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At St Paul’s we strive to live God’s unconditional love of every single person |
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Rector's Reflections for 14th June 2009)
Tomorrow the Australian Church remembers Evelyn Underhill [1875-1941] English spiritual writer and pacifist.
Born at the height of the Victorian era and living into the darkest days of the second world war, her life spans the apogee and the decline of the British Empire. She was writing at a time of huge spiritual interest at home and abroad, when the church, in all its forms, was influential with governments and formative of public opinion. Her greatest work Mysticism was published in 1911 and is still in print. Culture constantly changes. The 20th Century did great damage to the spiritual content of public discourse. The popular culture turned away from “high-mindedness” to become self absorbed and cynical. Interest in spirituality waned as the trappings of the consumer economy replaced the joys of the arts and the life of the community. The Underhill’s of this world were forgotten. But the trauma of two world wars, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and the fascination with technology all are passing moments. A new reality is emerging in which these events are put into perspective. They are givens in the new reality, but they are not the context in which that reality is experienced. The context is spiritual. Without the spiritual sense of who and what we are the rest is meaningless. The spiritual writers of every age draw attention to it, interpreting again what we already know for a new age. Underhill was writing for the Edwardians. Today’s writers address the post-modernist age. The former had a sense of certainty we cannot know. For us all is contingent, provisional, tentative. Yet Underhill spent the whole of her life searching for the core of meaning. She was looking for the God whom she knew was there, and whom she glimpsed often enough to keep in touch with. The superficial certainty of the Edwardian age did not mask the deep mystery of God, did not seduce her to think she finally knew it all. She would have understood the postmodernist angst. We have much for which to thank the spiritual writers. From St John the evangelist, St Augustine, St Francis of Assisi, Thomas á Kempis, John Wesley and Evelyn Underhill, we have learned how to relate to the God who surrounds us, love us, and sets us free.
Rector's Reflections for Third Sunday of Advent (16th December 2007)
My batteries have gone flat !!! The batteries in my telephones that is.
The mobile, the walkabouts and the speaker phone have all gone out of service at the same time. I can communicate only on one instrument, and that is rather inconvenient.
Botheration.
Has your prayer life ever [or often] been like that? I know mine has. Everything seems to be going ok. Prayer time is regular, and fruitful, one feels good about things. Then the slippage starts, prayers get put aside for “urgent” matters, then for things not so urgent.
Before you know it, prayer takes a back seat. It becomes one of those things “I must get around to soon”. The only regular time for prayer becomes the formal prayer of worship. Like my telephones, where once there were several channels open, now there is but one.
The advent season is one of the calls to repentance of the year. Repentance is about turning things around, going in a different direction, getting the course set once again, all that navigational stuff.
Cleaning out the rubbish is also part of the deal, there is nothing like a good spring clean to make room for something new. Spring cleaning is hindered by attachment to what is already there. It is discomforting to let go of habits, even after they have outlived their usefulness. The comfort of the familiar is a powerful motivation to retain them. But they are the problem, so they have to go.
The season of the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth is apposite for refreshing our relationship with God. After all, God takes the initiative and come to us in a fresh way. The least we can do is return the compliment.
Rector's Reflections for Second Sunday of Advent (9th December 2007)
We continue our walk to the crèche of Christ.
How marvellous it is that our God, to whom we say is the originator of all things, should choose to reveal himself to us, at all !!!
Why would he bother? Humans of whatever sort are by their very nature passing shadows. Even if the creator has an interest in that particular species, individual members of it are so transient that individually they matter hardly at all.
Who am I that you are mindful of me was the query of the psalmist.
Woe is me, for I am a sinful man O Lord. Was the lament of Peter.
Feelings of insignificance, feelings of inadequacy, these are the common lot of all who seek the closer presence of God.
Left to itself human reason can only go so far in apprehending God. By common consensus we conclude that whatever the spiritual core of reality is, it is perfection, it demands obedience, and it is utterly other. Whatever the religious system you are looking at, you will find those characteristics. Even Christians slip into this relationship with God from time to time.
However a moment’s thought about the story of the Nativity forces one to a different conclusion about God. This is not a story about a triumphalist God, a mighty law-giver, a tyrant demanding obedience. This is a story of intimacy, closeness and vulnerability. This is a story of personality and love. This is a story that includes you and me.
As our culture has progressively lost its spiritual roots, setting itself adrift on a sea of rationalist delusion, we find ourselves looking for firm bedrock on which to build a new understanding of self and of the world around us. Reason was for a long time thought to be that bedrock, but is has been found wanting, leading us instead to the impasse of the present age, and the dead end of materialism.
The firm bedrock is what we always knew, the relationships in which we discover each other and ourselves. The ultimate relationship and revelation is in God, in Christ, in Bethlehem.
Rector's Reflections for First Sunday of Advent (2nd December 2007)
The bible finishes with the prayer ‘Amen, Come Lord Jesus’. And that remains the prayer of all Christians.
Come Lord Jesus.
The new Testament is just that, a NEW covenant, a new understanding of the relationship between God and His People. Even the definition HIS people is new. All the restrictions, all the hesitations, all the exclusions, are done away with. The relationship is one of intimacy, not of distance, of love, not of dominance.
It has taken humanity a long time to appreciate this. There are many still who understand our relationship of God in terms of God’s power and suzerainty, of fear and trembling before an angry judge who can barely restrain his impulse to destroy the miscreants before him. The only thing that stands in the way of the wrath of this judge and their destruction is the blood of Jesus. That view was current in early parts of the Old Testament. The anger of God at Mt Sinai is the best known example.
But it is utterly alien to the nature of God shown to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we believe is God Incarnate, and therefore the true revelation of the God whom we worship. The Christian dispensation is encapsulated in our Baptism. We are made part of the Body of Christ, an intimate part of the life of Christ, and therefore of the being of God. The intimacy can be broken by our own will, but God is always looking to restore the intimacy in its completeness.
This is the context in which we have to view “Come Lord Jesus”. It is the eternal prayer of the penitent. Awareness of our role in diminishing the relationship with God drives us to seek its restoration, drives us to repentance. Awareness that only in an intimate relationship with God do we find our true freedom, and the fulfilment of our potential drives us to say;
Come Lord Jesus
The question is, dare we invite God into that intimacy. The only limitation is our willingness to participate. The incarnation demonstrates that God has no such hesitation. The crucified Christ stretches out his arms and invites us to receive him.
Can we respond
Come Lord Jesus
Rector's Reflections for 26th Sunday after Pentecost (25th November 2007)
At the time of writing we have yet to cast our votes. One person not on the ballot paper was Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder how many would have voted for him given the opportunity?
Today we mark Christ the King, Christus Rex, of whom we have a representation at the back of St Paul’s. Who has been installed as King of Australia?
No doubt the winner of the election would suggest that he is. (There were no female possibilities this time around).
The members of parliament who belong to the winning party would agree, looking forward to the spoils of victory. [No doubt there are already some minds hatching plots to usurp the throne.]
Members doomed to languish in the impotence of opposition will also agree, their shattered dreams of power left among the detiris of abandoned polling booths.
St Paul sounds a note of caution. Whoever rules does so as a surrogate of God. However they achieve power, by birth, by plebiscite, or by force of arms, their brief comes from God, in whose name they care for the earth.
Pray for the king, may he remember from whence his authority derives.
Rector's Reflections for 25th Sunday after Pentecost (18th November 2007)
One week to go and we can all pull our heads out of the burrow. 2007 has been one long political season, more notable for generating heat than the light.
We have been treated to leaders who wear their religious commitments on their sleeves. not a common sight in Australian politics. I am not sure that it is all that welcome either. When politics embraces religion the result is usually bad for both. Religious and political leaders have different jobs to do, and have, to some extent, to keep tabs on each other. When they get into the same bed important checks and balances for a democratic form of government are lost.
Political skills are not necessarily those of the theologian, and vice versa. If politics is the art of the possible, perhaps theology is the framework for the responsible. Both are matters of constant debate, and both need the other to keep their feet on the ground. When they are confused, as is well illustrated by the case of the Rev Ian Paisley, the results are not good. The confusion of religion and politics in conservative Islam leads to excesses of both. Christians went through a similar period of political and religious excess after the European reformation. The spectre of Oliver Cromwell and the Spanish Inquisition forever haunts us, and cautions us for the future.
Casting a vote is difficult in our times. There is little to choose between the offerings of the parties. All make a base appeal to self-interest, so Christian idealism does not get much opportunity to express itself. In the end the split will be something like 52/48. which is hardly a ringing endorsement of anything. But the temptation to simply toss a coin, or vote for the donkey ought to be resisted.
The bible does not address the question of voting. The nearest it comes is the casting of lots, as in the election of Mathias. Casting lots was an attempt to discover God’s will, not give expression to human desire. Governance is viewed in the scripture as a divine function, carried out by God’s surrogates here on earth. Hence for St Paul and the rest of the scripture, rulers were to be obeyed, because they were Gods mouthpiece. King Charles I lost his head for asserting the divine right of Kings. None of that monarchist nonsense was to be tolerated by Cromwell’s republican Protestants, Bible or no Bible. The invention of representative democracy was not envisaged by the writers of Scripture, so we make our own way with only the guidance of general principals.
May God be able to make the best of whatever Australia decides next Saturday.
Copyright © St Paul's Manly 2006