Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

disturbing angels in the wilderness

12/4/2022

Angels by Marek Piwicki on Unsplash

John the Baptist is an angel. This is explicit in the biblical text, where Mark writes of them, quoting Isaiah, “behold I send my messenger ahead of you” – and the word used for messenger (as everywhere in the Greek text) is angelos - angel! John the Baptist probably does not fit the picture we have of an angel – no wings, no obvious glowing light, no message of peace. But he’s an angel. He’s pretty unmissable – wild, eccentric to say the least, and certainly not welcome at the average family tea table. As Jo has written in her brief Biblical commentaries in Insights for this season, “If he was a toddler someone might suggest his emotions were disregulated by his diet and he needed to calm down and get a good night’s sleep! Yet, his prophetic voice is one we cannot ignore. He reminds us that there is always a place for righteous anger and that sometimes the new and better requires actions of clearing and letting go that can be painful and disturbing to some. His voice acts as corrective to tendencies in some Christian circles to associate the gospel with niceness or respectability. John was not respectable. But his message was essential.” His was the message of a disturbing angel calling us to change.

silence, dreams, and strength

12/12/2021

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, once said that “somewhere we know that without silence, words lose their meaning”. When there is silence, words also become infinitely more powerful. An enfleshed Word, like an infant Jesus – remembering that the word ‘infant’ comes from the Greek for ‘not speaking’ – carries most meaning of all; ‘the Word without a word’ as T.S Eliot expressed it in his poem Ash Wednesday...

'with you I am well pleased'

1/7/2021

Do you feel that God is pleased with you? I do hope so, though I know that at times I myself have not been sure about that, and it is an area with which many people struggle. We are in the season of epiphany – the season of revelation, which is what epiphany means. Our readings for the next few weeks reveal something of who Jesus is. But in doing so, they also reveal something of who we are and who we have the capacity to become.

the voice that calls us home

12/6/2020

Today, the second Sunday of Advent is traditionally devoted to the prophets – and in particular to the voices of second Isaiah and of John the Baptist as recorded by Mark’s gospel. Those voices, spanning the centuries, call us home from various kinds of exile...

the things that ignore us save us

9/16/2020

The contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey once wrote that ‘the things that ignore us save us in the end. Their presence awakens silence in us.’ I have been pondering this week whether this is what all wild places have in common, whether they be the Australian outback, other deserts, mountain places or wilderness forest. Regardless of the particularity of their wildness, wild places ignore us – in a healthy and health-giving way. In a wild place we cease, as human creations, to be at the centre of our own worldview and become aware of all that is beyond us. As the American Presbyterian theologian Belden C. Lane expresses it in his great work “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: exploring desert and mountain spirituality”: 'There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within.' When we find ourselves bereft of human company and resources, then we find ourselves in a place to let go of the demands of ego, the trivialities of our everyday lives, and to receive something of the incalculable and transforming presence of God...

coming out into the light from above

4/27/2017

Today's Gospel (John 3.31-36) appears very abruptly in the text of John's Gospel. Indeed some commentators have even considered whether they are words of John the Baptist. For he has just been speaking and there is no change of speaker indicated. Yet they seem to me all of a part with the Johannine figure of Christ and its high christology Key themes of the Gospel are indeed included in it. Let me turn to them in a moment. Firstly however, as Penny observed, at yesterday's eucharist, about an earlier passage in this same chapter 3 of John, these words clearly come from a context of conflict...

making transition - sharing in God's new creation

1/15/2017

Making a transition is rarely easy, is it? Currently I’m conscious of many changes in which I am involved, some of which will take much time, wisdom and energy to unfold. We are, of course, in the very midst of such a change this morning, as Penny and I lay down our callings here, and as all of us open ourselves to the new things that God will do with us in the future. As such, this is a special, and precious, moment, as all holy transitions are. For the test, and the fruit, of God’s love is often found where we experience change. After all, as we see again, strikingly, in our Gospel reading today, our God is a God of a new creation, always calling us forth into new life and growth. Like John the Baptist, some of us are called to let go and pass on the baton. Like the disciples we are all called to ‘come and see’ where Jesus is calling us. Like Simon, we may be called to new names and purposes. Don’t you agree Penny?...

rejoice

12/12/2015

Rejoice! For this is the Sunday for joy! By tradition this Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for the first word of our second reading today, Rejoice! Just as Refreshment Sunday comes half way through Lent, and is a day for feasting and letting go of the Lenten disciplines for a day, as we rejoice in being half way to Easter, so Gaudete Sunday comes half way through Advent, and tells us that we are half way to Christmas. The note of warning is still present as we heard from John the Baptist in our Gospel reading, but the other readings begin to sound a note of celebration. On this day by tradition the pink candle of our Advent wreath can be lit, and rose coloured vestments worn in those wealthy churches that own them - it is an expensive matter to have vestments that you only use once or twice a year!

So why is any of this important?...

peace, priesthood and being prophetic

12/5/2015

How do you picture peace? I wonder if your vision is quite the same as that of the prophet Isaiah in the John the Baptist story in our Gospel reading today? Isaiah says this: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Well, that definitely doesn’t work for me if it were taken at all literally. For I was born in the North Pennine hill country of England, which owes so much of its life, history, wildness and picturesque beauty to the variety of its landscape, its hills and valleys. I certainly know that the folk of the Durham Dales would do all they possibly could to avoid every valley being filled, every hill being made low, and the winding paths and rough ways being made smooth. I suspect too that few people in Toowoomba would take kindly to such an environmental transformation of our own Range, valleys, hills and landscape. No. On this second Sunday in Advent, as we centre on the theme of peace, we need to look deeper if we are to find fuller meaning in today’s Gospel reading. Perhaps we are helped by re-casting Isaiah’s words a little. To that end, I offer some words of the great El Salvadorean archbishop and martyr Oscar Romero: words which I believe catch up the spirit of the Advent prophets, that “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.” Let me return to that, and to John the Baptist in our Gospel, again, in a moment…

beyond separation - the light that heals

12/12/2014

by Jon Inkpin, for Advent 3, Year B

What does light mean to you? Let us reflect upon it. For light is at the symbolic heart of Advent and Christmas, as it is of our Gospel reading this morning. Indeed the Gospel writer John says of John the Baptiser, ‘he came as a witness to the light.’ So what is this light and what difference does it make to our lives?

Our Gospel reading today is not entirely helpful. For a number of reasons, our lectionary compilers missed out 11 verses between the first few verses (verses 6-8) and the following ones (19-28). Which is a bit of a shame. For verses 9-10 especially, are, for me, key to understanding both the light of John’s Gospel and John the Baptist’s role. For verses 9-10 say this: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world, He was in the world, and the world came into being through him: yet the world did not know him.’ In other words, John’s Gospel is saying that what we know as the light of Christ is that which lights up everyone, but we, as human beings, fail, so often, to grasp this. As a result we become separated, or feel ourselves separated, from true reality. This is the root of the brokenness and divisions of our world, of our personal relationships, and of our own personalities. If we are not connected, or do not know ourselves as connected, to eternal light, then how can we shine to our fullest.

This is at the heart of the ministry of healing in which we share in our eucharist today. As we pray, we do so to be reconnected and renewed in the light of Christ. For, in the light of Christ, all things are interconnected and re-illuminated. The ministry of healing, you see, is not a special separate act. It is an affirmation and demonstration of our deepest reality: that we all come into being through the light of Christ and that we all shine best when we allow that light to flow through us and between us...