Love is inclusive not exclusive

In the readings from this the fourth Sunday of Advent, just prior to the actual incarnation we have Isaiah's prophesy and Matthew's description of that fulfilled (Is. 7.14; Matt. 1.23).  Of course we have the problem of the virgin versus the young woman in the translation and interpretation but lets leave that aside for the present.  The implication is here that the incarnation of God is prophesied and fulfilled within a cultural context which is filled with innuendo and shame.  Shame for Joseph and the family as a result of accepting a 'virgin' / young girl who is already pregnant for his wife. This culture will put away the woman in disgrace to be ostracised for life; hidden away from family, friends and culture; a leper who has no leprosy.

Only by loving do we accept the other.

In an extraordinary turn around from the expected ostracisation by a community we have an acceptance, yes of God's presence (a given), of a person in their own right and for who they are not or who they appear to be.  Our focus is so often on the fact that Joseph is spoken to or that their is an intervention but is this really the issue here.  All that happens is that Joseph is given all the facts, God does not make Joseph sign up all he does is give the man the facts.  The decision is always Joseph's to make.  Just think of the bigoted way in which we think today and place ourselves in Joseph's shoes.  What would our decision be?  Quite honestly, if we take away all our sanctimonious attitudes, I suspect that we would not make the decision that Joseph made.  The difference is that today we are influenced by media, by the greater community and by the politics that surround us each and every day.  It is not the well being of the person that comes to mind first but rather our standing and political face in the community.  We only have to look at the political attitudes towards those who seek asylum and the ground swell of nationalistic rhetoric to see that this is true.

If we today act out of our political presence in the world what does Joseph act out of?  The political pressures where still there and in some ways they were as horrendous, if not more so, for a village carpenter.  Yet, Joseph acts with compassion towards someone who is likely to be shamed and placed in the shadows.  He acts towards the person and with the person in mind, not towards the political sense of the community.  In looking at our interactions within our parish and within our daily lives are we ready to do the same as we draw towards the incarnation?  How can we tell whether our decisions are based on compassion or on political gain?  Do we sometimes or always err on the side of caution and fail to make the connection between our decision and the well being of our community?

To act as Joseph did is to act with a deep understanding of the other.  To make decisions with compassion is to make decisions that are deeply centred in love.  Love that Joseph shows is a love that does not bow to power, politics or opinion and yet it is a love that shares everything openly. In not sharing we ultimately deny love for political gain.  In not being open with our knowledge, insights, wisdom and in not listening to others we are not operating out of love.  We demand these things for ourselves and then neglect to reciprocate.  God gave his trust to Joseph operating out of love, hoping that Joseph would commit himself to the same having been given an example.  We acknowledge and see God's love abounding in scripture and around us in our lives.  A love that shares and is one with the other.  A love that seeks the well being of all not just of one.  A love that will weather the storms of scandal and upset without losing sight of the other. The love that we accept is a love that is totally inclusive, it is not petty thinking only of self, it is not greedy thinking only of gain, it does not shun or put others into categories to be ignored.  If we do not get our way do we throw a tantrum or do we accept all in love resting in the grace of hope, faith and joy?   In approaching the incarnation can we let go and let love guide our ways?

Joy comes with healing

John the Baptist is worried, is Jesus the Messiah or isn't he?  John like  many of his time had an apocalyptic understanding of who the messiah was; a warrior, the scion of David, kingly in appearance one who would come to re-establish Israel. Jesus responds by reminding John via the reports his disciples will carry back Isaiah's words of healing (35.5-6; Matt. 11.5).  This is not what was expected, where was the new kingdom?  Where was the overthrow of the Roman invaders?  Where was the new society that was so hoped for?  Here we are so many years later asking the same questions, filled with the same doubt, in a world gone mad on violence and cold hearts.  What has happened to the joy that comes with God's peace and Christ's abundant love?

We feel as if we are deserted in the midst of the fecundity of present time.  Mainline churches and volunteer societies appear to be dying.  We look towards a bleak dry future so turn towards the glories of the past with reminiscences of the joy and love we felt when all things were bright and cheerful.  We yearn for a future that is filled with the joys of the past and the friendships that have been created.  What we never realise is that those joys that we are sunk into remain in the past and so we never have the ability to engage with the present to create new joys out of what we perceive to be endless sorrows.  It is only when we recognise that by dwelling in the past and attempting to re-create that past in the present we are creating our own melancholy and inability to move into the future.  In this recognition we begin our return to new life and the joy of Christ in the world.  By retreating to the past and attempting to recreate it in the present we are playing a political game that is only for our benefit, our control of the world around us, our drug of choice that pushes our own agendas without thinking of the greater whole or of Christ's life, death and resurrection.

Let the past die, mourn the past but live into the joy of new life.

Being human we are unable to let go of the memories of the past.  They haunt us in the present and deny us our future.  In the incarnation as it comes towards us we are reminded that we are mortal for God has created us and has become created with us so that we can live into the future.  A future that as we know involves dying and in dying we let go of the past.  In living into the future we recognise the elements of re-birth and newness of life as we co-create the joy of God's love.  It is only when we recognise the elements of death within our own lives that we can start to let go and let God's love in recreating joy, happiness and life.  It is through this healing power of understanding and anamnesis as we re-live the path of Christ that we come to the joy of new life.  This letting go and re-membering needs to occur within all aspects of our life.  We become hypocrites when we allow our past activities and politics to guide our present activities without first going through death to create new paths and new joys.

If we do this correctly, we mourn each death and move on into new life, this applies to parish life as much as to our lives in community.  This is the upside down world of God's coming kingdom, it is we who have to mourn not others, it is we who have to suffer the death of ourselves not others,it is we who have to forgive ourselves not others.  Christ gives us a clue to what healing in God's kingdom means as he proclaims those deeds that have been undertaken.  The poor and the outcast are given hope and joy.  The vicissitudes of life are not imposed by others but by by our own wants and needs our own rejection of the joy that is around us if we open our hearts to the other.  God's kingdom comes in the iruption of newness within the fecundity of our lives as we understand ourselves and so come open our eyes to joy and love in relationships we build into the future..

Prepare with faith

Sitting in the balcony seats of a theatre watching the opening of Godspell. There is a hair raising moment as a superb tenor calls from beneath you - 'Prepare Ye the way of the Lord' (Godspell) - it reverberates through the theatre and sends shivers down the spine. On this Sunday, this is what we are called to do. Prepare in faith and with faith as we listen to John's vituperative outburst against those who come to him (Matt 3.7).  A tongue lashing about their own faith as they come to a preparation to receive a new spirit of God's presence in their lives. A tongue lashing that comes from the liminal spaces of the desert margins to the overly pretentious religious of the day.  A call from the margins that extends into the future to today and beyond.

John's call from the margins needs to be heard by all who profess a faith as it is a persistent call to those who believe that they are centred in God / Christ. Just as John called out to those who were not practicing their faith genuinely within the society of their time, we are also asked to be that voice on the margin.  We are all called to be voices from the margins of the societies that we live in.  However, we must remember that John called to his own and is a signpost on the way towards Christ, pointing towards a new future that must be taken in faith.  We must realise that we are required to point out our own faults and our own lacks first, before we can portray the Christic life.  In our preparations for the incarnation we often neglect John the Baptist's call to examine our own behaviours.  We are expectant in our faith journey at this time of year for the incarnation, as we should be, but are so future orientated that we forget our present circumstances.  How can we come before Christ incarnate if we have not realised our own faults and brokenness?

No matter how we perceive ourselves as a faith based community we are called by that faith to reveal Christ within ourselves and part of that revelation is to see ourselves as others perceive us. Then and only then can we be the true prophetic voice that calls to the world, reminding the world what it is to live as Christ.  For example, the Dalai Lama has reiterated and reminds us that violence in the name of any religion or faith is one that is anathema to that faith. All faiths and those that adhere to those faiths look towards a life that is premised on relationship and God's love. Yet, when we look around the world all we see is the violence that we perpetrate upon each other that arises out of our own lack.  Our own lack or willingness to embrace the other with a childlike faith.  Such a faith knows no bounds in its acceptance of the other.  Until we can come ourselves into such an acceptance we will fail in our faith journey towards Christ. And violence is only one thing that denies us the totality of living a Christic life.

You do not have to see the outcome. Just step out in faith.

We have a habit of judging the worth of someone or the feasibility of something from our own internal pre-judgements, most of which are formed from first impressions.  Isaiah that right judgement is a sign of Christ's presence (Is. 11.4).  We do not judge on outward appearances for if we do it is very unlikely that the lion will feed with the calf.  We will avoid the two and go with either this or that, for us it is incomprehensible for both this and that to come together.  Two opposites can never mix and yet Christ brings the two together as one not as polar opposites.  If we are not open to Christ's Spirit we are not open to an acceptance of another way of seeing.  Isaiah, Christ and poets often see things from a different angle.  We are asked to step into, with, and alongside faith knowing that the dream of impossibilities is open to us.  Only when we accept this faith journey (a darkness in the future that turns to light as we approach) will we come to truly understand Christ's presence in our lives.

A challenge:
Can you dream of 50 different ways to use the worship space that you attend without repeating yourself and without specifying it as worship?  In opening ourselves up in such a way we allow ourselves to start to imagine the topsy turvey world that would be if we all lived into Christ.

Living in expectant hope

A this time of year we begin our journey as Christians towards a celebration of the incarnation.  As with all beginnings we begin with hope, a hope for better things, an expectation that the world will be better afterwards, a surge towards something that will be tangibly changed in our lives.  Isaiah begins our journey with a call to the people of God to 'walk in the light of the Lord' (Is. 2.5).  This is an extraordinary call, not only for the people at the time but for Christians in today's world, as it calls us onto a journey that extends far into the future that is filled with the completion of our own desires and hopes for a better life.

Indeed, all the reading from scripture that are set in the common lectionary for the first Sunday in Advent were designed to bring a sense of hope to the people for whom they were written.  We can ask for ourselves what is this hope that these writers are trying to express? and perhaps more basically, for ourselves what is hope?  In a world that appears to have lost much of its meaning both politically and from a religious/philosophical point of view one wonders what the future holds?  This can of course lead us into despair which looking at the calls of social media and media itself, would be the way that many are thinking.  The rise of those who see no reason not to exploit either others or the things of the world for selfish gain leads to a rise in this despairing.  Yet at the start of the Christian new year we are given a glimpse of something glorious, something that has meaning for us and should have meaning for our own communities in which we live.  Hope is an intangible, a vague glimpse of something to strive for within a world that has dark clouds that stretch from horizon to horizon.

A candle in the distance brings hope to the lost

All hero mythologies are at their most basic  stories of mythic hope in the face of despair and hopelessness.  We only have to think of Tolkien, Sanderson, Kay, etc and their heroic trilogies for a sense of this.  We can of course go back even further to Arthurian style or even Norse mythology to see the same glimmer of hope being pursued by the hero.  In the Christian manner we are all heroes within our journey. We are all drawn by the hope that the Christ spark brings that is on the horizon of our future.  Hope is not generated from the past, we cannot and should not dwell in the myths of the past seeking for the solution of our present.  It is the call from the coming Christ the future that is visioned by Isaiah and found in our walking in the light of God that creates our journey's purpose.

If we allow our past to be our hope then we have failed to see the coming Christ and we dwell only on the incarnation, preparing for an emptiness that has come and gone.  Our celebrations are a celebration of what has been and looking to the hope that is generated by Christ's call into the future.  If we leave out the hope of what is to come we then spiral into the debauchery that Paul in writing to the Romans (13.13) decries.  Indeed if we look at our collective celebrations at Christmas this is what we presume rather than the celebration that comes with a knowledge of the call into the future.  The incarnation becomes for us a signpost into a new future, a signpost that is a call from the future into the past.  A call that recalls us into a newness that brings us into Christ's present.  It is only from seeing that spark of hope in the far distance that enables our ministry in the present and draws us along our faith journey towards the coming Christic presence.

The centre of our lives

Christians today celebrate the Reign of Christ or in non PC language Christ the King.  In recognising the change in terminology we recognise that occasionally we fail to confront the reality of our purpose.  Kingship was supposed at Christ's crucifixion (Lk. 23.38) as a recognition of leadership within the world view of the time.  The reign of Christ softens this leadership view to an overarching 'feel good' setting that is being achieved through implied, not direct, leadership as in 'King' (too patriarchal for some).  In deed it is time to move beyond our designations and our self perceived interpretations of words to mark the occasion by a concrete change in our lives.  All of these perceptions are fueled at heart by our own choices that are centred on our selves.  The first and original sign of this brokenness in scripture is the self aligned choice to deny God and seek self benefit through the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.  Such a self centred approach is seen within the whole animal kingdom through a paradigm of survival (if I do not share I gain power, authority, and health within the tribe / pride / group), think cuckoo. Some of us cannot face this originary moment by naming it but rather would look for ameliorating words to skirt the issue blinding us to our own propensities.  Christ's Kingship asks us to turn this on its head.

The predator is no longer predator when he gives up his self interest.

The Christian journey towards a more catholic approach to life that is inclusive, non-discriminatory, life affirming and joy giving begins at baptism when we ask parents and Godparents to affirm that their child will be brought up rejecting 'selfishness'.  A profound life giving choice.   All young (human and others from the animal kingdom) have an in built mechanism that is centred around their own, well justified, selfish needs and will let the parent know in no uncertain terms what they require.  Our hardest task as Christians is to overcome this 'survival' trait as we tend to be "egocentric, narrow-minded, mimetic creatures" (Illio Delio).  In life we tend to retain this trait as our society demands it of us through consumerism, dualistic either / or thinking and the winner takes all attitudes.  In choosing this route, as shown throughout the journey of scripture, we close our hearts and minds to those who are trying to form community around us.  We build our own prisons and hells, our own disgruntlement and dissatisfaction, and our own separateness from God's presence through our closed mind and heart attitude that centres on our self contentment.  This is our choice.

Parents and godparents make the choice for the child to become like Christ, at baptism, trusting them to bring the child to an affirmation of this choice later in life.  In baptism, we place Christ at the centre and ask parents and Godparents to raise their child with a Christ centred attitude.  What does this look like in the modern world?  To start with it means that we need to begin by acknowledging that we are all self focused and not relationship focused.  By making this acknowledgement we turn away from the building of walls around our opinions, views, actions and begin to engage in life giving relationships with each other.  We centre love, justice, peace, mercy and compassion in those relationships.  By making those choices in the present we enact Christ's reign and begin to create a new future that has an open mind and heart.  We are then able or rather enabled to identify and join with Christ emerging in our midst on social media, at the football game or at a concert.

In baptism, we are reminded to turn away from all that is evil but if we think deeply about it evil arises out of our choices, our choices towards the self rather than towards the other.  In celebrating Christ this day we need to make a choice towards the other.  An enabling choice that opens our hearts and our minds, to bring joy into the world through our relationships with the other.  This only occurs when we allow the Christ to lead us in the authority of 'Kin(g)ship' so that Christ's reign becomes complete in our lives.

Coping with apocalypse

Shock, panic, horror and surprise.  These are the reactions that the majority of pundits and people through out the world greeted the realisation of Donald Trump's ascendancy to President-elect.  These are the same or similar to the emotions which are clearly depicted in the passage from Luke's gospel as Christ talks about the future (21.5-19). The emotions of people who look into an uncertain future caused by the disruption of expectation.  Yet from all accounts these results could have been predicted as some indeed did.  The emotions arise from our uncertainty as to what the future holds when such an enormous change occurs within our own lives and we need to remind ourselves of a number of things that arise out of our own faith and our own beliefs.

In determining our expectations of the future we listen to the opinions and views that we have formed within our own coterie of acquaintance.  The disruption of our expectations throws us out of kilter with a wish to foment equal disruption to what we perceive as being 'the other' in order to somehow bring it back into line with our expectations.  In a manner of speaking this has come about because of an assumption on our part.  We automatically divide everyone into groups and assume that our divisions are held by all, as they are rooted within a common understanding of disenfranchisement, injustice, neglect, etc.  In making this assumption we believe that there are no other divisions within society or the group which matters more than these.  Thus, there are the poor, the refugee, the abused 'woman', the abused child, etc.  Readily agreed marginalised groups yet amongst these groups who are served (well known} injustices there may be others who have a perception of marginalisation and injustice whom we do not readily recognise.  Yet, for those within these groups, the grievance suffered may result in their feelings of marginalisation and should be recognised as such.  Christ calls us into community and that community is in these days marginalised (unrecognised as such).  So within our own 'otherwise' communities why should we be surprised that there are others who feel just as marginalised.  We are called to stand firm within our own faith and part of that standing firm is to ensure all marginalised groups find the justice they seek in a world governed by injustice.

Isaiah grants us a vision of what a world governed by justice looks like in reality (Is. 65.17-25).  It is written in language that is poetic and in a way totally unbelievable to our own methodological / scientific thought pattern.  It is...unbelievable / fantastical...if we allow ourselves to think solely in that manner.  We consistently divide the world into groups and create divisive understandings between those groups.  Thus, we become enslaved to a mentality that reflects into the world an us vs them categorisation of our surroundings.  In doing so we create for ourselves the marginalised groups that we can then run to aid to fulfill the demands of justice, love, etc.  In the world of the poetic vision of Isaiah the groups all of sudden become inconsequential and blurred. Rusty Schweikart, one of the Apollo mission astronauts prior to the moon landing, described his last day in orbit:

"And now you're well into the last day. And you find yourself just looking. Drifting over that very familiar piece of geography that we call the Middle East. And you're looking down at this, and suddenly it hits you that there are no boundaries. Every time you have seen this before, from the time you were a child, there were always lines. And you realise there are no lines. The lines do not exist. Lines only exist because we hold them in our mind as existing. Then you realise, at that instant, that people are busy killing each other over those imaginary lines."

Just as we create economic and political boundaries so we also create boundaries within our own lives to the detriment of society as seen in the vision of our faith.

Where are the divisions / boundaries / borders in the world?

Is it a surprise than that we are frightened by an uncertain future? We are caught by our own self created blindness as to what to expect from the future. In walking with the 'other', who are different to us (in thought, word and deed), we are called to open our hearts in love, open our minds to their visions and open our wills to a common understanding of what is more than our own prejudices and self imposed barriers.

For all the saints

Who are our saints?  Each year we celebrate and commemorate the festival of All Saints on the first of November but who are the saints that we are celebrating?  I suspect that most of us will look back through his/her-story and suggest the many heroes of the faith that are recognised by all of us, the St George's and the Mother Theresa's, the recognisably good people.  Those whom we have elevated into a semblance of sainthood because of their good deeds or their martyrdom for their faith.  Each and every country I am sure have these figures that are elevated above the normal.  Yet, all of these have their saint's days, days on which we celebrate their lives, yes sometimes clumsily all con-joined on the one day in some fashion but each individually recognised.

In the early church it was recognised that those who followed in Christ's footsteps where the 'saints' (Phil. 1.1 and elsewhere). So where are all the saints of today, they are the ones who are part of the Body of Christ worshipping this day in love and celebrating the saints not realising that is ourselves that we celebrate.  It is the ones who persevere in their faith journey and hold up the light of Christ to the community in which they live who are being celebrated this day, not the rich and famous but the low and infamous. Luke's gospel in some ways highlights this in his version of the Beatitudes (Lk. 6.20-31), which praises the lowly and brings shame on the mighty.  No matter how we read this passage it perhaps highlights for us the pros and cons of our own attitudes and how we need to go about being the incarnation of the saints down through the ages today.

Let all the saints add their voice of truth and disrupt the comfortable.

This twisted passage that seems to heap damnation on those who have it and bring blessings on those who have nothing is an elementary lesson in comportment for us as modern saints.  It is when we are rich with the world's luxuries that we forget who we are and who we are committed to becoming.  Our happiness becomes but a fleeting joy to be dashed away by the first hint of difference and misunderstanding within our relationships.  It is rather when we are in need of others attention, the love of others, the relationship that slips our grasp that we come close to enjoying God's presence.  This is because we become attentive to those around us, we listen to their story and we form our relationship as they walk beside us and we become part of them. When we are at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs we are comfortable, well fed and enjoy our extra time to indulge our senses and our sensibilities.  In doing so in our age, for that matter any age, we forget that their are others in need and it is only when we are confronted by the necessity to forage for ourselves that we become aware of desperation in others.  We are not well equipped to be thrown out of our well paying jobs and our good lifestyles.  We are unable to form relationships that aid us and fulfil us while struggling to fulfill our needs.  Is this not what we have become as a worshipping community, ones who have been cast out to fend for themselves within a wider world that is fighting for its community?  Those who have struggled to feed themselves and others are those that form community around themselves and help others on their upward journey.

This twisted reversal is best seen perhaps in the last of the 'blessings' / 'curses' (Lk. 6.22-23, 26). These lines remind us that as truth sayers into our communities we will be derided and abused.  Those who are comfortable and well off wish only to hear the soothing things not the disruptive words of truth.  We need only look at the Climate change debate, it is those who sow platitudes who are held up but the truth sayers are the ones who are brow beaten into submission and closed own.  Or even the immigration issue.  We are comfortable when we hear words of comfort but woe betide those who tell the disruptive truth for this we will crucify them.  We asked to bear Christ's cross wit him and we cannot do that if we believe the convenient truths rather than the disruptive call of God.