A patchwork of offerings from my inner and outer gardens.
Reflecting on the fact that the people most impacted by climate change are the ones who have done least to cause it, I thought of Jeremiah 31:29-30. Here’s my reworded version:
The rich have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the poor are set on edge.
My daughter was inconsolable after witnessing the murder of a blackbird by a Magpie. I tried to console her a little with this:
We are all part of the same good earth, that springs up in different forms at different times, animated by the breath of God. In time, we all return to the earth and our breath is reunited with God.
I was deeply struck by this verses from Joel (2:21-22), and wondered how to interpret them for our times. Here I’ve tried to express something about hope beyond hope, and trusting in God for who He is, not for what He might do. Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. This is what I came up with.
Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, even though the wilderness is barren; the tree is empty of fruit, the fig tree and vine yield nothing. The Lord is God, and even this ending is in his hands.A short piece of liturgy inspired by Revelation 12:1-5 A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule[a] all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne.
The dragon wields its power through earthly rulers and authorities While the woman, clothed with the sun, prepares to birth the Messiah The dragon lies in wait, ready to destroy the Christ But he is snatched away and taken to the throne-room of God Although evil seems to triumph in our time God’s kingdom will prevail, by the power of the resurrection. Amen, come Lord Jesus
Some simple intercessions in case you need some ideas…
As we wander in the luscious vineyards, taste the grapes and drink sweet wine; you see us in our rejoicing. Help us to see you. As we come to worship tired, but dutiful, wondering what good it will do; you see us in our disconnection. Help us to see you. As we stumble and fall, hurt each other and forget your love; You see us in our lostness. Help us to see you. As we are battered by pain, confused and in grief; You see us in our suffering. Help us to see you. As we start to hope again and perceive signs of resurrection; You see us through loving eyes. Help us to see you. And we bring before you those [we have mentioned and those] on our hearts that need your healing touch and to know that you see them… We thank you for putting us into communities of faith and love, and thank you for those who lead us… And we ask for your mercy on this fractious and divided world, for peace with the Earth, for peace between nations, and a new awareness of our unity in Christ… Show us the path you are calling us to as individuals and communities, and give us the grace and courage to follow it. Amen.Here is my reimagining of Ignatius’ meditation on the Two Standards
Imagine you are at a crossroads in your life. You have been invited to two job interviews with two very different potential employers. The first is a huge multinational company with an annual turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars. As you approach the building for the interview, you notice its imposing architecture – it’s clean, shiny, and modern. The lines are straight and nothing is out of place. No expense has been spared, because the people who work here are important and their work is highly profitable. You introduce yourself to the receptionist, who smiles at you in a way that makes you feel important. She directs you upstairs to the office where you interview will be held. As you walk past, you notice impeccably dressed employees using the latest technology and original artworks lining the walls. You are welcomed into an office where you meet your interviewer. He is wearing a designer suit, diamond-studded cufflinks and an expensive watch. He sits behind an expansive desk; he is clearly a powerful, wealthy, respected individual. He asks you a few questions so easy that you barely need to think about your answers. He then goes on to tell you about the role, how important the position is and how they need to find just the right person, and that it looks like it could be you. He hints at the salary, which is a figure so huge that you can scarcely believe it. He mentions that working for this company would open all sorts of doors socially and even politically. He speaks with a charismatic ease and conviction. But there is something about him that makes you hesitate. You wonder what it might cost you to accept this well-paid, high-profile job offer and whether you might become filled with pride? As the interview ends, you leave the meeting room and look once more at the people working in the offices as you walk past. You notice something about the way they work: self-assured but something else…perhaps also a little empty? You pick up the company’s annual report on the way out, it’s filled with photos of happy employees and grateful customers, along with graphs and charts describing the economic successes of the previous year. The description of their main activities is ambiguous, but you soon realise that, in order to operate, this company must cause massive environmental destruction. It displaces indigenous people from their lands and exploits the most vulnerable. At face value, this opportunity it incredibly attractive, and it certainly appeals to some part of you, but there’s also a disquiet that is growing in your heart. You have another interview later the same day. It’s in a part of town you do not know, and as you make your way through this unfamiliar landscape past rundown housing and overflowing bins, you wonder if the address you were given was correct. Grass is growing in the cracks between the paving slabs and you can hear birds singing. You knock on the door of a shabby, dilapidated old warehouse that is covered in graffiti. The door opens and you are welcomed in by a somewhat dishevelled-looking young man, with a scruffy beard and wrinkled clothes. His eyes are bright and sparkling, there is a joy within him that radiates in a way that is contagious. He thanks you for coming, and apologies for the surroundings – he explains that he doesn’t have his own office, but borrows whatever he can when he meets up with people. You both sit down on chipped plastic chairs in a dark corner and he asks you some piercing questions about your reasons for applying for the job and what you really want in life that really make you think. He tells you about the work of his organization, of the service it provides, and of the deep impact for good that it has. He promises you meaningful work and growth in character. He warns you that the pay is terrible, that they have very limited resources, and that you would have to take a drastic cut in your standard of living. Then he tells you that people won’t value the work you would be doing; most think it’s pointless or foolish, some even think it is dangerous for society because it threatens to upset the status quo. He warns you that your family and friends will probably struggle to accept your new employment. Your mind is telling you that accepting this job would be a crazy idea, but your heart is telling you something else – there is something about this man that is deeply attractive and good, you wish that you could become like him, you want to spend as much time with him as you can. He has a beautiful humility about him. You meet some of his workers on the way out, but in fact they seem more like his friends. They have a similar joy and openness, despite their obvious poverty. You take your farewells, and on your journey back home you consider the two offers you have been given. The first offer is well-paid work that is valued by society – something you could be very proud of in a worldly sense – but you remember the emptiness of the workers, your discomfort with the interviewer, and the impact of the company’s operations. The second offer of work is very poorly paid and underappreciated – but you reflect on the beauty you saw in your second interviewer and his workers, their purity of spirit and humility, and the ways working with him would be positive for the world. What do you decide to do? Talk to the Trinity about it, one person at a time. 
This is a reflection on two of the lectionary readings for ‘Proper 4’: Psalm 139 and 2 Corinthians 4:5-12. With inspiration from Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.
At the beginning of last year, my better half and I spent three months in a large city in Northern India. This was an extraordinary experience of the sights, sounds and smells of a very different way of life to what we had been used to in quiet, orderly, rural Switzerland. A particularly strong memory was of a trip I took with some work colleagues to visit a field hospital in a remote village. On the way there, in the dead of night, we took a pit-stop for a cup of something hot. Now, I like my tea weak with very little milk, no sugar, and generally not messed about with. The chai I was given was strong, milky, spicy and unbearably sweet; but the most memorable thing about it was the strong taste of mud! This chai was served in small, unglazed, clay cups, which dissolved slightly imparting an unmistakeable flavour to the tea. These clay cups are disposable, they are formed from the clay of the ground, baked, used once, and then thrown back to the ground. It was to these basic and functional clay vessels that my mind turned when I read our passage from 2 Corinthians today.
Some members of the church in Corinth had been arguing that Paul had suffered too much to be a genuine apostle, and so he partly wrote this letter to emphasize that God was using Paul’s suffering to reveal God’s glory. Paul describes himself as a slave to the church for the sake of God’s glory and that he was nothing but a clay jar. He goes on to say that that we all have this treasure of God’s glory in the clay jars of our lives. Paul’s attitude appears extremely self-effacing.
But let’s pause our thoughts about the clay jars for now and go on to look at today’s Psalm. We had a truncated version read to us, and I do recommend that you read the full text, as it is a beautiful description of God’s intimate love for each one of us. It talks of how God pursues us, searches us out wherever we are, hems us in, and won’t let us go. Of how he knows us, how he watched over us being knitted together in the womb. How we are precious and valuable, unconditionally loved from before even the first amino acids of our nascent being were joined together.
At first glance, these two images appear to be in conflict. How can we be, at one and the same time, both so precious and so mundane? Do our lives matter in themselves, or are we just a vehicle to be used by God?
On further reflection, I think we can hold these two images in tension, but we need to give them different emphases at different points in our lives. Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr talks about the two halves of life. The first half of life is all about building up our ego, succeeding in our projects, discovering who we are and becoming confident in that. This sounds rather like the nurturing emphasis of Psalm 139. He calls it ‘building the container’ and sees it is a necessary part of spiritual development. But at some point, there comes a crisis – a moment of great failure or loss, or even of great love – that breaks through the ego we have built up and brings us to a new place of awareness. Here we start to see that the point of the container of our lives is to hold something bigger, so we can start to let go of our ego and let God be God in us without needing to succeed, achieve or prove a point. This second half of life sounds rather like Paul’s jars of clay, when we know that the jar isn’t the important thing – it’s all about the treasure within.
But this does come with a health warning. We need to come to 2 Cor 4 from a position of security, value and love. If we skip over Psalm 139, we miss out on the first half of life work of building up a healthy personhood. If we try to go straight to the clay jar, we risk ending up seeing ourselves as worthless, unimportant and even unlovable. We will have problems with setting healthy boundaries and caring for ourselves as much as we care for other people. But if we can put these two pictures together, we end up being so deeply secure in the unconditional love of God that we are free to let go of our own desire for approval, admiration or affirmation. We are liberated to be clay jars full of the treasure of God’s glory as a gift to the world.
There is so much to say about this image of clay jars. I hope it isn’t stretching things too far to compare the Indian teacups flavouring the tea with the way that each of us makes God visible in a slightly different way. We are not uniform, passive containers, who could easily be replaced by anyone else; each one of us expresses something unique of the nature of God, and as Psalm 139 tells us, and unlike the Indian teacups, each one of us has been made with great care and attention. And yet, the cup isn’t the point, it’s the tea that matters. Genesis tells us that Adam was made from the earth and the funeral service reminds us that to the earth our bodies will return. Like the clay teacups, we are formed out of the earth for a while, designed to hold something precious and then destined to return to the earth.
Clay jars are not particularly beautiful, and even as we grow emotionally and spiritually, our weakness and failures remain obvious to the people close to us, and hopefully also to ourselves. The paradox of our own failings and the glory of God coexisting within us is the reality of human existence. We all bear wounds, and God uses these to form us for our path in life. We see this in the life of Paul, who went from being arch-persecutor of the fledgling church to its greatest evangelist; God took someone with enormous zeal for what he misguidedly thought was the truth and redirected it for good. Perhaps the extreme nature of his personality well-suited Paul to the life of adventure, danger and suffering that bore the fruit of much of the New Testament and the expansion of the early church.
But we get indications here and there that Paul was not an easy character to deal with. There were conflicts with Barnabus and with Peter that perhaps could have been dealt with better, and he can sometimes come across as taking himself a bit too seriously. Really this shouldn’t surprise us, we all have a shadow side we need to face up to; for our shadow becomes problematic when we pretend it isn’t there, and it can come out in ugly ways, as in the various scandals that have rocked Christian churches in recent times.
God said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ and indeed, light is most obvious when it illuminates a dark place. The light of Christ is shining in our hearts, we can see it in each other, even when we can’t see it in ourselves, and, in the strange economy of God, it coexists with the very things that make us difficult to live with! Elsewhere in this letter (12:9) Paul writes that God told him ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’; we can’t generate the light, we can only receive it, and that’s actually easier when we are vulnerable, wounded, and aware of our flaws, these are the places where God can most easily get in and do his work.
But this transformation isn’t for our benefit. Paul reminds us where to put our focus ‘For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.’ We are not to promote ourselves, or even our precious church community; our focus is to be on Christ. As a church community our purpose is to glorify, worship, and reveal Christ to the world.
Our church is like one of Paul’s clay jars; I invite you to prayerfully consider how you might contribute to strengthening it – not for its own sake, but for the sake of the treasure it holds for the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Ignatius of Loyola wrote his Principle and Foundation in the 16th century. Here follows my riff on theme
God so longed to express her creativity and to share her love with conscious beings, that she created an astounding universe from the tiniest speck of nothing. As matter coalesced and planets began to form, she chose one at just the right distance from it’s closest star and through the Word breathed her spirit into its slowly accumulating atmosphere. The simple elements and minerals joyfully responded by producing life in all its bounteous variety.
After many aeons, God called forth human beings from the fertile earth and the flame of her spirit flickered within them. God showered them with love and invited them to love her back without reserve, to respond with joyful praise, humble appreciation and to serve her by serving their fellow creatures. We, like them, are to become so immersed in God’s love that we become transparent to each other, like beacons that light the way to God for others.
God calls us to keep returning to her, as only she can wash away the pain and confusion that block out her light. God is patient with our wounds and failings, which are so tightly bound together with our gifts and graces. God calls us to be discerning about the direction of our hearts, to be on guard for those things that pull us away from her healing love. To hold all things lightly, so that the only things that grip us are the tender arms of God.
God calls us into union with herself to the point that all our other desires pale into insignificance. God invites us to fully lean into her embrace, trusting that whatever life brings to us will be used to achieve God’s purposes.
This is a reflection on Luke 8:40-56, with thanks to Ched Myers for his work in Binding the Strong Man and to Richard Rohr for his understanding of the ‘one great suffering’.
I wonder if any of you saw the sci-fi film Inception that was released in 2010? It starred Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who specialized in conning secrets from his victims by infiltrating their dreams. Without going into too much detail, let me summarise by saying that he implanted a dream into a businessman to manipulate him into making a decision, and what’s more, he actually implanted three dreams, one inside the other.
Now I don’t want to suggest that the gospel writer Mark wrote science fiction, but he did use a similar literary technique to get our attention in the gospel reading today: he placed the story of the haemorrhaging woman inside the story of Jairus’ daughter.
The technical term for this is ‘intercalation’: the outer story gives the context for interpreting the inner story. There’s another example in chapter 11, where Jesus cursed a fig tree because it had no fruit. He then cleansed the temple of the money changers and afterwards returned to the fig tree, which by then had withered. The message seems to be that temple was like a fig tree which has leaves but no fruit, that is, the temple and its practises had become barren.
This intercalation signals that the two healings in today’s gospel reading are to be read in tandem, that they comment on each other. What is more, the number 12 is mentioned twice, which should ring some bells for us, think 12 tribes of Israel and 12 disciples, and there are two daughters both of whom were very sick.
Let’s first have a look at the two main characters – Jairus and the haemorrhaging woman.
Jairus was a leader of the synagogue, he would have been in charge of running things – not in a priestly role, but more like a CEO, allocating duties and ensuring they were carried out properly. He would have been one of the most important and respected men in the community.
The haemorrhaging woman was in a sharply contrasting situation, her 12-year flow of blood had been financially debilitating, as she had spent all her money on ineffective doctors, it must have been physically exhausting, as well as practically difficult to deal with. What is more, her condition rendered her permanently unclean so she wouldn’t have been allowed near the synagogue. She was an outcast on the very edge of society.
Jairus was a powerful man in a patriarchal society, while the woman was right at the opposite end of the social spectrum, just look at the differences in the way they behave:
At that time, a woman’s “success” was dependent on her ability to marry and have children. The haemorrhaging woman failed in this duty and was therefore without honour. The Purity Code mandated that menstruating women be quarantined, and so it was highly inappropriate for her to be out in public – much less grabbing a “holy man”! But Mark ignores this scandal in order to focus instead on the way she had been bankrupted by profiteering physicians who had exploited her without healing her.
And yet, it’s not appropriate to see her as merely a victim. By being out in public and touching Jesus while she was ritually unclean, she intentionally challenges the social boundaries set up against her. She stood up for herself by going out and seeking healing in a transgressive way, and Jesus commends her for it, for her ‘faith’.
The moment she touches Jesus, the power dynamics of the story start to be reversed. For starters, rather than contaminating Jesus with her impurity, the woman is healed.
Then, when Jesus senses that power has gone out of him, he stops to inquire what has happened; he is concerned with the individual human being who has sought out his help. Never mind that she is one of the crowd, the anonymous mass of impoverished people that always seem to be following him around, this person is important enough for him to interrupt his journey to Jairus’ house. In typical fashion, the disciples cannot understand why he takes this detour while there is the urgent request of a powerful person to attend to. But Jesus insists on knowing who touched him.
Emerging from the margins of the story to center stage, it is the woman’s turn to fall in front of Jesus, implying that she is now on equal par with Jairus. Finding her voice, “she told him the whole truth”— she does this in fear and trembling, but Jesus speaks peace over her and acknowledges her rightful status as “daughter” in the family of Israel.
Just as Jesus calls the woman daughter, servants come to say that Jairus’ daughter is dead. It seems that by spending time on this woman, Jesus has let Jairus down. But Jesus is not phased by this and exhorts Jairus to believe… the intercalation of the two stories implies that Jesus is instructing this leader of the synagogue to learn about faith from an outcast woman! Here, faith means trusting the person of Jesus, rather than the circumstances of the situation.
The scene at Jairus’ house must have been quite dramatic. Mourning rituals of the time involved the beating of breasts, tearing of hair, and rending of garments. There was to be no work or activity for 3 days, no joy, and no reading of the scriptures apart from the none-too cheery books of Job, Jeremiah and Lamentations. When Jesus insists that the girl is only sleeping, this mourning turns to derision. Jesus throws out the onlookers and raises the girl back to life.
The people gathered around the girl were astonished, a reaction that only happens one other time in the gospel of Mark, at Jesus‘ resurrection, in both cases the word used is ekstasis. The double use of this rare word ekstasis encourages us to see a link between the two events, but more on that later.
At his point, Mark mentions that the girl was 12 years old – she had lived affluently for 12 years, and was on the verge of menstruation. In contrast, the bleeding woman had suffered for 12 years, permanently infertile. This special number, also symbolizes the twelve tribes of Israel; within the “family” of Israel, these “daughters” represent the advantaged and the impoverished.
Inequality within society is not only unjust, it is also dangerous. High levels of income inequality are linked to economic instability, financial crisis, debt, inflation and violent crime; the effects are also psychological, including diminishing trust, an eroded sense of community and growing political apathy. People in less equal societies are less likely to engage in social or civic activities, and less likely to say they’re happy.
Jesus’ healing journey had to take a detour to listen to the pain of the excluded and disadvantaged woman. Only when the outcast woman was restored to “daughterhood” could the daughter of the synagogue also be restored to life. The kingdom that Jesus came to bring is for the good of everyone, and only when the inequalities in our societies are addressed, will the whole of society prosper.
While it’s reassuring to know that Christ’s kingdom will ultimately bring an end to injustice, what about all the injustices and all the other suffering happening in the meantime? What about our own personal sufferings, in whatever form they take, what might this story have to say about that?
People deal with pain and suffering in different ways. Some tend to blame others or even God. Others deny or repress their feelings behind a stiff upper lip. Others are able to express their painful feelings in healthy ways and to find some sort of peace. This story points us towards yet another way of approaching suffering.
Mark places the woman’s story of suffering inside the story of Jairus’ daughter’s death and new life. This whole incident in placed within the larger narrative of the gospel of Mark – the narrative of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. Like the woman, Jesus became outcast, cursed by the crucifixion, and like the girl he rose from death – remember that word ekstasis? On the cross he held their suffering and shared in it.
In Christ, God chose to become human and stand in solidarity with us in our brokenness, and he invites us to come to him in our times of suffering and struggle and place our story inside his bigger story too.
I hardly need to tell you that suffering is an important part of the human experience, and we struggle and strain against it. Many pages have been written to try to understand how a good God can allow so much pain and suffering, without any easy answer.
But what we do know is that on the cross Christ embraced both our suffering and the whole world’s suffering. In Christ, our suffering connects us, in some small way, with the one great suffering of the rest of the world.
Perhaps we can find some consolation in holding our pain in solidarity with others, trusting in Christ who held it all on the cross, holds it now in the heart of the Godhead and is transforming it into resurrection.