‘Tell me the old, old story, when you have cause to fear.’ Yes? No? Maybe? How do you respond to that: and, more broadly, to faith, and God, in Jesus, as story? Many years ago, on the radio, one of the radical thinking clergy of the Church of England was asked about how they understood God. ‘God’, they said, ‘is the poem in which I live my life.’ Yes? No? Maybe? Does that resonate with you? Many people, secular and faith-based, would be quite dismissive. Stories, and poems not least, they would say, are typically fanciful and not factual, fabricated and too often false. Of course, that kind of response generally lacks self-awareness and is very narrow, and, often, quite ideological. Apart from not recognising that different expressions of life have their own characteristics and validity, they typically miss the way in which story, metaphor, and symbol, exist within all areas of knowledge. Science for example is full of different models, and ideas like evolution are themselves stories. Scientists are right in saying that life-giving stories are helped by empirical verification. Yet, without stories as such, it is impossible for human life and consciousness to exist. That is something that liberals and progressives, especially in faith spaces, have often missed. It is not enough to point out the weaknesses in a tired traditionalist story: whether that be about creation, sexuality, or anything else. Even more importantly, we also need to tell a new story. Populist politicians, like rabble-rousing religious preachers, know this well. Facts are malleable but stories, once established, persist: whether they are particular ways of understanding the body, the nation, the world, and, of course, God. All of us therefore have stories, conscious and unconscious, running through our heads: some of them planted there long ago, some of them picked up from the latest social media frenzy; some of them giving life-giving purpose to our lives, others providing scripts that limit us but which are hard to shake off. What then is our story?...
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‘Tell all the truth', wrote the poet Emily Dickenson, 'but tell it slant’. For ‘The Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every one be blind.’[1] That is pretty much Mark’s Gospel’s account of resurrection, isn’t it? Whilst other resurrection stories were attached later, the two earliest, and arguably the best, manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel stop abruptly at verse 8 of chapter 16, with women fleeing from an empty tomb and ‘saying nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ Furthermore, the text simply stops in mid-sentence, with the little preposition which means ‘for’. Mark’s Gospel, at least, is clear that resurrection is both truly astounding and impossible to convey straightforwardly. For how do we describe resurrection? How do we communicate resurrection? How do we live resurrection? The nature of resurrection is that it involves strange truths of transformation: which require, like so much great art, ‘telling it slant’; which rest on mystery; and which revolve around deep, lived, experience. For art, mystery, and experience: these three things are at the heart of the strange truths of resurrection we exult in today, as witnessed to by our readings and key images this morning, and the continuing life of you and I, and all who follow Christ… What kind of a crucifixion do we share in on this Good Friday? Is the cross a threat, a judgement, or even a weapon? Is it simply a site and symbol of death and destruction? Or is it a pathway of transformation, for us and for our world? To help us enter it as a pathway of loving transformation, I want to offer a few words around four different images of crucifixion, which may support us in our spiritual journeying today. Each is an image from the suffering of the last century of our modern world. Each, in different ways, represents the crucifixion afresh, and encourages us to know transformation. Let me first however, in introduction, share this great image of the crucifixion from Matthias Grünewald, painted for the Isenheim Altarpiece in the hospital chapel of St Anthony’s monastery. What do you see in it?... ‘People assume’, said the tenth Dr Who,[1] ‘that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.’ Isn’t that Time Lord right? Time is much more fascinating than we ordinarily think. In today’s Gospel reading we are in this respect challenged deeply. For we are called to choose not only to address what is valuable in past, present and future: in what we call chronological, or measurable, time, deriving from the Greek word ‘chronos’. Rather we are brought face to face with ‘kairos’, another Greek word which means the ‘right or critical’, or meaningful, time. Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς, are the key words in Greek in Mark chapter 1 verse 15: words often translated as ‘the time has been fulfilled’ (or ‘is ripe’ - for, as the verse continues, ‘the reign of God has drawn near, (repent) turn around and believe the good news’… One ancient way of approaching spirituality, especially in the Orthodox Christian traditions, is to speak of three kinds of birdlife. The first of these, sometimes known as the ‘carnal’ life, is represented by farmyard chooks. These birds peck at the dust, clucking around, and sometimes fighting each other: confined to an enclosure, with their products used by others or being fattened up themselves for slaughter and consumption. The second, sometimes known as the ‘natural’ life, is represented by the rooster. This bird, with more intellectual capacity, is able to rise above, and see beyond, the farmyard dust; and, whilst remaining tied to it, is able to influence and manage aspects of the world of the chooks, at least to a degree. The third bird however is the eagle: who flies free, majestic, and far beyond, the limited horizons of both the chooks and the rooster. Not for nothing has the eagle thus been highly revered, across many cultural and faith traditions, not least among many First Nations peoples: being typically regarded as symbolic of great and deep strength, leadership, and vision. Now, there is of course the danger in such analogies of forms of spiritual elitism, a disregard of the ‘ordinary’, and disdain towards the material. Yet, as we hear Isaiah 40 verses 21-31 today, we are encouraged to be lifted up as ‘on eagle’s wings’. So to what kind of bird do we choose to look? What kind of life do we choose?... Jeanne d’Arc, the Suffragettes, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, the Tent Embassy, Mardi Gras ‘78ers, Tiananmen Square protestors, Peter Tatchell, Bob Brown, the Occupy movement: what do these people have in common?... Would we consider that some, at least, of them have been prophets, or prophetic, in their words and actions? I think there is a case, on at least three grounds: firstly, because they have been typically disturbing to many, and certainly controversial; secondly, because, at the heart of their actions has been a claiming, and transforming, of space reserved, essentially as sacred, by others; and, thirdly, because they ask us to consider what is really true. This is also at the heart of today’s readings, which ask us to reflect on who, and what, is truly prophetic. But let us add some more people into this. How about those who refused to keep to government rules about gathering together and living appropriately during the COVID-19 lockdowns, or the invaders of the Capitol buildings in Washington on 6 January 2021, or the Christian Lives Matters folks who attacked us and others last year? Are they, in their own way, also prophets, or prophetic? After all, they too are typically controversial and disturbing. They also claim and seek to transform spaces which have been defined by others in different ways. And they too ask us to consider what is truly prophetic. For are we just consecrating our particular cultural and political preferences when we say some people or things are prophetic? Or is there something more to it?... Twenty years ago now, I was working with the First Nations arm of the National Council of Churches, and was involved in organising a series of events called ‘Hearts are Burning’, each designed to re-ignite positive Christian engagement with First Nations people, and, above all, to help First Nations’ Christian voices to be heard. For the gifts of First Nations’ Christians are vital to any healthy futures for faith in these lands now known as Australia. As one of our keynote speakers back then, the late Aboriginal Bishop Jim Leftwich, would repeatedly, and strikingly, affirm, ‘the mission field has become the mission force.’ In other words, it is those who first received the Gospel in colonial, even imperial, form, who are typically now best equipped to speak genuine ‘good news’ in these lands today. That is part of why we mark today in the Uniting Church as the Aboriginal “Day of Mourning”: both to recognise the continuing impact of past imperial and settler colonial violence and also, crucially, to hear the voice of the Spirit speaking again today through First Nations peoples. It is therefore a huge delight to have Aunty Ali Golding with us again this morning, and, in a few moments, I want to hand over to her to offer her own reflections. For I do not intend to say too much myself this morning, except to share, very briefly, three questions which arise for me from our Gospel, as we mark this Day of Mourning… Spiritual callings are typically strange, don’t you think? As our scripture readings today attest, they often occur to the strangest of people, and/or in the strangest of circumstances. Most importantly of all, they are frequently strange in character. After all, they come from what we call divinity, which, to our ordinary ways of the world, is typically strange or slant – even, if you will, queer. Our own experiences, as well as today’s readings, bear this out, just as they invite us to listen and respond to further strange calls of our strange God in our own day. For as as recorded, in regard to the faith tradition he began, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, put it well in saying that: (Faith)… began as something strange and it will return to being strange, so blessed are the strangers.[1]... Some of you may have noticed a change to our worship space today. The baby has gone – transformed it seems into a scallop shell. I am passing it around among you as I speak and I invite you to hold it for a few moments if you wish... ...Now, what strange alchemy is this, you may ask? What does this signify? We’ll come back to that. For now, just be aware that we are being subtly, and not so subtly, redirected, from the outer to the inner; from the seen to the unseen; from creation to re-creation; from the incarnation to the resurrection. This is a theological progression that demands that we go back to the beginning – to the creation of light in the story of Genesis as we heard, and to the beginning of the gospel as the author of Mark proclaims it just a couple of verses earlier than today’s text, ‘the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’... One of the most memorable set of Christmas services I helped arrange involved what I was brought up to call a dustbin, though others call it by other names, including (as in the USA) a trash can. This garbage icon was placed at the crossing point of the nave of St Luke, Toowoomba. For that church building is very much like a cathedral in design, so that it was unmissable, and full and centre throughout worship. Indeed, at Midnight Mass, the choir had to part to walk around it in their processions, and everyone coming up for, and returning from, communion. The dustbin/trash can lid was also put upside down on the top of the bin, so that a figure representing the Christ child could be placed upon it. The point was not to undermine the beauty of other aspects of worship or of Christmas – for, as you may have gathered by now, despite the many virtues of the Congregationalist tradition which established this building, I am definitely not a Puritan when it comes to Christmas worship! For one thing, I am too queer a person not to revel in the extraordinary queer elements of Christmas. Rather, the point of the dustbin was to recall us to the heart of the Incarnation of Christ, to where all the beauty and the joy and the utter transformative power of this season arises. Like the great queer poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, I believe profoundly that, in so many ways, in our struggles and human troubles, ‘we are all are in the gutter, but’, as he put it, and this is the queerness and liberation of Christ-centred faith, ‘some of us are looking at the stars.’ Christmas is indeed about looking at the stars, and covering ourselves again with stardust, and all kinds of glitter – for, truly, we too are stardust, made of stardust, and we are meant to glitter. For the Word is indeed made flesh, formed, and re-formed, out of junk… |
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sermons and reflections from Penny Jones & Josephine Inkpin, a same gender married Anglican clergy couple serving with the Uniting Church in Sydney Archives
April 2024
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