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 well are we listening?

Sunday 15A 16^th July 2023

[Matthew 13:1-23]

After watching a video * of woman doctor describing her Near Death Experience – the remarkable psychic “journey” during the half hour she was clinically dead – I described it to a friend, who was a priest. His reaction amazed and disappointed me. He said that such experiences were “rubbish”; mere hallucinations. When I suggested he watch the video, this highly-educated man refused. He had no need to examine the evidence, for or against: his mind was made up.

This illustrates the parable in Mathew’s gospel about the various outcomes when seed is sown. After the farmer scatters it on the ground, some seeds are eaten by birds, some choked by weeds, and others withered by the sun, but some falls on good soil and produces a bountiful crop.

We usually interpret the seed as representing “the word” about the “reign of God” which it was Jesus’ life’s purpose to announce. That was how Jesus himself explained the parable. From his spoken teachings and his actions, as described in the four gospels and preached by his followers. humanity has deepened its understanding of itself. For instance, from the simple but powerful story of the “good Samaritan” we are shown the wider horizon of love, the beauty of helping any person in need, even strangers and foreigners. The Good News expands our view of God as like a loving father or mother of all people. It promises that if we help those who lack food, clothes or shelter; if we build peace by forgiving our enemies and loving each other as God loves us we will gain “eternal life” – not just “heavenly reward” but create God’s reign here, on earth.

When Jesus broke sacred Sabbath rules to heal people, we learned that rules and laws, even “religious” ones, are less important than people who need help. Jesus advised us to question ancient conventions and traditions of family and society, for these are often based on self-interest, narrow parochialism or tribalism. We must “hate” these if they stand in the way of pursuing the greater good, which includes everyone.

Jesus was criticised for partying with outcasts, but in befriending people of every kind – whether “respectable” or “riff-raff” – Jesus showed us that we are all loved by God. Above all, he showed us how to change the world by building supportive, welcoming communities, centred on a beautiful ritual meal at which we remember him as actually present when we break bread and share a cup.

But – to return to my sceptical priest friend – “the word” in not only found in the bible or heard in churches. The world around us offers abundant wisdom, if only we are listening. It is sad that some people imagine that “church” is our only source, as if the world is somehow unworthy, even corrupt. Does God speak only through the pages of the bible? Wasn’t the mysterious God expressing Eternal Wisdom in creating the trillion galaxies, of which we are an infinitesimal part?

Isn’t the Creator seen and heard in every movement of creatures in the countless living species, including ourselves? Jesus was born into this wonderful, constantly evolving universe. If we are listening, we can learn wisdom from every aspect of the world around us. If we allow ourselves to wonder, we will be astonished by the Creator’s word that echoes within it.

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* This is the video…

Can we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body’?

Easter 9^th April 2023

(John 20:1-9)

In his autobiography, * the Australian author Ian Guthridge tells of his Catholic childhood, how he joined the Jesuit order at seventeen and lived its austerities for twenty years. In his late thirties he questioned what he believed, left the Jesuits and discarded Catholic practices. While still respecting Christianity and other faiths for building a good and moral society, he no longer believed in a transcendent God or life beyond death.

The writer looks honestly at religious institutions, admitting the many benefits they have brought, but also pointing out their serious flaws. He is more honest than many people who will not face such questions, preferring their own comfort or self-interest to the truth.

But Guthridge rejected the bible’s stories without having a deep knowledge of modern biblical scholarship. He also failed to recognise how people, in the first century or now, have “met” God in prayer; have had “mystical” experiences, including countless “Near Death Experiences”; or recognised Providence working in their lives.

Belief in Christ’s resurrection was the foundation of the church, but as a transcendent event, no one could witness it or describe it. The four gospels and St Paul give differing accounts of the circumstances surrounding it, and critics point out that the accounts contradict each other. Was the risen Jesus seen first in Jerusalem or in Galilee? Which of the women went to the tomb? Did they see one or two angels? Did Jesus ascend to the father on Easter night, or forty days later?

Before these stories were written, Christians were already saying that Christ was alive, in short formulae that they used when spreading the Good News, teaching catechumens and in worshipping together. We find these formulae in the New Testament: “Christ died for our sins… was buried and raised up on the third day” “Christ was designated Son Son of God in power by resurrection from the dead”.

Were these apostles deluded? Or were they describing their genuine experience? This question challenges every one of us. We need not worry if the later stories conflict. The first witnesses claims were told and retold in different Christian communities, and as always happens to stories, their details gradually changed with the telling. Decades after Jesus’ death, the gospel writers collected them and tried to edit them so that they would hang together.

Was the tomb empty? Would anyone trying to promote a colossal deception choose women as witnesses, when women could not even give evidence in a law court? Would the editors invent the fact that the apostles didn’t believe the women’s announcement, when it detracts from the prestige of those founding fathers?

The transcendent dimension, God and the after-life, is mysterious and totally beyond our senses. Anyone who has glimpsed it has the impossible task of “translating” what they have experienced into physical words and images. So it is legitimate to ask did Mary Magdalen actually cling physically to Jesus, as she may have hugged him before his death? Did Thomas really put his finger into a fleshy wound such as surgeons attend to? Did Jesus genuinely eat grilled fish and receive nourishment from it?

There is no doubt that those women and men had unforgettable experiences that forever changed their lives – and eventually changed the world. But other details in their stories should warn us that Jesus had not come back as we come back from our overseas travel. In three of those stories, his best friends did not at first recognise Jesus. In others, he suddenly appeared in a locked room, or suddenly disappeared from sight. Clearly, Jesus was not resuscitated in the same condition as he was before his death.

Paul, writing before the gospels were written, points out that “what is sown is corruptible, but what is raised is incorruptible… a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43) Jesus himself had cryptically said that after death, those who share in his resurrection will “neither marry nor give in marriage”.

Because resurrection is not resuscitation of the physical body, it is foolish to ask how material will be shared among risen bodies, when the same atoms have been re-cycled through the soil and food chain to become part of many bodies in succession.

Coming to accept resurrection is a process. Not being able to accept does not make us less good or less moral persons. But even glimpsing this transcendent mystery makes a vast difference to our life. The promise of sharing it forever is “indescribable and glorious joy”.

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* Give me a child when he is young… (1987)

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

We too are being transfigured

Lent Sunday 2C 13.3.22

                                                        [Port Fairy Folk Festival Mass] 

[Genesis 15:5-18, Philippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 9:28-36]

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything is in flux, all is changing. Was he right? Before you step into the river a second time, he said. it has radically changed. Heraclitus had a point. Not only does the water change constantly. a few billion years ago there were no rivers, and no planet earth!

Everything, including you and I, is very temporary. Some kinds of change we enjoy… like the music we have come to hear this weekend: a delightful sequence of changing notes and rhythms. Yet other change can be terrifying. In Queensland and Lismore these last weeks, the storms brought unprecedented change, and ruin for many homes and businesses. And then there is the war in Ukraine!

Deep down, we fear change: concerned about our future we need our superannuation and pension schemes. We fear sickness, growing old; death. Nostalgia is the pain and sadness we feel when we recall the past. The other day I picked up a funeral booklet: on the cover there was a picture of a handsome young man. He had died at 95, no longer fit or handsome. Other photos showed him as a baby; a toddler; young boy in football jersey; his wedding day; then with his adult children. Funerals are sad.

May I share with you a huge discovery about change that has come to me in these later years? I suppose this breakthrough had been hatching for years, like a slow egg; but it became much clearer during a serious illness. I saw more deeply the meaning of the ‘Good News’ that Jesus went about preaching, and sent others to preach. He said: ‘The Reign of God has arrived: repent and believe the Good News’. We have usually taken this word repent to mean ‘change your hearts from being bad. Stop sinning!’ But the Greek word is meta-noia: ‘see beyond; see the bigger picture’. Expand your horizon. This is the change that we constantly need to make. Sickness expanded my mind. I saw more than before that at every moment we live and move in the presence of God.

We are always in the presence of the mysterious Holy One who pulled Abraham away from his ancestral home. That ancient myth is a symbolic story about you and me: pulled from the security of our childhood – as I was pulled away from comfortable good health – towards the next stage of our growth. God made a permanent contract with Abraham. In that eerie ritual, animals were cut in half, and the two contracting parties passed between the bloody halves. ‘If we break the covenant, let us be slaughtered like these. After dark, a mysterious fire passed through. Abraham was terrified. God is a terrifying and fascinating mystery.

But we know that God came amongst us, as Jesus, saying: I will die for you! This is my blood, of the New Covenant. Where will it take us? Abraham was promised as many descendants as there are stars. We mightn’t want to be father or mother to a vast tribe, but the number can teach us. Even in the desert, Abraham couldn’t see more than 10,000 stars, but we now know that there are 200 billion stars in our local Milky Way galaxy. And there are a trillion galaxies. The One who made those knows us personally; is our friend; will love us always. This friendship changes us; transfigures us. And when we see that every person is a beloved child of God, we see them with deeper compassion.

This is the bigger picture. The Holy One promised Abraham a homeland. St Paul said: ‘Our homeland is in heaven’, because like all the ancients he thought God lived above the sky. What do you think eternity is like?Is it, as the Buddhists think, supreme consciousness? After death, are our minds somehow perfected? Or is it also our relationships? Will we be able to meet and share with our ancestors and all who have gone before? Could perfect human love be a foretaste? Being loved by the God who moves a trillion galaxies.

Christians believe in the ‘resurrection of the body’. ‘Christ will transfigure this body we have, to be like his’. Peter, James and John saw Jesus’ briefly transfigured, bright as lightning, while he was praying. They saw him speaking with Moses and Elijah, key prophets of God’s first covenant. Jesus is God’s ultimate spokesperson, for as we heard at his baptism, we hear again: This is my son: Listen to him! Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about his Exodus, his final transformation through death and resurrection. And the biblical myth of Exodus is another symbol of our transformation-journey, towards our promised land: resurrection.

We get hints of resurrection in the Near Death Experience, a phenomenon that I have been studying for forty years now. They are reported by millions of people who were ‘clinically dead’ but were later revived. About thirty percent of them describe being out of their body, while perfectly conscious and peaceful. Some report seeing an amazing Light. Some of them speak with that light, and go into it. These These Near Death Experiences change people’s lives, but are beyond comprehension and can be described only in metaphors. Our faith tells us of this transcendent state. We do not need to spend our lives trying to cling to our ‘permanent’ suburban home, our achievements, our children’s successful careers; or our ‘secure’ retirement. These things are all good and worth striving for; but they are all temporary.

And look around! We are currently changing our planet so that today’s children will inherit a devastated world: our governments refuse to stop burning coal and gas, heating up our planet and making the sea level rise. New struggles for resources will produce millions more refugees. Nothing stands still. Not even the church, although many people are seduced by the fantasy that it is unchanging. They try to turn it into a timeless cult. But we must admit its enormous human mistakes. The wisdom of the Vatican Council tells us that we Christians share this changing planet with the rest of humanity. We are all part of God’s bigger picture, whose Infinite Love we trust to heal us all, eventually?

Thy kingdom come! The three men on that mountain saw God’s Glory, which is our future. As we accept this, we too are transfigured, and at every moment can be deeply hopeful and profoundly joyous, whatever happens. But let’s not be like the ever-bumbling Peter, and try to make this moment permanent. This beautiful place is not our final destination.

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Where does hope come from?

Epiphany 2^nd January 2022

[Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:2-6, Matthew 2:1-12]

From the time that children start to be aware of the world around them, they begin to realise there are many things that they cannot do without help. They later learn that there are some things that even their parents cannot do. And they quickly learn that ‘bad things’ happen. They ask: Why did our dog die – or some other pet. Why did Grandma get sick? Why is that person in a wheelchair?

As adults we learn about much worse evils in the world. In today’s story from Matthew’s gospel, King Herod is the ultimate villain. He was actually like that in real life: he impoverished the people with heavy taxes to fund his huge building programmes; he had several members of his own family killed because he thought they might become his rivals. The gospel told us that he killed many babies and toddlers because the wise travellers from the East wouldn’t tell him where the new-born king lived.

Stories like this, about the struggle between good and evil, are scattered thorough all literature and are abundant in cheap, violent films. They are based on fact, and the fact that we tell these stories raises big questions: Why is it that we are all determined to make our lives better? Where do we get the strength to stand against the bad things that happen?Where does hope come from?

We hope, even though we know that our years are limited; that our body will wear out one day. We fear for the future of our world, for the planet is getting hotter. We lament that thousands of children around the world are starving, right now. Yet we hope for better things. That things will improve. Some people do lose hope. They can be so weighed down by life’s cares that they give way to depression and despair. We all have our breaking point. But it is normal and healthy to stand strong. Where do we get our hope from?

Today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah tells us about this. Isaiah’s people have been through disasters: they have been invaded several times, many have been slaughtered, many taken into exile as slaves. After about seventy years, a new king of the Persians allows them to return to their homeland, but life is still very harsh, and they fight among themselves.

Yet Isaiah sees that a great light is dawning for his people. This prophet speaks a lot about light… more than any other of the sixteen main prophets in the bible. The light is God. Although we cannot know what God is, and everything we say about God is a metaphor, the best metaphors to ‘describe’ God are light… and love.

It is quite common that in an accident or health emergency, some people’s heart and brain functions stop, but then they are revived. Many of these people try to describe having a spiritual experience, called the Near Death Experience. They always mention seeing a magnificent Light. They say: ‘I went towards this beautiful light’. Some even enter the light, and experience incredible happiness and peace. Some are aware that countless other persons are in that Light, united in love far greater than anything we know on earth. The encounter fills them with hope.

Isaiah tells us that the light, that God, will come. ‘His glory will rise over you.’ He adds: God gives us the task of spreading the light. ‘Nations will come to your light.’ And what Isaiah tells us is told in a hundred different ways throughout the Bible, especially after Jesus: ‘God is on our side; wants us to know God. The light is gradually dawning for us.

In the legendary Book of Job, that man who has suffered terribly could strongly state: ‘I know that my redeemer lives!’ The statement was made into a beautiful song by Handel, in The Messiah. Then the last book of the bible, Revelation, speaks of the hope that the earth will be renewed. It speaks of the City of God, full of God’s Light. The ultimate happy ending.

We can know this hope, this vision, from the gospels and the prophets. This feast of the Epiphany celebrates the Showing of God to those strangers from the East, from the unknown nations of the earth… like us. All nations will see this light. St Paul, too, in today’s second reading, tells us that he is compelled to spread this good news of God’s love for all people. This was his life’s mission.

Waiting for the Light is a life long process. It is as if we are out in the middle of the Nullabor Plain at midnight, waiting for the train. It is absolutely flat out there, and the track is dead-straight for 500 kilometres. You can see the glow of the great headlight several hours before the train arrives.

The hope of seeing God more in our daily life, and eventually face-to-face gives us great comfort. It is like a backbone to our faith, the faith we get from this baby born in Bethlehem. In him, ‘Our light has come.’

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God, help us to see!

[Luke 18:35-43] Mon. 15^th November 2021

Early in Luke’s gospel, Jesus said that the purpose of his life was to give to the world’s poor the good news that God loves them; and to help the blind to see again. In today’s passage he is entering Jericho, not far from the end of his journey towards Jerusalem and his predictable murder by the religious and government authorities. A blind man calls out to him. How long had be been sitting there, begging for his food? He was one of those poor people on the margins of life whom Jesus, with extreme paradox, called ‘blessed’ or happy. Why? Because, as one translation puts it, they ‘know their need for God’. Jesus stops, calls the blind one and responds by healing him.

The healing powerfully shows us God’s view of the poor. Jesus often asked his disciples to become like little children, or slaves; or like eunuchs, who are childless; or like the poor. There is no disgrace in being like these. In fact it is only when we begin to let go of our ego – or have it stripped from us by some kind of failure – that we begin to see our need for God in the way that these deprived people are always aware of the things that they need.

Can we see that we are actually like this blind person? That in many ways, our whole human race is blind? We know that the last five years have been the warmest on record, and that we are already experiencing worse bushfires, cyclones, floods. Poorer countries are suffering severe droughts and famines; yet our world leaders have just met in Glasgow and could not agree to put aside our greed for short-term profit, so as to help the common good of the human family and all other creatures! Tragically, our Australian government has been among the most selfish of all.

Are we so blind to the beauty of the world around us, that we are not concerned that the coral reefs are being killed by rising temperatures; and every day more rain-forests – habitats for uncounted species – are being destroyed for commercial crops? In their blindness, some people are lying about this enormous climate crisis; and even about the covid-19 pandemic, spreading false news about vaccination that makes many people afraid to get this simple medical help. Urgently, our society needs to widen its vision.

I have just been impressed by yet another account of a Near Death Experience. Anita Moorjani had been in great pain with terminal lymphoma; she was in a coma and about to die. But in a mystical experience she was given an even greater insight than the blind man whom Jesus healed. Anita, her body clinically dead for a short while, experienced total freedom from pain, and felt loved, unconditionally. With new sight she saw that she had always considered herself as a failure for not measuring up to what her father and her culture demanded of her. She had walked away from the marriage arranged by her family, who had then cast her out. In the Near Death Experience she ‘met’ her deceased father, and felt his unconditional love. With new insight, she saw that God was within her, and that all life is meant to be about love and joy. On returning to her body, she fully recovered from the terminal cancer.

As we struggle, like the blind beggar, with our everyday lives, can we begin to see that the Infinite Mystery, the Holy One, is not far in the distance, but is nearby, within us, asking as Jesus asked the beggar: ‘What do you want me to do for you’? Have we the courage to resist those negative voices, even ‘religious’ people, who are telling us to shut up? Can we keep believing that our desperate, ‘noisy’ prayer is good, and that such trust in God brings results? Like Anita Moorjani when she was clinically ‘dead’, can we see with joy that God is really present in our hearts all along, empowering us to love and forgive others? Our faith will save us; and others will join us when we praise God with our joyful lives.

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When is it safe to believe?

Monday 28B 11^th October 2021

[Romans 1:1-7, Luke 11: 29-32]

When we are confronted with things that our five senses cannot explain, how can we know if they are real? A good example is the Near Death Experience, which happens to some people who for a short time are ‘clinically dead’. About 40% of these folk find themselves still completely conscious, looking down on their own body. Many also tell of meeting their ancestors or other spiritual beings. Sometimes they learn things that they could not have otherwise known.

Some Catholics, and especially priests, cannot accept that the Near Death Experience is genuine. Perhaps they are afraid that millions of people might be finding and meeting God outside the church-structure and beyond the control of the clergy?

How can we be certain about things beyond our senses? Just before today’s passage from Luke’s gospel, Jesus had healed a deaf man. In those times, such disabilities were believed to be caused by a demon possessing the person, so some of the people who saw the healing accused Jesus of curing by demonic power. A few verses later, Jesus says: ‘This is a wicked generation’ because it was still asking for a sign from heaven to prove who Jesus was. In Mark’s earlier gospel, Jesus simply refused to give any sign; but Matthew and Luke show Jesus saying that the only sign he will give is ‘The sign of Jonah’.

The book of the prophet Jonah is a humorous and absurd short story, a parody, poking fun at the people of Israel for their lack of faith, and at their prophets, who weren’t giving them God’s true word. In the story, God gives Jonah the impossible task of preaching to the pagan Assyrians in Nineveh, so Jonah takes ship to run away. God sends a storm, and to save the ship, Jonah is tossed overboard but is rescued when a fish swallows him. Back on dry land, he does convert the huge pagan city of Nineveh, with a ten-word sermon! As we would say today: ‘Yeah… right!’

Matthew’s gospel says that the ‘sign of Jonah’ was Jesus’ three days in the grave, like Jonah in the preposterous fish. Luke, however, sees the ‘sign of Jonah’ as Jesus himself, urging people to ‘repent’, to see the bigger picture, that God is all around us. In Jesus, ‘A greater than Jonah is here’.

Jonah ran from God because he could not stomach the idea that God loves all people, and wanted to bring even the pagan Assyrians to know God. Jesus adds that besides the Assyrians, another pagan, the ‘Queen of the South’, came a long way to hear the wisdom that God had given King Solomon. Jesus is expanding our horizon: showing that far beyond the boundaries of whoever we think are the ‘chosen people’ – Jews, Catholics, Islam – God loves and is saving everyone.

Why did Luke write his gospel? Perhaps his community, a generation after Jesus’ resurrection, were struggling to keep believing in someone they had never seen? Luke’s gospel stories remind them: ‘Look at the most important sign God ever gave us: the Risen Christ.’

In other parts of Luke’s gospel, people are given a sign to prove that the message they have been given is true. Remember how Zechariah was struck dumb until his son was born, because he didn’t believe the news? Mary, on the other hand, was given a sign – Elizabeth’s pregnancy – to confirm what Mary already accepted. Sometimes other people in the bible asked for a sign to help them believe a messenger, as Gideon did in the Book of Judges. [Chapter 6].

Where do we stand, in believing things that our senses can never show us? It is common sense, in fact it is wisdom, to listen keenly to all the signs that come our way, carefully discerning how credible they are. Then we must make a leap of faith. It’s not unreasonable, because it’s based on reason. St Paul speaks of this, in the opening words of his Letter to the Christians in Rome. He calls himself the slave of God. Years before, on the road to Damascus, Saul/Paul had been persecuting Christians but had a mystical vision, very like the Near Death Experience. He was overcome by The Light, and heard the Risen Christ telling him what to do.

Paul did not understand this experience with his senses, but came to trust the Unseen One completely. He tells us here that we too can come to ‘the obedience of faith’.

We need to respect all our own experiences: when we are blown away by the beauty of the world; when we pray, thanking the unseen One. And especially when we experience love for each other. In all these, we are touching the unseen, Transcendent Realm. It pays us also to listen to the vast range of other people’s experience, and how it changes their lives. ‘By their fruits you will know them.’

We will be sure when we are in touch with the Power greater than ourselves – Christians are confident that they know it in the person of Christ, but we will never know him completely. Are we ready to keep growing continuously, accepting love, even if we do not know the Source, and thanking and loving in return?

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PS An example of an atheist’s Near Death Experience can be found here: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=atheist+shocked+by+who+he+meet&view=detail&mid=5FBF1FC2EA43C640BAD05FBF1FC2EA43C640BAD0&FORM=VIRE

This post is not a homily

You may find this video interesting. It is relevant to everyone, for each of us will die one day! This hard-working family man, a power-line engineer, described himself as an atheist, until he had a Near Death Experience after a work accident. It radically changed his life.

Some people scoff at Near Death Experiences, but after studying them for more than 40 years I am convinced that they are genuine encounters with the Transcendent. I would add, however, that what happens when the person is ‘clinically dead’, with every organ not function for many minutes, the ‘spiritual’ experience that some have is literally indescribable. When they are revived, they want to tell others about it, but can only use images and words that come from life in the material world. Metaphors! In other words, their experience was real, but their story is an attempt to describe the Transcendent, which is indescribable. They are often disbelieved or laughed at. Some have real difficulty in re-adjusting to ‘normal’ life.

Many attempts have been made to explain away the NDE, but none are satisfactory. If you are new to all this, judge for yourself!