Why we speak of doubt

Immediately after Easter and the joy of the risen Lord we have a reading on doubt and our famous protagonist in this arena Thomas (Jn 20.19-). Why do we need to speak about doubt so soon after the joy that is resplendent at Easter? Surely we should be looking at this either during Lent or at least halfway through the year when doubts arise sometime after the event. In reality this reading could be discussed at and on any Sunday of the year for the simple reality that in this day and age, in our secularity, the norm is a mindset based on doubt.

Just think about this a bit and you will begin to realise its truth. Our premise in life is to doubt our abilities up till, and even sometimes when, we are proven wrong. Our doubts are raised in all sorts of ways. I remember when I purchased my first house. I spent days doubting my ability to pay the mortgage on a single income, I doubted my ability to achieve the required loan, etc. This meant that I spent days worrying myself over the smallest detail and believing that everything would go wrong. We all do this in some form or another especially when it comes to our work lives. However, it spills over into our social and spiritual lives as well. Very few of us are ever without doubt at some point in our lives. Thomas exhibits only that which is natural within our humanity. I am certain that there is no one who is reading this who has never doubted either themselves or their abilities. It is natural and is portrayed in our greatest heroes or those whom we hold up to be great.

Impossibility ceases when there is hope not doubt

So, if doubt is a part of our lives, what is the big deal? Why should we worry about it or retell it in our scriptures? Perhaps simply to acknowledge that it is part of our lives as human beings and when we do doubt we do not allow it to be the pervading force in our lives. Doubt of ourselves as human beings leads us into the depravity of dependence on others and allowing others to guide our lives for both good and evil. We place ourselves in the position of slaves not in the position of those who are equal. Christ calls his disciples friends and loves them to the end, in doing so he elevates them to a place that is filled with hope. In casting himself as a servant to all he places the deliverance of ourselves from the road that doubt places us on. By his grace we are elevated into a place that is beyond doubt and yet...we will tend towards doubt as a default within our lives.

This is why this passage is placed here within our cycle of scripture no matter what year it is. Christ is risen and yet immediately we fall into the pattern of doubt, as shown by Thomas. Christ comes into the lives of the disciples as the risen Lord. Hope is present for death has been conquered there is no room for doubt as Thomas also clearly shows for in Christ there is new life; there is fresh hope in the midst of the greatest despair. Doubt is pushed away from our lives by the hope of a new life. Despair is allayed with Christ. We squander ourselves in doubt at every point in our journey. It is tiring when we do not allow ourselves the positive presence of the risen Lord because we are in a constant battle with our own internal doubts about our faith, about our work, about our life, about ..., about..., about... At what point does the Easter story become ours and is lived in our communities in the same way that it was lived in the communities of the risen Lord. It is not about a building, a place or a ritual; it is about a community gathered around in friendship and love that shares its common faith with those around us. Let us like Thomas stop doubting and celebrate 'My Lord, My God'.

Why search among the dead...

Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! Once more we have come to the space and time of celebrating the risen Christ, once more we come to celebrate the risen life. Each time that we do so we rededicate our lives to the promises that are made at baptism. Promises that commit ourselves to looking forward to a future that is filled with the truth and veracity of Christ within our lives. This is an important time for us as Christians and it is a time that should be filled with hope and joy for a fulfillment of the new life that comes with Christ. Too often though it is a time of despair and futility as we contemplate in our hearts our lacks and our inability to change from year to year creating a fugue in our hearts and souls.

This however is a time of rejoicing, our introspection should have been undertaken as we approached the cross initially. Now in the joy of seeing our risen Lord we need to acknowledge our own death so that we also can rise with Christ. What we should not do is go looking into the past that is dead to us to find the newness in life that is promised by Christ in his resurrection. Christ comes to us from the future not the past and in coming to us from the future we accept him into our lives knowing and abetting the change that this brings. We celebrate the burning away of the dead wood as we light the new fire, the fire of the Spirit in our lives as we move forward on the journey to the risen life. We pass through baptism acknowledging that we will live in truth and in Christ.

Let us not search amongst the dead and the past where they reside

In passing through the waters of death we can once more rise again leaving those things behind that belong in the past and celebrate the life that Christ gives us in the NOW. How can we find the good life in the past when Christ comes from the future? In our renewal of vows taken by our godparents on our behalf and ourselves when we came to confirmation we reaffirm our purpose and close ourselves of to the past. In passing through the waters we pass from death, that is now past, to a new life which is in Christ, the future. If we renege on these vows we deny Christ and look to death for our self knowledge. Only when we accept the death of ourselves in the waters of baptism do we begin to live in newness of life.

We celebrate today in the present. We allow the past to die. We begin a new life in the future with Christ. In celebrating today we need to place all our effort into fulfilling the vows that we take. Only in allowing ourselves to die will we begin to rise into something different. Unfortunately for many today this will be an exercise in futility as we do not wish to die. The horror that we feel is present in death is persuasive and denies us the support that we need to fulfil Christ's promise. In our denial we loose our rebirth and are unable to become as Christ as we bring with us the sins of the past. We immediately forget the words at the beginning of each service and the light that is re-lit at dawn, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!

Passion and palms

This is a short reflection on the week to come.

Sounds like a new cocktail that has been created to celebrate. How can we celebrate two things on the one day.Both admittedly have passion in them but we seem to have allowed that to sittle away into minor protests that appear to rally no one or change the scene as dramatically as the passion in the one off parade into Jerusalem (Lk .19.28-40). The passionate response of the crowds to this man / Christ, yet not yet, figure as they enter into a central town in the politics of the era and area. These passions of welcome change to a passion for death over the period of a week. What are we to make of this change and how are we meant to interact with this day.

I have spoken over the past two years regarding political protest and the commitment that we need to make before the protest achieves anything. How protest often becomes nothing more than a temporary side show for other to watch. I note that very little has been made of the annual march for refugees this year. Has this style of protest run its course? Has the passion left the field? I see the same sort of thing happening when it comes to the environment. So how do we sustain the passion? The passion that celebrates and the passion that brings hardship and struggle within our lives.

Our passion may hurt us but we will achieve our utmost

It is only when we struggle that we begin to achieve something. Any person learning something new can tell you that unless there is a passion for it you will ultimately fail and lead yourself into depression. By struggle we find the new path that brings life. Christ struggles through this week to bring new life. We struggle as we endure the hardships that are brought about by change. It is through our willingness to interact with the struggle that we actually grow. Through out Lent people have struggled with the course that I have led so that they can better understand God's presence in their lives. This is what it means to have passion and to come to know Christ in our lives. If we cannot enter into Christ then we cannot become like Christ. If we fail to have passion for what we want then we fail in achieving that which is most important to ourselves.

In entering Holy week we enter into the trials and passion of Christ. If we are to enter fully into Christ this is the path that we must take. A path that leads to our death, the death of our lives as we know them so that we can be resurrected into the life of Christ. In this final week before the glory of Easter let us dwell first on the passion of the crowd as it changes and then on the passion that Christ undergoes in order to find new life. We need to understand the same change in us. The wonder and the kick (so to speak) that we get out of our initial becoming  filled with the Spirit. This is followed by what appears to be years of struggle and often times years that are spent with those around us seemingly dropping from the path. Yet, it is in this struggle that we achieve our goals and come to understand that death in our lives is often the only way forward. We are reluctant, we hesitate, we become depressed and begin to turn away. We need to grasp the struggle and embrace the change that comes with death in order to embrace the life of newness that comes with Christ. Our passion needs to become fulfilled just as Christ's passion becomes fulfilled.

The price of oil

No, I am not going to talk about the price of oil and it's derivative products. I would rather look at the price that we put on our material goods in general and the goods that come from God. It is a question of outlook as the Gospel passage from John points out (Jn 12.3-8). The cost of the perfumed oil that was used by Mary and its usage. From Mary's point of view she has given what she can to the fullest possible extent. The oil, which had probably been saved up over a long time to be used sparingly, was poured with generosity over Christ's feet. Perhaps, like many of us Judas watching from the sidelines has a different  view: greater use could have been attained especially if the asset had been turned into cash rather than poured down the drain so to speak. This question is one that sits close to our hearts during Lent as it is a question that we need to wrestle with in applying it to not only material assets but to our spiritual wealth as well.

Compassion is the beginning of community and openness to the other

How are we to react when it comes to the use of the assets that we posses both personal and corporate? Is it for us to determine the expenditure? Are are we to follow Christ in our compassionate outpouring of all we have towards those who are in need? The Judas effect is the one that perhaps we adopt rather than that of Mary in the Gospel story. The asset is to be taken by ourselves and used for what we believe is to be the greater good. Christ says famously here that the 'poor are always with us' suggesting that there is little that we can do in the present time to alleviate something that is constantly there but rather to pour our wealth out in worship and acknowledgement of Christ or rather God. Yes, there is very little we can do to alleviate the poverty of the nations until such time as we can alleviate the poverty that is inherent within ourselves. Both ways have there faults built in. Judas was by no means an innocent in this conversation. It is inherent in the passage that Judas meant to utilise the money for himself not in the alleviation of the poor. We ourselves sidetrack often so that we spend everything that there is in chasing our own dreams and desires rather than using what has been freely given to the worship of God and following God's requirements.

In holding on to our own wealth of time, talent, finance, worship, etc. we withhold the opportunity of those who are not imbued with these to experience God's presence and love. In facing our own desires in this Lenten period we need to face our tendency to be as Judas, hoarding for ourselves and our wants. In our Lenten study we spoke about learning the life of compassion that is embedded within the Christian journey. We often do not see compassion as a response and we withhold our  compassionate response. In the Isaiah passage God says that even in the desert God will provide something new (Is 43.18-19) while we harbour our thoughts in the past. Compassion asks us to open our hearts to those around us and leave of the things that we are doing for ourselves. Leave the Judas mindset behind and allow something new to happen as we interact with compassion. We can claim anything in terms of how good we are, just as Paul does (Phil. 3.4-6), but in the end unless we write our assets of to God's presence in our lives we are nothing.

Mary's attitude is just this letting go of everything to allow the compassion of God and the love of God to reside within ourselves. In this manner we think not of our own wants and needs but we let go and open our hearts to the other. Only when we allow this to happen do we begin to see the new life of God and create the compassionate community that does not allow the poor to exist. It is our own thoughts that disabuse others as we do not open ourselves to the suffering that is around us.

Prodigal who?

The story of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15.11-32) is well known and has been written about with some superb insights around God's love for us (e.g. Henry Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son and John MacArthur's  The Prodigal Son). The majority of such books focus on the Prodigal and the welcome he receives from the Father. Yes, this is astonishing but what is perhaps even more astonishing is that the tale is not completed. There is no end. We all know that towards the end there is a discussion with the eldest son but we need to ask: What does the the eldest son do? There is nothing in the parable to tell us and it is up to us to come to a conclusion so that we can complete the story.

We are so often told to place ourselves into the mindset of the prodigal but in reality we need to really work on the mindset of the older son as more often than not this is our mindset, not that of the prodigal. We are often told that we need to acknowledge our sin and find the extraordinary love of God surrounding us. What happens when we are given the freedom of choice to do what is desired but refuse to and turn away deliberately thinking that we are better. The older son denigrates the father as the father holds out his love waiting for the older son to come into the house. Is not his sin against God just as great even when he has been in his fathers house all the time receiving the benefits of that love? Remember that all of the material possessions of the father actually belongs to the son. He knows he has a close relationship and yet he has not asked for anything willing to be a servant rather than receive the benefits of the estate.

Have we locked ourselves out like the older son?

Often having gained our inheritance we either squander it or we do not utilise it to the benefit of those around us. We try to hoard it and thus lose our relationship with God as we rail against the disasters that have come upon us. If we are the older son, what is our response do we go of in a huff because of our expectations of a generous handout when it already belongs to us? The older son appears to be more lost than the prodigal as the prodigal at least realises that he has sinned. Seemingly the older son has not. In the prodigal's realisation he has come begging and not expecting the generosity that has been given. Note that his plea to his Father loses the conniving end of the original thought as he is welcomed by the generous father (Lk 15.19, 21). This is the prodigal's real turning point as he is faced with the generosity and humility of the father in front of the village. Having the inheritance that we have been given are we not as rude in some ways as the older son as we often do not realise our own sinfulness and cannot repent in the face of the love that is given to us, rather we take offence, walk of in a huff, etc.

We are often in need of recognising both sides of the equation of repentance and forgiveness. Just as the pharisees listening to Christ tell this parable we need to be challenged not by the easy and foreseeable result of the returning prodigal but by the attitude and non-resolved situation that involves the older son. In our own situation and in the situation of our community whether it is the wider church or secular society we need to end the story and not leave it hanging as Christ does. We need to write the story in our answer to God, not for ourselves but for the new life that is promised as we climb beyond our own response to God's forgiving love.

Pride before a fall

In our Lenten journeys we are continuously looking at ourselves to strive towards the pattern that Christ lays before us in his life. Some of us may believe that where we are is where we need to be at which point we stop listening to God's presence in our lives and start thinking about ourselves. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians warns of the consequences of ignoring the lessons from the Exodus story (1 Cor 10.1-5). In a similar manner these warnings are for us today as we contemplate our own reactions to those things that occur around us.

We are very quick in our condemnation of those who belittle others and yet we fail to live out the teachings of God. An article appeared in Grafton with regards to our own inconsequential thoughts that change how we perceive the reality around us. In our communities around the globe we all say that we are inclusive, we are not like others in that we welcome all. These are the messages that we give each other and those around us. But I ask you are we? Are we actually as inclusive as we think we are? Sometimes it is hard for us to understand that our own rhetoric does not reflect what we project into the community. Then when we realise our faults we delve into them and make them our martyrdom, the cross on which we hang ourselves.

Our pride blinds us to our reality

God offers us more than what we can provide for ourselves, if we are only able to follow where Christ leads us. The gospel that we proclaim is one that does away with the idols that we set up for ourselves. Those idols are the ones that lead us astray. We allow the mind of the community to sway us because that is what they see and are blinded to the actuality of their own thoughts. If we truly proclaim inclusivity then we should not harbour anything but love for those who are outside of ourselves. Yet,we constantly align others and those who think differently from us. We are a listening people. In order or us to form a relationship, no matter how difficult we think it is we need first to listen. As a country and as a community of faith this is the one thing we are appalling at. We only listen to the voices of dissent whether from the past or from a perception of what we think is happening. If, we are at odds with someone then we stop listening to them and portray our own beliefs by ass u m(e)ing to bring it into conjunction with our own thoughts. This happens in small groups as much as in wider and larger groups.

Going back to the Grafton article for a moment the community has the belief in the idol of inclusivity when they are homogeneous. We often proclaim our inclusivity .and yet exclude those we deem to be different from us. It is not in the big things but the small things that this often occurs. The Christian church proclaims an inclusive gospel of peace and love. Yet, more violence has been perpetrated in its name than anything else. We still set up the idols of ignorance and faithlessness as we follow our own paths and not the path of Christ. Paul reminds us to look back to our past in the scriptures and history to understand that we are imperfect as we look for God's presence. In our imperfection we set ourselves up for a continuous fall away from Christ's love. W allow our pride to show us the way rather than our humility to allow others to teach us. Scripture is there to teach us, the other is there to teach us and until we all start to listen we will not hear what there is to hear and we will not learn.

The consequences of the past

It is a strange world we live in. In the last twenty four hours we have witnessed one of the worst atrocities that the world has seen in recent months with the deaths of 49 people at the shooting in NZ. We have witnessed the shame of a politician who linked such tragic deaths to immigration policy. We have seen the outcry of many in the face of such utter vilification of people made in the image of God. Yet, I can foresee that in times to come this will be just another tragedy just like the fall of the tower at Siloam (Lk. 13.4). The scale may be different but the voices are the same in the blame game of culture and religion. In the same passage this is foretold as Christ himself states that this will continue until we repent but of what?

In the Philippians passage the writer suggests that we need to model our behaviour on that of Christ and he will be their as we transform ourselves into such a being that our transfigured selves can shine as a light to the world. What our problem, or at least one of our problems, is the holding on to of either untruths or truths that have been manipulated to conform to our wishes rather than those of God. We are like those that follow Christ in that we hold to our beliefs rather than to what scripture and God tells us. we place ourselves above those things that we should be believing and undermine our own beliefs. It is surprising for some that many non-Christians are more Christian than most Christians. Our belief systems often overlap with the belief systems of others but we are to engrossed in what we think we are meant to do that we fail to see others doing what we should be doing. We are quite honestly unable to conform to Christ more often than not as we uphold those who would have us  denigrate those not of our ilk. Our neighbours and our fellow inhabitants of earth are seen only as tools to be used for the benefit of ourselves and not for their own selves. Too often our sins are the sins that we perpetrate everyday without realising our own self hypocrisy.

Only when we see beyond the past do we see a new future

Today we are reminded of the covenant that was made with Abram at a time when he was extremely uncertain of the future (Genesis 15). The promise that was made at that time was a promise of land and of fecundity. This to a certain degree mirrors the promise that is made right at the start of Genesis at the creation for man created in the image of God to go forth and multiply. How else but through his and Eve's offspring to become a multitude on Earth. This same generosity of fecundity is being offered to Abram and his descendants even if none are apparent at the time. Yet, it is a promise that is not without its challenges. Challenges that are to be faced and are in turn a challenge to the descendants' faith, which we know through the scriptures is not always true. This then is perhaps the crux of our question and how we are true to God as God is true to us.

It is only when we remove our own petty hypocrisies that we are actually able to follow Christ and fulfill that which we are destined to. It is when we form our own self fulfilling dreams that we revert to the continuation of Siloam and all that that means for us. It is only when we recognise the truth of God's promises to us that we are able to fully transform our lives and live as Christ would wish us to. Then the petty hatreds of today will fade away and we will begin to understand what it means to love. It is the influences of the past that colour the thoughts of the future. If something has happened in the past that has angered, disappointed, depressed, turned us away, upset us, etc. then anything that is similar will cause us to react in the same way. We need often to let go our past experience and allow ourselves to experience God anew for us to step into a new future. We have to reset our lives in accordance with God's purposes and allow our new eyes to see more clearly through the obstructions of the past.