Our universal need to forgive

Sunday 24C 17^th September 2023

[Matthew 18:21-35]

Forgiveness Cross, Ikuntji, N.T.

Fred Shuttleworth came from a large and poor farming family in Alabama. His faith drew him to become a pastor for his African American people, struggling for justice and equality. At Christmas 1953, when the Ku Klux Klan dynamited his family home in Birmingham, Shuttleworth was almost killed. Later, when he and his wife tried to enrol their daughters in a segregated school, they were all savagely beaten by a hostile mob.

For many years Fred bravely led a nonviolent campaign of sit-ins and marches to desegregate Birmingham. They were brutally opposed by its notorious police chief “Bull” O’Connor, whose violent methods, seen on television, brought nation-wide support and a degree of justice for these descendants of slaves.

Shuttleworth lived to be 89. On every occasion when he suffered violence, he forgave those who hurt him, and urged his supporters to forgive too. He had understood Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question: “…how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me… seven times?”. He lived the truth that forgiving is not a matter of quantity but of letting our heart become a channel for God’s infinite, forgiving love.

When Matthew’s gospel speaks about forgiving, some details may puzzle us. We might baulk at being told to forgive seventy-by-seven times, but this is typical of the exaggerated language Jesus used to show that forgiving is essential as we work to build the Reign of God.

Jesus is not commanding us to forgive mindlessly. A few verses back he pointed out that we must demand that those who offend against us listen to us, to our witnesses, or to the assembly. Jesus knew that we humans are all deeply connected among ourselves and to every part of the universe. Today, ecology and as quantum physics are showing this in new ways. The same vision of unity is described by mystics and by those who report a Near Death Experience. When we fail to forgive, we are going against this oneness. In our youth, we necessarily develop separately as individual egos or personalities, but this is not our final stage. As we learn to love our family, our partner, or the family of humankind we find that we must “die to self”, and in some mysterious way this prepares us to be joined, after our death, with all others in God.

We may also puzzle over Jesus’ parable of the forgiving and unforgiving king. Does he represent God? His slave – who was probably employed to extort taxes – owes the king an astronomical sum, but pleads and persuades the monarch to cancel the huge debt. However the king later changes his mind and hands the same slave over to be tortured until he has repaid everything. Jesus then concludes by saying: “that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive…”

This king is not like God. He rules by power and violence, relying on his subjects’ fear. He reigns by extorting taxes, and when he forgives the slave’s debt he actually increases his power by making the slave more deeply dependent than before. When finally he condemns the slave to be tortured, this terrible example increases the king’s power over the rest of his subjects.

The king’s actions are some of the many dramatic warnings found in Matthew’s gospel, which are to be taken seriously but not literally in their details. Matthew shows Jesus telling us that we are responsible for all that we do, and must account for it. But we are not being advised to cut off our hand to avoid stealing, or pluck out an eye to cure lust. When we sin against the community we will not literally be thrown into the stinking, burning rubbish dump called Gehenna, which we translate as “hell”. Nor is any of us an all-good sheep or an all-bad goat. At the end of our life, when we are shown the far-reaching consequences of our selfish actions, of our failing to love, we may be deeply ashamed. But can we believe that the God whom Jesus reveals to us as Unlimited Love will torture us in fire, forever?

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How do you deal with the problem of evil?

Sunday 16A 23.7.2023

[Matthew 13:24-43]

The crimes that people commit – murder, rape, torture and war – hurt people terribly. They also present us with the problem of how to deal with the people who commit them. This parable in Matthew’s gospel, about weeds growing in the wheat, attempts to address this problem. It is one of the enigmatic and humorous stories Jesus told as he sent out his followers to announce the Good News that the Empire of God had begun.

Parables tell us how God’s Empire works. Several describe how this empire spreads, slow but unstoppable, like yeast working through dough, or seeds sprouting and growing. This story about weeds among the wheat crop focuses on the problem, in the early Christian community and today, of how to deal with members who do wrong and even seriously damage the community. It’s a familiar problem in any family or community.

Matthew offers a solution he used several times in his gospel: at some “end time” God will separate the “bad” people from the “good” ones, goats from sheep, then throw out the bad, who will weep and gnash their teeth in darkness or burn in eternal fire. In saying this, Matthew was reporting how Jesus, in Semitic fashion, used wild exaggeration to emphasise that our actions have serious consequences. Jesus suggested, for instance, that would-be thieves should cut off their right hand, or anyone tempted to look lustfully at a woman should pluck out an eye. Such language might also be used by an exasperated parent to warn a loved but disobedient child: “If you do that again, I’ll kill you!” Such language needs to be interpreted!

The parable of the weeds uses the same kind of exaggeration to warn how God will deal with “bad people” at some future time. But if taken literally, this leads to a dualist universe where two kinds of people will in the end be forever separated. Other parts of the New Testament offer a deeper promise: that God, who is profoundly one, plans to “gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). Jesus himself promised: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth [on the cross], will draw all people to myself.” (John 12: 32)

But despite its dualism, the parable of the weeds in the wheat offers practical wisdom about dealing with people who do wrong. The wise farmer tells his workers not to try to separate the weeds yet, for that would destroy the wheat. For now, let them be. This does not mean that we should do nothing about those who do wrong. We must call out their crimes and act strongly against them, especially powerful people in official positions. But we need also to see every offender as a person like ourselves, formed “in the image of God”, not despising them as “different”, deserving to be punished or eliminated. Everyone is to some degree responsible for the wrong they do, but each person also caries wounds that limit their freedom of choice. In every country, those raised in poverty, or in oppressed groups, are hugely over-represented in the prison population.

Voices on talk-back radio and social media often sling mud at offenders, for we tend to enjoy punishing anyone who has fallen. Too often this has led to bullying, scapegoating and lynching. Politicians know how to win popularity by stirring up our fear of crime, and often legislate for more severe penalties. But this leads to building bigger prisons – often run for commercial profit. Right now, staff shortages in Queensland youth prisons cause young prisoners to spend long periods “locked down” in solitary confinement. Most offenders emerge from prison more damaged than when they went in.

Are we doing precisely what Jesus’ parable advises us not to do: separating the “weeds” from the rest of society? Why not allocate more tax money to educating and rehabilitating, as some other countries do most successfully?

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The importance of not keeping secrets

Sunday 12A 25^th June 2023

[Matthew 10:26-33]

We call them “whistle-blowers”; those who act on their conscience to report wrongdoing by governments or other institutions. They are often threatened with severe penalties, because the organisations they challenge are enormously powerful. Nonetheless they feel compelled to reveal the truth about the evil, and speak out for the common good.

The Australian parliament recently improved Australia’s whistle-blower laws, but these amendments are not good enough. It is good that those who exposed Australia for shamefully deceiving the Timor Leste government have now been pardoned, but others still face terrible punishments. For instance David McBride blew the whistle on alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, and faces a trial which could put him in prison for up to fifty years. Richard Boyle, who reported misconduct at the Australian Tax Office, could be given a sentence of up to 161 years in prison. And then there is the Australian Julian Assange, who rightly exposed US war crimes and other evils, but has suffered conditions that amount to torture in a British jail, and may still be jail in USA for more than a century.

The twelve apostles whom Jesus sent out were also to told to reveal a secret – “What you have heard in secret, shout from the housetops” – not about guilt, but the glorious news that God is with us. Every human culture since the beginning had sought to grasp the mystery of where we have come from. and our final destination, but these messengers were to announce that the unseen Creator loves us; that we can address God as the most loving parent; that God’s reign was now beginning. Christians call this revelation: the Infinite Consciousness telling us about itself.

Jesus warned his messengers that they would be opposed and even be killed, as he himself was later murdered like the lowest slave. But he also encouraged them not to be afraid of those who can kill the body, but to fear only whatever can kill body and soul in “Gehenna”. The original Aramaic meant the destruction of the whole “self”, not of the soul separated from the body, as Greek philosophy has taught us to imagine.

Whatever the saying means, it does not mean that God might torment some souls or people in hell-fire forever, as Christian artists and preachers liked to portray. Catholics of earlier generations were taught this belief, but when imposed on children this terrible threat was a form of child abuse. Perhaps it was taught because it maintained the power of clerics, who claimed to hold the means to save us from “damnation”. It was one of the ways in which the church went astray.

The bible’s many sayings about the end of human life, or the end of the world, are highly symbolic and metaphorical. The symbol Gehenna comes from the burning, stinking rubbish dump in the valley of Ben Hinnom, outside Jerusalem. It powerfully symbolised the chaos of a life wasted and destroyed.

But immediately after this threat is mentioned, God’s infinite love is declared. We are told that God knows every detail of the natural world, including the movement of sparrows and the loss of human hairs. Jesus’ reported words conclude by saying that we are worth more than many sparrows. So we need to discard any idea we have of God as a human judge, made in our image, and pronouncing a final condemnation. The New Testament tells us that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8 & 16), and that if we can awaken and respond to that love, we will have nothing to fear. (1 John 4:18). This is the “secret” message that Jesus told his apostles to spread. Is it any wonder that he also told them – and all who speak the truth – not to be afraid, even of death, because the Spirit of Infinite Love is within them.

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Is God in all things and all people?

Feast of the Epiphany 8^th January 2023

[Isaiah 66:1-6, Ephesians 3:2-6, Matthew 2:1-12]

An epiphany means a showing, a manifestation or discovery, usually of something beyond what is natural or ordinary. On this feast of The Epiphany we recall how three visitors from eastern Pagan lands followed a new star and found the baby Jesus. They were not Jews, as Jesus was; nor were they kings. Matthew’s gospel calls them magi, Eastern astrologers who studied the movements of stars and planets. However like all liturgical feasts, this one doesn’t just remember a long-ago event. It celebrates how we can find new insights into God and what God is doing today.

The story of the Magi is found only in Matthew’s gospel. Together with Luke, this is the only gospel to give us stories of Jesus’ childhood. There are none in Mark, the earliest gospel, or in John. The church accepts that these childhood stories may be legendary additions, for ancient writers in all cultures often added such ornaments to their narratives, for they were not pretending to write history with literal accuracy or exact information, as we expect today. This can be seen from the story’s details. Besides the wondrous wandering star, it shows King Herod as improbably naive. He was a ruthless political manipulator who murdered even members of his own family. If he feared the birth of a rival king, wouldn’t he have sent some of his many spies to follow or supervise the magi? The real Herod would not have been so easily tricked.

But we don’t re-tell this ancient story just for entertainment, like a Netflix movie. Matthew included it to us to lead us to our own epiphany; to show us astonishing new truths about God. The Incarnation challenges us to accept that the Wisdom which created a trillion galaxies was born among us as a helpless Jewish infant, in an insignificant colony of the Roman empire. The Epiphany teaches us that he did not come only for the chosen people who had received the Law from God on Mount Sinai. The journey of the magi tells us that Jesus came for every race on earth.

That journey comes early in Matthew’s gospel. In the very last verses of its final chapter Jesus commissioned his disciples to make journeys to share the Good News with every nation on earth (Matthew 28:19). Paul too – in today’s second reading – emphasised the same truth, that pagan nations now share with Jews the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Have Christians always recognised this central truth that Jesus’ life shows us: that God is an intimate friend to every person, especially when we suffer? Jesus, God among us, sought and ate with people rejected by society: tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the disabled. Most of his hearers came from among the majority of the population, who were desperately poor. Despite the sufferings that such people endure – often made worse by their own desperate choices as damaged persons – they are no less beautiful than the rich and glamorous. In their struggles to help each other survive, they often more readily grow in love, and unconsciously manifest God to others through daily epiphanies of their own.

Paul took this truth even further, finding that Christ’s death and resurrection has powerfully brought us all together, joining us in Christ as one body. No doubt he was remembering his profound vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. This insight, from Jesus, Matthew, Paul and others is quite different from the dualist vision, derived largely from from St Augustine three centuries later, which sees God as a severe judge, and that the universe will end up divided, with a minority of people “saved” and the majority, rejected as inadequate, suffering forever in hell.

Paul’s vision of cosmic unity fits with what respected mystics have reported through the ages, * and what thousands of our contemporaries, whose bodies were for a brief time “clinically dead”, have later reported in their Near Death Experience: that all creatures are somehow connected in one great and beautiful unity, and that God is truly bringing all things together in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).

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* E.g. Dame Julian of Norwich, who left profound theological writings and died around 1416 CE

The gap between rich and poor: What can we do?

Sunday 26C 25. 9. 2022

[Amos 6:1-7, Luke 16:19-31]

This parable about the rich man and the beggar is directed at the greedy Pharisees whom Jesus addressed, several chapters back. What is it telling us?

Lazarus is the only person named in any parable. His name, in Hebrew, means ‘God has helped’. The rich man is not named. ‘Dives’ in some translations, simply means ‘a rich man’. The fact that Lazarus is named, surely reinforces the truth, which the whole bible is telling us, that the Holy One is on the side of people who suffer. “Blessed are the poor”.

Any story about life after death gets our attention. We wonder. We are scared. We are, each of us, going to be dead for eternity. But any story about life after death is metaphorical, for we can have no clear understanding of a state beyond our bodily senses.

The story is surely not claiming that when we die, we can look forward, literally, to resting on Abraham’s bosom. It would be rather crowded! That metaphor is drawn from how, at a banquet, a favoured guest would recline on the chest of the host, as John leaned back on Jesus at the Last Supper. After death, the poor, the suffering, will be honoured guests.

The details about flames and thirst are also metaphorical. This story is one main source of countless later stories about the ‘flames of hell’. Luke calls the placed Hades, and most ancient cultures imagined that in Hades the ghosts of the dead led a pretty dim life, without particular punishments. Some commentators think that the story places both Abraham and Lazarus in Hades, but in different parts.

What about the ‘great gulf’ between the two? Is that also metaphorical? The common belief that God will punish ‘bad people’ with eternal punishment actually proposes a dualist end of the world: God accepting a universe eternally divided between good and evil. This is fundamentally Manichean, like the ancient Persian religion which believed in two Gods, one good and one bad. The “hell solution” has Satan as the god of the evildoers, conquered, yes, but still reigning in his own realm.

How can we reconcile this dualist solution with Jesus saying he will ‘draw all to himself’ (John 12:32); and with St Paul’s vision of God bringing ‘all things together in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:10), and reconciling to himself ‘all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross’? (Colossians 1:20). This story isn’t a panoramic description of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’.

The ancient error of dualism leads people today to believe that there is a gulf between our worship of God in church and “the world” out there with its problems: between our religion and our involvement in politics, justice, and care for the poor. This is a fundamental error that many clerics and lay people are making today.

So the main points of this story seem to be:

# After death, present injustices will be fixed.

# There are serious consequences for us if neglect the poor.

The story challenges us to check on which side we choose to live.

So we need to ask ourselves: “What about the Lazarus at our door?”

We see the homeless begging in our streets, and our hearts are moved. We now see millions more, for our ‘door’ is our television, or the screen by which we access the internet. Lazarus is the 60 million homeless refugees around the world; the 30 million Pakistani flood victims; the Rohinga victims of genocide; the Uighurs, the products of whose slave labour we are possibly buying, using and wearing. What can we do about them, our sisters and brothers? It the situation hopeless, doomed never to change?

Some of us are in a position to analyse and make changes to the economic structures that sustain the gulf between haves and have-nots; some of can provide material help to a few. Some of us, as medical workers, are able to heal the wounds of the modern Lazarus. But we can all use our voice to keep telling the world that we do not accept what is happening. We can all unite with a group, – as we often do – to protest against this or that local legislation or situation that treats people unjustly. We can all keep a closer watch on our consuming.

But most importantly, we can equip ourselves by drawing closerto the author of this parable, the mysterious Holy One, who made us and the poor. Do we realise that our common origin is Infinite Love, from whom we receive abundant gifts, continually? God’s abundance, if only we can share it justly and fairly, is enough for every person to be fed and housed.

We have the huge privilege of being able to grow closer to God by praying, meditating, self-denial, so as to become, personally,a more effective channel of God’s love to the poor, even those we never meet. Can we discover our infinite resources, so as to become more effective channels of love to the poor?

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“The last shall be first…”

Sunday 21C 21^st August 2022

[Isaiah 66:18-21, Luke 13:22-30]

As a child, I did not have many books, for our family’s limited income was needed for more urgent things. But I delighted in a treasured Christmas present: a picture book of Aesop’s Fables.

Each fable was summed up in a one-line “moral”. In the story of the fox and the stork, it was: “the one who laughs last, laughs longest.” I carried this wisdom to school, but the teacher’s unequal distribution of favours, and a bully’s torments soon taught me that the moral did not work in my life. Like a juvenile Job, I lamented that rosy formulas about how the world worked, did not always apply.

But we can learn from Aesop, and other people of every culture, long before our bible was written, that everyone asks how life works: “Who set this up?” “Are there Gods? What are they like? Will they reward or punish us after we die?”

When we ponder the Bible’s writers’ rich thoughts and emotions, and listen to the best scholars’ interpretations, we see that its wide range of stories and poems is telling us that oppressed peoples – the majority of earth’s population – will “laugh last”, because there is a Transcendent Reality who described itself to the Hebrews as YHWH, the One Who Is. And this Source of all creatures, including us whom it has helped to evolve into consciousness, is on our side.

Jesus came from this Source, telling us the Good News that God’s Reign had begun; that the promises glimpsed by Isaiah – today’s First Reading – and other prophets were true: that one day all peoples will come together in peace, to see and share God’s glory. And the Infinite One is infinitely good, so we are safe… saved.

In today’s reading from Luke, an anonymous “someone” asks Jesus: “…will there be only a few saved?” Jesus doesn’t answer, but instead points out that our life is always a struggle, a narrow path. But in the Beatitudes he had said that whether we struggle against unjust rulers, or famine, or the climate crisis, or loss of our family or home through the madness of war, all our travail is temporary and limited, and can be solved through team-work and the love of others, and of God.

Many of us do not handle the struggle well, living mainly for ourselves, and failing to love others enough. So the gospels are full of warning stories which end in the “good” being separated from the “bad”. But these stories describe our efforts: they don’t necessarily include God’s. God is not detached from our struggle, like the impartial judge of a sporting contest, with no stake in our success or failure. Jesus shows God to be the devoted shepherd; the woman who searches desperately for the small, lost coin; the loving father who forgives his child’s outrageous rudeness and folly. God is the fragile, human Jesus who speaks the truth to the unjust leaders of his religion and of the state, until they torture him to death.

Jesus’ scary fables about punishment warn us what our own selfishness will produce, not what God is capable of. Jesus’ own life shows us God’s infinite love, inextricably involved in our struggle: God living within us, our intimate partner.

According to Isaiah, Jesus and other prophets, the final outcome will be a great feast, to which all are invited. Unlike Aesop’s fable, in which the stork punishes the fox by preventing him from sharing the food, God invites everyone. But Jesus also warned his Jewish contemporaries that the privileges they treasured as the Chosen People did not guarantee them priority. Those who imagine themselves to be first may well come last. The moral? We are not saved by our appearance or religious performance, but only by love. Many will be saved by their love for others, even if they never go near a temple or a church.

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