Ted Witham

Impossible Things for Breakfast

You never seem to come to an end to this reading from St John’s Gospel.

When I was about nine years old, I discovered a book on my grandparents’ shelves called The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas… or was it A.J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom? The book explained the miracle of the feeding by suggesting that the little boy sharing his lunch shamed all the people into sharing the picnics they had brought with them.

And maybe that’s part of what John is saying to us: that when we recognise that people are hungry, we should share the little we have with our friends and neighbours and that will encourage a spirit of sharing in the community, and there will be enough to go around and more.

I think I knew even at nine that this explanation was a brush-off. Obviously sharing is a good thing, far better than the alternative, but a little disappointing if that was all Jesus was teaching. All the sharing that has happened since then has not made a dent in world hunger, and in any case, the people in the story were hungry, not for food, but for teaching and for a leader, a Messiah.

This is a story about two shocking events: a man who can feed 5,000 with virtually nothing, and who can walk on water. The story is firstly about who Jesus is, not about our puny efforts to feed the world.

I don’t know what to make of the two events. I don’t do miracles. But that in fact is the point. John is introducing a person who does things that cannot be done; a person who doesn’t fit the normal world we live in. We can’t go back in a time-machine and see exactly what happened, but we can be sure that Jesus was so far out of the ordinary that John shocks us into a new recognition: Jesus is no ordinary man. I may not do miracles; but I have spent my life trying to come to terms with who this Jesus is.

On the basis of John’s evidence, I can’t come to an honest conclusion. Jesus continues to escape my understanding. But if he feeds human beings with bread, and, not only with fish and bread, but with symbolic bread, himself, his presence, then, like the crowds, I want to keep following him. If his presence in stormy seas makes the journey more bearable, then, like the disciples, I’m glad to invite him aboard.

The crowds couldn’t pin Jesus down. They saw the signs he had been doing on the sick. These signs pointed to something important, something good, but exactly what Jesus was doing when you closely examined the signs was a bit harder to grasp. Not universal health-care; not every human being without health problems, but a sign that God’s kingdom was breaking in in a new way. While it may seem that evil and disease have the upper hand, the signs Jesus were doing on the sick were pointing to a different reality, and therefore worth following up, worth finding out more.

Maybe he was the Messiah who had come to throw off the Roman yoke. Jesus organised the crowd into men and women. In Mark’s version, they were in companies of 100 and 50, just like an army.

It’s a three-day forced march from Galilee to Jerusalem. There were, presumably, Roman spies in such a large crowd. The crowd acclaimed Jesus as the Prophet, and calculated that they could get to Jerusalem before spies could get to Roman headquarters at Caesarea and alert the Roman legion there, who would take many hours to prepare and then two days to march from Caesarea to Jerusalem.

A popular uprising could just work on that timetable. On the other hand, an uprising like that could be violently put down too. As soon as Jesus saw the way the crowd was thinking, he disappeared. He was not a political Messiah.

If not a political Messiah, then something else. The disciples stuck around to find out.

They were intrigued by Jesus’ handling of the fragments. Twelve baskets full. And of course John, as a master story-teller, is well aware of the symbolism. By the time John writes his Gospel, the Temple has been destroyed, the Jewish nation has been smashed, and only fragments are scattered throughout the Middle East. The twelve new tribes, the twelve fragments, so carefully and lovingly picked up by Jesus, are the new Israel, the followers of Jesus, the Church.

So is Jesus the new Moses? Like Moses he distributes bread to people in the wilderness. Like Moses he teaches on a mountain. As with Moses, the Passover is at hand. Jesus is to lead his people out of slavery to a new promised land. However, this cannot be a geographical Exodus. So what will this new Moses mean? What will his Exodus look like?

John doesn’t tell us that Jesus is God. He doesn’t make the equivalence. But he does tease us, and shock us, into asking the question, well, if not, what? If not God, what is Jesus? If not a political Messiah, what sort of Messiah? If not a new Moses, what sort of Moses? If not only a healer, then what sort of healer?

As I said earlier, I don’t have an answer. Of course, you can’t turn five barley loaves and two fish into bread for five thousand with twelve baskets left over. Of course, you can’t walk on water. But the response of the crowds, and the response of the disciples tells me that Jesus did things that cannot be done, and just like them, I want to know more.

In nearly 50 years of trying to find out who Jesus is, I have found that he feeds me. I gain an enormous amount spiritually and personally from exploring the scriptures and from sharing the Eucharist with you, my brothers and sisters. I have found that when life is hard, frightening, worrying, then in the midst of that, Jesus is there, and suddenly, I am through the storm.

And who Jesus is keeps just out of reach. I need to keep on following someone so intriguing whose only attitude to me is one of enormous love and goodwill.

Beloved Daughter, Beloved Son

Mark 5:21-43 – Gospel for Sunday 28 June 2015 (Pentecost 5)

Preached at St George’s, Dunsborough

These stories are partly about two women’s ability to have children. The girl is twelve years old. On her next birthday she would have been old enough to marry and bring a baby into the world. As modern Western people we recoil from this whole business of treating a girl as a commodity to be sold. Bride price, dowry, physical attributes, and then the sheer hard work of bearing babies and keeping house – and keeping to the house – for the rest of their lives. To us, the customs of those times were as repugnant as the Taliban’s are now.

But her age is mentioned for that reason. Jesus restores her to her life prospects as wife and mother.

The older woman has had a bleed for 18 years. It doesn’t specify what sort of bleed, and that leads most scholars to suggest that it was related to her womb, not a stomach ulcer. With the medical care of those days, there is no way she could have children. There is no way she could be a wife under the Jewish Holiness code. Her life as a wife and mother was on hold at the least, probably finished, dead.

Jesus restores both women to life; and that includes to restore the possibility of their cultural role as wives and mothers. Whatever we think would have been best for them, being wife and mother was what they would have known and wanted, and certainly better than being dead!

But as Mark tells us the story, he insists on two words which take the restoring of these women far beyond those cultural expectations. The two words:

life
and
daughter

The woman has spent everything she had on cures. ‘Everything she had’: the Greek work is ‘bios’ which we know in English words like ‘biology’. She had spent her whole ‘bios’, her whole ‘life’, her whole ‘living’ on doctors and cures. At one level, it just means, she had spent all she had chasing a cure. But if you’ve ever had a complex medical problem, you know it’s not just the monetary cost. We are so blessed in Australia with Medicare, cost is not usually the problem. But we can find ourselves with so many appointments and treatments, visits to the pharmacist and physio as well as to the GP and specialists, not to mention waiting on the phone to make those appointment, that our whole life starts to revolve around our medical issues. Our life is in danger of becoming our medical impairments. There are times when we could easily spend our whole life on chasing a cure. It’s not good. That’s where this woman was.

Jesus healed her. Jesus gave her her life back.

Jairus’s daughter was dead. The professional mourners were already in place, and laughing at Jesus for thinking he could achieve anything. Her life was gone. There was nothing left but her pious burial. Jesus raised her from the dead. He gave her her life back.

Of course, both of these resuscitations are prefiguring the resurrection. And they are also mirrors to us. If we reach out to Jesus, just touch the hem of his robe, just taste his power in the Eucharist, then he may give us our life back. That’s what Jesus wants to do. There is no person, no thing, so far from God, who cannot be restored, who cannot receive their life back.

What that will mean will vary from person to person, just as it was different for the woman with the bleed and Jairus’s daughter, so it will be for you. But Mark is telling us the Good News that Jesus considers every person – even women in his society – should be able to live her life to the full, and that she can do that if she allows Jesus to restore life to her. Or him.

That’s more than the cultural script of being a wife and mother. That’s a gift of life that is wide open to all good possibilities.

The second word that Mark uses is ‘daughter’. Each of the women healed in these stories is called a daughter, because each is unconditionally loved. Jesus calls the woman he heals by the name of ‘Daughter’: ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’ (Mark 5:34). And then immediately follows the rest of the other story. ‘While he was still speaking there came from the house some who said, “Your daughter is dead”.” (5:35) Whose daughter? It is ambiguous, because she is both Jairus’s much loved ‘little daughter’, and a daughter to Jesus too.

I am blessed to have a wonderful daughter. I remember the day in 1983 when she was born. I remember a lot more of her childhood than she might like me to. I am so proud of her now as a young mother of three, working at an interesting job part-time. She is a lovely and accomplished young woman. Everyone knows that. But only Rae and I can call her ‘Daughter’. We have the privilege of loving her especially. The love that I have for Clare, and the love that I know is returned, is a real joy.

Jesus emphasises with the women in these stories that the Father loves each daughter just like, and even more, than a human father loves his daughter. Daughters, you are loved, you are loved by God, with a love that gives you your life and goes on giving you your life back. Sons, you are loved, you are loved, too, by the Father, but sometimes, even in this 21^st Century after Jesus, the daughters need to be told more intensely, more Intentionally, that God’s love is for them in this way of deep joy.

But for all of us, daughters and sons, can we in reality imagine what Jesus is offering to us?

the fulfilment of our lives up to our expectations so that we can do what God wants us to do in this world, as the two women were given the opportunity to be wives and mothers;

secondly, to get our lives back richer than we can imagine and better than we can imagine: this is Christ’s gift to us. As we open ourselves to Christ, so we are being transformed into new people, leaving the old one behind, becoming the person God intended us to be from the beginning, and discovering more and more joy in that. This is why for me being fed with the bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood is so important, as it feeds us on that journey of transformation.

and thirdly, knowing ourselves deeply loved as God’s children. God has loved us from the beginning and will love us eternally.

This is good news. It takes time to seep into us. It can be hard to hear this good news. God took human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth to show us what God is like. And this is what God is like. This is what God delights in doing for people.

Sin is when we refuse to let this love, the love of Christ penetrate more and more deeply into our hearts and lives, when we refuse to connect to Christ. Christ for his part continues to offer us our lives back, renewed and better than before.

Out of our poverty, we become rich, as Paul said in this morning’s epistle (2 Cor. 8:9) – and what wealth it is. What Good News it is! And what good news we become for others as this transformation takes place.

If you think I am being too idealistic, I plead with you to go back to the reading and see again what the gift is that Jesus gives to the woman and to Jairus’ daughter, and then to resolve to go about your lives knowing that it is true. God loves you through and through for eternity. Let him change you into his glory bit by bit.

****

A Water-Hole Gushing Up To Eternal Life

I’m a proud Noongar woman. I belong to this country. And I know how to open the gnamma hole to get water. I know what to sing to the spirits. I shout loudly to tell them that I’m coming. “Kaya! Ngany nidja!” I call, “Hello! I am here! Woolah! Ngany nidja!” I’m about to throw sand down the gnamma hole to purify the water, when this wadulah man appears.

He’s a wadulah and he’s a man. He thinks he knows everything and he thinks he owns our country.

But he waits, back where I called the spirits, and says to me, respectful-like: ‘Can you get me some water, Aunty?’

I’m a bit surprised. I’ve never heard a wadulah ask before. For anything. If they know where the gnamma hole is they rip the top off and help themselves. I’m a bit suspicious too. ‘What wadulah asks a Noongar woman to get him a drink?’ I ask.

‘If you knew who was asking you,’ he says, ‘you would ask him for living water.’

‘Where would you get living water?’ I ask him, ‘You got no gnamma hole and you got no spirits here. Our ancestors told us how the gnamma hole was made, and how the Wagul passed through the country. You’re not greater than the ancestors, are you?’

He said, ‘When you drink your water you get thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give will never get thirsty again. The water I give will be a water-hole gushing up to eternal life.’

I didn’t know whether to laugh or run away from this wadulah. ‘You’d better give me some of your water,’ I says, ‘so I don’t have to come out to the gnamma hole to get it no more.’

So he said to me, ‘Go and get your husband and come back here.’

‘Ain’t got no husband.’

He says, ‘Too right you’ve got no husband. You’ve had five husbands. But the man you’re living with now is not your Law husband.’

I swallowed. ‘Uncle, you must be a prophet. Our ancestors called on the spirits on this mountain and you wadulahs say people should worship in church.’

He replied, ‘Believe me, Aunty, time is coming when you will worship the Father not on this hill nor in church. You worship spirits you do not know. We worship God because he brings salvation. But time is coming when true worshippers will worship the Father in a real true spirit. The Father is looking out for people to be his true worshippers. God is spirit.’

I says, ‘The Mission told us Christ will come and when he comes, he will tell us everything.’ Then he turns to me and puts it to me: ‘I, this one talking to you, I am he. ‘

Just then, his followers came back. They looked shocked to see him talking to me, but they didn’t say to me, ‘What are you after?’ or to him ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ I dropped my water-can and ran down into the camp shouting to everyone, ‘I’ve met someone who’s told me everything I’ve ever done. Could he be Christ? Whoever he is, he’s made me proud of being me!’

Laudato Si’

My hymn

re-posted from https://franciscanhymns.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hymn-of-saint-francis/

to honour Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’

Praise to Most High for sun so warm,
for moon and stars so bright;
praise to Most High for all that form,
the universe of light!

Praise to Most High for sparkling dawn,
for sunset splashed with gold;
praise to Most High for rich red soils,
and surf majestic rolled.

Praise to Most High for rain and wind,
for making new things grow;
praise to Most High for Mother Earth,
and safe through death to go.

Praise to Most High for Jesus Christ,
His present power to heal;
praise to Most High that he was raised
and still his love falls real.

Praise to Most High for those we love,
and who are kind to us;
the gift of love we least deserve
is your sure sign to us.

Praise to Most High who shows the way:
love, joy, humility;
praise to Most High himself the gift,
our kindly Trinity.

8686 Tune “Nativity” TIS 204

St Francis praises God outside the Roman Catholic church in Collie, W.A.

Education, Education, Education!

First published on the Starts at Sixty website, June 12, 2015

Kids join Islamic State (ISIS) because they are hungry for a passion. In the grey world created for them by their adults, they want something exciting to believe in, some dramatic good they can achieve, something great they can create, a cause to give their whole life to. Of course they do. They are adolescents.

And they are also ignorant.

Teenagers these days know so many things, and they can google what they don’t know, but we have failed them dismally in teaching them about religion and about the religions expressed in cultures around the world. For various reasons, we have been afraid to have any religion taught in schools, and yet this is the very learning area that would prevent the radicalisation of young people.

I mean, of course, religion taught well, and taught by competent teachers. This is so urgent as to be the fourth ‘R’ of the 21^st Century: young people need to know about religion alongside reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.

They need to know why billions have embraced religion and found that religion provides wisdom, comfort and direction for their lives. They need to know what motivated Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and what produced the luscious religious art of the Renaissance. In a word, they need to know something of the passion, commitment and engagement in life that religion brings to many people.

They also need to know why millions reject religion. Religion is not just passion. It’s not just a response of the heart. It requires thought and discernment as well. Agnostics have reasons for questioning, and atheists have reasons for believing that religions have got it wrong, and students need to grapple with those reasons and see if they too are convinced.

It’s our fault that our young people don’t know about religion, don’t know its complexities, don’t know how rule of law, democracy, and science all came about through the work of devout Jews, Christians and Muslims, and how the modern world could not have come into existence without religion.

Eid – a time of joy and peace for families after the fasting of Ramadan

They have not been introduced to the proposition that morality, morality like reverence for life, arises from the pages of the scriptures of the great religions.

It’s our fault as a community. Rectifying that error will not be easy. When he was Minister for Education forty years ago, Kim Beazley Senior proposed a National Curriculum with nine Learning Areas, one of which was Religion. He foresaw that Religion needs firstly to be taken seriously as a curriculum area.

Countries such as Denmark that seem to be doing better in embracing minorities, including Muslims, are currently strengthening their ‘identity-carrying subjects’ such as history and Christian studies. Australia will get a similar result through serious teaching about all religions.

Politicians, principals and academics should publicly champion the teaching of Religion Studies as a national priority.

The Year 11 and 12 courses that now exist like ‘Religion and Life’ in WA need boosting into greater visibility in order to create a bigger demand.

We need to identify competent teachers to mentor other teachers who, though highly trained in other areas, feel inadequate to teach religion. There are such master teachers, particularly in church schools and in professional associations like the Australian Association for Religious Education.

Universities should review teacher training programs to make sure that they prepare teachers thoroughly to teach Religion. Sadly, the Universities I know have dropped successful courses because administrators have been indifferent. That should change!

The aim should be to make the teaching and learning of Religion as engaging and fascinating as religion – and the debates about it – are.

Schools need to make sure that there is sensible space in the time-table for Religion. Students cannot take seriously a subject that is allowed only 45 minutes a week. Imagine if Science or Maths had only one period in a week! ISIS has had runaway success in meeting its educational aims. As a community we can do better than ISIS.

In other words, our community needs a plan to end the ignorance by creating and nurturing a new, a ninth, Learning Area. Every student who sees through the extremism of ISIS because she learns that Islam is something different altogether is a treasure saved for Australia.

Ted Witham is Immediate Past President of the Australian Association for Religious Education and a retired Religious Educator.

Reptiles and Anniversaries

First published on the Starts at Sixty website, 11 June 2015.

Reptiles, Waterholes, Ranges

Why would anyone travel to Broome in December? Well, in December 2005, my wife Rae and I had an excuse. We decided we would use Frequent Flyer points to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our marriage with a few days in the far north of Western Australia. We flew into Broome for three days. On the first day it was 35 degrees and the humidity around 90 percent. Without a car, every journey to find a meal or to walk to Cable Beach was an unpleasant sweaty exertion.
That evening, we booked a day trip out of Broome along Gibb River Road. We figured that even if we saw little in the way of scenery, we would have two meals provided in air-conditioned comfort.
Comfort, however, is not the first word that describes the all-terrain military carrier vehicle, the Hummer, which bumped into our apartment carpark at 6 a.m. Even on hard tarmac, the Hummer rides like an ill-tempered camel. We bumped along at 120-130 km/h inland to Derby, arriving at about 10 a.m., as the temperature steadily rose. At a certain point, the heat overwhelmed the air-conditioning, and it gave out, leaving us to be conditioned only by the hot easterly air gusting through open windows.
As the temperature increased, however, the interest of the journey also rose. On a long straight stretch of road, the driver suddenly stopped the bus, jumped down and ran flat out. He returned two minutes later with a frill-necked lizard in his bleeding, bitten hands: the angry, frightened frill-necked lizard gave a wonderful display of his neck, large and red with emotion.
The Hummer bounced along the gravel corrugations of the famed Gibb River Road. On our left, the sheer jagged cliffs of the Napier Range rose abruptly where Bunuma resistance hero Jandamarra had hidden out in the 1880s and 90s.
Well after 1 p.m. we struggled through a darkened gorge, and swam in the deliciously cool water-hole at the far end of Tunnel Creek. Refreshed, and relieved not to meet a snake in the water with us, we enjoyed sandwiches and drinks from the car fridge, and turned back for Broome.
A red cloud of dust haunted the Hummer as the sun started to sink in the west. We stopped at Windjana Gorge, where a skittish posse of freshwater crocs played chasey with each other in the upper reaches of the sandy beach. ‘Don’t get between them and the water,’ advised our guide. It seemed to us tourists that wherever we stood we were between the metre-long reptiles and the water. However beautiful the place, we elected not to stay too long.
Darkness fell about 8 p.m. Back on the bitumen we stopped for a barbecue dinner, and with the Hummer’s lights turned off, visibility was nil. Rae and I walked off hand in hand into the darkness for the weird experience of seeing showy diamond stars piercing the ebony canopy but not being able to see our own hands or the tarmac beneath our feet.
The Hummer trundled into Broome after midnight. The driver said he would be up at 5 a.m. to re-fuel and repeat the experience with a new group of tourists. We could sleep in.
Next morning, however, another surprise blew into our wedding anniversary. The humidity woke us at about 9 o’clock. It was almost unbearable, even in air-conditioning. ‘The Build-up’, the locals call this time of year, and it makes people do strange things. The weather too.
The wind picked up, first from the north, then, it seemed, from every direction. Round and round like a whirlpool. A cyclone, which the day before had been over Darwin, was now threatening Broome. We prepared to leave for Perth.
Qantaslink staff hurried us through the airport and on to the plane. It was the quickest loading and take-off I have experienced. Forget security. As we circled over the town, we saw trees bending in half to the wind and felt the plane struggling to bank smoothly.
The speaker hissed. ‘We will be the last flight out of Broome until the cyclone has passed,’ announced the pilot. Rae and I sat back in our seats and smiled at each other. ‘I enjoyed our wedding anniversary,’ I said to my wife, ‘but now I need a rest in a cool quiet place.’ ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘without reptiles.’

Re-Design my Pain

Todd Sampson reminded me on ABC TV last night that I can Re-design my Brain when it comes to my chronic pain. The three principles that I should meditate on for ten minutes a day are:

This pain will pass,
The pain can’t hurt me, and
This pain won’t stop my body doing all (or most) of what I want.

The first principle is for those times when the pain flares up and is an invitation to live in the present. It is a reminder that in the future, I won’t have this pain. The future may be after I have slept tonight. The future may be after I have pulled the emergency cord and taken a pain holiday by consuming what my GP calls any “uh-zepam” drug. The future may be the next general anaesthetic I will some day have. The future may be after my death. It doesn’t matter how rare the future or how far out into the future, just the fact that there is a future where the pain changes for the better.

This pain will pass. Hang on to that.

This pain can’t hurt me. If I break my arm and then lift a heavy suitcase, that will hurt me. But my constant companions, the pains in my back and feet are not the result of new tissue damage or broken bones. I don’t have to limp because of my sciatic legs. The pain is just there, and movement will not make anything worse. In fact, movement may make things better.

Better to move than seize up. This pain can’t hurt me.

My body, considering all the things that are wrong with it, works very well. I can feel the wind on my face and see the waves down at the beach. I can hear the magpies sing their joyful carols. I can embrace those I love, and set my grandchildren on my knee and take them riding in my wheelchair. I walk three kilometres five mornings a week. I enjoy three meals a day. I can sit and type and engage my brain and fingers setting devious crosswords and writing stories.

Yes, I do have to work around the limitations of mobility that pain imposes on me. But my body can do most of the things I want to do.

Whenever I begin to be distressed by my pain, I can remind myself of these three statements of fact:

This pain will pass,
The pain can’t hurt me, and
This pain won’t stop my body doing what I want.

These devious affirmations will change my brain’s perception of pain, and I will carry on.

Holy Spirit, Helper

Pentecost 2015 St George’s Dunsborough

Sermon

Gospel: John 15:26-26, 16:4b-16

When the Lord God created the first human being, he was incomplete. It was not good for the man to be alone, God said. He needed, so Genesis tells us, a ‘helpmeet’, a companion who would be by his side to take his side. The word for ‘helper’ in Hebrew is a beautiful word, ‘ezer’.

God brought the animals to the man to see what he would call them. And the man gave the animals their names. But they were not the helpmeet the man was looking for. Maybe he was their helpmeet, their champion, their companion who could speak for them and make sure their world is a place in which they can thrive. But the animals were not a helpmeet for him.

But God put the man into a deep sleep (the first recorded instance of anaesthetics), and took from the man’s side a rib, and perhaps a grain of salt. We don’t have to take these foundation myths as literal history. They are stories that tell us the truth about ourselves. That’s why they are so important.

From the rib, God created the first woman, and brought her to the man. She was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. The same but different. Equal but not the same. She was the ‘ezer’, the helpmeet the man had been looking for; someone who could be a companion and a champion, speaking up for him when he could not. That was the ideal, anyway. And the reason she could be a helpmeet when the animals could not, was that not only could she be a helpmeet for the man, he could be a helpmeet for her. There was mutuality in the relationship. “The mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other”, as the old Prayer Book describes marriage.

Those of us who are blessed with marriage know something of what it means to have an ‘ezer’, a companion and a champion, someone who stands beside us and stands up for us. I thank God every day for the ‘helpmeet’ God has given me. And I know I am more human, a more complete human, because of Rae, because I am married. We men can be a little sub-human without our helpmeets.

And Genesis is describing not only marriage but other close friendships and partnerships. We may have an ‘ezer’ in an adult child, or in a friend we’ve had since childhood, or in someone we’ve only met recently.

People who study friendship say most of us have two or three, and at the most four or five people in our lives, who are close companions and who believe in us no matter what, and who we can speak up for too when necessary. I wonder too, whether an individual dog or horse might be an ezer for a human being. Is there a possibility of mutuality of care between species? Genesis doesn’t seem to think so, but seeing a recent program on ABC TV about dogs helping returned soldiers with PTSD made me wonder again.

The gift of a ‘helpmeet’ is a wonderful provision from God. But in the Old Testament God often describes himself as our ‘ezer’. Think of Psalm 46. ‘God is our help and strength, a very present help in trouble.’ – ‘ezer’. God promises to stand beside us and to stand up for us. He is our companion and our champion. God believes in us, and possibly the most difficult step of faith is to realise the depth to which God believes in you. God knows that you are not perfect, but he does not believe that you are therefore rubbish, he believes that you are of infinite value and worth. God will go to extraordinary lengths for you. Listen to what God says:

I have called you back from the ends of the earth, saying, ‘You are my servant.’ For I have chosen you and will not throw you away. – Isaiah 41:9

God championing us in this way makes us more human, more complete. God standing beside us and standing up for us makes us more who we are; it gives us the confidence and strength to grow into our true selves. So it makes sense to allow God to be our ‘ezer’, to stand by us in this fruitful way.

So what of Pentecost?

‘When the Helper comes,’ says Jesus, ‘the Spirit of truth, he will bear witness about me.’ (John 15:26). The Helper, the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our ‘ezer’, and this Helper comes to abide with us, to be the ongoing companion and champion for us. Jesus reveals the name of the Helper, our ‘ezer’, it is the Spirit of Jesus, his ongoing presence with us.

And he also reveals something else: Jesus invites us into a mutuality with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our ‘ezer’, our Helper, and we rejoice in that wonderful presence in our lives, and he is also inviting us to be his ‘ezer’. Jesus is asking us to be his companion and his champion, to stand beside him and to stand by him in love; to speak up for him when appropriate, to make sure the world is a place where he can thrive.

Being a Christian is mutual; it is for the ‘mutual society, help and comfort’ that Christ and we have one for the other. And the more we allow the love of the Spirit, the Helper, to permeate our lives, the more human we become, the more truly human we become.

May I suggest a prayer – just a one-off, or to do regularly? You can do this by the beach, under the stars, or in the quiet of your own home, or right now as you sit in the pew. Take some moments to quiet your breath. Maybe do some controlled breathing, counting up to 30 or 40 slow breaths. Then imagine opening your whole self outwards. If you have room, you may spread your arms outwards. Then imagine the warm love of God surrounding you, and pouring into you from every side, filling you, leaving no room for anything else. This warmth is the fire of the Spirit of God. Hold onto the warmth and carry this feeling with you through the day.

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We dare to think that because we also agree to be Christ’s Helper, our love for Him will make him, in some mysterious way, more Christlike. Jesus continues the work that he began on the Cross through us. The Father has tasked him with bringing the world back to him, and Christ works, not by forcing his way through the evil that resists him, but by the gentle power of love, dripping like water on stone.

What we do can reduce that resistance, can open the paths of love, can help heal the pain of lovelessness, can sometimes even remove the stones that block the path of Christ. Look for acts of kindness, however small, opportunities to bring peace, and practise the way of Christ. There’s a saying attributed to St Francis of Assisi. ‘Preach the Gospel always, if necessary, use words.’

So it is extraordinary first to take in that God loves us, believes in us without reservation, and that we can allow ourselves to bear the fruits of peace, love, joy, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) that appear in our lives just from being close to the Spirit. It is even more extraordinary to know that we are invited, as Christ’s companions, to share in his work, so that with the Spirit, he is more able to bring this world to the loving end that the Father has decreed.

Desert Stockman

SERMON – ST GEORGE’S DUNSBOROUGH

EASTER V (April 26) 2015

John 10:11-18

It’s tough being in the desert. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on horseback, motor-bike or quad-bike. It’s particularly tough if you have to bring in a big mob. Or a mob that’s due to calve or lamb. You have to make sure you and the stock have water and feed – just enough, and a bit more. You have to keep the animals together. You have to be able to follow the faint tracks to the waterholes, because they are the life-line. And if you get to the windmill and it’s been fouled by foxes, or if the windmill has been knocked over by a mob of feral camels, you have to be able to fix the windmill, and get the water flowing again.

It takes all this to be a good stockman. You have to be tough, and capable, and resilient. You have to care about the stock, but not be a wimp. You couldn’t do the job if you didn’t care, if you weren’t committed 120% to the animals.

You know where this is heading. The word in Latin for a stockman is ‘pastor’. A good pastor, a good shepherd, is caring, tough, intelligent and committed. The desert of Judea is similar to the outback deserts of Australia. The job of stockman essentially is like the Palestinian shepherd.

‘I am the good shepherd,’ says Jesus. He made some of his fellow-Jews angry by saying ‘I am’: it sounds simple, but ‘I am’ is very close to the name for God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3: ‘I am who I am.’ He was making a claim to be God; and he was making a claim that God was at least Father and Son. Both were blasphemous claims, both were dangerous. Maybe he could be stoned to death. Better to find another excuse to have him put to death.

‘I am God, and God is a good stockman.’ That seems to be what Jesus is claiming. God cares for his mob, God is tough, resilient, capable and 120% committed to the mob. The good stockman, Jesus says, gives his life for the mob. This weekend we are surrounded by reminders of men who gave their lives for their country. But they didn’t. They gave their deaths for the country. And we express gratitude for the freedom their sacrifice has bought us. But the good stockman gives his life. He is prepared to die for his flock, but his main attribute is that all his life, for eternity, is given in the service of his people and of all creation. That’s commitment.

It is also an invitation for us in the Church to model ourselves after Jesus. Those of us who are designated pastors are called to be good stockmen and women.

The environment is tough, so no-one would set themselves up as a pastor in the Church unless they were called. And then God graces them to be tough, resilient, capable and 120% committed to the mob. Pastors follow the tracks as they dig into Scripture and lead people to nourishment in the Spirit. In our tradition they empower with Word and Sacrament, with preaching and teaching, and Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. The tracks in the desert are Word, and the waterholes are Sacrament.

The environment is tough, and most pastors in their lives have a time when those tough conditions get to them and they get hurt, or burnt out, or otherwise needing time out. When I was first ordained, priests who needed to take time off were not treated very well, and were expected back on the job as soon as possible. You know the routine: the stiff upper lip, not talk about it to anyone, just get on with it. These people often became less human and less able to pastor their people.

I was extremely lucky that after 6 months of sick leave from a parish, a friend, who was Rector of another parish, offered me a job as Associate Priest, on condition that I took my time, as much time as I needed, to get better. That generosity was great for me, and also ended up suiting the parish well, as I was able to plug some gaps over the next five years.

These days, you would hope that we can be absolutely generous with pastors, giving them as much space, time and eventually support as they need to heal so they become better human beings because of their experience, and therefore better pastors.

Not only are there individuals designated as pastors, the whole church is corporately a pastor, a good stockman, for the whole community, providing nurture and direction to the wider world. The ‘Manna and Mercy’ free dinners are a great example of this.

Just this week, a letter to ISIS came into my Inbox. It was slick communication, obviously aimed at the same young men who are attracted by the online propaganda ISIS puts out. Only this letter was a love letter from the Church, pleading with followers of ISIS to return to the ways of goodness and truth, to put aside their bloodshed and destructive ways. The letter calls the young men ‘brothers’ and acknowledges that we are all sinners before God. It wants to drench the Middle East with love, not hatred. Surely this is an example of the Church corporately being a good stockman: caring and committed in a tough environment, showing the way to true life.

As individuals, we are each called to be a good stockman or a good stockwoman, to show the way in a desert world to the oases of love that God provides to the individuals we meet.

When we look at the outback, we often choose to see only the expanses of empty unchanging desert; harsh, dry tracts of impoverished earth, dotted here and there with waterholes. Aboriginal people have learned the trick of seeing the positive image. Instead of emptiness, they see a rich network of journey-lines, song-lines, joining waterholes and leading the way through the annual cycle of hunting, gathering, and corroboree. It’s one of the reasons they can survive in the desert.

Jesus calls us to be good stockmen and women, to see the journey-lines traced by the Bible in the desert and to be nourished by the waterholes of bread and wine. Jesus the good stockman leads us to life.

What is Prayer? (II)

WHAT IS PRAYER?

for the Pastoral Care Group at St George’s, Dunsborough

23 April, 2015

On February 13 in 2008, I was on my way to a meeting south of Melbourne. I remember because I caught a taxi at 9 a.m. and heard on the taxi radio the Prime Minister’s apology to Australia’s indigenous people, and I was very moved.

Our meeting was at the Community of the Holy Name, a community of Anglican nuns, and lasted three days. Mother offered me a lift to the airport coach to save the cost of a taxi on the way back. Sister Jenny, who I hadn’t met, jumped at the chance to volunteer to drive me to the coach stop. She talked non-stop. She wanted to know about my back, why my mobility was limited, and why I was putting up with pain.

Surely I should be able to fix it by prayer. I told Sister I had prayed, and as far I was concerned, I had been completely healed. I could walk – which was in doubt before my operation in 1969, and I had had 30 years of rich living as a husband and father, a school chaplain, a parish priest, head of an inter-church organisation (YouthCARE). In fact, I rather resented what Sister was saying, and in my mind, I christened her Sister Grinch.

She insisted that I should go to a healing service with Margaret Court when I got home. We parted, not very happily, because everything she said to me about prayer was rubbing me up the wrong way.

I know the theory: we are God’s children. God wants the best for us. There is nothing good that we cannot ask from God, and God will give it. Simply have faith. The implication of Sister Grinch’s sermonising was that I didn’t have enough faith. That may be true, but it was certainly not for her to judge me. If God doesn’t give what we ask, then there must be a reason: God must be teaching us something. Again, that may be true, but I experience life as more random than that. I believe God is in control of the big picture, but I don’t expect to work out the reason for everything. I’d go mad as a pastor trying that approach on the kids I buried who had committed suicide; or the boy in Special Ed. whose body simply gave up living on his 14^th birthday.

God is not like Santa Claus, granting our wishes simply because we ask. Rae and I prayed hard that our son would be OK, that he wouldn’t have a problem, but he’s still struggling with mental and physical illness at 33 years old.

So our personal experience has coloured our ideas of prayer. In a nutshell, prayer for me is not about curing people from problems, prayer is a way of drawing closer to God and to the people prayed for. Of course, I’ve seen some extraordinary healings, and I celebrate those. But they don’t seem to be God’s usual way of working with people.

So I see prayer a bit differently:

Firstly, it is not primarily about asking God for things. We pray because Jesus prayed. We pray because, as we follow Jesus, prayer keeps us close to Father, Son and Spirit. Prayer keeps us, as St Paul says, in Christ.

Secondly, prayer is recognising that we live in a broken world, as Jesus did. Jesus had the courage both to face the crowds of the sick and lame in Capernaum, and to move on to other villages and towns, leaving behind many not healed. He forgave those who betrayed him, and those who nailed him to the cross. He gazed on the world with love. That gaze can be our prayer too.

Thirdly, prayer is offering ourselves in love and service to that broken world, as Jesus did. Prayer is often only holding out our heart – but our heart is powerful. The gift of our solidarity with the suffering can be transformative. There is nothing I can say to someone dying of liver cancer. It is painful and quick, often only a few weeks from diagnosis to death. But I can gaze with love on the person – not look away – and stand with the person in prayer, and that can be the gift that truly heals, that opens up for that person a new wholeness in their last pilgrimage on earth.

Sometimes the prayer of solidarity turns into something practical that only I can do. Instead of telling God to do something, the prayer empowers me to act. A word, a card, a recommendation, an insight, a hug. But these practical prayers are only the tip of the iceberg. The invisible heart of prayer, the 90% that is mystery, is the solidarity, the standing with the suffering person.

Of course, there’s much more to prayer than that. When teaching kids or adults new to the faith, I use a mnemonic:

A.C.T.S.

A for Adoration. All prayer starts in praise and worship.

C for Confession. We can only pray when we acknowledge the distance between us and God.

T for Thanksgiving. Our whole life should be Eucharistic, one big Thank You to God; and

S – and note it’s last – for Supplication. We ask God to help those who suffer. This is the portion of prayer we’ve been discussing today, and only really scratching the surface of intercessory prayer or Supplication.

We can’t help praying as Christians, because we can’t help loving. Prayer is a way of loving a person or people in need, and meaning it, and discovering the living Christ in that space also loving you and the one in need. What transformation can come from that!

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Handout : Click here: What is prayer