Thursday, September 08, 2016
Thursday, July 07, 2016
The neighbour: Proximity or Affinity?
Jesus asks a lawyer to summarize the Law and the man obliges: We are to love God and we are to love our neighbour, he says.
grudge against the sons of your own people
but you shall love your neighbour (re’a)
as yourself.
Posted by Raspberry Rabbit at 7/07/2016 0 comments
Friday, June 17, 2016
A man in his right mind.
Is the young man’s mental map now what it ought to be, or what the village thinks it should be or even what Jesus has told him it should be? What is clear is that the young man was formerly unable to be a part of village life. He caused chaos when he was there and had even been physically restrained. If he escaped those chains or was allowed to flee, he would wander in the wilderness with beasts as his only companions. This is no longer the case. We are now presented with the “after” photograph. The crisis is over. The Greek word used by the evangelist for this young man’s latest state speaks of a restored capacity for discernment and most importantly judgement. In the second photograph he can now choose where before he was a victim of forces he could not control: Reason and good sense have returned.
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Tuesday, May 31, 2016
The unfolding story of God in small spaces.
They are good boys who don’t deserve the things which have landed on them from outside. Nor should their sons be defined by (or blamed for) every impulse welling up within them and causing them and others grief. These women know the habits and all the warm human smells of their boys. They have picked up cast-off garments and even clutched them for a moment – counting themselves lucky to be in contact with an aimless bit of the lad which he has thrown aside. Some administrative marvel out there will have done the maths and pointed out the unfairness of Elijah landing in the house of one poor widow with an ailing son in a land filled with sickness and deprivation (cf. Luke 4:25-26?). What about any hypothetical funeral procession held earlier in the day in Capernaum – a procession which Jesus and his disciples did not happen to encounter? What about that mother?
And, while I'm on the subject, have we even been to this woman's house?
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Friday, May 27, 2016
The faith of an expat: Jesus and the Centurion
"I’m a man under authority", he says. I know how these things take place. The Lieutenant-Colonel speaks to the Adjutant who then speaks to the junior officers who then speak to me and the other NCO’s. We speak to the men. If we encounter resistance, it’s not for nothing that the symbol of my centurion’s office is a stout stick of vine wood which can be applied to a soldier’s back. The job gets done.
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Thursday, May 19, 2016
How much can you bear?
It sails very close to the wind.
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Thursday, May 12, 2016
The best things in life are invisible
Pentecost Sunday
Year C
Acts 2:1-21
Ignatius of Antioch once said (Ignatius' Epistle to the Romans III:3) that:
which I have no hesitation flipping on its back and taking Ignatius to mean that:
It is a lesson often learned too late: We will not ultimately regret missing out on the houses, cars and the substantive preferments of this life. We will, however, bitterly regret having been passed over by honour, verity, friendship, purpose, love and the myriad connections we have to the souls of other people and to the Kingdom of God in our midst. It won't do to protest that people are quite visible, thank you very much, and while we're at it so are church buildings and halls. Truth can be researched in universities; honour and verity in courts of law. All of these have mailing addresses. Our attachment to these visible things, however like all relationships, is an invisible connection. They direct the orientation of our souls or they do not.
A group of people bitterly divided over a task can be said to be missing "Team Spirit". A young person who has struggled with a series of exams or facing the end of a relationship can be said to be "Dispirited". All the bits and pieces of success and forward progress are there but for want of a certain je ne sais quoi the group or the individual is pinned to in place.. The magic ingredient is missing from the recipe - the insubstantial substantial necessary to make the whole thing work. In the absence of fundamental direction we may agonize about our forward progress. The visible marks of success - our pay grade, our grade point average, our place on the ladder - seem a relentless upward or forward slog.
The invisible gift of the Spirit of God is as necessary as the animating spirit that has kept you and me walking around lo these many years. Luke makes a point of using the related words for Spirit and rushing wind to show a clear connection between the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the very creation of the Human Being in the Garden. Without the animating gift we are merely clay. It's an extraordinary gift of God to us from the time of our conception yet it is something utterly ordinary to us now. We no longer think about breathing. There is grief and sorrow when the gift is removed. Peter's sermon (which carries on beyond the reading chosen for this Sunday) puts the matter of this second gift of breath plainly. Yes these events are extraordinary. This invisible gift is, nonetheless, the ordinary equipment of the Christian. If this gift been taken from you (or more properly feels taken from you) - by virtue of anger over personal reversals, bitter experience or the sin that has divided you from God and from your brothers and sisters then you will need to ask for it back.
Retreating into your visible achievements will not do.
That's the sort of thing you would do instead of living.
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Thursday, May 05, 2016
What does your faith cost the rest of the world?
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Thursday, April 28, 2016
Naming the Saints of God
Take some time to read through Acts 15-17. God was clearly out and about in the Roman Empire. He was bringing men and women to faith in large centres and in out-of-the-way places. He was bringing strangers together in the towns and cities of the Empire. They were small business people, they were household servants – Jews and Gentiles. The Christian establishment back in Jerusalem was now being called on to be fellow workers with God in the process which he was initiating and with the people who he knew already. All Paul and his friends needed to do was to make themselves available and to weather the uncertainty. They were to “loiter with intent”.
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Thursday, April 14, 2016
They were once like us.
Easter 4
“There's Elton John” says mum.
If mum would ever just “stifle” and stop talking over the television she would be told who's who in due course. Nicholas Witchell, the BBC's royal correspondent does yeoman service filling in the blanks for those of us who need our memories jogged at great events. That's his job, after all. He knows. In the vision of John of Patmos (which we know in English as the Book of Revelation and which the rest of the world calls the Apocalypse), a heavenly elder turns to John the viewer and asks:
“John the Revelator” was possibly a prisoner in the island's salt mines when he had his vision. He writes like a Hebrew or Aramaic speaker who's learned a bit of journeyman's Greek along the way. He's nothing special. So why does the heavenly elder ask him about the identity of the crowd? John appears put-out at this reversal of roles: “Sir, you are the one that knows.” he says.
Try to remember that the emphasis in the elder's question is on the second part: “...where have they come from?” The “clearly not me” surrenders a little bit in the elder's explanation that these are ordinary humans who have
My life in the salt mine as an exile for Christ performs some change in my nature. The pain of faithful life is not wasted. I am a prisoner. I am a member of a persecuted religious minority in a Roman outpost. I write in a language in which I have no ease because I am impelled to testify to the victory of God in the presence of my brothers and sisters. I am a member of a tiny church with a difficult demographic and an uncertain future. My faith is pretty well all that I have. I struggle to profess that faith in the midst of colleagues, parents or children who share little of it.
I now know the answer to both sides of the elder's question:
I am not there right now.
Posted by Raspberry Rabbit at 4/14/2016 0 comments
Labels: 500 words on a reading, Year C Readings
Friday, April 08, 2016
Simon Peter in the school of love.
Easter 3
Year C
John 21:1-19
Jesus asks Peter – Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
These ‘what’ exactly? More than ‘this’ life, represented by the items of a fisherman’s trade scattered around on the beach – these nets, these spools of braided line, these floats?
Or – do you love me more than these other disciples love me?
You, Peter, pre-eminent among my followers:
Do you love me more than these others do?
The question arising between a man and a woman or a parent and a child - 'Do you love me?' - might be playful or perhaps it probes at some perceived weakness.
Do you love me? (of course you do)
Do you love me? (I want to hear you say it)
Do you love me? (I suspect that you do not)
Do you love me? (I wonder if you know what that means)
I’ll roll the dice and will hold that:
1. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him more than these that he was referring to the other disciples gathered with them on the beach.
2. He asks the question three times because Peter has denied him three times and;
3. That when he asked Peter whether or not he loved him he was wondering if Peter knew what that meant.
Because it is not clear that we always know what love means.
You'll have heard of the well-known “tussle” here in the conversation between Jesus and Peter:
Three times Jesus asks Peter whether he loves him and twice he uses the Greek word (agapao) which refers to the type of love which gives and sacrifices, a love which lifts up the beloved. Peter keeps replying “Yes, Lord I love you” and uses the word (phileo) which is a more ordinary emotional attachment or affection.
You would expect that with the the second time of asking Peter would have twigged that the repeated question with a particular word was meant to hammer him into shape but, in fact, it is Jesus who draws near to Peter and uses Peter’s inadequate word for love in his final question: "Peter, do you love me?"
Peter has not yet fathomed the love that Jesus asks about. Jesus, though, will begin in the place where his disciple stands and use the words that Peter can speak and know here in this School of Love which convenes on a Galilean beach. It was the same way he encountered Thomas in the School of Faith which met behind locked doors in Jerusalem in last week’s Gospel reading.
Jesus starts where these disciples are but the lesson does not finish there.. The School of Love will carry on. Peter will come to learn love’s meaning. Jesus finishes with the words: “Follow me”.
Posted by Raspberry Rabbit at 4/08/2016 0 comments
Labels: 500 words on a reading, Year C Readings
Friday, April 01, 2016
This open door
Posted by Raspberry Rabbit at 4/01/2016 0 comments