Formation: The Bible - How myths can be true
In the Ancient Near Eastern world, modern historical method was not the way of talking about origin stories, of the big questions of life, meaning and history, of the experiences of a community. So if we bring those modern assumptions to the text, we end up falling into an either/or mentality. And often the way that ancient peoples told their stories, and especially their origin stories, was to use mythological elements to communicate theological ideas. We can call this “mythicised history” or “theological history”. In other words, the question is often not – “did this happen exactly this way?”, but rather, “what do we learn about the way they see God and reality?”
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Lent: Letting go of the chase
The disciples are tempted, as so many of us are, to take whatever system is in front of us, be it religious, political, or economic, and figure out how to use it to our advantage. To feed the drive of the ego. We are so often at the centre of our own story, jostling for position. Maybe it’s not as overt as these two brothers, but a lot of the ways we structure our society is designed to help us feed the ego, to acquire more status and more influence. The challenge of Jesus is that the pathway to life and to the kingdom of God, is found in the giving up of our chasing status, power, influence and success in favour of seeing others liberated.
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Lent: The life found beyond prejudice
The profound shock In the parable of the Good Samaritan is that the ethnic and religious other is the one who shows compassion. This story is a pointed way of saying: you need to examine the ethnic and religious prejudice and exclusion that you hold. This needs to change! Jesus challenges the entire notion of trying to decide who is my neighbour and who isn’t my neighbour. Who is in and who is out. Who is one of “your people” and who isn’t. Jesus exposes the fault in the question itself.
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Lent: The virtues of Cruciformity
Compassion does not see people based on some kind of preferential treatment, its lack of bias and partiality reminds us that it is available to all at any one time. Compassion as a metaphor for God cannot be restrained by our religious or social constructs, lest we become deceived into thinking that the divine has a elite group of people that are favoured more than others. The only people that seem to attract divine favour are those who are at their most vulnerable at any given time.
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Lent: Lost and Found
We cling to things that ultimately do not give us the meaning and fulfilment that we crave. We think that ‘having’ or ‘getting’ that thing is what will make us feel happy and satisfied. But the challenge of Jesus, and our challenge as we enter Lent, is that ‘getting the thing’ is not the ultimate way to this kind of life. It’s the giving up of things for others. For God, and for our neighbour.
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Lent and our transformation
Lent invites its participants onto a road of self-examination, reflection and discovery. It’s about giving something up (fasting) to create space for the emergence of something new. In this way it is embodied, something that we are encouraged to feel.
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Formation: The Bible - Wisdom Text or Instruction Manual
The kinds of things that the authors of scripture are wrestling with are in many respects the same we wrestle with now. They’re couched in different contexts and different language, but it’s often the same journey. Whether it’s how we deal with conflict, about what we believe lies at the heart of fundamental reality, about what we believe is central to the human experience, about how to negotiate our own demons, our jealousies, anger, rage, anxiety, worries, loves, relationships.
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23rd Psalm - The Table
Consequently, dealing well with our enemies – internal/external - in Christ, brings a sense a security and self assurance that doesn’t drive us to be independent and self defined, but comfortable in who God created us to be, happy and content to remain in the house of our divine creator rather than trying to construct our own.
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23rd Psalm - Disorientation
The nature of anguish, uncertainty, mystery, lament, dark night of the soul and despair is all a critical part of our experience if we are to follow the trajectory of providence. In order to move through to new orientation we must all experience disorientation. There is no fast track to the new, in fact Brueggemann says that despair is where hope lives. In other words we all need to experience the darkness in order to find the God who hides in the shadows.
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23rd Psalm - For your Names Sake
This phrase both challenges and humbles me, as I consider my human task as a divine representative. I can partner with God, or not. Either way I am still assured of the love of the Great Shepherd, but with or without me, God will do what is purposed, for the sake of God’s own.
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Love
Children love lots of things. Their insatiable love for life means that they engage and grab love in any and every way possible. Growing up into adulthood, we hopefully begin to understand that love, true love, comes from one source. However, that source is big enough and broad enough to hold all creation and everything we love. It is also helps us see ourselves and each other as we truly are, not as mere reflections. Helps us know the world as it fully is known from the viewpoint of Love.
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Hope
The statement “I hope that… ” applies hope to a desired outcome. But the statement “I hope” does not anticipate a particular event. It says that even if nothing changes, everything is not lost. For Marcel, hope is the “response of the creature to the infinite Being to whom it is conscious of owing everything that it has.” In other words – this is not about hope “for” something, but hope “in” something or someone. Hope that is “in God”, rather than “for something”, is the kind of hope that can be truly meaningful for us.
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Faith
In this new year, and in these uncertain times we need to hear the voice that says, “This is the way, walk in it” and find assurance in this voice, not so much the road that we are walking on but the one who tells us to get up and go. In this way living by Faith is living today, hoping for tomorrow, held and anchored in the faithful love of God. This then invites us to consider a life of ‘Faith in’ rather than ‘Faith for’.
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Advent: Peace
What might it mean for us to be recipients of peace as this year draws to a close? The Advent season, as much as we have turned it into a frantic time, is at its heart a season to pause and to be reminded that we can be recipients of peace. This story of Jesus says to us that we do not have to scramble to be seen, to be noticed, to find our affirmation or to find our place in the story. Instead, we are offered peace.
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Advent: Affirmation
Jesus encounters someone who has had their humanity damaged by the actions and judgements of others, and affirms and restores her. He opposes the social and moral judgements being made by others in the room, sees her and offers her peace. A man, born in shame and danger to an unwed mother, now encounters a woman who is also ostracised, pushed to the edges, shunned, labelled, judged, and offers her peace and affirmation. And offers her the hero’s role in a story that would be retold for thousands of years.
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Advent: Incarnation
Advent ushers in the beginning of the Church Liturgical calendar year. The long season of Ordinary time comes to an end and we move into a place of hopeful anticipation, immersing ourselves in the Christmas Story, the birth narrative of Jesus as well as all of the extras that come with this busy season that vie for our attention and our wallets. It’s a season of gift giving, a time to celebrate the birth of the greatest gift given to mankind, God, who became flesh and lived like one of us.
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Whanaungatanga: The manaakitanga of Jesus
A visual representation of Manaakitanga would be the interplay of waves on the shore. With its repetitive flow the wave’s mana leaves its mark. In the same way, through our duty of care we share our inner presence and mana with others, and in doing so mana increases. Duty of care is a necessary reciprocal and continual relationship between individuals (although not solely confined to humanity, but the includes all of creation) and then further into a wider community.
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Whanaungatanga: Missio Dei and a living eucharist
The Apostle Paul suggests that the church is the body of Christ, so every time we take Eucharist together, we are not just remembering the breaking of Jesus physical body, but we are invited to participate in it too. To remind us of the idea that we also might be given as life and nourishment for the world. And maybe we’re a little broken in the process – but like Jesus – the breaking offers an opportunity for resurrection life.
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Whanaungatanga: Rest
Because of the way the ancient Hebrews understood God, they believed that God embedded rest into the very heart of creation itself. In fact, because human beings were created on the 6th day and God rested on the 7th day, in this story the first day that human creatures truly experience is a day of rest. Life is to be lived from rest, outward.
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Whanaungatanga: Prayer
There is something beautiful, healthy and holy about naming our need, our longing, our desire, our pain, grief, or joy. We take these things that circulate in our heads and hearts and keep us awake at night and make us anxious and worry and stress and wonder and problem solve - and we bring them out of ourselves into the midst of this ongoing conversation that is already happening with God and with others.
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