Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

welcome to the divinity reveal party

12/24/2024

past Christmas focus in St Luke, Toowoomba

Something is missing here. What do you think it is? I mean, I have been involved in these Christmas Eve gigs for a long time. I’m sure there is something I was typically aware of, on Christmas Eve, in the first years of my ministry, which we don’t see around us here…

the jester and the fisher king

11/24/2024

One of the great figures in British, not least Arthurian, mythology is the Fisher King. His origins are possibly in Welsh Celtic legend, derived from Bran the Blessed in the Mabinogion. Lively modern uses of the story include Terry Gilliam’s (1991) fantasy comedy drama, entitled The Fisher King, dealing with trauma and questing for love and healing in New York, and starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams – a portion of whose lines we heard earlier in our contemporary reading. For the myth continues to resonate with human struggles for personal and communal well-being, not least in the contexts of power and masculinity, and their effects on others. This is because of the mythic significance of the Fisher King, who is both the protector and physical embodiment of his realm, but who bears a wound that renders him impotent and his lands and people barren and blighted. Only the successful completion of a hero-knight’s task can bring the healing of his wounds and life-giving for all. At the end of the Church’s lectionary year, as we reflect upon God’s life-giving realm, and upon Christ at the centre, redeeming humanity, the Fisher King continues to open up perspectives for us and our own times. Let me therefore offer a few pointers to help tease out today’s Gospel passage and the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus related to the nature of power, kingship, and human flourishing. Let me begin however, with another story, about another king, and, especially, about a jester…

a tricky question

11/3/2024

Most of those asking Jesus questions so far in Mark’s gospel have been hostile – seeking in various ways to catch him out. However, as Mark records the encounter it would seem that this scribe is different. They listen and hear that Jesus answers well and receive his response gladly, in such a way that Jesus declares them as ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. The question is nevertheless a tricky one, and Jesus’s response is careful. He limits his answer to the Torah. He begins in the most orthodox way imaginable by invoking the Shema, “Hear, O Israel,” from Deuteronomy 6:4–5; first, an assertion of who God is and to whom God is and then, a command issued on the basis of that identity, to love God with all one’s being — God and no other. And then, Jesus adds from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is in effect nothing novel about any of this. For our part we have heard this so often that it there is a danger of it having become practically ho-hum – love God, love your neighbour; the Golden Rule, ‘Mrs do -as you -would- be -done -by’; nothing new to see here, go back to sleep?! But if that is what we hear, then I suspect we have not heard at all. For here we have not such much a series of commandments – love God, love your neighbour, love yourself – as what Buddhist teaching might call a koan – an unanswerable question designed to wake us up and which over a lifetime of reflection may yield a multitude of possible resolutions, none of them complete. No part of this teaching yields easy answers. What does it mean to love God with our whole being? Who is God for a start? What is my mind, my heart, my soul, to say nothing of my body? I don’t even know how my little finger works, so what makes me think I can begin to contemplate God? Only when I realise this and might be about to give up, might I be ready perhaps to begin...

Wisdom embodied

9/15/2024

‘but who do you say that I am?’ said Jesus. What a question! How do we respond? Let us explore this vital faith inquiry a little bit this morning, also asking what the figure of Wisdom in our reading from Proverbs might have to say to us. And let us further ask what the question of the identity and purpose of Christ might have to say in relation to our own identity and purpose in this Season of Creation and Faiths for Climate Justice Week of Action. For how we name and understand the divine makes a big difference to how we relate not only to God, but to ourselves, and to the wider world…

sharing in miracles: the feast of grace

7/28/2024

I want to speak today about three things: about magical cats, about scarcity thinking and the famine of grace, and about sharing in miracles. First however a question: do you know the rousing 19th century hymn ‘Alleluia! Sing to Jesus’? The second verse, referring to the Ascension of Christ, includes lines which have always struck me: ‘Alleluia! He is near us: faith believes, nor questions how.’ How do you respond to that? In my case, I have to confess that I have always tended to sing the last part not as ‘faith believes, nor questions how’ but as ‘faith believes and questions how.’ What do you think? In my view, how we respond helps determine whether we can overcome scarcity thinking and the famine of grace, and, instead, grow as magical cats, sharing in miracles…

the strange transforming truths of resurrection

3/31/2024

image: Brandy Martell, 400 block of 13th St near Frankland St, Oakland

‘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…

becoming the ecstatic community

2/25/2024

scene from Sense8

Ecstasy – what does that word mean to you? Ecstasy certainly has many associations! Some of these are deeply sacred, others far more profane. Each however has something in common: they are about standing out: standing out of the ordinary. For in its Greek origins, ecstasy means exactly that. ‘Ek’ means ‘out of’ and ‘stasis’ means ‘standing: hence ‘ek-statis’ – standing out, or away from, the norm. Ecstasy certainly therefore has important philosophical and theological aspects. Take, for example, the queer Cuban American theorist José Esteban Muñoz. I have been thinking about Muñoz because the theme of this year’s Sydney Mardi Gras is ‘Our Future’ and Muñoz gave a great deal of creative thought to imagining more loving futures. For Muñoz suggested that, in contrast to what he called ‘straight time’, at their/our best, queer people live and invite others into what he called ‘ecstatic time’. In other words, instead of living with the ‘normal’ expectations of time and this world, at their/our best, queer people seek to live and reshape this world differently. Instead of our pasts, our presents, and our futures being shaped by our birth families, and by ‘straight’ drives’ for power, children, inheritance, and wealth, at their/our best, queer people seek different kinds of happiness and societal arrangements. For, like other historically marginalised people, queer people have typically been ‘ecstatic’ people. We/they have stood outside of ordinary life and time: which is very much where our two main figures in our biblical story tonight come in – Naomi and Ruth – as striking models of the ‘ecstatic community’ into which God calls us…

on not being kaka - regarding demons and eagles' wings

2/4/2024

on wings of an eagle (image by David Clode on Unsplash)

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?...

beginning beloved

1/7/2024

image by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

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’...

which gifts for 2024?

12/31/2023

image by Ehteshamul Haque Adit on Unsplash

Do you know the allegorical image known as 'The Vinegar Tasters'? It is related to Eastern philosophies and may be helpful to reflect upon as we end one calendar year and begin another, particularly as today’s Gospel reading offers us symbols brought to the Christ child from the East. For which gifts are we to offer at this time? What pathways are we seeking to tread into the future?...