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…
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‘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 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… In essence, Christmas is quite a queer thing - don’t you think? I don’t really mean its added oddities, like the 19th century, mainly English, extras, like the carols we sing, and the 20th century, mainly American, extras, like the exaltation of Santa. Those are aspects of Christmas down under which are part of our eclectic multiculturalism, even if they partly reflect our settler colonial culture and tend to work better in the northern hemisphere. For we have more than a little work still to do in listening to the Spirit in these lands now called Australia, including turning many of Christmas traditional symbols upside down and inside out. But that is less of a challenge when we truly celebrate the queerness of Christmas, especially in its original, biblically recorded, forms. For the stories of Christ’s birth - God made flesh - are, like queerness, full of extraordinary features, and very difficult to pin down. Indeed, the very idea that God is made flesh was, and is, a horror to many people. That means that matter matters, and, not least, our bodies matter – and every little bit of them – and caring for one another and our planet matters, because ‘matter matters’ and everything shares in this divine matter. Meanwhile, the idea that God is born in, and with, marginal and outcast bodies still seems so absurd and objectionable to many. For the biblical stories and symbols present God’s queer love: the ultimately irresistible power of Love which overturns all the neat boxes and boundaries of our oppressive world, and its typical ways of thinking. So, rather than trying to straighten out Christmas, as many people try to do every year, I believe that we are far better simply to enjoy its very queer ride: which involves keep adding to the oddities of this time of year, with fresh joy and creativity; and letting its divine queerness shine in us… Adjectives can be misleading and sometimes destructive. The former US President Donald Trump knows this particularly well. He deliberately chooses adjectives for his opponents. So we have had ‘LIttle’ Marco Rubio, ‘Lyin’ Ted Cruz, and, most notoriously, ‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton. This both essentialises an alleged feature of a person whom Trump attacks and also contributes to a particular narrative about what matters. Trump leads in this. Yet he is not alone. Historically the Church has also done this, not least with our Gospel reading today. For if I asked most people for an adjective for Thomas, they would probably say ‘Doubting’. Indeed, throughout my life, I have generally heard today’s Gospel interpreted in only two ways. On the one hand, this story is told, typically by conservatives, as an encouragement to have true belief, and not to doubt. On the other hand, often somewhat defensively, liberals and progressives have spent much energy talking about the value of doubt. Now these approaches are really only two sides of the same, often quite distorting, coin. Instead, with recent voices from the margins, not least trauma-responsive theologians, how about we try viewing today’s Gospel text from a quite different standpoint? Instead of the framework of intellectual faith and doubt, let us take seriously the important bodily aspects of this story. Instead of obsessing about creedal truth, let us be attentive to wounds. Instead of focusing on the possibilities of the after life, we might reflect on what it means to live, together, after trauma. These, and very different aspects of Thomas, deliver us from unhealthy faith and offer pathways to healing for us all… Today’s Gospel reading is a very rich passage, full of extraordinary metaphors, story and meaning. It includes, for example, that powerful central affirmation of Christian Faith that God so loved the world that they sent their Beloved One that all who believe may have eternal life. Note well the heart of this good news: that God loves the world so much that all who believe – not just the doctrinally righteous, or the ethically conservative, but all may have eternal life. For the God we celebrate today is the God of unlimited, inexhaustible, love. As our Gospel text says, Christ comes among us not for condemnation, but for love and salvation. Let us therefore affirm again that you, we, all of us, are loved. The Gospel, our Good News, invites us to claim this, and live it. All of which brings us, in this passage, to the person of Nicodemus, and to light, and darkness… There was once a monk who, whenever he passed a mirror, would look into it, wink, and say: ‘so, you old rogue, who are you today, and what are you up to?’ It is a lovely example of what, at its best, today’s queer theology asks. It is at the heart of what Mark Jordan was saying in our contemporary reading today (‘In Search of Queer Theology Lost’). In a striking manner, it also helps lead us into this week’s great Gospel story of the Transfiguration and its meaning(s) for us. For the monk, queer theology, and our Gospel, each challenge us to deeper, more refreshing, ways of living and understanding life and faith. Each disturbs settled identities. Each offers us fresh insight into God: into divine Love and Be-ing, which can never be confined to any one identity, time or place. As one of my favourite memes has it, ‘God is always transitioning’ – or at least, our understanding of God. As, and when, we grasp that, we also share in transfiguring Love… My wife Penny and I met at theological college. It was certainly not love at first sight. I was quite introverted, not trying to give away much of who I was, and Penny – well, Penny was very nervous and came across as a terrible caricature of an English middle-class blue stocking type of woman: think, those of you who can remember back that far, of Joyce Grenfell in the old St Trinian’s films. Our college was overwhelmingly full of men, with this being only the second year a handful of women had been admitted. So, when I met Penny in the first hour or so after arriving, I thought: ‘well, if this is how the women are here, I am simply not going to survive!’ I guess that was one factor in our initial relationship: sheer survival in an age and culture still trying to come to terms with the equality of women as a whole, never mind wider gender diversity. It was an earlier reminder that, if Penny and I were to minister, it would be as salt. We would be adding fresh flavour to both the Church and the wider world, seeking to provide healing or simply preservation for some of us, and, from time to time, perhaps irritating others into whose wounds we might be placed to aid healing. Maybe some will have views on how well, or otherwise, we have done that so far. Our hope and prayer is, in the words of Jesus in our Gospel reading today, that we, with others, will never lose out saltiness… Christmas-time is so often a confluence of loss and gain. So many of us find that good and tough memories are tangled up. My parents died a year ago this weekend, just as a new child was conceived in my immediate family: a child who will therefore be a new gift among us this Christmas. Yet it is hardly the first time that death and birthing have been entwined. Reflecting on that helps me better understand today’s Gospel and not least Mary’s extraordinary cry of justice, and of joy. As Alla Renee Bozarth brilliantly expresses it in her poem Annunciation, it is a cry of subversive angelic power. No wonder the three large ‘queer’ angels we will shortly welcome from Lismore’s LIghtnUp project are entitled Courage, Compassion, and Joy. For, as Lismore’s wonderful community artist Jyllie Jackson has identified, Courage, Compassion and Joy are core life-giving elements, not only to Queer Pride. They also, vitally, flow out of the Gospel and Magnificat of Mary, and, as Jyllie suggests to us, they are at the core of what the Way of Jesus, and our particular community, is and can be…
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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
March 2024
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