Luke 4:14-21

"I do believe our girls are in crisis, but then I think our boys are still in crisis too; after all, the capitalist-patriarchy is harmful for everyone. It is based on a sex binary that involves a reductive, racist, disablist, and sexist heteronormative construction of humanity, which privileges heterosexual men, but only those who conform to the stereotypes of "man"." by Louise Pennington

I'm going to a book group tomorrow night where we will be discussing the book 'Preachers, Prophets and Heretics: Anglican Women's Ministry' Edited by Elaine Lindsay and Janet Scarfe. We will be focusing on chapter nine which is about the Movement for the ordination of women (MOW) and the Anglican Diocese of Sydney's opposition to the ordination of women. The chapter asserts that those who opposed the ordination of women claimed to be going by Scripture alone and they cautioned  those who sought to change the order of things against being influenced by 'Social mores'.  The words from Louise Pennington's Blog sum up for me what I regard as the arrogance and inability to look and see (as Jesus often urged) a new kingdom, a new way of doing things, one which superceded patriarchy and any divisions that elevated the male gender above the female gender or one ethnic group above another or richer people above poorer people. 'The Spirt of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.' Luke 4: 18,19  

Hmmn!!!! It seems like we can use Scripture to justify our power and position rather than let it challenge us about justce and freedom from poverty and oppression.

John 6:51-58

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life… whoever eats me will live because of me.

I was reading this passage in preparation for our weekly Holy Communion and prayer for healing service at Wollongong and I was shocked by the words. I hadn’t realised or noticed or I had forgotten that Jesus said these words in such an explicit way. In my mind I thought that they were the words of the church not of Jesus. Whoever eats me will live… eats me? I looked back over my notes on this lectionary reading from 2009 and I read how I had much the same reaction. This passage confronts. As a vegetarian it is not too my taste.

In the whole discourse about Jesus as the bread of life in John chapter six, it seems to me that the absorbing of Jesus’ teaching is more than feeding the mind. It is absorbing God’s life into our lives. It is so much about becoming one with Jesus. Elsewhere Jesus says, “As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, as we are one (John 17:21-23)” and ‘Abide in me as I abide in you’ (John 15:4). And here in John 6:56 Jesus says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”.

We human beings are so absorbed in each other, often devouring one another, and so absorbed in ways of relating that are learned from institutions based on rivalry and the survival of the strongest, the richest, the powerful at the expense of the poorest and weakest; that the words of Jesus seem nice but ineffectual in our reality they are insipid, utopian, idealistic. Yet the invitation to us is to instead be absorbed in all that distracts and consumes us in this life to be instead absorbed in God’s eternal life.

So Jesus shocks us with his cannibalistic talk but I think that somewhere between merely learning from him (or about him and the ways of God) and eating him, is a path. Discipleship is always more than understanding the message, it is following despite not understanding, it is relating without fully knowing someone.

When we eat food on earth it keeps us alive but one day we will all die. When we eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood we are eating eternal food, food that will keep us alive eternally. Can we be alive eternally and yet die physically? In eating this food we are becoming one with Jesus, one with God, we are becoming eternal. This is more than listening, more than learning, more than taking notes, more than remembering, more than knowing, more than mimicking, more than imitating, more than being like Jesus; it is becoming one with God, one with God.

That is too much to get one’s head around. How can we live forever and yet die? When we die we all fall into the eternal (the elements) or are absorbed by the eternal but what of when we are alive? Are we not part of the eternal anyway? Do we not live and move and have our being in God whether we believe it or not? While we live on this earth, during this time of temporal life, do we have the choice to live at the same time connected to the eternal yet using our own thoughts, our own ways rather than the ways of God, the ways of the kingdom of God?

John 6:35, 41-51

 ... and they shall all be taught by God (V45)

When Jesus says, ‘…and they shall all be taught by God’ seemingly Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah who says, ‘All your children will be taught by God’ (chapter 54:43). Did this mean that one day in the future the descendants of the exiles will be taught directly by God? Has that time now come in the person of Jesus? In quoting this could Jesus be saying that when you listen to me you are being taught by God? Could he be saying that he is more than a prophet, more than a priest, more than a rabbi, more than a teacher? If Jesus’ words are the words of God, how do we respond? How do we discern which words are authentically the original words of Jesus and which words were added when handed down orally to the gospel writers and how have they edited them? And when we read these words how are we interpreting them through our experiences and other life knowledges?

When I sit listening to eulogies at funerals and especially when I hear the children of the deceased person speaking about their father or mother, I wonder to myself what my children will say about me at my funeral. Will they state my achievements? Will they say they were loved? Will they recall what they learned from me?

Rene Girard talks about how we learn from each other by mimicking one another. We get out desires from watching one another, wanting what the other has, or wanting more than the other has. Lots of good things are learnt from each other too. Jesus seems to have more than learned behaviour and mimicking him in mind when he talks about the bread they are to eat as his flesh. These are part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus but becoming one with Christ, one with God, seems much, much more than becoming like Christ.

When it comes to church life? Will the church community have any children, a younger generation to hand the church on to? What are young people and children learning from us adults in the church? What are we teaching them? What are they absorbing into their minds, when and if they attend church? While we are reading them stories what are they reading into our lives? Are we passing on bible stories or have we become part of the story of eternal life? Are we talking about kingdom life or living the kingdom life? What do those experiences teach them about us, about God?

The recent National Church Life Survey in Australia says that the retention of 15-19 year olds by the church is one of the three key attendance measures in regards to growth or decline in the church. This is an irrelevant measure if there are no children in the church in the first place.

Walter Brueggemann in his book ‘Biblical perspectives on evangelism’ describes evangelism as ‘an activity of transformed consciousness that results in an altered perception of the world, neighbour, and self and an authorisation to live differently in that world’. For Brueggemann evangelism is more than telling people about Jesus and in particular when sharing the message with children. He says children need people who are crazy about them, showing unconditional grace and unconditional love. Faith is caught not taught. Faith is taught by passionate lives.

I think that the transformation Jesus is talking about is eternal, of which a transformed consciousness is part. Jesus challenges us to absorb his words, to digest them, to let them become all of who we are not just part of us. Then we will no longer just say what Jesus said, but we will be and do and become all that Jesus was and is and is to come.

Luke 24:36-48

You are witnesses of these things (v48) Witnesses of what? Witnesses to what?

The words of a poem by William Butler Yeats are powerfully channelled by Mike Scott in this song echoing words that speak of a world that witnesses the injustice and oppression of human beings.

If people don't give witness the stones will cry out (Luke 19:40)


Let the earth bear witness

John 12:20-33

THE TRUTH ABOUT VIOLENCE

I recently went to the Merrigong Theatre (Wollongong, New South Wales) to see the play ‘The Boys’. The relationships in the story, whether between men and women, between men and other men, or between parent and child are dominated by violence which continually plays itself out as a never ending cycle of violence. Can the cycle of violence be broken?

If we violently oppose violence we inevitably play its game and violence will always win. On the other hand if we do not oppose violence, if we keep quiet, if we do not speak up, if we do not protest, if we do not act, then we will be colluding with violence. We become accustomed to it. It becomes part of our lives, part of the community, part of how society and the systems within society operate. Violence has a way of suppressing the truth about itself, of hiding it away.  It dominates relationships, economics, politics, religion and even the church.

Jean-Michel Oughourlian says, ‘… the task of revealing the truth about violence requires a… person… who is not obliged to violence for anything and does not think in terms of violence – someone who is capable of talking back to violence while remaining entirely untouched by it (p.218)’. Rather than using violence or confronting violence Jesus exposes the truth about violence by taking the place of the victim and in doing so rises above the violence that had dominated the world.

Jesus says, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth (on the cross) will draw all people to myself.’ John 12:33

The period of Lent offers us a time to reflect upon the truth about violence and how Jesus offers a way to expose it.

My reflections on violence used in this article were mainly drawn from the book ‘Things hidden since the foundation of the world’ by Rene Girard, Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort.                     

John 3:14-21

And just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (v14,15).

Why would Jesus compare himself to a snake or to the act of Moses lifting up a snake in the wilderness? What is the story behind the lifting up of the snake?

The story comes from Numbers 21:4-9 - The people of Israel were grumbling about God and Moses for leading them out into the wilderness because there was no food or water and they were sick of the manna from heaven (so, the story goes).  Then God sent poisonous snakes to punish the people and many people died. When the fear hit them they came back to Moses and admitted that they had sinned by speaking against God and against Moses and begged Moses to pray to God for the snakes to be taken away. So Moses prayed and God told Moses to make a poisonous snake and put it on a pole and whenever someone would be bitten by a snake if they looked up at the snake on the pole they would live. So Moses made a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole and whenever someone who had been bitten by a snake looked up at the snake they did not die, they lived.

When I came across this story years ago, I thought it was amazing. It was another wondrous story of what God can do and how silly were those people not to trust God. Now when I read it I am appalled. It speaks of a God who treats people as totally dispensable in order to get God’s way. What a cruel way to control people, punishing them indiscriminately with a plague of poisonous snakes. God had rescued the people from Egypt by bringing terrible plagues on the Egyptians now this rescuer is controlling the people with the same bullying and fear invoking methods. I don’t believe in this kind of God anymore. If there is something of a God in this world then I see this God as totally different. For me God is love.

Why would Jesus compare himself being lifted up (on the cross) to the snake being lifted up on a pole? Does Jesus become a snake or is he merely referring to the act of being lifted up? Is Jesus a snake or made a snake? The whole picture is bizarre to me.

I can’t get the image of the snakes crawling about biting people out of my mind. As this is St. Patrick’s weekend I’m reminded that St. Patrick is said to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland. There are a number of very strange stories about snakes in the bible and which have led people to believe all sorts of things, like the snake handling Christians in the USA who base their rituals of handling poisonous snakes on Mark 16:18 which says ‘they shall pick up snakes with their hands’ and on the story of Saint Paul who was bitten by a snake but survived. Pete Rollins in his book ‘The Fidelity of Betrayal’ writes how in the third century there was a Gnostic group called the Ophites (Ophis meaning snake) who understood the snake in the garden of Eden to be a great hero who stood up to the tyrant God in an attempt to free humans.

Can the snake episode be viewed as prophetic of the future when anti-venom came to be made from the very venom that could kill a person. A drug is a poison that, taken in the right dosage, is also a remedy. One takes the anti-venom and lives. For us Christians Jesus is seen as innocent, sinless. From the view point of the religious leaders of his day Jesus would have been a snake, evil, tempting people away, leading them astray, his words were seen as poison yet for Jesus his very words were what would bring life, …whoever believes in him may have eternal life (V15).

Is the snake symbolic of grumbling against God? In the garden of Eden the snake quarrels with God or rather with Eve and questions God. In the wilderness the snake may represent those who question God and those who represent God. While they are complaining about God there is also truth in their claims, the antidote, the answer, the cure is also found in the cause, in the source. In Jesus’ time the leaders take one who is causing trouble and have him crucified, in the one who is causing trouble is also our salvation.

On the night of my initial conversion the minister ‘leading me to the Lord’ used John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.’ At that point in my life I took that to mean that by believing in Jesus I would go to heaven when I died. Now I think eternal life is something to be discovered and lived in this world. A few weeks ago I discovered that the original meaning of believe was belove. Whoever loves me may have eternal life. This implies more than head knowledge but relationship. Jesus is asking us to do more than believe that he died on a cross but to take up our cross and follow him in relationship, in solidarity, with him.

In John 3:19-21 Jesus speaks about the light that has come into the world and people preferring to love the darkness rather than the light. I’m reminded of the gruesomeness of how the Emperor Nero is said to have dipped Christians in oil and put them on a pole a set them alight to illuminate Rome at night. Jesus is lifted up like a light so that all who come under the light or into the light are not afraid to come openly and honestly and truthfully, they have nothing to hide in the light of Christ.

In John 2:18 the religious leaders ask Jesus, “What sign can you give us?” John is fascinated by signs. Jesus is raised up as a sign. The same word for raised as a standard also means sign or miracle. Jesus being raised up is the ultimate sign to which all other signs point. The light comes from the cross, the ultimate sign, the darkest moment, not from the resurrection.

Was this a sacrifice by human beings to God? Did God really require a human sacrifice? Would God really take a Human being and require him to be stuck on a pole, a cross, like the snake in the wilderness? Surely such ideas can only come from human beings who use violence to control and intimidate. I think it was a sacrifice but not in the way animals were sacrificed to God. Sacrifice literally means ‘to make sacred’. The violence of killing makes the victim holy. The irrational requirement of sacrifice is seen as absolving people from all responsibility. But I think that responsibility for our actions is the very sacrifice God wants us to make. The sacrifice Jesus made was made in his refusal to have anything to do with violence. Jesus is lifted up on the cross and placed for all to see. In being lifted up Jesus rises above the violence. Rene Girard (Things hidden since the foundation of the world) says that violence is the controlling agent in every form of mythic or cultural structure, and Christ is the only agent who is capable of escaping from these structures and freeing us from their dominance. Jesus is the only person who achieves the goal that God has set for all humanity, the only human who has nothing to do with violence and its works. Jesus alone, the son of man, the true human being, has fulfilled a calling that belongs to all human beings: to live in love, to love one another. Jesus comes to Jerusalem not as a sacrifice for sin but to break the cycle of violence. Jesus, by this action, breaks out from the cycle of murder and death. He gives his life in order not to kill. Jesus doesn’t mimic our actions like we mimic each other's actions and desires. Love God and your neighbour as yourself…you shall not covet, you shall not kill…

Again I finish with some quotes courtesy of Brian McLaren from the Book ‘Things hidden since the foundation of the world’ by Rene Girard

Rene Girard - ‘A non-violent deity can only signal his existence to mankind by having himself driven out by violence – by demonstrating that he is not able to establish himself in the Kingdom of Violence. (p219)

But this very demonstration is bound to remain ambiguous for a very long time, and it is not capable of achieving a decisive result, since it looks like total impotence to those who live under the regime of violence. That is why at first it can only have some effect under a guise, deceptive through the admixture of some sacrificial elements, through the surreptitious re-insertion of some violence into the conception of the divine. (p220)

Behaving in a truly divine manner, on an earth still in the clutches of violence, means not dominating humans, not overwhelming them with supernatural power, it means not terrifying and astonishing them in turn, through the sufferings and blessings one can confer; it means not creating difference between doubles and not taking part in their disputes.(p234)

John 2:13-22

(The best bits of this are the Rene Girard quotes at the end)

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem and headed to the Temple (as one would on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover). What does the story of Jesus making a whip and driving out all the cattle and sheep and people involved in selling them out of the Temple mean? In John’s Gospel Jesus goes to Jerusalem three times in his ministry whereas the other three Gospels only mention one visit and that visit was just before he was crucified. Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem? He got stuck into those who were in the Temple and into the religious leaders but there was no political attack on the injustice of the Romans, nothing directed at Pontius Pilate or towards Herod and yet he was put to death for being a possible threat. Jesus only attacks the religious practices and the injustice at the heart of it. Has he come to clean up religion? Are we in the church to be more concerned with cleaning up our own act and our unjust practices rather than telling politicians to clean up their act? Are we acting justly within the church? Is there discrimination? Is there exploitation? How are we treating people who are poorer? Do we show favouritism to the wealthier people? How is our religion relating to people in society who are poorer in society, in the world?

Some see his visit to the Temple and especially the words where he said, ‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up’ as Jesus replacing the sacrificial system and worship centred in the temple to a religious system focused on Christ as the supreme sacrifice and worship centred in Christ.  Was it coincidental to Jesus’ death that he was killed during the Passover? Our theology suggests that it wasn’t but that it was all God’s sacrificial plan or are we just reading that into it with hindsight?  The first Corinthians reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-25) seems to confirm that. Some see this as Jesus replacing Judaism with Christianity. There is a reference here to the destruction of the temple but then it is translated to mean the resurrection of Christ’s body. The Temple of his body is more important. Perhaps he was saying when you are exploiting people you are destroying the real temple, where God really resides, in the lives of people. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Was what was going on in the temple but outer evidence of the real religion and motives of people?  In order to clean up our religion do we need to clean up our own motives, our own souls, our own beings?

I was glad to see that even though Jesus himself physically drove the sheep and cattle out he told those who were selling the doves to take them out. They weren’t hurt.  Jesus liberates animals and birds from certain death. The accusation is that they have made his Father’s house into a marketplace. What I see here is passion - passion for something different. Exploitation was taking place in the very space that was deemed to be the holiest place in Judaism, the place where God resided. Here the good is being tainted. Those selling cattle, sheep and doves are profiting from the people who have come a long way, days and weeks away, to the Temple to offer sacrifice.

I am fascinated by the mention of the doves. A dove is an internationally known symbol for peace. Noah sent out a dove and it came back to him with an olive leaf -another symbol of peace (Genesis 8:11). As Jesus was being baptised, ‘just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descended like a dove on him’ (Mark 1:10). I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained in him (John 1:32). The metaphorical imagery surrounding Jesus is of a person of peace. It seems ironic to me that here Jesus throws out the symbols of peace from the Temple.

All of this seems like scratching the surface of what Jesus was doing on the way to the cross. A deeper insight for me is hinted in the words ‘But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people… for he knew himself what was in everyone’(v24, 25). For me this is our thirst for power and our justification of violence in order to get what we want –even peace. Some see Jesus’ anger and actions in the Temple as justification for the use of force and violence in order to bring about change.

I want to finish with some thoughts from Rene Girard for further reflection which call us to look forward towards the cross. For me the cross is not about a blood sacrifice as articulated by the doctrines of ‘Sacrificial atonement and substitution’. Nor is it simply believing in these things. The cross invites participation in a non-violent path. The cross is about revealing a path for all humans to follow if we hope to see real peace and real transformative change. In the cross Jesus reveals a mystery that I cannot but partially grasp but which excites me greatly. Jesus may have driven out the cattle, sheep and doves out of the Temple but I think he was only demonstrating that the religious leaders had already driven God out of the Temple and that they would drive Jesus out from the world too.

Rene Girard - ‘A non-violent deity can only signal his existence to mankind by having himself driven out by violence – by demonstrating that he is not able to establish himself in the Kingdom of Violence. (p219)

But this very demonstration is bound to remain ambiguous for a very long time, and it is not capable of achieving a decisive result, since it looks like total impotence to those who live under the regime of violence. That is why at first it can only have some effect under a guise, deceptive through the admixture of some sacrificial elements, through the surreptitious re-insertion of some violence into the conception of the divine. (p220)

Behaving in a truly divine manner, on an earth still in the clutches of violence, means not dominating humans, not overwhelming them with supernatural power, it means not terrifying and astonishing them in turn, through the sufferings and blessings one can confer; it means not creating difference between doubles and not taking part in their disputes.(p234)

(Quotes courtesy of Brian McLaren from the Book ‘Things hidden since the foundation of the world’ by Rene Girard)