Total Control

Pentecost 15, Year A, 2011, Patronal Festival

Text: Isaiah 26: 1-4; Colossians 1: 9-14; John 12: 20-26.

Let us bow our heads in prayer –
Loving God, you have called us to drink of your cup and undergo your baptism. May we lose our lives for your sake. Amen.
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Believe it or not but this is the first time that I have actually preached on our Patronal Festival in the eight years that I have been here. We have generally always had the Melanesian Students leading this service and have always had visiting preachers.

I have to admit that handing over control of services as a Priest can sometimes be a harrowing experience – especially when you’re a perfectionist and something goes wrong and it’s totally out of your control.

What about you, do you like being in control?

When I was at University I had to study an experiment which has always stuck in my mind, even all these years latter, because of it’s meanness, and because I can’t stand unnecessary cruelty to animals.

The experiment consisted of two sets of monkeys being placed on electric chairs. Both sets were given random mild electric shocks. The difference between the two groups was that one had the power to partly control the shocks. If they learnt a complex routine of pushing buttons, they could reduce the number of shocks. However, the pattern of button pressing was too complicated to completely master, so that, no matter how hard they tried, they could never completely prevent the shocks.

The other group however, had no control at all over the number of shocks they received. They had a button to press, but it made no difference.

The monkeys who could sweat and struggle to have partial control over their world tended to develop ulcers and other signs of stress at a great rate, whereas the monkeys who got lots more unpleasant shocks, but had no control at all, showed no signs of ulcers, no signs of stress.

The moral of the story: For a comfortable life, if you are going to be in control of anything make sure you are in total control!

We can see the similar raising of the stress levels in M.Ps as they begin to debate and face again the possibility of a change from the lower level of control with M.M.P back to the more powerful control system of first past the post with the up coming election and referendum on this matter. Not that I’m suggesting that politicians are monkeys even though they sometimes behave like them.

All of which suggests that God probably suffers from chronic ulceration of the stomach lining, because that is the way God works – having ultimate responsibility, but not having control of the situation from day to day.

Not only has God handed over control to others, but, in our case, has handed most control over to a bunch of squabbling incompetents.

And Jesus was equally foolish. For three years he taught his world-changing message, and at the end, instead of writing a divine constitution, publishing a spiritual “Mein Kampf” and setting up an international university to train his disciples, with himself as the controlling head of a powerful world wide corporation; instead he let himself be killed in a most untimely manner, leaving it up to a rag tag bag of peasants and other illiterates, who thought he was a great personality but who hadn’t even grasped the fundamentals of what he was on about.

And these were the people that Jesus relied on to carry out his work, which was God’s work. No proper quality control. Like Father, like Son.

It’s uncomfortable, it may cause ulcers, or even worse; but it is the only Christian way. In every aspect of our lives, our power as Christians comes from giving away power and control. The Cross taught us this so clearly, that we took this potent symbol of power through – the – giving – away – of power as our very symbol.

If God has taught us the need to hand over control to others, even to apparently inadequate others, then we need to heed that lesson.

Today we celebrate the Martyr’s of Melanesia to whom our church is dedicated. Both the original Martyr’s of the nineteenth century being, John Coleridge Patterson and his companion Martyrs’ and the more recent seven Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood who are featured on the front page of this week’s newsletter in an icon dedicated to them. All of these men were people who went to seek peace knowing full well the dangers to their lives. Through their faith in God they were prepared to hand over control of their lives to others, even inadequate others.

So who is a Martyr? To me a martyr is someone who has been able to relinquish their ego to the extent that their true self, the part of us that is Spirit and God like, shines through. That person, walking in the steps of Christ and therefore in truth, has come to the realization that even death is an illusion and is ultimately not to be feared. That is not to say, of course, that they don’t experience physical pain and fear on their journey to martyrdom. And I’m sure that Jesus experienced these same human emotions as he journeyed to the Cross. In a very real way a Martyr challenges our views of our physical existence and calls us to see beyond this world of fear to a world of hope, love and eternity.

We may not be called to give up our lives physically like a Martyr, but like Martyrs each of us is call to relinquish our egos, live in God’s Spirit, and walk in the steps of Christ.

So what are the things in your own life that you need to relinquish, what are the things that you need to cast off to find your true self? The part of you that is God centered and eternal.

And on this our Patronal Festival as we remember the Martyrs that we honor as a congregation what are the things we need to relinquish to reveal to our wider community the love of God more fully in our lives, so that God’s love might be more fully known? Amen.

Reconciliation

Pentecost 12, Year A, 2011

Text: Ezekiel 33; 7-11; Romans 13: 8-14; Matthew 18: 15-20.

Let us bow our heads in prayer –
Reconciling God, may we who confess your faith prove it in our lives together, with abundant joy, outrageous hope and dependence on nothing but your word alone, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Has listening to today’s Gospel passage confronted you about an issue you have with someone in the church, and how you should handle it?

I have to admit that I found there was a certain irony in our Diocesan Synod falling on the same week as this Sunday’s Gospel reading. I can’t say that my experience of Synods, or Episcopal Elections for that matter, have always been the greatest examples of a loving Church in action!

One of my greatest disappointment since becoming a Priest, as a young man in my twenties, has been my witness of the politics within the church and to find that the church in its treatment of individuals is often no better than the rest of society.

Living together as a Christian community is not always easy. Some of us know that first hand within our own congregation. We are human after all, and while we may have God as our guide and source of never-ending love, for Whom nothing is impossible, we forget and fail and fall out our love with God and each other.

Our Gospel lesson today is all about how to deal with the fact that we fail. What should we do, what would Christ have us do, when someone in our community sins? When someone does something harmful to themselves, or to another person, or puts distance between themselves and God, or between themselves and the community, or even between themselves and us specifically?

Well, the first step Jesus says is to go to them face to face. “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” We need to be careful here because this is not about us pointing out another person’s sin for the sake of point out sin. It’s not about making us feel better or proving a point. In other words, it not about our own ego’s. It is about regaining a relationship with another person. It’s about oneness and love.

If the person you have gone to accepts what you have to say, says Jesus, that’s great. But if they don’t he says step two is to take other people along the next time you go to see the person, and if that doesn’t work step three is to go back again! In other words Jesus is saying we have to do everything in our power to get back into right relationship with our brother or sister.

If the person doesn’t listen over and over again, then we are not to pretend that nothing has happened. We are to notice and lament the fact that our brother or sister is missing from our table, from our faith community. There is a distance between us and we should admit it, rather than pretend not to notice or let the situation fester in our midst like an unattended wound.

I don’t know about you but I find this a very hard teaching of Jesus. Often we prefer a love that is out of focus and fuzzy to the sort of holy love that Jesus is talking about here which involves risk, the action of confrontation and communication. Let’s face it to confront and communicate with someone in love is sometimes a scary thing!

John Wesley realised this risk when he preached on today’s text during a time when some members of his parish were going behind each others backs gossiping and complaining about one another, and him! He said this of the first step of going privately to speak directly to someone, to confront them about their behaviour: “Do not avoid it so as to ‘shun the Cross’”.

Shunning the cross is how hard it might feel to speak directly to someone you might have an issue with rather than taking one of the easier and more usual ways of dealing with conflict. I’m sure we are all familiar with those ways. Like pretending it didn’t happen and just trying to let it go, meanwhile, being awkward around the person. Or, giving a person the cold shoulder treatment. Not saying anything to the person and crossing the street to avoid having to meet them. Or, perhaps taking ‘revenge.’ Never talking about what really happened, but making sure everyone knows somehow that person X is not to be trusted. Not talking directly with the person, but letting your hurt and anger seep into everything you do and say, poisoning the air around you, and putting more and more distance between you and the person who did you wrong.

Distance. That’s the key word here, isn’t it? Community is about togetherness, realising that we are all connected. Heaven is about oneness. Hell is about distance. In his book The Great Divorce, C.S Lewis imagines Hell as a gray and vast city. The strange thing about this city is that its inhabitancies only live on its outer edges. In the middle of the city there are rows of empty houses because the people who once lived in them quarrelled among themselves so much that they moved and then fought with their new neighbours and moved again until there was no place left to go except the outer edges. Everyone in Hell chooses distance instead of confrontation and positive communication as the solution to wrongs done against one another.

But what if a person refuses to acknowledge their sin and change their ways. What if after trying to communicate with them positively their continued presence is harmful? Well, says Jesus, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” They should be recognised as someone who is not willing to be in oneness, says Jesus. But here is the twist. Straight after this Jesus says “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind of earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” The same words that Jesus said to Peter when he made his confession of faith back in chapter sixteen. Jesus is addressing our function here as the church and as individuals which is to be an instrument of forgiveness. Gentiles and tax collectors were the very people Jesus made a special focus of his ministry. He reached out to them with the message that they could turn away from sin, they could come home. Indeed, Jesus was known as a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus’ very ministry showed us that God accepts people unconditionally. People who are always telling us what’s wrong with us don’t help us much as they paralyze us with shame and guilt. People on the other hand who accept us help us to feel good about ourselves, to relax, to find our way. Accepting another person however doesn’t mean we can never share constructive suggestions. But like everything else, our behaviour is not so much the issue as the energy that it carries. If I’m criticising someone in order to change them, that’s my ego talking. If I’ve prayed and asked God to heal me of my judgement, however, and then I’m still led to communicate something, the style of my sharing will be one of love instead of fear. It won’t carry the energy of attack, but rather support. Behavioural change is not enough. Covering an attack with sugary icing, with a sweet tone of voice or therapeutic jargon is not helpful. When we speak from the ego, we call up the ego in others. When we speak from the Holy Spirit, we call up that same love within them. A person who is in error calls for teaching not attack. So when we do speak, the key to confrontation and communication is not what we say, but rather the attitude that lies behind what we say. Amen.