Massive floods of water, and of faithful love

Lent 1B 18. 2. 2024

(Genesis 9:8-15, Mark 1:12-15)

Among the kinds of damage we might sometimes have to cope with, having our house flooded is surely one of the worst. Some people in Queensland have been flooded three times within twelve months, in the abnormal storms that global warming is causing in that part of our world. Scarcely had those unfortunate householders finished the difficult and depressing work of cleaning up, when another ferocious storm destroyed all their efforts.

Probably every culture on earth has in its collective memory a mythical story of a great flood. Scripture scholars show us that the flood story in Genesis is of this kind. We were ignorant to have accepted it as literally true. Was the entire earth flooded? Could a hand-built wooden boat carry two each of the millions of species of creatures? Who could provide, for forty days, the enormous variety of foods that they needed? It is hard enough to feed our pets. As with Jonah and his “great fish”, it is a waste of time trying to explain these powerful mythical stories as if they were literally true.

Through billions of years of evolution, we humans have developed remarkable brains with which we handle consciousness. Every culture has some awareness that we come from the infinite consciousness of what we call “God”. Many individuals try communicate with this Source of all that is, and it is these “listeners” who have given us these “inspired” stories which fill the bible. Taken together they gradually inform us that despite the natural tragedies that trouble humanity, which we are inclined to imagine are caused by our own guilt, God has made a covenant with us and will always care for us. “The universe is friendly”, although by our negligence and greed we are damaging this planet so badly that the natural world is becoming more difficult to live in. But the ancients interpreted the beautiful phenomenon of the rainbow as a symbol of God’s covenant, a faithful promise to be always “on our side”.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus was “driven by the Spirit” to spend a long time in the desert so as to better encounter God, from whom he had just heard- at his baptism – “you are my beloved son”. In his forty days of solitude he was tempted by all the negative forces that exist in ourselves and in the world. He overcame them, preparing himself to announce to the world the Good News of the Reign of God.

When we deliberately enter into silence, whether for minutes or days, we find not only that our Creator’s promise is infinitely more powerful than any planetary disasters – after all, our planet is a tiny fragment among God’s trillion galaxies – nor is the Creator merely our friend. The unimaginable Holy Spirit, Infinite Love, lives within us and all other people. It is our privilege to be able to develop this friendship, this love.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * * *

The mystery of God as three “Persons”

Trinity Sunday, 4^th June 2023 [Exodus 34:4-9 John 3:16-18]

Triskelion – Ancient symbol of the Trinity

The other day I came across, online, a wonderful gadget that I was tempted to buy, despite the high price. It was a realistic globe of the Earth, mounted on a stand. It turns slowly, ceaselessly, without batteries or wires, but driven by hidden magnets and a solar cell.

Perhaps the reason we find models so fascinating is that they let us see the bigger picture more clearly. This model of our turning planet shows how the earth, suspended in endless space, glides around the sun while itself turning at 1600 km per hour. It is awesome to see in miniature the colossal ball of oceans and continents, on whose surface we all go about our daily lives. Pondering this leads us to look at the even bigger picture: the mysterious force that not only moves the earth and the countless galaxies beyond us, but which causes them to exist and is holding them in being.

We can do more than just ponder! Today’s readings tell us that this Creative Force has the qualities of infinite tenderness, compassion, kindness and faithfulness. Our maker loves us. We heard in the mythical story of Moses how went up the mountain and met God. It doesn’t matter if Moses existed or not. The writers who created the story had just such a vision; they experienced the love of the Transcendent, and put it into the mouth of Moses. St Paul – who was certainly a real historical character – had a similar experience of the Transcendent. We are told about it at least three times in the New Testament: how Paul met the Risen Christ in some indescribable way. He was temporarily blinded by it, and spent the rest of his life teaching about the Risen One. More explicitly than Moses, Paul tells us that God seems somehow to be threefold: Father, Son and Spirit, and has the qualities of grace, love and fellowship. Many Christians are not aware that even before Paul’s time, in far off India, the Hindu sages were teaching that in God there is Being, Consciousness and Bliss: Sat, Chit and Ananda.

The writer of today’s gospel tells us that Jesus of Nazareth came from “the Father” and gives us his Spirit. God lives in us! Here we glimpse more clearly that God is a Trinity. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he has come not to condemn but to save the world, including us; to bring it all to completion. Our future destiny, our wholeness, is to be with God, the Trinity, in the timeless dimension after our death. For each of us, the vital question is: how do we respond to this good news?

Catherine la Cugna, in her book on the Trinity, points out that early Western theologians focused too much on trying to define the inner, immanent being of the Trinity and not so much on the fact that the Trinity is constantly looking outward, working to create the whole cosmos, to hold it in being, and to move our planet as it constantly evolves in all its beauty and complexity. Catherine La Cugna died quite young. On her tombstone, there is carved the quote: “ ..we glorify God by living in right relationship as Jesus did.. . by existing as persons in communion with God and every other creature.”

The Trinity is pure, self-giving relationships; and our wholeness is to learn to live in the same way. Relationship is at the heart of what it means to be a person. To become whole, we need to move beyond our immature individualism, our egotism.

It is sad that in our church, the institution, the disease of clericalism is rampant, based on selfish narcissism. This is diametrically opposed to sound relationships! For example, rather than relate with compassion to victims of sexual abuse, the institution’s leaders are still punishing and re-traumatising these victims by using lawyers – at huge cost – to avoid paying compensation; to permanently shut down the victim’s appeals. Instead of treating these victims as the Good Shepherd would, many church leaders treat them as enemies! This destroys relationships between people! It demolishes community.

The Trinity is pure Relationship between three “Persons”, who only analogically resemble us human persons. These divine “Persons” are in perfect relationship. We cannot understand God’s nature, but we can experience God’s love… that these “Persons” embrace the whole human family and the entire cosmos. The important question for each of us is: How do I respond to this? How do I relate to the Trinity? How often do I turn to give thanks? And with how much love?

                                                                      * * * * *

Shaping many into one

Pentecost Sunday 28^th May 2023

[Acts 2:1-11]

When deciduous trees stand naked in winter, we can see their marvellous structure of strong branches supporting a filigree of tiny twigs. Curiously, these trees can look very like branching stream patterns seen from a plane or in satellite photos.

Both structures are formed by water. In trees it reaches up against gravity, to build a structure that spreads its leaves to the sunlight. In the stream-pattern, gravity draws together millions of water-drops into trickles, brooks, then a mighty river.

In both patterns, many small things work together as one. They call to mind the mysterious Source of the life-force that keeps seven billion of us humans moving around on the planet’s surface.

In today’s story of Pentecost this Source, the Holy One, came as a powerful wind and as fire, which separated, branched out, to touch each person present. Those people waiting in Jerusalem were each different, just as we are. They each had a unique face, voice and finger-prints, and diverse abilities. Yet they each breathed the same air, drank from the same water supply, and shared the belief that Jesus, who had passed through death, was now filling them with his Spirit.

That Spirit gave them power. The biggest jetliners can move 500 people at high speed through the air. They get that power by burning about four litres of fuel every second. The sun burns a million tonnes in that same time. How powerful must be the force, the Consciousness, that sustains the whole universe… what the poet Dante called “the love that moves the stars”?

We imagine – deceiving ourselves – that we do and make things by our own independent power. Yes, our will-power can stand against death itself, but we delude ourselves if we think that we have this power in isolation from others. We exist because of the love and care of other people, and on a wider scale, because of the mind and love of the one Creator. Like those gathered at the first Pentecost, we are continually sustained by the breath of its one Spirit.

In his letter Laudato Si, Pope Francis emphasised how all living things, and the mineral world too, are connected and depend on each other. Some philosophers even ask whether deep down, the observer/ subject and the observed/ object are distinct or separate at all. It sounds crazy, but physicists who peer deepest into sub-atomic physics say similar things. We do have to struggle, through childhood and adolescence, to form our individual personality, our character, but it is foolish to think that our ego is independent from – much less superior to – other peoples’.

Why are we envious when others are praised? Their success is ours too. Why gloat over others’ failures? In them, we too are diminished. Why get unreasonably angry when others cause harm? It is our common task to repair the damage.

We Christians cherish the sacred ritual of the Eucharist, the Mass, whose main purpose is not our personal holiness, but to unite us more deeply with others in holy communion. Loving other people is the same thing as coming closer to God. (1 John 4:7-8*) In sacrament, in love, we draw on the Spirit to help unite the human Family.

====================================================

* everyone who loves is born of God and knows God… for God is love.

Does Christ’s Ascension touch me?

21st May 2023

[Acts 1:1-11, Matthew 28:16-20]

The ending of Jesus life is described differently by the gospel writers Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. But they all say that on Easter morning, women found his tomb empty. If those writers were “making it up”, to glorify their dead leader and boost their new community, they would have hardly chosen illiterate women as their main witnesses. Women’s evidence could not even be accepted in court. The stories of Easter morning differ in detail, but contain a convincing core of truth.

The stories of Jesus’ departure differ even more widely. Luke says it happened just outside Jerusalem, forty days after the resurrection. Matthew puts the event 120 kilometres away, in Galilee, and seemingly much sooner. John doesn’t describe Jesus’ ascension at all, but where Luke says the disciples received God’s Holy Spirit fifty days later, at Pentecost, John says that Jesus breathed his Spirit into them on Easter night!

These conflicting descriptions of the Ascension tell us a lot about gospel stories. When the gospels are describing events beyond the physical, they do not give details that are “literally true”. That would be impossible. No one saw Jesus’ resurrection, nor his ascension. These were transcendent events. They happened in some other dimension, on the border of our time-and-space world. Jesus did not “go up” like a moon rocket, to some place called heaven. He, God-become-human, lived, suffered a terrible death and then passed through to an unknown dimension, of which we know little. But he, the Risen One, is still with us, more intimately than before.

St Augustine put it well when he said that the risen Christ is still on earth among us, and we are already in heaven with him. To the degree that we allow and invite it, God’s infinite self resides in us, changing and empowering our lives.

The most important part of the ascension stories in Luke and Matthew may be the instructions given to the disciples. In Luke’s account, angels rebuke the onlookers: “Why are you standing there, looking into the sky?” For us in 2023, this suggests that if we want to follow the risen Christ, God present in us, we should not look up at the sky, hoping for heaven, in the future. Jesus did not go there. We need to look around us, at the beautiful planet we have been given to live in. We are commissioned to bring about the Realm of God, the Reign of Love, here. Instead, collectively, we are destroying the earth. We are spreading plastics and poisons which are destroying species. More than half of the insects on which our crops and flowers rely, have now gone. By burning fossil fuels we are warming the planet and melting the ice-caps and glaciers. Hundreds of millions of people depend on rivers that are shrinking. Any or all of these may be nearing an irreversible tipping point. We must cut through the constant lies of those who deny this is happening.

In Matthew’s story of the ascension, Jesus told his followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations”. Did he mean to cajole or force them to become Christians? For what reason? Or did he mean to teach them how to love?

In our society, we have much to learn about that. This week, when First Nations commentator Stan Grant dared to remind us that the British crown was responsible for invading his country and destroying his people, many people savagely attacked him. In the same week, police officers tasered ninety-five year old Clare Nowland in her nursing home, knowing no better way than near-lethal violence to control fragile people. Nothing to do with me? Or do we have work to do? Do we use Christ’s presence within us to speak, act and pray about these local events, and others like them? Isn’t it our task to deepen the level of love in our society; to bring about the victory of love and forgiveness, the Reign of the Holy One?

* * * * *

How can we reach “life to the full”?

Easter: Sunday 4 30. 3. 2023

[Acts 2:36-41, John 10: 1-10]

Today, in many countries, people suffer the horrors of war: bombardment, murder, rape and loss. Thousands try to survive by hiding in cellars or fleeing across borders. Do these – or their attackers – have “life to the full”?

There are still prisoners who have been in Guantanamo Bay for twenty years, who have had no trial and may not even be guilty of any crime. Many were taken to “black sites” in other countries, their terrible tortures “outsourced” by the US government. Against international law, Australia too keeps many refugees in prisons where they often despair and kill themselves. Do these people – or the politicians responsible – have “life to the full”?

We who live in calm and prosperity often obey the ceaseless voices of advertisers, and fill our lives with “stuff” we do not need, hoping to make our life more comfortable. Do we have “life to the full”?

Jesus promised the fullness of life to all of us. He used a metaphor based on the pastoral industry common in his land, comparing humanity to a sheep-flock and himself to the shepherd. The shepherd enters the sheep-pen through the gate, whereas thieves break in elsewhere. Jesus also compared himself to the gate itself. His point was that while false teachers come “only to steal and kill and destroy”, Jesus came so that we may have “life… to the full”.

The metaphor has for us lost its original force, in a land where sheep are counted by the thousand and driven by dogs rather than follow a shepherd who calls them by name. But even in the context of the New Testament, have we fully understood the metaphor?

On the day of Pentecost – our first reading tells us – St Peter took on the difficult task of convincing the gathering crowd that Jesus had risen from the dead. Peter succeeded. Because he spoke as a person filled with the Spirit of God, about three thousand joined the Christian group that day. Peter showed his listeners that God, whom Jews had long honoured and worshipped as the Holy One whom they dared not name, would now enter into and “possess” people who would accept the gift.

The first Jewish Christians soon realised that they no longer needed the ancient temple as the centre of their relationship with the Holy One. They met in their homes to thank God, in the simple thanksgiving ritual, the Eucharist that Jesus had given them. They knew that the risen Christ united them in that sharing of bread and wine. The Risen One was no longer their external Shepherd, Leader and Teacher, but was within each of them, closer now than in any love relationship.

This truth, that Christ is within each of us, is the way for anyone, despite their sufferings, to find “life to the full”. It changes radically our understanding of “being saved”. It must shift the structure of our church today, as synodality begins to listen to all, and respect their gifts. As we ponder more deeply, we will see that the Spirit of the Infinite God is not confined by the symbols and customs of Christian culture: the scriptures that prepared the coming of Jesus, or baptism that commits us to him. The Second Vatican Council stated that “we reject nothing that is true and holy in other religions”. * All Truth, Beauty and Goodness are contained in God, and all created beings reflect these in diverse ways. Long before Jesus came, Indigenous peoples, Hindus and Buddhists had deep insights and wisdom which can only have come from the same Holy Spirit by which God is within us. If people who follow the paths of those other traditions may not have the advantage of knowing God’s intimate love as expressed through Jesus Christ, those others may find depths of contemplation that many Christians do not discover.

* * * * *

* Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions. Par. 2.

The politics of Jesus?

Feast of Christ the King 20. 11. 2022

[Luke 23:35-43]

– Parliament House Canberra –

Jesus was born in a small country occupied by the Roman empire. He would have seen his own people being heavily taxed to support both Rome and Herod, Rome’s decadent puppet-king. He saw much violence too, and frequent crucifixions, Rome’s normal way of keeping control.

A thoughtful young man, Jesus did not join the Zealot revolutionaries who aimed to drive out the Romans by guerilla warfare. Later, when crowds flocked to hear his teaching, he refused to let them appoint him as their king (John 6:15) and in the end, at his trial, he told Pilate “my kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). But he did announce the Good News that a new kingdom had begun. He often said: “the kingdom of God is among – or possibly within you.” (e.g. Mark 1:14 & Luke 17:21) He promised that this kingdom would change the lives of the exploited Palestinian peasants and labourers, radically.

In a first teaching (Luke 4;18) he declared that he had come to free people trapped in everyday sufferings: the poor, the oppressed, prisoners, and people with a disability. Jesus showed his hearers – including ourselves – that we can each bring about God’s kingdom, by first discovering that God is not a severe judge who will condemn us, but who created us in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27) within a beautiful world. God loves us more than parents could ever love, and God’s Spirit comes into us when we ask. (Luke 11:13) We are made ready to receive God and to build the Kingdom within us by dying to ourselves, loving and forgiving even those who hate and oppose us.

Jesus showed them how to resist, daringly but nonviolently, the Roman soldiers and temple officials who exploited them. If they were struck, as slaves were, with a backhander from a right hand – the “unclean” left hand was never used – Jesus advised them to assert their dignity by turning the left cheek, inviting the bully to use his fist as he might fight an equal. If a Roman soldier demanded, lawfully, that they carry his heavy pack for one mile, the conscript could embarrass him by offering, against army regulations, to carry it for an extra mile. In such ways, poor, desperate people heard the wonderful news that they could draw on God’s infinite power within them, and hope for an eternal future. “”Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20). Jesus compared this Kingdom of God, which we are called to build, to a great wedding banquet where people of all races and social classes will eat together. (Matthew 22:1-10) It is our work now to do away with all divisions.

How did Jesus prepare for teaching us to build this kingdom? With a long, solitary retreat, fasting and confronting within himself the ordinary human desires to misuse power. He resisted the temptation to use power to satisfy himself without regard for others, refusing to turn stones into bread. He fought the temptation to seek political power and rule earthly kingdoms, which control people through violence, the threat of prison or death. Finally he resisted the temptation to abuse spiritual power, to use God’s help or protection to win others’ praise and admiration.

At the end of his life Jesus made a very political but nonviolent demonstration against the heart of his own religion, the corrupt, exploiting temple, which collaborated with the Roman overlords. Symbolically clearing out its traders and dealers, he temporarily blocked access while he preached God’s Kingdom there. He knew that this would lead to torture and execution, but chose to give his whole self in resisting, powerfully but nonviolently, the greatest evils of his time. This king surrendered all human power, to die naked and powerless on a cross. The only recognition of his kingship was the mocking title on his cross: “The king of the Jews”. (Mark 15:26)

Since the death of our king, many others have copied his politics, resisting and overcoming violence nonviolently. Their collaboration has succeeded much more often than has the violence of war. Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu who had studied the gospels, propagated this wisdom of Jesus and forced the British empire to withdraw from India. His example influenced successful nonviolent campaigns in the struggle against Hitler in Denmark (1942) racism in USA’s southern states (1960s), in the Philippines (1986), in South Africa against apartheid and in Poland (1989).

But despite Jesus’ teaching and example of the power of nonviolence, Christian emperors, kings and sometimes bishops have gone to war with dubious motives, under the sign of the cross, the symbol of total non-aggression.

* * * * *

Why be afraid of the end of the world?

Sunday 33 C 13^th November 2022

[ Luke 21:5-19]

Why have so many movies been made about some disaster that threatens to bring about the end of the world, or destroy all human life on the planet? Why do people eagerly pay to watch this? The end of the world, or of humanity, fascinates us. Will it come by collision with an asteroid? By nuclear war; a plague-virus experiment out of control; or maybe by nasty extra-terrestrial visitors? We are intrigued, but scared to face the real end, for most of these movies end with some heroic persons saving us from disaster at the last minute.

Our fascination and fear is not new. The last book in the Bible, Revelation or Apocalypse, depicts it with spectacular scenes of droughts, floods, plagues, fires and wars. These apocalyptic visions seem almost to be predictions of the current devastating flooding in Pakistan and Eastern Australia, or the world-wide bush-fires and the terrible famines in Africa.

Jesus warned us not to be needlessly alarmed by imagined “prophecies” about our world’s end. He was not concerned with spectacular visions about it, for only God knows the time. In today’s gospel, he implies that wars and revolutions are almost the normal result of the way we treat each other. Since his time, we have learned that earthquakes and plagues are natural, inevitable processes in the evolving world.

Jesus did predict that the grand Jerusalem temple would be destroyed. When Luke wrote his gospel, the Roman armies his had already destroyed it and Jerusalem some decades before. The temple had been a foundation of Jesus’ Jewish education and faith. He was carried there as an infant and went there with his parents for the annual Passover and probably other feasts. When almost an adult, he absconded there to hear and talk about God with the learned scholars. But Jesus knew that the temple’s enormous cost had come from king Herod’s ruthless taxing of the populace – most of them poor – and criticised its officials for “swallowing up the houses of widows” by their taxes and laws. (Mark 12:40) Immediately before Jesus predicted the temple’s destruction, Luke shows him praising one such widow for her generous gift to the temple.

The temple’s terrible fate did not perturb Jesus, for it was no longer needed as symbol of God among us. “Something greater than the temple is here”. (Matthew 12:6) Jesus was condemned to death on a false accusation that he promised to destroy the temple, and replace it with one “not made with hands”; (Mark 14:58) and three of the gospel writers note that when Jesus died, the curtain that closed off the temple’s Holy of Holies was mysteriously torn from top to bottom.

That symbol was replaced by something much deeper. Jesus was showing us that we are equipped to deal with difficulties and conflicts; the misunderstandings and persecutions that will sometimes hit us hard. He told us that under such opposition we are to “bear witness”. Witness to what? To the Good News that the Reign of God has already begun, and consists in the reality that God is within us; that we ourselves are God’s temple.

This amazing truth had been hinted at in the book of Genesis: “God made humans in the image of God’s self… ” (Genesis 1:27) Centuries before Jesus It had been discovered to varying degrees by the Hindu sages and the Buddha, but was clarified and deepened by Jesus’ promise that he would send God’s Spirit, would come as God’s self to dwell in us: “We [The Father and I ] shall come and make a home in you”. (John 14:23). This central Christian truth has transformed countless lives. When everyone understands it, it will bring about Revelation’s promise of a “new heaven and a new earth”. (Revelation21:1)

* * * * *

Do we need to haggle with God?

Sunday17C 24^th July 2022

[Genesis 18: 20-32, Luke 11: 1-13]

They clambered onto the Dandenong bus: a young couple with two boys, about six and two years old. They might have been Hazari refugees. The six-year-old looked around solemnly, observing everything, but the two-year-old was resisting everything his parents asked. He wriggled from his father’s lap and tried to run to another seat while the bus was cornering violently, quite unaware that his small body might be thrown to the other end of the aisle.

At that age, we are discovering that we have a will of our own and can control our own body to some extent, and exert power over others by saying “No!”. Parents have the delicate task of containing and directing that emerging will without damaging the child. Then as we grow we soon learn – even in kindergarten – that other people have wills too and make their own claims over things; on their own space; and on their share of the elders’ attention. The clash of wills can hurt us, but as we learn these sometimes-painful lessons we are fortunate if we know that other wills embrace us with love.

Later in our growing we find that in this vast universe there may be spirit-powers greater than any human will. Every culture has a myth of a Creator-God. They are myths because the reality is beyond our comprehension, even when it communicates with us through prophets whose words are preserved in our scriptures. We can only imagine God in terms of our limited senses, although God far exceeds all our powers. When we try to relate to God, we naturally use the same techniques that work with other humans. In earlier cultures people thought that gifts, blood-sacrifices and eloquent pleas would placate the One who made volcanoes, earthquakes and lightning: the One who controls life and death.

This reading from Genesis shows a crude view of God, who needs to go down to Sodom in person, to find the truth about what he has heard is going on there. Then Abraham starts to bargain with God to save Sodom from destruction. Like a nomadic chieftain haggling over cattle, Abraham whittles down the price from “fifty just men” to one fifth that number. At least the writer knew that God was approachable, at least by Abraham who had been called to be God’s trusted friend.

The author of the Genesis myth seems to have been starting to grasp the beautiful truth that later prophets proclaimed more clearly: that the will of the infinite God is not only sympathetic to us humans, but loves us intimately. In one of many instances, Isaiah heard God say of the people, hopelessly confused and disoriented: “…you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you”. (Isaiah 43:4)

In today’s gospel passage Luke shows Jesus telling us that relating to God is easier than we could ever imagine. God is closer to us, and more generous, than loving parents are to their children. Using the “Lord’s Prayer” we can ask for help with the most intimate and difficult things: the daily food we need; being forgiven for the damage we cause to our sisters, brothers and planet; and most difficult of all, forgiving those who hurt us.

If our still-developing will is tempted to ask, greedily, for things that our senses feel are important, Jesus lifts us to an infinitely higher level. As we talk with God, the gift that we receive is God’s self joined to our self. “…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”

* * * * *

The Coming of Infinite Love

Pentecost 5^th June 2022

[Acts 2:1-11, John 20:19-23]

It might surprise some of us to notice that the New Testament contains two versions of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the first Christian community. On this Pentecost Sunday we read them both. Luke, in Acts, places the event on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, fifty days – seven weeks – after the great feast of Passover. John’s gospel places the event on Easter night, when Jesus himself breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples.

This fact alone, that there are two different accounts, should help us to see that the mysterious, transcendent happening, like the “sightings” of the Risen Christ, cannot be described in literal terms. But we can state some truths about the Holy Spirit’s coming among us: It follows from the Incarnation, God coming among us as Jesus of Nazareth. We learned from the way Jesus treated people and from his Good News – the gospel – that our Creator is a loving father/mother, whose Infinite Love underlies the universe. Jesus showed us that God welcomes all people, and especially cares for those who are “poor”, deprived, treated unjustly, broken, grieving: the majority!

The mysterious event on the day of Pentecost – or the night of Easter – shows that this Infinite Love comes into each one of us, personally. John’s gospel shows Jesus promising exactly this: that God, Father, Son and Spirit, will come to live within us, to the degree that we “keep his commandment” to love each other “as I love you”.

What do you think stands out most, in the two different descriptions of the Holy One giving us this great gift? It is given when we have come together, trying to be united. The followers of the Risen One had “gathered”, even if only because they were scared! Into this imperfect group who were praying for God’s help, Infinite Love was able to come. The Spirit united them, stronger than before, as it can unite us. But the Spirit did not make them all the same, monotonously uniform. It brought alive their human gifts and differences, even empowering them to speak in different languages.

The Spirit united them, giving them, and us, the power eventually to unite the whole human family, because it gives us the power to forgive. “…those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” We also received the power to “retain” sins. Does this mean that our love can act like the retaining wall of a dam, preventing others from spreading evil and doing harm?

Do we who follow Jesus really believe that we possess this Infinite Love, which gives us the power, if we work together, eventually to heal our world? Why then, are we sometimes pessimistic, depressed? In John’s account, Jesus gives his friends peace and joy. Do we recognise and use these precious gifts?

Jesus’ Spirit sends us out, you and me, to heal our world. Can we try to keep in mind that the Spirit is in our every breath and movement? Yes, we can love every person that we come across – even “enemies” who harm people or our planet, whether they are cruel, or merely greedy and thoughtless. By applying the Spirit’s gift of loving and forgiving, we can heal them.

Looking honestly at our world-wide church, has it always been faithful to the Holy Spirit? Has it always respected the truth that every member is equally loved by God? Or through the centuries, have we allowed a “caste” of clergy to dominate the rest? Clerics’ role of presiding at Eucharist is important, but should it have separated them from the rest by giving them higher status? Because clerics came to be seen as “holy”, most of the church looked away when a small percentage of clergy took advantage of their status to abuse children. And many bishops concealed the clerics’ crimes “for the good of the church”. They were declaring that abused children were not as much part of the church as the clerics were!

In the beginning, the Eucharist was a joyful community meal, but clerical power gradually made it into a “one man show”, performed and controlled by a special man, “holier” than the rest. But holy men and women, saints, are found in every walk of life, not just in presbyteries or priories! If all Christians have rich and diverse gifts, how can Roman clerical committees insist that our celebration of the Eucharist must be uniform, identical, every time we come together to thank and praise the Infinite God?

Much good work has been done to restore the Eucharist, but today, when there are fewer priests, parishes are still being combined into super-parishes, for the sake of diminishing clergy, instead of being re-shaped to meet the people’s need to celebrate Eucharist in true communities, which can only happen when groups are small. We need many more priests, of a new and simpler kind, to let this happen around the world.

On this wonderful feast of Pentecost, can we each re-discover that at the beginning of our Christian life, we received God’s Spirit, making each one of us a “prophet, priest and king”?

* * * * *