Readings: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-40
One of the web sites I visit regularly in my preparation of sermons is one entitled “Journey with Jesus.” This week, a guest essay was posted, written by the Very Reverend Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Her ideas and words have informed my sermon this morning.
Dr Shaw tells how recently she had attended a poetry reading, given by the American poet Mary Oliver. “In the question and answer session afterwards” Shaw writes, Mary Oliver “talked about the ordinary despair so many people feel in the face of the enormity of the world’s problems. ‘What can one individual do?’ she asked.”[1]
That question continues to be posed throughout the world. Attempts to deal with this powerlessness and despair are springing up in Wall Street, Dale Farm[2], Greece, Melbourne and even here in the Octagon - as protestors express deep dissatisfaction that the vast majority of the world is being kept in poverty, while national and global politics are being driven by money and profits.
Another of my weekly web-site visits includes news from the Council for World Mission, in whose family we, the PCANZ belong. Here, I learn what I have not heard on the news, that these protests are also active in Taiwan, where last week there were two 44 hour hunger strikes. Wu Tao-chang, CEO of a [Taiwanese] local corporation and a Presbyterian elder, [spoke out for the various] "Occupy" protests around the world expressing his deep concern that capitalism had gone out of control in recent years.[3]
Demonstrators [in Taipei] denounced the government for allowing banks to charge exorbitant rates in revolving credit card loans, resulting in many people being trapped in debt.
They demanded [changes in laws relating to loans.] Elder Lin Yung-song, a lawyer from Chinan Presbyterian Church, [arguing] the economic disparity between rich and poor is fundamentally a structural problem, contrasted the extremely low wages for the working class with the cuts in inheritance tax from 50% to 10% for the richest class. A nation's progress is not only determined by its technological and economic advancement, said Lin, but rather, by how its lowliest people are cared for and treated."[4]
“Listen to your life” theologian Frederick Buechner[5] urges. “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” As we listen to this growing discontent within the life of the world, touching, tasting, smelling our way towards the holy, hidden heart of it all, we hear resounding once more, poet Mary Oliver’s question, but “what can one person do?”
Grace Cathedral’s Dean, Jane Shaw reminds us that the context of this morning’s gospel is that of the Pharisees testing Jesus. “But perhaps”, she writes, “the one who approached Jesus in this week's gospel had a similar feeling of being overwhelmed when he asked him, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” — for there were 613 precepts in the Torah. How was a person to keep track of them all, let alone prioritize them? Jesus answers with two positive commandments from the Torah: “You shall love the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 6: 5) and “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19: 18). “On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Mary Oliver, Shaw suggests “may have answered her own question, as Jesus answered the Pharisee’s, by testifying to the power of love”. The opening lines of her poem “Wild Geese” proclaim:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
The power and potential for this love was in evidence in the Wall Street protest. American playwright Eve Ensler, commenting on the Wall Street protestors after she had talked to many of them, wrote in the Huffington Post:
"So I came out to face this contradiction: the dehumanization of poverty and the exploitation of capitalism. A block away from the park where the second General Assembly was being held, I heard the words "I love you." The words were as swift as the man who said them, for when I looked back he was already five paces away. But they were as firm as those paces — heavy with determination, purpose, depth. His words permeated the air... Love was EVERYWHERE!"
“But what does this ‘love stuff’ mean? Dr Shaw asks. “Isn’t it, too, rather amorphous when we are trying to address the world’s needs?
As we conclude our morning worship here at Knox, we are sent out with the words “Go in peace”. In our response, “We go in the name of Christ”, we affirm our commitment to spend the week ahead in loving and serving as Jesus did. These words are shorthand for, what the sixteenth century mystic Teresa of Avila put so eloquently:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which [Christ] looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which [Christ] walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which [Christ] blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which [Christ] looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which [Christ] walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which [Christ] blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are [Christ’s] body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.[6]
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.[6]
Going in the name of Christ – going to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves – demands of us some careful thought and consideration. What does this mean for us – and our relationship with the whole of life – as we seek the holy hidden heart of it all?
“Christianity has always had a paradoxical attitude to the world, and the doctrine of the Incarnation bears it out. On the one hand, God so loved the world that God [dwells in our midst healing the sick, feeding the poor, releasing the captives, making friends especially with] those on the margins of society. On the other hand, those actions of Jesus meant he eventually came into conflict with the world, as he challenged human priorities and institutions.
“As a consequence, many Christians have had a negative view of the world. Some... have chosen to stay away from it, building separate, gathered, utopian communities. They would agree with the author of the epistle to Diognetus, in the middle of the second century, that Christians “live in their own countries, but only as resident aliens.”
“Other Christians have assumed that the world is a very bad place, ... but they are committed to making it more ‘godly,’ chiefly by converting as many people as possible to Christianity. For them, individual sinners must be saved in order to redeem the world.
“Yet other Christians still assume that the world is a bad place, but believe that Christians can make it better: we can build the kingdom of heaven on earth. These Christians do not withdraw from the world, nor do they simply try to grow their own ranks. They get their hands dirty to change things. This perspective has provided the impetus for many wonderful projects, but it has, at times, been paternalistic, assuming still that Christianity has all the answers.
“But what if loving our neighbour means that we need to listen to the world and engage with it? What if we realize we do not need to bring Christ to the world, because Christ is already in the world? This creates a different model of loving our neighbour, which is much more about Christians being vulnerable, listening, participating.”[7] And if this were the way of Christ, then what might that mean for us and our attitude to those camping out in the Octagon and in other places of the world? How might we be loving, vulnerable, listening and participating with our Dunedin neighbours – as well as those in Taipei, the USA and the UK?
“What can one person do?”
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Let’s give the last words to Franciscan Richard Rohr: “If you are truly capable of loving one person, you’re capable of loving more than one, and eventually even your enemy, and finally all. Love is one piece. Love is all or nothing. You either express love or you don’t.”
[1] “Love and Listening” The Very Reverend Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml for October 23 2011
[2] “Travellers may lose land to pay costs” Kevin Rawlinson, nzherald.co.nz, Saturday October 22, 2011 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10760930
[3] "The fallouts of such extremism driven by greed are global apathy against corporations, ever increasing economic gap between rich and poor, and a global recession.” CWM News item
[4] CWM News item: 20 Oct 2011 “Hunger strikers protest Taiwan rich–poor divide” http://www.cwmission.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2549:hunger-strikers-protest-taiwan-richpoor-divide&catid=8:news&Itemid=256
[5] Frederick Buechner Now and Then http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=215&g=1
[6] “Christ has no body” Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)
[7] Jane Shaw
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