'No Man is an Island'

As we pursue this idea of Lent stripping us, that we are revealed for what we are in our essence, it may well be easy to say that it reveals how we are 'individuals'. Yet such an idea, that 'we are all individuals', is anathema to Christian faith, however loudly some may aver. And indeed in purely philosophical terms it must be denied, for how an we know that we are 'individuals' without comparison with the other? So even our 'Individualism' requires others.

To be an 'individual' is to be less than that which we Are in Truth.

The phrase 'the Image of God' is one of the most dangerous in Scripture - [God's Love is from the First a Risk] - for through our sinfulness we all too readily reverse it's meaning. That instead of  taking our reference for what it means to be Human from the God who makes himself known to us in Christ, humans all too readily think our 'best' ideas of what We take to be human, and project them onto 'god'. We create 'God in our Image', a broken and shattered image, 'exchanging the Glory of the immortal God, for a Lie'. 

But let us turn our gaze from this human tragedy, to the glory of Immortal God, whom our faith teaches us is Father, Son and Spirit. Three in One and One in three. 'Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence'. Thus in God's being what do we find,  not Individualism but Persons in Communion. Only within the Being of God can we begin to comprehend the Human, and here we discover that I cannot speak of 'My life', nor you of 'Your life', in any sense of possession. For the Father freely lays down His Life in sending the Son into the World, the Son who only does what he sees the Father doing, freely lays down His Life - neither saying 'My Life', rather saying 'My Life is in effect 'Yours', Given to you. And this Self Giving is given full expression in, to, and through us in the Spirit - 'God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us' 

It is in this laying down our lives that we discover that Life is not so much In us as Between us.

Lent, if we will let it is given that we might learn Not to call our life our own, and so like the manna kept overnight, discover it is turned to maggots, but rather through the disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving relinquish our hold on the life given to us that it might in truth become Life - called into communion and community, into Lives shared, for it is only in the sharing that Life comes into Being, in the space Between.

All Age talk - Forgiveness

LINK TO RECORDING OF THIS MORNING'S TALK

Sermon for Sunday 19th February - Epiphany 7 - Ordinary time7

 Sermon for Sunday 19^th February, 2012

Epiphany 7 / Ordinary 7

Isaiah 43:18-25

Psalm 41

2 Corinthians 1:18-22

Mark 2:1-12

LINK TO RECORDING OF THE SERMON

 

I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
   and I will not remember your sins. Is 43:25

God who is the source of all Life – who is Love in his very being – does something utterly extraordinary – something which I think should give us all pause before we say that we know what love is. In Love he inextricably binds himself to a people – he commits himself to them by unbreakable bonds. He promises Never to let them go.

God is the Centre of Everything, Everything comes from Him and to Him Everything must return. God is Love. God is Light, in Him there is no darkness at all and when he takes on flesh for our sake, it is to banish the darkness, for the glory of His Name, that Love may Triumph

When I think of this Love of God, this convenant love, I am reminded of human marriage. I have to say straight away that I am comparing the Great Perfect Love of God with the far lesser, highly imperfect and at times invisible love in a human marriage – but I will deal with the Ideal (if the reality always falls short of this) 

In the Church of England liturgy the words used are these ‘I . . . take you to be my wife’, ‘I . . . take you to be my husband’. As I frequently told couples whom I was preparing for marriage – there is no ‘I will if you will’ – for you are entering into a Covenant relationship, which is the purest form of Love – a commitment to the other which is not dependent upon the Other. God’s Love is not dependent on us, He Is Love. In other words in marriage a couple you enter into a Covenant expression of Love, a Love that expresses how God love us. And of course this metaphor of marriage is used by St Paul when he is talking of the relationship between Christ and His Church.

This Love of God for His people is the theme that runs through the whole of the Old Testament and in some respects comes to its zenith, its peak in these latter chapters of the prophet Isaiah. Here God is rhetorically arguing with his unfaithful people – reminding them of their sins, of their unfaithfulness – but over and over again saying he will do something extraordinary in response – he will save them, he will protect them, he will be a life giver to them

¹⁸ Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.
²⁰ The wild animals will honour me,
   the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
   rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
²¹   the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

 - These words of the love of God revealed in a time in the History of his people when they were being taken into Exile because they had abandoned the God who had Committed himself to them, Given himself to them, taken them to himself in Covenant Love . When, to use other prophetic language with its roots in marriage, they had been unfaithful – in the midst of this he declares - I am going to do something new – I am going to make life giving waters flow.

Then he re-iterates the argument

²² you did not call upon me, O Jacob;
   but you have been weary of me, O Israel!
²³ You have not brought me your sheep for burnt-offerings,
   or honoured me with your sacrifices.
I have not burdened you with offerings,
   or wearied you with frankincense.
 ^{. . .}
But you have burdened me with your sins;
   you have wearied me with your iniquities. 

I have not been a burden to you, but you have been a burden to me. I have not wearied you, but you have wearied me . . .

BUT your unfaithfulness will not be the last word

²⁵ I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

 - I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Your unfaithfulness will not have the last word – My Love will – My foregiveness. God had bound himelf utterly to this people – they were His burden – he carried them – He was known as The God of Israel – if you like He was known as their National God – His identity was tied up with theirs – and so was His character - and Israel, the people of this God had besmirched themselves and so had taken God’s name with them into the mud.     

       

            So what does he do?? Does He cast them off?? NO! Rather he Refuses to let their Word be the Last Word – he will overcome Even Unfaithfulness, the Covenant may have meant little to Israel – but it meant everything to the God who makes Promises – He has made a Covenant – He has bound himself to these people and thus His name is being dragged through the mud? What will he do?? He will make their sins Whiter than snow!! – though they are scarlet – he will blot out their transgressions for His Names sake – He will not stoop down to their level of unfaithfulness – no He will restore them and Life them Up!!!

It is Breathtaking. To Israel’s No – he Thunders His Triumphant YES – and so one comes in whom All God’s Covenant Promises are held – In whom All His Promises are YES!! Which begins to explain what to some might be a strange puzzle in the gospel reading.

Here is Jesus – in this tightly packed house – barely room to breathe and some people bring their paralyzed friend to him – presumably to heal him?? The text is silent. So determined are they to get him to Jesus they go onto the roof and knock a hole in it. And lower him down in front of Him.

And here we see how Different is our reading of this text from those of the time of Jesus – What does Jesus do? He forgives him his sins – and his critics are thinking Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone? And we may be thinking – Hang on a minute!! He’s paralysed – can’t you see?? Why not do That First and forgive the sins later? Surely the Priority is healing him?? – and in this regard it is Very worth noting the following – Jesus heals the man to prove the point about forgiveness. Do you see??

He forgives the man. Then the scribes accuse him of blasphemy – THEN to show that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins he heals the man of his paralysis – to show that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins – Which is it easier to say ‘Son our sins are forgiven you’ Or take up your mat and walk??? Which is most important???

We look out on a world where there is So So much wrong – I used to get JWs coming to my door – I don’t know if they do the same here in NZ but in England they always began by saying- aren’t things in a terrible mess – and we LOOK OUT and have to agree with them – and so we see people with sickness – we see wars  - we see famines – we see all sorts of things. And we think that there are all these problems out there and we’re busy saying – look Here Jesus – all this forgiveness of sins stuff is . . . well of course its important but what about the Real problems . . . except the real problems all stem from sin which we do Not see because we’re all too busy looking out there. The problems are Symptoms – the root dis - ease is sin.

God is Love – he creates the world in Love, through Love, for Love – the Universe is if you like a cathedral of Love – Love holding it all together – its trellises  - its buttresses – its foundations and beautiful windows are Love -  and Sin takes a wrecking ball and smashes it up. If we go around that all that is wrong in the world today is down to sin, we might be thought idiotic – but if God is Love and Everything is an expression of Love – in other words the hard physical matter of our existence is in fact that Energy emanating from the Life of God that we call Love – then before any true healing can begin – those bonds have got to be restored. That is what holds everything together. Just what seems like a minor matter for the religiously minded becomes of literally Fundamental importance. And we might know this surely for ourselves for what is the pain we know like the pain of broken relationships – it is literally as if the fabric of our Lives is torn apart – it is that the fabric of creation is rent – love is torn.

Jesus – the Lamb of God from before all eternity offers himself to atone for the sins of the world. What is God’s Solution to the demolition of Love? More Love – Indestructable Love declared in Glory on Easter Morn and the Way for all who have found new life in Him. What he does for the paralysed man in forgiving him his sins, he literally embodies on the cross. 

Remember last week – this faith of our is bodily and material? God who is Love takes on flesh. Jesus embodies Love and forgiveness on the cross and so the New Creation begins to spring to birth  - one which we are called to step into. This New Life of Christ is one we are all called as Christians to participate in. The Scribes are right – only God can forgive sins – but we are joined to him to become one with Him and thus enter into he work he is doing as Christ was himself one with the Father and only did what he saw the father doing. Forgiving and then healing.

This last couple of weeks I have referred to Peter and John and the healing of the lame man outside the Temple. I suggested that there was something missing in a church that could no longer say ‘Silver and Gold have I none,’ nor could it say ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth get up and walk’ – well if that seems to hard – which is easier to say ‘Your sins are forgiven you’, or ‘take up your mat and walk?’ We are given a simpler yet more Foundational starter. Peter and John having discovered the power of this love which refuses to be overcome even by death enter into this Life being renewed by forgiveness and so in that Life, in the Life of the Risen Christ, the Embodiment of the New Creation they engage in the works that that forgiveness, that restoration of the bonds of Love makes possible.

Forgiveness is the way in which the true ordering of the world is made new, that Love is restored and that Love is the healing of Everything.

See and Know

Photograph by kind permission of Catherine Arranger

One of the benefits of Facebook - like all benefits it has its shadow side - is making friends with people from far away through friends and friends of friends. One such friend of mine took this lovely photograph of a door, in her home town in Southern France, and then posted it on Facebook . . . as one does. 

Yet this photograph was very different from many I see there - and something she said in her posting caught my attention. She has passed this door on an almost daily basis for the last 25 years, and only Now has she photographed it.

One of the 'benefits' of Facebook, is as a place where 'we can share our lives with others' - by posting all the many photographs we have taken of family events and the like. Except we are not sharing our lives, because we weren't even there ourselves.

Many years of going to children's school productions still hasn't solved something for me - despite trying to figure this out I cannot understand something that goes on both relentlessly and increasingly at such occasions - 'Proud Parents' recording it all for posterity - OBSERVING their child through the editorial influence of a camera or Video lens - for the sake of Memory. Yet how can you remember something which you were not present at? Not fully engaged in, or not sufficiently engaged in that you could find time to take all those photos - desperate to preserve a memory, but not actually there to remember - to soak in the atmosphere - to be Present - to Participate.

My friend's photograph I thought was lovely. For 25 years she had got to know her subject - indeed until that moment she had not treated the door as such, but rather as part of the fabric, the warp and weft of her life. It had a Life that was and is part of hers - there was mutual participation.

If this is true of a door, how much more so of a person?

Photography and especially video photography are very late on the block in terms of human history. They come into our world when more than ever we live in the era of the 'Triumph' of the individual - where we have learnt to separate ourselves from others to stand alone - so that we may watch them and they us. Photography is one example of a technology that is actually revealing the truth about the world we live in, by its very existence. It is an expression of our isolation, our aloneness -  and I speak as a occasionally keen amateur photographer.

'Less sophisticated' people than us, when first encountering a camera shy away, for fear you are stealing their soul. In a sense they are very right, for our essence as human beings is not as individuals but in relationship. The Essence of Being is the God who is Love. When we abstract ourselves from relationship to stand as the dispassionate or selfish observer (just trying to get the right photo of a person for our gratification and to feed our pride) - we break the bonds of love in order to stand apart.

As with all technology, cameras should come with a relational warning - it should say on the box,

 'not to be used on subjects with whom you have not been intimately associated for at least 25 years'

It is a myth that we can extract ourselves from life at no cost to ourselves - when we extract ourselves from life for even a moment we die a little

Life requires our Presence - we are enjoined to Participation. 

Put another way you cannot hold a camera or a video and join in the dance :)

True Freedom

(Photo courtesy of Rose)

One of the truly wonderful things about living in this part of the world is the abundance of wildlife which is to be encountered, most especially on the edge of the sea. Even with the 'pressures of work', there is scarce a week goes by without a visit to one of the very many beaches hereabouts. These special places, often deserted, are places of encounter with penguins or the Northern Royal Albatross, that has its crib hereabouts, or any number of seals and sea lions. Such encounters are often times of gift which I am slowly learning to be more grateful for

To digress for a moment, when I was a youngster living on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District I rarely if ever tramped the hills and I find there are a surprising number of folk who never seem to take the time for beaches and wildlife here, too. A Fresh Eye, as I discovered when I moved back to the North of England in later years is a Great Gift. 'Can anything Good come out of Nazareth? asks one who has 'seen it all'

Walking on the aptly named Long Beach this last week, on a day not suited for beaches and thus perfect for beaches, a day of rain and dense sea mist shrouding trees and cliffs on the shore line, of a heavy swell brooding with promise of more rain to come - I chanced upon a large fur seal. Stood some distance away as I was I don't think I disturbed him, they seem pretty imperturbable creatures, but he chose that moment to get up from his sandy repose and in that gloriously awkward yet graceful way of a creature only half formed for the land, made his way back into the waves. There is something full of wonder at such moments. Seals seem happy enough on shore, but for a few moments as they are in the shallows you behold their Joy as they come into their Home environment.

And I was very blessed in that moment, for I caught myself out of myself, rejoicing with the seal in its Joy. I saw myself taking pleasure purely in the pleasure of another. For a moment, freed from my usual posture of incurvatus se (turned in on myself). The seal was Happy and so was I. I was engaged in the joy of an other. It was Great Gift and led me to think of many such glimpses I have of the Heavenly life in others.
I was led to think of one dear friend amongst many who often faces circumstances which threaten to overwhelm  and yet who seems to have an infinite capacity to rejoice with others, to take sheer delight in another's delight. It is in them, truly a well of water springing up to eternal life. For me they have often exemplified the Excurvatus life - the turned out life, the life which is Other focussed.

It occurs to me that it is in this self letting go that we discover Life. Christ calls us frequently to let go of our life to discover Life. Often I have reflected on the thought that forgiveness is commanded as much if not more for the one who needs to forgive, than for the one who needs to be foregiveness - that it is in the radical letting go of all our own troubles that we step into something of Great Wonder.

Somewhat amusingly, given the source, I was further taken down this path of reflection by some words of the famous scientist Stephen Hawking who turned 70 this past week. Hawking although of a fairly atheist set of mind, does not waste his energies on the noisy proclamations of some of his fellows, although one might think he would have cause to, if that is he were turned in on himself. The gifted cosmologist has spent the vast majority of his 70 years profoundly disabled by Lou Gehrig's disease, a form of Motor Neurone Disease and yet he says 'The human race is so puny compared to the universe that being disabled is not of much cosmic significance'. Hawking takes great delight in something which is so incomprehensibly vast that he sees his own suffering in a totally different light. There is at the least an echo here of losing life and so finding it.


Over the past few months I have been reflecting over and again about the significance of the First Commandment and latterly of the Truth that Human life 'properly conceived' - i.e. born again, is pure response to the Word of God, such that it is the most profound of dances - a liberty and freedom. That it is only in loving God with all we have and all we are - with all of our resources so that there is nothing left for incurvatus self absorption, that we are set free to truly love others, to rejoice as they rejoice and indeed to mourn as they mourn. 


Learning from my friend and watching the seal helped me see this better - I Need to Get Out more

Sermon for The Feast of St John

Jesus said to Peter, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!’

Yesterday we remembered St Stephen: the first Christian martyr, so called. Stoned to death as he witnessed to the Light of the gospel revealed in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God.

Tomorrow we remember the Holy Innocents: the children massacred by Herod; 

in a sense, themselves martyrs also. witnessing to the reality of the darkness of the World.

and in between, St John.

It is tempting to think that John 'gets off lightly.'  He suffers no bloody death like Stephen, and, of course, it is Peter who asks Jesus of his fate and he too dies a martyr”s death. Although we are not entirely sure when or how, it was probably under Nero.

it is almost as if Jesus is saying to him – 'If I choose to give him an easy time and you a hard time - So What?'  For it is God who chooses how and through whom he will work in the world. When we put ourselves at his disposal for his glory we may well wonder mightily at his ends – the glory of divine purpose – but his means are often less than congenial too us.  Sometimes obedience to God draws us into intense personal loss and cost.

Thus, it would be easy to say that John has it easy: the one apostle to die in his bed.

However, if we think that, then we miss something so vital to Chrsitian faith that we might be said to have totally missed what it is all about.

For whether we die by the sword, or die in our beds, the Christian life is always one of costly love. In fact, one might say that John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was given the hardest path of all to follow, the path of year after year after year of Love.

In the fourth century something literally Vital went out of Christian faith:  It was normalised.  It was made part of respectable society.  It transitioned from  a few being Christians to a , Christianity that was made compulsory. If you like, it became part of the warp and weft of the World: taught in Schools, attendance at worship expected of all decent citizens. No one was martyred any more, as if the Light had finally vanquished the darkness – but as we know – 1600 years later that wasn’t so.

The Life that so challenged the World that one had either to repent and follow Christ or persecute those who did, the sharp dividning line between darkness and Light, was blurred.

But there were those who saw what was happening – who held out – who clung on to the fire of the Gospel.  First fleeing to the desert, then collecting as communities, communities of faith, they were the fore-runners of monasteries. One title that attached to them was ‘White martyrs’: those who still believed that one could not live with a foot in both camps – darkness and light – that one had to die to the World to enter the Love of God and to become one with it.

White martyrs: witnessing to light not by dying physically , but by dying to anything the World had to offer. Dying by refusing to choose any way but the way of Love.

St John is the Apostle of Love, he is the first White martyr, the first to live out day after day, month after month, year after year until at the last his body failed him.  He lived the command to Love without exception. For John there was to be no respite, no quick end to the costly walk with Jesus. His was literally in a fight to Love unto death.

Does this all sound too strong?

Surely the idea of the Apostle of Love sounds so ‘nice’, so ‘comforting’, as if John is warm and cuddly. But he is not. With his brother James he is one of the Sons of thunder.  Perhaps this is why Jesus chose him to be the one who would bear costly witness without the blessed relief of a martyrs death.  It was only a Son of thunder who would hold on to Love to the very end

And so we have in these days following the holiest of days:

The witness of Light – Stephen – those who cannot bear the light choose to kill him—and The witness of Darkness – the Holy Innocents,

and finally the witness of Love – costly devotion to the end

You see Love is a Nice idea.  We all like the idea of Love, we all want to be loved, until we encounter God’s Love. the Love that says “I love you, take up your cross and follow me’”  We all too easily say ‘I love God’ until we hear Jesus say to us: “If you Love me, keep my commandments.”  We all too easily say: “I would do wanything for Love,” until Love in the flesh tears us, rends us from all we hold most dear. Love is no idea – it is FIRE-- and the way of Love is the way of fire

Love in the flesh; that is what it is all about.  I speak not of love as an Idea,  but Love you can touch and feel and see.  “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.  T²his life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us’

How is it declared? In Love – there is no other way.  This is what it means to walk in the light, to bear the beams of divine Love for the world, to Love the Enemy, to Love those who hate us, to Love and to Love and to Love.  This is to enter into the fiery purposes of the God of Love. John’s declaration is not a string of doctrines or ideas, it is the declaration of LIFE!

Why?  ‘So that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.’ We Love in order to draw others into Light – the Light – the very life of God.  We love to share in the life of the Divine: fellowship with God, the God who is Love. For surely our Joy will only be complete when all are drawn into the fellowship of Love: costly, fiery, awe inspiringly beautiful Love, Love in all it’s fullness.  Love as revealed to us perfectly in Jesus.

Love took on flesh for our sake.  He became like us for one reason and for one reason only: that we might become like him,  that all may be drawn into the fellowship of Love, that all might be drawn into the life of God

⁴Love that commands: the voice of the Lion of Judah, 

roaring out above the chaos of the World, calling us to Light, 

to the witness of Love, 

Love in the Personal, love in the particular, costly, overflowingly generous Love.

Whatever path He chooses for us it is a path of martyrdom – of witness – be it St Stephen or the Holy Innocents or St John.  We are martyrs to Love, for Love must triumph: the darkness has not understood it, but the darkness shall never overcome it.