The next dimension

It is worthwhile running through the checklist you made when you were 18, 20 or 25, when you first identified what you wanted from your life: maybe it read like this: Finish uni; get a good/great job, better car, nice stereo; travel to Europe/Asia/South America; meet Mr/Miss Perfect; get married; buy a house; have 2.6 children; be a stay at home mum/dad (if I can) or have my career take off. If your list looks like this, then it would be similar to hundreds of thousands of other young Australians. In the cold light of day a list like this seems somewhat mercenary, seeking objects, experiences and relationships like mere acquisitions to be checked off a shopping list.

Being purposeful about our lives is what drives us to plan in such a way: we don’t want to have an unchallenging job, unattractive home/spouse/children/car, etc. That’s what differentiates us from other animals – our capacity to choose our futures and to plan to make them real. And most of us go about this ethically and responsibly.

If there is a dimension missing from such lists, it is about the most significant relationship we have from the minute of our conception, to our last breath and thence into eternity itself – with our God. In a life well lived, regardless of the plan, this relationship provides links between each of those moments of significance, of holiness, perhaps even sacraments (with a small ‘s’) – those ritual, grace-filled and grace-fueled moments that are memorialized in photographs, bonds, celebrations and shared grief. John the Evangelist assures us (John 14:18): I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. We are not left to our devices without his presence in and through our relationships.

God has a plan for each of us. As we walk though our lives, his plan becomes ever more clearer. We can look back over our shoulders and see his companionship as we seek to find and explore who and what we are called to be.

Although God’s grace is given freely, God does ask something of us in return: If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15), that is, love God and love your neighbour. If this is the way I have lived my life, then I can be assured that the choices I set my sights on will be blessed, successful and a hymn of praise to the God who loves us.

Hear now, all you who fear God,
while I declare what he has done for me.
Blessed be God who refused me not
my prayer or his kindness!

Psalm 66

A people set apart

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a consecrated nation, a people set apart,
to sing the praises of God who called you out of the darkness
into his wonderful light.
(1 Peter 2:9)

We all like to consider ourselves special. Someone to remember our birthdays, to celebrate and enjoy our achievements big and small, someone at whom we could smile, share secret glances. It’s great to be recognized. It’s surprising when you are far from home and meet colleagues, friends or family. Airports are such places, as are the Pitt St Mall in Sydney or the Bourke St Mall in Melbourne. It’s a buzz. That sense of acknowledgement is powerful – even if the names escape you. As a child and adolescent I remember the painful walks with my father down the main street. Dad knew everyone and everyone seemed to know him. While it speaks of belonging and connectedness, as a kid the walks were interminable and frustrating.

A text from Exodus 19:6 echoes through the second testament scriptures: You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. These are the words revealed to the Moses on Mt Sinai, words directed at the Hebrews soon after their escape from Egypt. What follows is the establishment of a holy covenant between the LORD and his people – expressed as the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). In this covenant the LORD freely chooses the Hebrews as his own – and for their part the Hebrews accept the LORD as their God. Thus they become a kingdom of priests to serve him, a holy nation set apart from all other nations. You and I are well aware that the Jews, the descendents of this same Hebrew people, are proudly aware of this extraordinary relationship begun in the depths of time and lived out still in villages and cities throughout the globe.

The writer of 1 Peter, however, is in a quite different context when he alludes to Exodus 19:6. He is perhaps in Babylon and writing to gentile Christians through the diaspora (Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia). For the writer (of 1 Peter) it is those who belong to Christ, who accept ‘the stone rejected by the builders’ who are now chosen, made holy and set apart. These early Christians are, of course, the church, the assemblies, the communities of the faithful. And we who are members of this community by virtue of our faith and practice are invited into relationship with this one LORD, in a covenant first established at Sinai and then renewed in the blood of the cross.

The church has more than its share of critics, yet it is its identity, our identity as believers that makes us special, it is through fidelity to the covenant, that we live out our holiness which sets us apart as God’s chosen people, that we can be seen to be and acknowledged as a royal priesthood.

The shepherd's voice

It may well be that you will find yourself in need of a prayer. The Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, might come to mind, to be uttered at that moment when other words fail. Not surprisingly one particular psalm takes shape and possesses our voice and expresses the keenness of our dependence of God and his nurturing, comforting care for us: Psalm 23. A favourite in times of grief and bereavement, it appears four times in the Sunday cycle of readings.

The idea of the Divine Being as a shepherd of his people was not unknown in the ancient Orient, but arrives with some clarity and purpose in the Hebrew’s First Testament. This beautiful psalm is rich in metaphor which we associate with shepherds: the rod and the staff and the lyrical words that provide comfort, a sense of trust. In the second part of the psalm God hosts a thanksgiving or sacrificial meal – the psalmist no longer pursued by foes but by goodness and kindness. It concludes with a pervading sense of God’s presence expressed as ‘dwelling in God’s house’.

Little wonder that the earliest of Christians, Jesus’ apostles and disciples, the evangelists and early communities attributed to Jesus the title and role of shepherd. John explores this theme throughout chapter 10 moving from metaphor to parable:

The sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.

Indeed, for John, Jesus is the Good Shepherd – who knows his sheep and who will lay down his life for them.

This image of Jesus is profoundly embedded in our Christian psyche and the link to Psalm 23 is a natural progression. For those of us of a certain age, the holy card depictions of the Good Shepherd, a pious, blanched Jesus with a lamb carried on his shoulders and staff in hand are far from the reality of shepherds of biblical times, but this image is conveying not the drudgery of a shepherd’s life, but the sensitive invitation to the care and favour of one who knows us and loves us.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.

God-given gifts

Our daughter and baby turns 21 today. We have already reminisced and reflected on that most happy day and there is nothing we would have done differently, nothing to change. She is the source of much joy and we have walked with her on her journey, nourished her, guided her, loved her. There were countless hours of reading to and with her, waiting outside dancing studios, enduring cartoon movies of princesses, horses and CareBears, then eventually party and nightclub drop-offs and pick-ups and the line (not too big) of prospective, potential and real boyfriends.
What a privilege we have as parents to nurture and care for our children. I am in awe of the God-given gifts we have been given.
This third Sunday of Easter we hear the story of the disciples’ walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13 – 35). This story is one of the richest we find in the post-resurrection narratives. This story of the blinkered disciples who fail to recognise their Master until the scriptures have been explained and bread broken at table mirrors our Eucharistic liturgy. There are allusions to the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species, the kerygma is outlined and it concludes that, “The Lord has truly been raised.” It is an acclamation of faith.
There are many unanswered questions about this story and in its mystery we become companions of Cleopas, recounting the events of the Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and then listening in wonder as the stranger who joins us breaks open the sacred scriptures and what is revealed is God’s plan for humanity, indeed the person of Jesus himself. As much as the journey to Emmaus is a revelation (in which Jesus physically appears), each disciple undertakes an internal journey to discover the burning within their hearts, that the Lord is intimately present and that recognition comes from a love of the scriptures and an awareness and ‘awakeness’ to those who walk by us and with us every day.
Equally this Sunday we recognise the sacredness of motherhood. Enshrined as Mothers’ Day it is a day to celebrate our mothers. Enjoy your day and be spoiled.

Only this I want

You might never have heard of the St Louis Jesuits. In the 1970s and 80s they were the Church’s answer to The Beatles. Wonderful engaging tunes with lyrics drawn directly from or with beautiful allusions to and images from the sacred scriptures of our forebears.
In 1981 one of their members, former Jesuit Dan Schutte, penned an extraordinary song, one of my favourites, Only this I want:

Only this I want, but to know the Lord,
And to bear his cross,
so as to wear the crown he wore.
Let your hearts be glad,
always glad in the Lord,
So to shine like stars
in the darkness of the night.

This is the plaintive call from the depths of the heart: if I have faith, what I am asking for? For me it is to have that relationship with my Lord, Jesus, and that while I acknowledge what he has done for me in his dying and rising, I want to share part of that agony, that suffering so that I too can make a difference, and share in his rising. And in the final verse, the gladness that comes from knowing Jesus, from sharing his cross and his crown is like the shining of stars in the darkness of the night.
These next few days are the most sacred days of our religious calendar. The fascination and focus we have on the events of Jesus’ last days are not morbid. If at one end Jesus’ incarnation is the most radical event in human history, then our salvation, our redemption through suffering, death and rising fundamentally moves the boundaries for all eternity. It is the total transformation of creation. Christ continues to suffer and die each day – through our inhumanity to one another, and yet each day there is resurrection. This mystery is past (what happened circa AD 30 – 36), present (what we now experience in our daily lives) and future (what is yet to come, what is yet to be fully revealed).
Don’t underestimate this mystery, for the huge armada we call the church is founded upon, driven and directed towards its understanding, of living it out, day by day.
Your child’s awareness of this mystery must go beyond chocolate eggs and the Easter bunny. As appealing as they are, they are distractions from the main event. While we have sanitized so much of our civilization, there is no escaping that our faith is balanced on the beams of the cross upon which Jesus was hung.
Wishing you a holy and happy Easter.

The Passion

It is such an overused word, so overused that its meaning has been devalued to ‘really like’. It’s such a pity, for once it meant ‘strong and barely controllable emotion...’ Passion takes its roots from the Greek, pascho, to suffer. In the Latin translation of the scriptures (the Vulgate) the word passio specifically referred to Jesus’ suffering, his agony in the garden, his trial, his being stripped of his clothes and whipped, his humiliating crowning with thorns, the bearing of his cross, his crucifixion.
Passion came to mean something for which we would suffer for or endure, for to follow our passion would be a most difficult task. A young singer desperate to sing for Opera Australia might plot and plan to achieve that goal, will endure poverty, disappointment and lowly roles in order that their passion may be satisfied. What is your real passion? What would you endure for your passion?
Like you, I suspect, my passion is my family. This passion is born from a deep desire to envelop, nourish and protect – even though they are independent adults! This passion is life-giving and life-affirming, for it requires the total gift of myself for those whom I love and in return I am loved.
At the centre of our faith is the proclamation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (the kerygma) and it is through Jesus’ Passion and Death that we are overwhelmed by his utter self-giving, he choses this pain as a life-offering for those whom he loves. That is, us.
The journey into Jerusalem on a donkey is the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the hill of Calvary. This story is retold on the Sunday we call Passion or Palm Sunday. On this day the entire Passion narrative is read – each aspect of his pain and suffering is recounted,each a further token of his love, each a further step towards the cross.
It is from these darkest moments, and indeed the darkest moment of all, that God’s greatest plan is revealed: Jesus must die if he is to rise from the dead. The pivotal act of his death sets in motion a new era in humanity’s story of salvation. Jesus’ Passion is what makes it possible for us to hope and dream, to anticipate eternal life. His blood, his life, is poured out for many (Matthew 26:28), for you and me so that we may live life, live it to the full.
Allow yourself the opportunity to remember this passion story this Sunday: reflect, pray, worship. Remember how much you are loved.

The principle of compassion

The Fetzer Institute claims to “engage with people and projects around the world to help bring the power of love, forgiveness, and compassion to the center of individual and community life.” As a response to Karen Armstrong’s desire to establish a Charter for Compassion, the institute provided the wherewithal to make the charter a reality.
The charter declares that:
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
In his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:36 – 38) Jesus advises his disciple to be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate. This compassion is one of mercy, forgiveness, tenderness, empathy – it is to act towards others as God does. His compassion is totally gratuitous. We are not required to be deserving. His love and compassion are lavish.
The Gospels we hear from John this Lenten season come from the Book of Signs – seven stories which orient us towards Jesus’ humanity, the fullness of his humanity, expressed in his acted-out, lived-out compassion for those who are in need. He heals, he forgives, he mirrors his Father’s compassion.
The Fetzer charter makes clear that the way we act out compassion is by treating others as we wish to be treated. For them compassion has a drive of its own, it impels action.
It is thus not surprising that Victoire Larmenier, foundress of the Sisters of Nazareth, was deeply drawn to this particular Gospel value. Indeed it impelled her and her companions into the service of the elderly and young people. Her service is a model of compassion that we continue to emulate as a school community. Compassion that drives service.
The season of Lent is the opportune time to remember that God loves us, he will forgive us, he holds no grudges, and yes, he totally understands. If we remember and act this out, we will be mirroring his compassion, and therefore living out our own humanity.

The right choice

As parents we dream that as our children grow older and mature, that their capacity to make good choices, good decisions will also grow. It happens sooner than you expect, school days end and they must choose uni, an apprenticeship or traineeship, travel or work, or perhaps parent-supported unemployment. They will soon learn that to complete a uni course or an apprenticeship takes commitment. It means putting in time and energy in learning and developing skills with the end of achieving a challenging, interesting and fulfilling career.
Thus making good decisions, life-changing decisions, means having the commitment to seeing those decisions to the end. Sometimes, like David, our future is mapped out for us (he was anointed by Samuel), but no matter what others want from us, we must freely choose (remember Edward, Duke of Windsor). Or perhaps like Mary we might say, ‘Yes, Lord, I come to do your will,’ and give ourselves over to love. And we might well have own difficulties when we make choices, but they may fade into insignificance in comparison to great matters of state.
So yes, things will get in the road of the decisions we commit ourselves to: we get too busy; we have so many other things to do; place to go; people to see; messages to leave; it’s too cold; too hot; sick children; late meetings. They all prevent us from doing what we know we ought. It means not being able to maintain my diet, my exercise regime, keeping in contact with my parents, my spouse, my children, my friends, reading the novels next to my bed, finish repairing the bits and pieces around the house, bidding for things on eBay. Our life-making decisions become routine and tedious and we lose the edge of what we are truly called to be. The Gospel is at the edge, it doesn’t get any more radical or fundamental.
When we do follow through, it is easy to attribute such tenacity to our personal strength and character. It may be so.
The Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Lent comes from John (9:1-41). In this retelling, a man who has been born blind has his eyes made open by Jesus and he can see. A group of Pharisees cannot believe that Jesus has made this happen, for to them Jesus was a sinner, and such good could not possibly come from a sinner. The now-sighted man defends Jesus and acknowledges him as the Son of Man and worships him. This is a man of determination and courage.
Acknowledging the source of our healing, of our strength can be difficult. If we are so loved by our God, is it not unreasonable to assert that it is he who drawing us and inviting us into good relationship, good health and full life?
Inviting God into your lives will make a difference. Worshipping him will make a difference. It is a choice, and it is a life-changing choice: so come, worship the Lord.