Hard love

 In thinking about love we tend towards a mushy expression of romanticism which has been conveyed to us by the ever helpful media and social mores of the world. In coming to terms with love as it is expressed by Christ and God we have to enlarge our view and overcome our own inbuilt biases. The passage from 1 Corinthians (15.35-50) outlines what appears to be totally un-achievable for those that are mortal. The very fact that we are mortal seems to suggest that we cannot achieve that which is only available to the spiritual. Yet why would Paul suggest this if it were not achievable within our own mortal bodies.

The issue perhaps is how we understand and how we cope with the feeling and ideology of love in the first place. Too often perhaps we relegate it to a forgotten world of pinks and hearts and softness that enfolds us in comfort and bliss. However, the love that is from God is not this marshmallow style of love. Yes, there is an element of protection and forgiveness but there is a much harder aspect that forms and moulds us into something other. Let's look for example at the speech that Joseph makes to his brothers in Genesis (45.3-11). We see this often as a lovely reunion of a family split apart from each other and forgiveness on the part of Joseph. Midrashic sources delve much deeper into the psychological processes that are in play here. From these sources comes an understanding that this speech is a result of an about face almost in Joseph's thinking that has been brought about by the impassioned speech from Judah in the foregoing chapter. Joseph has been trying to piece together a story over the period of his interaction with the family, a story that he casts over the familial members and creates the conditions for them to participate in. Yet, following Judah's speech he comes to the realisation that his story will bring shame upon the family, a shame that will cause even greater divisions than have already been wrought. His love for them makes him abandon the "revenge" and holds out a branch that will draw the tattered remnants of the dispersing family into a whole despite the cost to him. It is this love, which breaks us down, so that we can reform ourselves and our families into a new understanding.

Christ offers us an alternate way of looking at the other through the eyes of love. In Luke's gospel (6.27-38) the actions of love are broken down into what can only be described in this day and age as the "Idiots Guide to..". Perhaps, this is actually all we are good for, being spoon fed the requirements of this extraordinary love that comes from God. Unless we are prepared to unpack ourselves and understand our agendas like Joseph, who almost mid story, returns to himself and begins to understand the sacrifice it takes to re-draw the family. Christ re-draws humanities response to the other on the cross through his sacrifice, making holy, and re-drawing our relationships in the midst of chaos. The steps are simple. They are laid out in black and white in Luke's gospel (Lk. 6.27-38). These are the simple steps that lead us into the moment of re-drawing our lives around love. It is we who have to sacrifice the story that we build around ourselves in order to accommodate the stories that are told by others. In the same way the other also sacrifices there story once they have heard our re-interpretation of our lives so that they can do the same for themselves and have the courage to return to the basic format of love that is acceptance of self and other.

Love that transforms our lives is harder than we think

In taking the route of extreme love we open ourselves up to transformation. In re-writing our story we understand what has been hidden by the mushiness of our understanding. We transform ourselves so that we become spirit. The malleability and ease with which the spirit is accepting becomes our physical home. We are able to transcend the limitations that our earthly life places upon us and are able to embrace the strange, the unusual, the other in an accepting love that is not only transformative but also deeply protective and life giving.

Faith to weather the storms

 As a faith community we are meant to lead the way in terms of faith. This is after all what we proclaim to do as a community.. have FAITH! Yet, this is perhaps the one thing we tend to struggle with on a constant basis as it is asking us to place our whole being into an unknown. If we look at Jeremiah (17.5-10) we can see God saying something along the lines of: Have faith in me and you will grow like a tree beside life giving waters, if you do not you will be similar to a tree in the middle of a harsh desert. A similar theme is struck in Psalm 1. The early Christians also struggled with belief and faith but I suspect for different reasons (1 Cor 15.12-20).

Today faith and belief are not well known commodities, at least not in the spiritual sense. Faith and belief actually imbue our culture and our times but in a very different manner to what we think of within our Christian sensibilities. We actually have an undying faith in science and scientific progress, we have a strong faith in economic progress (whatever that may mean) and above all we have an absolute faith in everything technological. We have left behind us any thought of the nebulous faith that is associated with, well, faith. We are so concerned with what our rationality can undertake that we forget the other side of ourselves. One of our major issues in society today is that of mental health. I do not know but I suspect there is a correlation between our ability to sustain faith and our ability to retain our mental composure in the light of change. The world is changing rapidly and often which leads us towards an inability to integrate the things that are happening around us. We are so driven by our faith in things that are physical or rational that we do not cater for the needs of the other side of our own being.

Are we sturdy on the banks of God's love?

In the Lukan beatitudes Christ puts the two sides of our being into perspective (Lk.6.17-26). Both the negative and the positive, the up and the down. Unfortunately today we look only to the one side, always looking for the up, never recognising that there is a down that corresponds. It is the integration of the two that brings us to Christ because it brings us to a wholeness of being. We cannot have one without the other. Any person who is involved in recovery or involved in bringing others out of pain know that for this to happen both the negative and the positive need to be embraced. IF we are unable to understand the flip side, we are unable to understand ourselves. In order for us to maintain our faith we need to overthrow our faith. That sounds weird. In reality it is not we have a dependency on a faith with regards to the rational often as a result we find we have no place to turn to other than into disturbance and illness. If we overthrow this and move into the madness of faith in something other than the rational we find our equilibrium and begin to understand ourselves. It is a question of trust rather than anything else. Are you able to allow the other to catch you as you fall backwards? By taking trust and faith to the extreme we are able to fall into the hands of God as he leads us into the future.

In beginning to understand ourselves we can see both sides of the equation, as it were, and are able to accept who we are. We begin to love ourselves. In this acceptance we are able to see the other not as other but as part of ourselves and are therefore able to begin to love our neighbour as ourselves. We begin to have faith in Christ and all the extraordinary claims that come with that faith because they are extraordinary. Like the tree in Psalm 1 that is beside the water we need to have an eye on the waters of faith and the dry country of rationality in order for us to become whole. It is not this or that it is rather both this and that.

How do we respond to God's call?

The passage from Isaiah that tells of his vision and how he becomes a prophet, a man of unclean lips, in the service of God and Isaiah's response to the summons of God whom shall I send "Here, I am Lord. Send me." (Is 6:1-8). This is affirmed in that wonderful hymn "I the Lord of Sea and Sky" which is often sung at the commissioning of priests and others. For me, whilst it reflects Isaiah's call it does poorly to reflect our response unless the final chorus becomes the plural allowing the emphasis to reside in the heart of those called and who have responded. But today we hear the various positive responses on the level of the individual to the call that God gives summoning us to ministry in the world. Even today God calls out to us in the same words that are sung in the hymn and in Isaiah "Whom shall I send?".

God is calling just as God called Isaiah in our time and in this place. The question becomes how are we to respond to the call that God puts upon our hearts. In the scriptures that are read on this Sunday there are a number of responses, the enthusiastic Isaiahan response "Here, here, choose me" through the Pauline response "Oh woe is me weak and poor yet doing God's work by God's grace" (1 Cor 15:8-10) and into the disciples immediate acceptance to follow Christ (Lk. 5:11). I am not sure where you stand in that spectrum but each of has a story about being called by God into ministry of one sort or another. It may not necessarily be a moment of enlightenment such as Isaiah, more likely not, but it is a call that is laid upon our hearts. Yet, so few of us actually respond in any way whatsoever. I can hear the response now "Yes, but we don't all want to be priests or deacons or heaven forbid a bishop". My response is that God calls not into a ministry such as a deacon but into a ministry that God wishes you to take part in. Indeed some calls may not be seen until the person has died. Isaiah did not want to become a prophet, Paul was a persecutor of the Church and the disciples were fishermen not deacons, apostles or anything else. Yet, they all stopped doing what they were doing and heard God's call.

Responding to God's call means we have to first listen to God

The issue perhaps for us is not that we do not hear God's call in the modern world but that the call is drowned out by the practicalities of the world in which we live. How many people who do not come to church are actually responding to God's bidding in doing what they are doing? Why should the Church have the sole right to hear God's call? Occasionally we have to be more aware of our faith and how it operates in the reality of this world in which we live. I am not saying that those in the church do not have a call, I am not saying that our response to God is invalid, what I am saying is that God's call is often different to what we expect as a faith group. All we have to do is look at the examples that Christ gives to see how true this is (Lk. 5:25-27) and if we are not careful we will all react in the same way as those in the synagogue did when this is proposed.by Christ. We are so focussed on ourselves that we rarely look outside of the group to see where God is actually working and who God is calling into ministry.

God calls us into a number of ministries  which in our hearts we recognise. prophets, teachers, speakers in tongues, etc. All of whom we either celebrate or do not recognise, particularly prophets. Some denominations go over board and almost worship those who speak in tongues (no one is a Christian unless you speak in tongues attitude). If we are all made in God's image then we are also called in some fashion to undertake God's work and that is to bring peace, justice and love into the world. Some of us do this well others ignore God's call and sunder their relationship with God but in reality, even today, we need to answer that call that God has put into our hearts, no matter how hard it might be and no matter if we think, like Isaiah that we are not worthy, we still need to respond in some fashion. In this case doing the opposite of what God calls us to or not responding is after all a response.

Presenting ourselves

  The Jewish ordinances required that the first born be presented to God which is what happened when Christ is taken to Jerusalem. It was part of the purification ritual that all Jewish people undertook in accordance with the laws given in the Torah  (Ex 13:12-15; Lev. 12). The event is for Mary herself and for the redemption of her first born son, Jesus. The first was to remove the impurities associated with childbirth and is a rite of cleansing something that was a must in ancient times to ensure, not only in terms of faith but also in terms of social behaviours and health, cleanliness with a surety of being disease free. This is also a time when the first born son was presented and redeemed from God who required the firstborn as sacrifice. There have over the years a number of other things been associated with this date in terms of its alternative name of Candlemas when the beeswax candles were blessed for the year.

So why celebrate this, why make a liturgical fuss about a Jewish event for a mother that was normal for the time and has lived out its usefulness in terms of our modern society? Perhaps there are a number of reasons that can be thought of a) it introduces the Simeon prophesy with regards the Christ and Mary, b) it also introduces the prophecies of Anna though we pay small attention to them. Furthermore, it is an opportunity for ourselves to once again present ourselves as an offering to God and seek his presence to guide and direct us in lives that are lived in Christ. Something that we remind ourselves of at the end of each Eucharistic service. In doing this we need to pay attention to both Simeon and Anna as their words, at least some of them, are familiar to us or should be. The words that are not familiar, I suspect most people do not know what Simeon says after what we call the Nunc Dimittis but are indeed important for us, just as the words of the prophetess Anna who we neglect.

We need to present ourselves before God each day of our lives

Anna's word speak of liberation for the people of Jerusalem. It is probably fairly certain that readers and those listening to Anna think in terms of liberation from the Romans. However, like the more deluded and opaque followers, not only in Christ's disciples but also today, this is not the reality, I suspect, of what Anna is speaking of. Christ shows us a way towards redemption and liberation that is not the overthrow of those in power by physical revolution but rather in the revolution of our understanding of living. Once we think in terms of mortal revolution and liberation we begin to be the Che Guevarra's of the day losing our hope and the understanding embedded in the way of Christ. The liberation that Anna speaks to is the liberation of our own lives from the tyranny of the selfish physicality of human thought of power over and to the transformation of our lives to the spiritual reality of living alongside others in creating community by using power with.

However, as Simeon points out in his final words to the parents, particularly Mary, such a liberation that is promised by Christ is not without its own issues and challenges to our lives. Some of these challenges will pierce our hearts with doubt and sorrow. So that in following Christ we follow fully to the cross and its underlying pain and struggle. Power over is an easy route to take as it establishes us without concern for the other. The revolution that Christ calls us to is a liberating of our need to control and allowing God to take that power. By presenting ourselves as a sacrifice as the parents of Christ did we relinquish our idea of power over to attain a more cooperative understanding of God's presence that allows us to care for the other and encourage them to perform the miracles of community with us rather than subjugating themselves to us. This is liberating in this day and age as we forgo the need to maintain ourselves as powerful but rather we submit ourselves to the authority and presence of God within our lives. We give ourselves to God, truly as a living sacrifice, as required allowing for God's leading and direction to fulfil that which brings justice. All liberation in Christ is about bringing that justice which is God's rather than the justice promulgated by our own power and authority.