Reflections from The Hill – Straight or Messy? (John 6.59-69)

My Ever-Lovin’ will tell you, if you ask, that I can be a bit of a pain, especially when it comes to living an ordered life. For the most part, this isn’t a permanent problem but I’m here to tell you that there’s something attractive about straight lines.

Like the other day when I reverse parked into a spot outside the gym: the front of the car pointed towards one corner of the rectangle, the rear pointed in the diagonally opposite direction.

I was happy to walk away from this poor example of parking, so I was not in the least impressed when one of my fellow-gymmers yelled “At least you got it inside the lines.” It became a soaked tee-shirt morning that day, for there’s only so much a man can take at 5.45am.

Getting things inside the lines has been a focus since before I was in Grade 1, whether it was colouring in, sitting up straight, doing my homework or, at the risk of repeating myself, parking the car.

The flip side of this is, you guessed it, disappointment on my part when the figurative wheels point in the wrong direction and I am forced to admit that life is, well, messy; there’s no straight path.

Take the Israelites as an example: given the option of walking for seven days in a straight line from Egypt to The Promised Land, the Israelites took a Forty-Year-Walkabout instead. OK, we can argue that their silliness didn’t help but it gives the lie to what might be called The Easy Life.

A similar situation re-surfaces in this week’s Gospel, in the bit where Jesus starts on about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Cannibalism ain’t high on Jesus’ lifestyle agenda, nor on mine as it happens, so what’s all this about?

Here we have to go down the metaphor route: Jesus is making a direct reference to the exodus event I just mentioned, where The Mob was fed with manna; “the bread from heaven”, every day until they reached their destination. By using that allusion, Jesus is saying something special about himself. Neat.

Then it gets messy. The nice and neat, straight-sided, theological cage is rattled by Jesus messing up their story. No longer is it a tale about something that is understandable like bread but it’s been changed into something fairly complex like a relationship.

Manna (the God Bread) was something external back then, something that people picked up off the ground. Now, Jesus is talking about the God Bread being the relationship with Him which, if we want it, will mean taking Him to ourselves, eating and drinking for our salvation. Or, in other words “Turning to Christ”.

Is it any wonder some of the bystanders murmured aloud: “Man, this is hard tack; who can take this on board? He’s gone right outside the lines now: it’s too much for us to handle”, or words to that effect, so they turned back and no longer went about with him.

Understand that we’re not talking about a bunch of hangers-on here, like people who might walk away from a nutter. John calls this lot ‘disciples’, so the chances are they’d been around Him for a while.

They saw Him walk the talk, they had tuned in to His message; he was a nice guy and all that, but they couldn’t cope with the messiness. “Does this offend you?” He asked them. Well, yes.

That’s when Jesus shirt-fronts the Big Twelve with His question. “And you, what about you? Are you going to leave as well?” He had them by the short-and-curlies in a couple of questions. Talk about rattling their cage.

If they’d actually recalled the manna story, they would have remembered how much a meandering story it was: forty years to walk a journey that otherwise took about a week. Life’s not a walk in the park.

We know, don’t we, that life isn’t served up to us in straight lines. There are curve balls coming in from all points of the compass and the solutions to these hiccoughs aren’t always straight forward either. How we long for it to be different.

The words of eternal life aren’t always the ones that fit onto the latest Christian poster or tee-shirt or are on the bottom of our emails. They’re not always simple, cute or easy to hear. The words of eternal life remind us that life is not always plain because solutions to our problems aren’t always straightforward.

It is exactly because the words of eternal life ring true that we can’t leave. Where would we go? Who else will tell us the truth about life? Who else has lived the truth about life so fully? Who else has lived – and died – outside the box?

Reflections from The Hill – Finding Mary

(Note from Ian: Reflections this week is an edited version of a Sermon I’m planning to deliver at St Mary’s Atherton on Sunday. It’s their Festival Day. I’m indebted to Sr Elizabeth Johnson CSJ for her insights.)

How should we think about her today, this little Middle Eastern woman called Mary? Different times and cultures have interpreted her in different ways and she could easily be the Lady of a Thousand Faces. Let’s see why.

The first thing is to look in Scripture and, in particular, the Gospels. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t get much court-time: in Matthew, Mary doesn’t say anything and is kind of beige, neutral; in Mark, she’s like the cocky on the biscuit tin, an outsider; in Luke, she’s a woman of faith; in John, the only name she gets is “the mother of Jesus”, which says a lot, particularly if you’re a clergy spouse.

Certainly, there’s no consistency in the Good Book. However, we can say some things about her, this one who has intrigued and fascinated people for centuries.

Mary (Miriam in Hebrew) was, start to finish, a Jewish woman. She had inherited her faith from her family line, one that stretched back to Abraham and Sarah. Her prayers were to YHWH, the God who set people free, the One who established covenant with his people.

Mary followed the Torah (Law) by reciting the prayers, keeping Sabbath and Festivals and lighting candles. She was a typical Jewish woman who also believed that the Messiah had come. This didn’t mean that she stopped attending synagogue; far from it, she continued that practice.

While Mary was one of the original Jewish Christians, she was never a Gentile. It does her no honour, therefore, to take to her Jewishness with a bottle of White King Bleach. Don’t think we haven’t done that, believe me. We have.

We’ve turned her Jewish complexion into that of a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian. Not content with disfigurement, we’ve also taken to her spiritual life and made her into a 20^th/21^st century version of a Christian woman, which she ain’t.

Mary lived in a rural village, Nazareth, whose population consisted largely of peasants and tradies. Married to a local chippie, her life consisted of taking care of her large household. Besides Joseph and Jesus, Scripture tells us there were four brothers: James, Joses, Judas and Simon and some unnamed sisters.

Her days were filled with the hard, unpaid work of women of all ages: the feeding, clothing and nurturing of a growing household. Like other village women of her day, she was, most likely, illiterate.

Times were tough in l’le old Nazareth. This village was part of an occupied state under the heel of imperial Rome. Revolution was in the air. The atmosphere was tense. Violence and poverty prevailed.

To our shame, it’s only in recent days that we’ve even noticed the similarities between Mary's life and the lives of many others. The Flight into Egypt and the death of her son Jesus by execution compares with those who, among other horrors, have had their children and grandchildren disappear or murdered by dictatorial regimes.

Whatever else Mary is, she is a sister of the marginalized women in every oppressive situation. It does her no honour, then, to take her out of her dangerous historical circumstance and transform her into an icon of a peaceful middle-class, western woman dressed in a blue robe.

Mary walked by faith, not by sight. She had a relationship with God that was profound. In her days, people's hope for the coming of the Messiah included the hope that he would liberate the poor from oppression. That was her hope, too.

Her “Here I am Lord” in Luke is a response to the call of God on her life to be God's partner in the work of redemption, a vocation that still eludes many of us today. As I say, she walked by faith, not by sight.

God stood beside this young woman who was pregnant outside of wedlock and in danger of her own life. God stood with her to fulfil the divine promise. Mary's faith-filled partnership with God in the work of liberation is sung out in the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55). It's the longest set of words placed on the lips of any woman in the New Testament.

In this song, she sings of the future, when peaceful justice will take root in the land among all people. She’s a prototype of many others – Martin Luther King and so on – and, like his speech, her song is great too; a revolutionary song of salvation. Not only is Mary full of grace but she’s also full of political opinions, which is a Good Thing in anyone.

It does no honour to her to reduce her faith to a privatised level. What’s worse, though, is to reduce Mary’s faith to that of a doting mother/son thing. Before Jesus was born, Mary had her own deep relationship with God and it’s a relationship that isn't focused on Jesus.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is someone whose life we ought to try to copy; she’s a friend of God. It’s good to find her and to let her dangerous memory inspire and encourage our own witness as a partner with her in that same hope.

Reflections from The Hill – A Desert Freebie – John 6.24-35

(thanks to Ps Luke Bouman for some of these thoughts)

There’s something about a freebie that’s attractive. If it’s big enough and plentiful enough, that’s even better. Whether it’s a BBQ with free champers and OJ in King George Square or a ride on a bus, I have a hard time keeping away.

Sometimes the freebie is genuinely gracious and fulfilling but mostly it’s not. “Something for nothing” ain’t all what it’s cracked up to be. I wonder why my avarice takes over and accepts so easily?

The crowds on that Galilean seaside were prepared to cross the water just to get whatever was on offer, for there was something about Jesus that kept drawing people to him.

It wasn’t just that the offer of free bread was attracting them, like we might get from the Day-Old counter at Brumbies. The bread he was giving out wasn’t simply free. This bread actually came out of nowhere and it came right in the middle of nowhere.

The people had been in the wilderness, they had been the people of God on the move again and, like once before, they received this bread.

Now they wanted more: “Give us this bread always.” Like sceptics all over the world, they’re not any different from us: they wanted a repeat performance because they just couldn’t grasp what they saw the first time. Miracles don’t always lead people to faith. People just say ‘do it again, only slower this time.’

This scenario, captured in today’s Gospel reading, is exactly that and, yes, it’s slower. What’s disconcerting is something I’ve already alluded to: that we’re not much better than those seaside wanderers. We’re still on the search for more – more bread, more something that will satisfy us. And we’re in a wilderness too, most of us, a wilderness more of our own making than not.

The world in which we live is made up of two whacking great bits. One part contains people who eat as much as they like and still bring leftovers for lunch. Yet these are curiously unfilled, unsatisfied.

The other part contains those who are desperate for any morsel that falls, any crust that remains. Here they wait, with protruding ribs and painful stomachs.

The one says to the others: “How can you still be like this? There’s more than enough to go around.” The others say “How can you be hungry? You have so much already.”

There’s something about this Gospel that has a challenge for us. It’s found in the middle of the Reading, in a part that often slips us by: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.“

Even in the midst of global financial anxieties and failures, we in the west have a hard time with those words because they fly in the face of the things we most treasure. My financial advisor would agree: shouldn’t we be building wealth?

However, the lessons from the wilderness about food were as important for the people of Israel as they are for us. They learned that Yahweh would give them the things they needed. They also learned not to hoard their bread but to share it with those who could not get it for themselves, otherwise it went bad.

In his helping them to understand, Jesus identifies himself with Yahweh, The Big Fellah. “I AM the bread of Life …” he says. Here is the One who satisfies; here is the Bread of Life – and this in stark contrast to the kind of bread that feeds but doesn’t fill.

This kind of Life-bread opens up a Pandora’s Box of other needs, of other hungers that Jesus satisfies; peace or justice or loving kindness or simply a humble walk. These hungers will never leave us no matter how many times we come for sustenance at his Table.

We become the bread we eat, reshaped into His Body, not by putting up our hand and letting avarice take over but by giving as he gave. We come hungry for life and leave hungry to give it. That’s the Jesus way.

Reflections from The Hill – Bread – John 6.1-21

Like much of the world in this Olympic year, I’m gearing up for a couple of weeks of broken sleep, when too much sport is never enough. Winners are grinners, but I wonder why every commentary I’ve read makes the point that the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle recorded in all Four Gospels.

It’s as if the more times a miracle is recorded across the Gospels, the more we need to take notice. Why? Isn’t just one recorded miracle enough any more?

Have I missed something? Sure, I can see the point that a miracle is emphasised by repetition but why? Are we now at a point where we are grading miracles as if they’re in an Olympic pre-selection trial? That the Gold Medal goes to the one that appears in all 4 Gospels?

I would have thought that any miracle is worth a look, whether or not it appears in multiple places, wouldn’t you?

On the other hand, instead of observing the number of repetitions – as if we are in some theological sporting contest – maybe I should concentrate on the content of the Miracle.

Let’s first be mindful of this, though: the Gospel Readings for the next five weeks are from John 6. What this means is that, over that time-frame, there will be lots of references to bread and how it comes from above and stuff like that. A test of ingenuity approaches, methinks.

There is one significant difference between the version of the Miracle that we’re reading today and the ones found in the other Gospels: John calls his version a sign (it’s a sign, it’s a sign) and therefore not simply about satisfying people’s empty tummies.

Here, the reader is going to discover something about Jesus and something about God at the same time, Two-for-One style. What that is, of course, is that Jesus can and does satisfy every one of our needs.

Jesus is way more than a heavenly baker or Brumby’s owner. He’s way more than a Baker’s Delight franchisee and he’s certainly not just trying to drum up business for the local welfare food outlet.

The punters don’t seem to get on board with this idea at all – and haven’t done since Jesus did the water-into-wine thing back in Chapter 2. They want more tucker, more grappa, more healings, more whatever.

Some time ago, My Beloved and I were at an Investment Seminar and someone asked the presenter this question: How much money do I need to be happy? The man answered with tongue in cheek: about 10% more than you get already.

We are so convinced that material possessions will make us happy – and just a bit more will make us even more happy – that we miss the point of this miracle yet again. More may be what we want, but is it needed?

Have a look in my bathroom if you still don’t believe me. Although My Beloved banned me long ago from doing the weekly shopping with her, I do go to the supermarket by myself sometimes.

Do I take a list? No. Do I know what I’m going to buy? No. Do I end up with a drawer full of traveller’s-sized toothpaste and facial wipes? You bet. Have I got enough? I fear that I will run out.

The real miracle is surely not about whether my Superannuation account will be sufficient to retire on, or whether I will run out of facial wipes.

The real miracle for the lilies and the birds and the crowds and the people like us is this: today, Jesus addresses and satisfies both our deficiencies and our poverty. He is all we need.

Reflections from The Hill – Doing It Jesus-style – Mark 6.30-ff

It ain’t easy being green, or a vicar, or a dad; they each come with their own special challenges, although being a frog would be hard. But what must it be like to have been an apostle?

The spiritual ones among us would rejoice, like Fr Mulcahy of M*A*S*H, because they were nearer the cross and, by implication, nearer to that form of spiritual power that is measured in centimetres and is based on the Theory of Proximity.

Then there’s us others who are separated by centuries from the original events yet still manage to get caught up with every wind and breeze that comes along.

It never ceases to amaze me that, one minute, we can be face to face with some miracle or other and the next be dragging our bottom-lip around as if we’d lost a quid and picked up sixpence.

Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah – and lots of others – were masters at that game. They have their hi-lo moments, as did the apostles in Mark’s Gospel. In the Feeding Story, Jesus tells his Boys to feed the large number of followers. The Boys know there’s no Brumbies or Maccas close by, so they get all aerated and sarcastically ask Him where He thinks the nearest food outlet might be.

I can hear the exasperation in his answer: “How many loaves have you?” It’s like “When are you going to get it?” So he takes the few loaves and fish and multiplies them right before their eyes. That’s the Jesus way.

The sadness is that the Boys miss out again on grasping the reality that the Kingdom of God is there in front of them and that they’ve just muffed an invitation to participate in it.

This Big Feed contrasts with many Church meals I’ve attended: you know the sort – tables groaning with chicken wings and quiche, piles of salads, sandwiches (egg mostly), devilled kidneys (maybe), bread rolls, slices, coleslaw, apple crumble and Peter’s Ice Cream to top it off.

The Big Feed had none of this. Rather, the resources were meagre by comparison to a pot-luck supper. It was more like “Whatcha got in the pocket of ya cloak?” than “Would you like to bring a slice or a meat dish?” It was more like “Sit in groups of fifty” rather than “Table 12 goes first.”

Relying on, participating in, the miracle nearly always means that there are often more resources available than we first realise. That’s the Jesus way.

However, if storms are your thing, and not food, then the next part of the story is for you, even if it’s more difficult. To start with, the disciples are described as ‘terrified’ and ‘astounded’ as they face the water but they’re still not getting it. Then, perhaps the most poignant verse in the whole of the Gospel: “they did not understand about the loaves for their hearts were hardened.”

We’ll hear this ‘hardened hearts’ thing again in the next Big Feed Story and I’m beginning to think that this is a bit like a mantra, a chorus, a cycle that keeps getting repeated. How easily we lapse into being ignorant and fearful followers, much more like hangers-on than co-workers.

There may well be a case to argue that this was Mark’s argument with The Boys all along. They were call to follow and they were to participate – but they certainly weren’t picking up any clues about participation. Maybe doing it is just too hard.

And isn’t that true also as we look over our life and the ministry to which we’ve been called? That while a vocation might be clear, the doing of it is often clouded by other stuff like sloth or disobedience.

While we might want to try and balance a call with an activity (or series of activities), Mark is actually challenging us to look further into the area of the miraculous as a significant aspect of our work because, above all else, that’s His domain and that’s where He wants us to be.

Reflections from The Hill – More – Mark 6.14-29

Just occasionally, with the emphasis on just, reading one of the Biblical stories is a bit like living in reality TV-land but more uncomfortable.

Reading Bible stories can be fun and exciting. Hey, who wants TV fiction then? Just get out a copy of the Gospels and get stuck into reading that.

Let’s take today’s Gospel Reading as a case in point. Reading about Herod the Tetrarch, for example, makes me think straightaway of that one-time President of the US of A, Richard Nixon.

Tricky Dicky was a master of manipulation and political intrigue, yes? So blinded was he to the vortex of ambition that he was prepared to sacrifice his principles to give himself an advantage over others, just like Herod.

On the goodies side, there are remarkable similarities between John the Baptist and Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero or Dietrich Bonhoeffer; real life leaders who were willing to tell the truth about corruption and the misuse of power, whatever the cost.

Let me not let the ladies off the hook, either. Herodias is just like those female characters who, black widow-like, exterminate their lovers or friends on grounds of self-protection and build themselves a platform of power. Remember Roberta Williams?

Even if it is true that Herodias was intent on protecting her own children, which I doubt if what she allowed her daughter to do is any indication, we might be challenged ourselves to contemplate the lengths we would go to protect our own offspring.

One thing’s for sure about this Reading and that is that Mark has a very specific purpose in telling the story. It’s the only scene in the Gospel, I think, where Jesus does not play any part. So, it’s important. Why?

The first thing to note is this: the proclamation of the Kingdom has significant implications, and I just don’t mean political ones. The status quo is always under threat when we live out our life as Christians.

As David Lose says, ‘our all too easy acquiescence with the cultural presumption that might … is right’ is severely compromised here. The proclamation of God’s kingdom principles is a costly business.

Even more challenging is the possibility that, when we stand up against George St or Canberra or whatever your Parliament’s address is, there will be some collateral damage and we might find ourselves on the wrong end of a baton, or worse.

Mark is telling us this, partly, because he’s describing the world in which he lives but, by extension, he is warning those of us in future generations about the implications of doing and saying the right thing.

Is that it, you ask? Is this all there is or are we yet to squeeze the Gospel orange a little more, at least enough to extract the Good News from this passage?

Maybe that’s the point, that John’s beheading by Herod and family isn’t the end of the story, it isn’t the whole enchilada, that there is more?

Truth is that there is something more than the intrigue, the heartache, the tragedies; of Herod, of Nixon, and of our penchant for the status quo.

Isn’t the heart of the Gospel the belief and teaching that Jesus came to make it possible for us to have something more than mere survival, more than simply success?

Didn’t he come to help us imagine – and enter into – something more than just living, that there is something called ‘the abundant life’ which can be ours? Isn’t that a better ending than many of us seem to expect?

When our Temple has been destroyed, or our marriage is on its last legs, or we’ve just been made redundant, or we’ve just found out that our best friend has cheated on us, then the possibility of another, good, ending has immense appeal.

That’s not just good news. It’s got to be better news any day than anything we can imagine or construct ourselves.

Reflections from The Hill – Shooting Isaiah’s Arrows – Isaiah 49.1-6

Growing up as I did in a repressive family, I used to fantasise about sitting behind a desk. I interpreted this to mean that, one day, I was going to be in charge of something.

However, no-one ever came to that desk. No one asked me to deliberate on an issue; no-one brought me anything to fix; no one stopped by for a yarn. I was all alone, bereft of friends and things to do.

Then I learned that desks can be barriers for us to hide behind. This brought a new light to my life. People came, but not too close. They didn’t stay, not once. They brought stuff with them but it ended up in the WPB. The barriers were up and I was as happy as a pig in a barrel of malt. Happy, safe, and bored witless.

The desk had to go. I had to stop hiding behind the “Lovely service, Father” stuff and all the other security-oriented approbations. I had to get out of the cloying wonder of my own presence else I’d be as stiff as a four-day old road kill.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had my share of holy moments: I’ve wept beside the death-beds of young children; I love teaching adults “If I Were A Butterfly” with actions; I’ve been put over the fence by a wide-eyed Santa Gertrudis cow and had many other similar Pastoral joys helping people in need.

There have always been the hair-pulling reactions from people who just don’t get it that bring me back to earth. And, unlike Isaiah in this First Reading today, I’ve never been able to convince people to return to a homeland some of them have never even seen, especially since that homeland was in ruins.

What I’m more inclined to do is to rail at them for their obstinacy and beat my head against a wall. Or, if things get really bad, to grab a nice red or single malt whiskey and put a dent in its contents.

I’ve always considered myself to be more a pastor than anything else; more comfortable among a mass of sinners rather than shaking a righteous fist and preaching God’s wrath at them.

Prophets don’t have a long employment history. They either get booted out of town or have their heads cut off after one too many so-called ‘incidents’, so I’m not particularly excited to be among them.

Still, if people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and God has other ideas, then sometimes it takes a sharp stick or a pointed jab to get them off their derrieres and into moving to where they ought to be.

I am aware that The Good Book has two words for ‘time’. One word is the tick-tock word that describes sequential time; the other is the special moment word, that describes the right, or opportune, time.

There’s not a lot of future in being a knock-‘em-down, drag-‘em-out, fire-and-brimstone type of guy and, frankly, it ain’t me. I’d rather be picking myself out of the dust of a drafting yard than standing on a street corner telling the passers-by that they’re all going to hell in a handbag.

There is a kairos time for many things. I was going to be the pastor with the soft heart who slogged through the rough stuff with the sinners, who wept and laughed with them and who grabbed their sweaty palms and said “This stuff stinks. It’s good that God’s with us, eh?” God’s time was different.

Maybe I ought to have had a hissy fit and yelled at them once in a while. Maybe I ought to have yelled at the coastlands a bit more often. If I did that, maybe I could have shaken them out of their complacency. Maybe.

So I ask: is it possible to shoot Isaiah’s arrows or swing his sword without being cut to pieces by an angry crowd? Is there any future in that?