on others so that God will gift us even more with the love that is returned seventy and a hundred fold. It is out of abundance that Paul asks the Corinthians to give (2 Cor 8:10-15) and in giving out of abundance to relieve the poverty of others the abundance will find its way back to us. In this circumstance Paul is referring to financial burdens and how often, if we have been generous, that generosity comes back to us in our time of need. The same applies in the same way to power and authority as it does for the generation and distribution of wealth. If we allow ourselves to give up that which we yearn for the real likelihood exists of such power and authority returning to us. Yet, we hold on to what we have been given and hoard it thinking that if we let it out of our hands we will be worse off.

Christ allows power to flow from him to heal and bring release from suffering. Saul during his reign sought only power for himself, even though Samuel mourns at his death (2 Sam. 1:17-27), not for the sake of the people just as God warned prior to his ascension to the rulership of Israel. The issue is that we succumb to the pleasures that power and authority bring rather than allowing others access. In doing so we die to God's presence as it becomes solely about ourselves and not about our community. Love though is solely about the other and not dependent on the self. In giving of ourselves and letting go of our concerns over power in our small kingdoms we allow the bigger presence and kingdom of God in to flourish.

Crossing to the other side

 We are often afraid to move into new things. Change frightens us because of the new difficulties that it inevitably brings to our lives. Just think of the many different ways this is true in our lives. Moving house, moving communities, moving countries, moving jobs and careers, etc. The first thing to note about all of these is that it involves a movement away from where we have been to where we want to be. The very fact that movement is part of the equation tells us that change is inevitable as we journey through life's varied and often difficult terrain. In the journey of our lives we face difficulties and many of these become giants in our imagination or high powered storms that prevent our access to what we believe to be our future. It is we that have to struggle in the midst of such storms in life and with the giants of our imagination.

In the story that is beloved by many, David faces a giant that opposes the Israelites (1 Sam. 17:32 - ff). A giant that has grown in all proportions so that their courage and their faith is challenged making them lose heart (1 Sam 17:32). This is a story of courage and faith. Courage to face our deepest fears and faith to understand that if we do not stand against those things we fear we are automatically dead, so to speak. Our fear when facing the giants in our lives and in our communities is often due to our lack of faith not only in what we can actually accomplish but also a lack of faith in God. God did no create us for God's amusement in our failures but rather so that we can become more compassionate and loving. In order for us to become more compassionate and caring we have to overcome our own doubts, our own hesitancies about our abilities. It takes somebody of great courage and trust to step out and face the giants of our modern era, those things that we fear to confront and conquer because they overwhelm us. We build that courage and trust by placing ourselves in the hands of God and follow in Christ knowing that they will guide us with their Spirit.

In the midst of uncertainty we need to trust ourselves and face the future that is unknown (@rachelbotsman)

Christ appears so calm in the face of the storm (Mk 4:38), fast asleep without a care in the world. Our approach to storms in our lives is to be more like the disciples in the boat, facing the storm with fear which ultimately leads to panic. Many of the storms we face our created from our own self doubts. We are unable to face down those things that terrorise us and in our moments of weakness allow the issues we are facing to become increasingly greater and out of control. Christ understands this and faces the fears by rebuking them which of course the struggling disciples find awesome. A rebuke is a facing down of what is feared so that we can handle the situation. It is facing our fear and not allowing our weakness dictate how we live our lives. In a recent tweet Rachel Botsman (@rachelbotsman) points out that the essence of trusting ourselves is that ability to sit in the presence of doubts and uncertainty in order to learn and eventually grow. This is often an ongoing theme in MMORPG and the LitRPG books that are often spawned by or spawn them. The understanding that we grow from what our uncertainties and fears teach us.

In approaching our future, not only as individuals but also as faith communities we also need to come to this understanding and follow David and Christ with courage to face our fears of the future and our doubts as to our abilities. One of the giants of our time, which continually raises its head in some form or another, is the continuing and ongoing presence of intimate family violence, commonly known as domestic violence. We like David need to approach this giant of behavioural monstrosity and cut it out from our communities. The Anglican Church in Australia is at the forefront with the issue of a recent report and challenge to us as a faith community(https://anglican.org.au/our-work/family-violence/). Like David we take it one step at a time, preparing and facing, as it is a giant that we can conquer if we allow ourselves to face the fear we all have that there is little we can do. In facing our future as a community we also have to sit with our uncertainties and trust in ourselves, as well as in God's saving presence to guide us in facing our doubts and fears. It is only when we do this that we can say as the murdered priest, Luis Espinal, wrote "Train us, Lord, to fling ourselves upon the impossible, for beyond the impossible is your grace and your presence; we cannot fall into emptiness. The future is an enigma, our road is covered by mist, but we want to go on giving ourselves, because you continue hoping amid the night and weeping tears through a thousand human eyes".

Shallow sight

 Last week I spoke of our inability to see with long sight to those things that we need to undertake for the future. This week's readings speak to us of how shallow our sight is, especially when it comes to seeing others for who they are. We rely on what is presumably the shortest sight that we can achieve because it is the quickest and thus for our age the best. We only have to look at the first reading from today regarding the selection of David (1 Sam.16:1-13). Just like everyone else Samuel sees not with God's eyes but with the eyes of the human. A short quick assessment of what is before him allows him to judge the worth of the sons. Too often we too use the quick sight that is shallow to assess our neighbours and what is before us.

It is not only people that we undertake this shallow sight on, it is at the end of the day basically every single thing that we have to look at. What do I mean? Well if we are presented with a new way of doing something we give it a quick glance and then depending on our life experience will make a decision as to whether it is going to be effective or not. Quite often we overlook something that is phenomenal only to kick ourselves later when it becomes obvious that it is the next technique, object or whatever which has become something of desire. I can think of a number of occasions when I was offered something and declined only to never be able to obtain it again. Our shallow gaze often makes us overlook the inherent goodness or rightness in what we are looking at or how it will change our lives for the better. Our shortness of sight and our quickness to take exception lead us into our many downfalls not only as people but as members of our faith.

A light bulb moment can come from the smallest thing

We also go on to overlook the smallest of possibilities because we are to focussed on making the grand gesture. We think that because something is small in our eyes then it is worthless especially when it comes to new beginnings. We want to be lavish when we undertake things but as Christ points out in the parables of the seed (Mk. 4:26-34) it is the small beginnings that bring about the most change. In our parishes and our lives we yearn for the big opportunity, the big new start and overlook the small offerings that are made to us each and every day. It is from the smallest acorn that a mighty oak is grown and so for us it is from the smallest and humblest of hearts that the greatest faith and beginning is found. We cannot fathom the incomprehensibility of God's thoughts or plans such that we must make our own as a form of compensation. We dream big and as a result we often do not have our dreams come to fruition. But just think if we were but to plant a small seed of love in someone's life who knows what will grow as a result. That does not mean that we do not dream big but rather allow for a small start that will grow to fulfil our dreaming.

Paul states in the letter to the Corinthians that we are always confident (2 Cor. 5:6). We are totally confident in ourselves. We are confident in our dreams and in our plans, yet we, unlike those that Paul address, are too often not one with the Lord. We do not live in our faith but in our own ideas and our own plans. We belittle others because, more often than not, they do not dream big enough for us. Yet, if we were to see with God's eyes, if we were to look beyond our senses and actually manage to walk in faith we would see a devastatingly different world. We would not shun the small but celebrate the seeds that are sown in the small ways that we reach out to the other. To often we allow what we deem to be the big picture to cloud the compassion that God asks of us and wishes us to take in faith. We just have to think of the response over the last few years of the government to a small Tamil family who have sought asylum and were in Queensland accepted into the community. Instead of looking at a small impoverished family they saw the large problem. They looked superficially rather than with deep eyes of faith and Christ. Paul states to the Corinthians that we must not look with human eyes but with the eyes of Christ (2 Cor: 5:16). This means that we must take our time when we are assessing things like new projects, new ways of doing things and new outlooks that are different from what we think we believe. This means that we must also look with the discernment of the Spirit much as how David's kingly abilities were discerned. Only when we are certain of the path that God wishes us to travel can we make decisions that further God's kingdom that allows the sown seeds of faith to grow.

Seen and unseen

I suppose that our transient lives predispose us to looking for short term benefits rather than for long term gains. We prefer a bit of adhockery so as to deal with issues as they arise rather than moving into a new future with planning for future generations. One of the issues with our political system is that those we elect are people who are often a generation behind in their thinking and in what the people of their country are asking for. Simply put those in power are often looking for short term goals to either remain in power or make a quick fix to growing situations. In the reading from 1 Samuel we hear about the Israelites wanting a king (1 Sam 8:4-11) and we know the consequences of getting what is wanted as opposed to what is beneficial and to be desired. In looking for a king, a mortal king / leader the Israelites were not looking towards God nor were they looking at a long term picture. Like our present day they were focussed only on the perceived benefits of the short term goal, a king.

In our own lives we too look for short term gains very rarely we look at the long term. Just think about the increasing presence of short term loan companies like PayPal, etc. Paul in writing to the Corinthians hits the nail on the head when he states that our troubles are slight and short-lived (2 Cor 4:17). This is the reality, if we were to look at things in perspective. We are consumed by our short lives and therefore seek to take every advantage we can to become what society portrays as being the best. This could and can be riches, fame, comfort, etc. All of which are geared to our personal taste and wants rather than needs. We would rather spend more on an item that will give us pleasure in the short term rather than seek for a long term gain or goal. There are exceptions, there is no denying the fact that some people go for a long term goal rather than the short term but these are exceptional people and often they are not noticed by society around them. Some are of course quite famous but the fame has not come as a result of seeking it but rather as a result of their example in their selected community. None of us had heard of Mother Theresa until her deeds were published or became famous. How many years had she been doing the things she was doing before she was noticed by the rest of us?

Do we see the future possibilities or the present gains?

Even when we think of our own community it is often with a sight on the short term goal rather than a long term understanding of the future. Let us go back say twenty years in many parishes and you would have found thriving communities with much love in an apparently exciting environment that appeared to be extremely successful. Twenty years on and often those communities are in the midst of struggle because they were unwise in what they sought looking at their success as an ongoing given rather than as the short life that it actually was. Often as parishes and as other spiritually formed communities we look only to gain more people of like mind, bemoan our lacks and recast ourselves into the successes of the past. The moment we have in plenty we do not think to the future but rather think only of the present much the same as do aged politicians who know that they will have no future other than what they have in the present. The question we fail to ask is what does God want from us and our communities?

God does not favour one above the other God loves all. God does not favour our human constraints on what God thinks or wills but wishes for us to become as Christ. What precisely does this mean for us? Well, in the words of Christ "who are my mother and my brothers?" (Mark 3:33) and the answer is not those in the present who believe that they are. The so called guardians of our future who only think of the past or their time. No it is we who are the purveyors of the future and it is we who must look far into the future and strive towards what God wants - all to be as Christ to those around them. It is not the sanctuary of the old church were we were baptised but the community that our children's children would wish for; the one that is free of pain and filled with love and understanding of each others difference. Our riches are not on earth but are present in Christ as we seek for a better world not just for our selves but for all of our companions in Christ wherever and whoever they may turn out to be. They are the unseen future goals not the seen present gains.

Three in one and One in three

 The Trinity, a problem for all ages and a thorn in the side of many monotheistic religions claiming that Christianity is not one of these as it is poly-theistic. Today this is what we celebrate as Christians. This exceedingly anomalous philosophical construct to explain God as it was, is and will be perceived by millions of Christian faithful. The philosophy behind this construct is a problematic as it has caused many a person called into ministry to fail and become a pariah as a result of what was perceived to be a misunderstanding of the construct. All of this philosophical construction was used to try and incorporate the corporate into the incorporate of God. In other words explain Jesus the human in terms of God the beyond human. Our belief in the Trinity comes out of the theological and philosophical debates in the early years of Christianity and much of our belief is contained in the the Creeds, namely the Athanasian, Nicene and Apostles. All of which, particularly the Athanasian, give us the bare bones of the Trinitarian belief. If our construct of belief arises in these debates, how much relevance have these debates for us today and how would we begin to discern the truth of our belief systems without having to rely on philosophical systems from centuries ago?  

Are we too focussed on an analogy with insufficient focus on God's [w]holeness?

Trinitarian wisdom dictates our attempts to convey the truth of three in one and one in three. We attempt this by sinking into the inane with conceptual analogies such as the source of a stream, a candle, a woman or man, a shamrock, etc.  Especially in this day and age when those who are asked to preach more often then not do not have the philosophical or theological background to elucidate the earlier attempts that we hang on to. The concept of three in one and one in three is elusive and as impossible to accurately describe as perhaps God is. This is why we become circumspect with our words and our thoughts when preaching on Trinity Sunday fully aware that we may be reported for saying the wrong thing. Yet, what is the wrong thing when speaking of the incomprehensibility of God? Do we just throw out our past and just acknowledge that we cannot explain fully a relationship that has bugged us for centuries? Is there something some glimmer that we can find in the old adages which can help us understand the incarnation and the relationship between "Father", "Son" and "Spirit"?

Am I dodging the question here by posing more questions? Quite possibly but these are valid questions to pose in the modern age. Unless we can incorporate our modern knowledge into our faith how can we in any manner of speaking interact with the people of today. As the new Archbishop of Sydney said when speaking about the present day "We must engage with all of that [modern society], we must be creative, courageous, contemporary, willing to fail". There is a swirling enigma surrounding our understanding of God. Especially when we begin to celebrate / emphasise one feature over another because we have a complete inability to incorporate all three into one in a manner that the modern mind can encompass while paying tribute to the tradition of three. It is perhaps prudent to turn to what is known as process theology to assist us in thinking towards a modern paradigm that encompasses this three in one. Maybe, it is elements of process theology combined with a healthy dose of modern physics and philosophical meanderings that we need to add into the mix. One of the more unusual ways of thinking that could be incorporated are Chaos theory and an understanding of continual ongoing growth rather than split things into distinct units. We then look at God as a continuing and ongoing process which starts with wells of attraction that form and evolve through incarnation into wisdom rather than spots of specific time. 

We speak of Jesus as the son of God and the only Son of God and yet also in Scripture it speaks of us being made in the image of God and as Children of God who are due God's inheritance as we can call God Abba, how does this become part of our acknowledgement of Jesus as God's only son? At the end of the day when we think of the Trinity we must not be captured and halted in our thinking of God by our traditional analogy of God, for that is all that the trinitarian formulation is as we can see from its history. By focussing on the trinity we focus on the wholeness of God not on the particles that make up God. It means that we start to become [w]holistic in our outlook which means we draw closer in [w]holiness rather than being petty and focussed on division. Instead of splitting the light into its component parts and focussing our energy on one part of the spectrum we begin to realise that God is a lot more than the parts. However, we have a tendency to focus on the minutiae and singularities rather than wholeness. Thus, we focus purely on the analogy of the three rather than the wholeness of God. We are a [w]holey people who should be focussing on the [w]holeness of God who is perfected in love and shown in love and lives for love.

The coming Spirit

 Pentecost, the day tradition has as the start of the Church but in reality it is the start of a movement rather than the Church. It is much easier if we perceive this time as just that the beginnings of a movement because organised "church" as we know it today did not start until much later. During the period as in any period when the Spirit strikes there is an awful lot of renewed and new speculation, thinking, development, theology and dare I say it philosophy. It is this latter which has to a certain extent influenced our later understanding of our common faith background and all the very many different people, faith groups, denominations that are in the world today. During this last week we have consistently prayed for Christian unity but what is interesting about Pentecost is the multitudes of people who were in Jerusalem at the time from all over the Roman Empire. Many will have had connection to the Jewish faith, however, it is more than likely that many of them will have been from differing faith groups of the time, including the Imperial faith of the Empire.

This is what makes the coming of the Spirit so interesting as it bypasses and overshadows a particular faith. Each time that the Spirit has moved it has done so in a manner that has upset the established understanding of Church or rather our established understanding of Church. It is perhaps significant for us that our understanding is but a small drop in knowledge formulated by ourselves about something that is incomprehensible. The movement of the Spirit in the world collapses our philosophical and deeply thought theological positions on the nature of God as it did in the first Pentecost. We can only contain God within our own paradigms and from what we can deduce. Unfortunately, for us, the fact that we cannot know God means that those paradigms, like any model, are just that but we treat what we think is God as God and then the Spirit comes along and demolishes our understanding by showing God in a new light and a new way. This then takes of in a new form that becomes the way or our way or some such which everyone thinks is how God wants us to be.

The Truth lies behind the obscurity of our thoughts deep in our hearts

This is the foolishness of our own thinking and does not reveal God, only the Spirit the advocate as John calls the coming Spirit (Jn. 14:26). If we see the Spirit showing us a multitude of different things each time that the Spirit's work is seen in the world is it not about time that we paid attention to what the Spirit is saying? From the start when the Spirit descended on the disciples they were in the midst of a diversity that was overwhelming from all corners of the earth and it is to them that the Spirit spoke (Acts 2:8-11), not just to the Jewish faith. There is an assumption that we take away from reading the passage in Acts (and what we presume to be the reason for so many to be in Jerusalem at the time) that they were all part of and /or connected to the faith an assumption. It may be highly likely but we cannot guarantee its truth. If the Spirit speaks to all people and this is the advocate who speaks the truth then what does this say to us who do not accept others? God's truth is love, the Spirit of God in all its forms conveys that love to those that listen. We however only accept one truth and cannot comprehend all truths. We latch on to one thing ignoring the fact that in another time and place the Spirit has said something totally different. The disparity of the Spirit's voice is as disparate as the monastic movement and the charismatic movement. Both were driven by the Spirit both display the truth and yet they are so far apart that it is almost impossible to believe they are the same Spirit of God giving us the truth.

If we are to believe that the Spirit is the purveyor of truth (Jn. 16:13) then both ends of the spectrum are the truth. Just as the dichotomy of particle and wave are present in light so the dichotomy that we appear to see in the Christian faith is representative of the wholeness of God and no one aspect is THE truth. The only truth that the Spirit brings is the truth of God's love in all its varied and glorious forms. We cannot single out one or the other it is both and for God's love is revealed in many varied ways so that we can be accepted for who we are within the spectrum of God's grace and love that is never ending.

Unity includes diversity

 Christ in John's gospel prays that all those that follow, mainly his disciples in the first instance, for them to be unified "That they be one" (Jn. 16:21) but also to be consecrated as holy in God (Jn. 16:17). By implication of course we see this as being extended to ourselves as followers of Christ. In the lead up to the coming of the Spirit next week at Pentecost we pray for the unity of the Christian faith in the world in accordance with this, Christ's prayer. However, as usual we have our selves to blame for the disunity in the world, which in itself has created the need for such a week of prayer.

Looking from the bow end of history as it pierces into the unknown waters of that which is to come, we can look back along an ever widening wake that ripples outwards from where we are. We can see in those endless ripples and the wake that we have created points of disturbance and eddy, even right back at the beginning of our journey. In the story from Acts today we read of a need to select a new "Apostle" in lieu of Judas' betrayal (Acts 1:21-26). Any decision we make whether by lot or by our own choice disturbs the wake of history as there can immediately be a "what if?" question posed. Each what if disturbs our past and renders a slightly different future or ripple that proceeds forward with us to the bowsprit of our journey. In most cases such decisions create ripples of angst and discomfort when others who have chosen differently to us interact with us. In times past that angst has led to violence and sufficient disruption to create a new choice and a new eddy in the wake as we move forward.

We are not all the same but we can all be unified

We cannot always choose the same as everyone else because our vision, our understanding that draws us to God differs significantly. Yet, if we were but to draw back a little we can see that we are spectators of the same thing, almost like a physics experiment that is dependent on what we are about to measure. Perhaps, even better, it is as if we are all seated in a theatre watching God on the stage of being. One may watch from the centre, an other from the right and another from the left. Each like the blind man and the elephant see / feel something different and believe that they have the correct view of the whole. In voicing our opinion we are adamant that what we have seen is the only view and thus we become people at odds with each other, divided, raging and unable to form peace with each other. Is it then surprising that our disunity is as it is as we are unable to collapse the wave function into a singularity that is acceptable to all views. We fail in being unable to draw away from what we see to encompass the whole and thus derive some understanding of the unity that is in actuality present, were we but able to see.

Only when we begin to see that our own views are just that, views, we will begin to have some understanding of the holiness of God's multiplicity which eventually forms the unity that is. Even we in our singularity are multiple for no unity can be without it also being some concept of multiplicity. We associate singularity and unity with sameness and uniformity. This is not the case, we only have to look at a swarm of bees or a flock of birds to understand that the unity of a swarm or a flock is made up of a multiplicity of individuals. Unfortunately, we single-mindedly turn what is natural into the unnatural by association of the worst possible traits with one thing forgetting that it is made up of a number rather than being the same. We can see this by our sayings which often come to the fore in some situations "All...look the same"; "all...act the same" (you just need to put whatever it is in where the dots are). Once we put aside those things that prejudice our thoughts and our vision can we begin to gaze in wonder at the actual beauty of the multiplicity in the singularity that is God.

Let us put aside those things that make us different for the moment and concentrate on those things that make us the same. Put aside doctrines that divide and embrace the other for who they are and who they may become in the presence of God. It does not matter to God who you are it matters only in what you do as of all the commandments that we embrace only one truly matters and that is to love the other; not just God and not just our neighbour but the other who is both and all.