A sermon for Easter 4 - 29 April, 2012 - with thanks to John Shea

Readings: Acts 4:5-11; 1 John 3:16-24

“Here is our hope” we sang again this morning, “in the mystery of suffering is the heartbeat of Love, Love that will not let go.”[1]

In this Easter season, we continue to consider how within our own everyday lives, Love, the Holy Mystery we call God, holds us fast and will not let us go.  We remember – for we need reminding again and again – that the resurrection stories (the central focus at the heart of the Christian story) – are not about believing in particular doctrine, creed, or philosophy – but rather “affirmations of unbroken relationships within divine reality”. [2] Love, in all its tenacity and mystery appears to us in the midst of our everyday lives – even in the midst of all our pain, hopelessness and scepticism. 

We call it unconditional love[3] – love that will not let go – love that would die for us.

A young father holds his newly born daughter in his arms and out of some vastness he didn’t even know was there deep within him, he says, ‘I’d die for you’.  A middle aged couple, for whom love has arrived surprisingly, in the autumn of their lives; without any reserve in their hearts, promise to love in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, loving each other all the days of their lives.  A woman holds the hand of her terminally ill friend and says, “You know, I’m here for you, I’m not going away.”  Love that will not let go – love that would die for us.

We call it unconditional love.  Often it seems a beyond-our-reach ideal –almost frighteningly impossible; and yet, we each have these moments of unconditional love: moments in which we open ourselves unreservedly to another and commit ourselves totally to the other’s well-being.  We often reach for ‘laying down our life’ language to express what, at the moment, seems so clear and undeniable to us.  Unconditional love means everything – and forever.

Of course, it may be difficult to make good on these passion-filled outbursts of love.  In the rough and tumble of day-in day-out living, many conditions arrive.  Our absolute statements of ‘all and forever’ begin to be peppered by conditional clauses, “if you don’t … then I won’t .. I can’t, because….  We are a combination of the unconditional and the conditioned.  We have preferences, cautions, habits and needs.  More often than not, our unconditional ideal is that ‘irresistible force’ meeting the ‘immovable object’ of our conditioned reality.  However, even in this less than ideal state, few of us would think that our failure to achieve one hundred percent ‘unconditionality’ refutes or rejects those wonderful visionary moments when we declare our love ‘for all the days of my life’ and ‘till death do us part’.  For yes, when we said them – when we made those declarations - there was deep truth in them.

When we look back to those moments, when we have felt that overpowering swell of unconditional love, we notice something rather surprising.  This overwhelming love doesn’t appear to be something we have much choice about – it just happens – it just is.   It sweeps over us, almost against our bidding – we love unreservedly – without forethought, without logic, without decision – we just love. 

Each week, as I take my four-month old grandson on a walk through the university campus, I catch tiny glimpses of this surprising, heart-filled, spontaneous love.   The most unlikely people seem to react to babies without reservation.  Everywhere we go, we come upon young students and older staff members – men and women – whose faces light up with joy as they smile at this little bundle of new life, whom they do not know and may never encounter again.  It’s not a response I get when I walk on my own.  But, when I am accompanied by my baby grandson, skateboarders, intent on getting to lectures on time, give way to the buggy and glance with wonder at its tiny occupant; conversations are stilled mid-sentence as I overhear the murmuring of ‘how cute’ ‘what a sweetie’; studious faces, pondering deep thoughts, light up as they catch sight of the little human being in my care.   For an infinitesimal moment, nothing else appears to matter – nothing but the spark of love and delight, ignited by this alert, innocent and adorable baby.  And as I continue to walk, I find myself pondering this recognition; for, is this not a glimpse of unconditional Love – an identification of the Divine Presence in our midst?   And, knowing that these glimpses we have of unconditional love are only that – the briefest of glimpses; and acknowledging that somehow, it’s increasingly more difficult to catch these glimpses as people grow from cute babies to wilful children and opinionated adults; I find myself wondering, how might I – how might we – experience this unconditional love more fully and more often.   And, assuming that this might also be your question, I want to suggest these glimpses can be expanded by all of us in making a commitment to living a particular Way, by following a particular spiritual path, by opening ourselves to a story that is bigger than our own individual one. 

Stephen Levine suggests that this experience of unconditional love has to do with a way of being.  He writes: “You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love.  It is not a dualistic emotion.  It is a sense of oneness with all that is.  The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal.  It is a feeling of unity … It is not an emotion, it is a state of being … it is not so much that ‘two are as one’ so much as it is ‘the One [the Holy Mystery that is God] manifested as two.’[4] ...or three, or more...

And that makes sense of those sparks ignited by my grandson.  Those students and staff at the university, appeared to catch, for a moment, a sense of oneness with him - and for a brief moment, love was kindled.  When the parent, lover or friend says “I’ll die for you” they too have found the oneness of the universe expressed within their relationship.  And this is what we see in Jesus – a person who just is unconditional love; whose fundamental being – whose ultimate grounding in Divine Love – makes him a living, ongoing expression of unconditional love:  Jesus dwelling in God and God in Jesus – inviting us to participate in this oneness – this unity of love with all around us.

The Johannine community found this to be a profound understanding of who Jesus was.  We find it expressed in John’s gospel as Jesus’ I AM statements.  With unmistakable overtones of the divine declaration I AM who I AM, Jesus points us to the way of unconditional love:  I am the way, the truth, the life; I am the Good Shepherd – the one who would lay down his life for his sheep.  I know my own flock – and I lay down my life for them. No one takes my life from me – I lay it down of my own accord.

It is in Jesus that we see more fully than we have seen in anyone else, that expression of unconditional love.   This love is not about personal achievements or moral preferences.  This is just the way Jesus is – and it is the identity we are called to assume.  It is not a love that is boasted about – not of human making – but rather an expression of the way humanity can be, when living fully focussed in the Source of our being, the Goal of our longing, that which we call God.  The writer of the Epistle of John reflects on this:  “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How can God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

My friends, every single time we get in touch with that unconditional loving in our lives – every time our hearts open spontaneously to another, every time we say, from the depths of our being “I’d die for you” we too are living the way of our true identity: dwelling in God-ness, God-ness in us, being the heartbeat of Holy Love that will not let go.  May that love increase.

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[1] Shirley Murray, “Christ is alive and the universe must celebrate” Alleluia Aotearoa15. New Zealand Hymn Book Trust.

[2] Rebecca Lyman, “Ours the Cross, the Grave, the Skies” in http://www.journeywithjesus.net/  Easter Day 2011

[3] This sermon is an adaptation of, and quotes extensively from, “Loving Unconditionally” by John Shea, in Eating with the Bridegroom Liturgical Press, 2005, p.124-127.

[4] Stephen Levine Who Dies?: An investigation of conscious living and conscious dying, Anchor Press, 1982, p.75.  Quoted in Shea, 2005, p.127.

A sermon for Easter 3, April 22 2012

Readings: 1 John 3:1-7, Acts 3:1-19; Luke 24: 36b-48

Last Sunday I spoke about the resurrection as the Christian way of describing a life-time journey – as a way of writing our life-story around a central commitment to being transformed.   As we continue our journey through the liturgical season of Easter, I invite you to consider again today how your life story is being written around this process of “dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being”.

This morning’s resurrection story from the early church tells of a man paralyzed from birth being brought to the Temple – placed in the very vulnerable position of needing to beg for his survival; and, out of that place of risk and emptiness, receiving healing.  We, who are paralyzed in so many ways in our lives, can hear in this resurrection story that healing is available to us all within the boundless Love of Holy Mystery … if we would but open our hearts to the potential, which embraces us.

How open is your heart to this transforming Love in which we dwell? 

The word ‘heart’ occurs more than a thousand times in the Bible[1].  Most often, it is used, not to describe the pumping muscle at the centre of our living, but as “a comprehensive metaphor for the self.”  This heart metaphor invites us into an exploration of how we see and think; how we comprehend and feel; how we respond and act.  At the depths of our being, our hearts (or some might say our ‘souls’, our ‘minds’ our ‘spirits’) shape who we truly are.

Marcus Borg reminds us that the “Bible has many pairs of metaphors for the human condition and our need… portray[ing] our predicament and the solution.  In bondage, we need liberation.  [When] in exile and estranged, we need to return and reconnect.  Blind, we need to have our sight restored.  In the dark, we need enlightenment.  Sick and wounded, we need healing.  Hungry and thirsty, we need food and drink.  Sinful and unclean we need forgiveness and cleansing.  Dead and entombed, we need to be raised into life. …the heart, the self at its deepest level, can be turned toward God or away from God, open to God or closed to God.”[2]   A closed heart prevents us from seeing clearly, it lacks gratitude and is insensitive to wonder and awe; a closed heart lacks compassion and is unaware of injustice; a closed heart forgets the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being.  “it is as if the self is enclosed in a dome, a transparent shell: the world is ‘out there’ and I am ‘in here’.  Like an invisible shield, the dome is a boundary separating the self from the world.  It can become hard and rigid [like a tomb].  It closes us off from the world, and we live centered in ourselves. … Not all hearts are equally hard.  In severe form, hard hearts are associated with violence, brutality, arrogant and a rapacious world-devouring greed… The mild form of /violence is judgmentalism, of brutality, insensitivity, of arrogance, self-centeredness; of rapacious greed, ordinary self-interest.”  I certainly recognise myself here – do you?

Borg reflects on how this opening and closing of the heart happens “on a daily basis.  I am aware that some days my heart is more open than other days.  Even in the course of a single day, there are moments when my heart is more open or more closed.  Sometimes it is closed because of tiredness, worry, or busyness.  I know that my heart is closed whenever I feel grumpy or self-preoccupied, when the world looks ordinary, or when the critical voice is strong in my head, whether directed at myself or others.  When I stand in a supermarket checkout line and all the people I see look kind of ugly, I know my heart is closed.” [3]  For some of us, the pain we carry is so great; we cannot imagine how our hearts could ever be opened.  We are paralyzed; we live within our tomb-like shells.  The Christian story tells us, we do not have to remain in that deathly place – that our tombs can be broken open –that transformative healing is not just an idea, but a reality.   And, most of the time, like the first disciples, we are skeptical.  How is it possible for our hearts to be hatched open?  We doubt whether we can ever move from tomb to delight. And yet, at the heart of the gospel we are told our very selves can be opened to the sacred, the wonder, the wholeness for which we yearn. 

The hatching open of our hearts is a comprehensive image for the ongoing process of living the Christian life. …

I’ve spoken before of the ‘thin places’ metaphor.  It’s a wonderful image to describe those places where hearts experience the hatching of new life.  I have always found the Isle of Iona to be one of those places; I’ve also found this beautiful building another; music, too, has always been a powerful thin-place experience for me.  These thin places are where we find it easier to recognise Godness shining – those places, people, experiences where Holy Mystery, in which we are always living, becomes startlingly clear.  Within those thin places, the Spirit of God hatches opens hearts, revealing resurrection moments and transforming our life stories.

John Shea tells of a thin place experience:

“The man crept into the back of the church.  Early Sunday Mass, 8.00am., last row, aisle seat.  Barely in, quickly out if need be.

It was his habit since the divorce.  He was afraid not to go to Mass – and he was afraid to go to Mass. So he snuck in and out.  It was not that he was well known in this parish.  When people looked at him, they would not be thinking, “Poor Bill, what a messy divorce!”  But he was thinking it.  It was how he saw himself.  In his head he was guilty, a major failure at matrimony – and at a young age!  It was hard to handle.  No matter how much they talked about forgiveness, there was very little room for matrimonial failure in the Catholic Church.  The last row, aisle seat was a perfect place.  It was where he belonged.

An old priest was saying Mass.  He was soft spoken, but if you paid attention, he made you think.  He preached that people could rise out of their sins – [out of their hopelessness] that a child of God is never completely paralysed.  “If you hear this truth,” he almost whispered, “you can walk.”

As usual, Bill did not go to communion.

After communion a woman soloist sang a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace.”  Every ‘wretch that was saved’ was moved.

Except one.  Suddenly the old priest was on his feet and walking toward the congregation.

‘I hate that song.  I am not a wretch.  You are not a wretch.  The Gospel is right.  You are a [beloved] child of God.  Perhaps momentarily paralyzed, but called to rise.’

Then the old priest began moving down the center aisle.  ‘This is my recessional song,’ he shouted.

He began to point to people in pew after pew. “You are a [beloved] child of God.  You are a [beloved] child of God.   And you.”

“Oh no!” thought Bill, as the priest approached with his jabbing finger. “Oh no!”

“And you are a [beloved] child of God” said the old priest in a voice that was now quiet, not from exhaustion, but from the intuition the truth he was saying had nothing to do with loudness.

Last man, last row, aisle seat: “You are a [beloved] child of God.”

Bill tried, but he could not stop the tears.  After a while he even stopped trying.  Everyone walked by him.  Finally, he stood up, walked out, and went back home.” [4]

Friends, like the old priest, that which we call God entices us into wholeness, through love.  We discover that truth in the thin places of our lives.  Most of us have been taught the way of moralism, which claims God will love us if and when we change – and, let me assure you, that is a path doomed to failure[5].  We are never going to be good enough – pure enough – holy enough – loving enough.   Thank goodness the resurrection stories tell it differently: 

The stories of Easter remind us of how we lock ourselves in our tombs of pain and self-blame, closing our hearts, not knowing how to shift the stone that blocks us from all we yearn for.  Sometimes we remember to slowly loosen our fearful grip, knowing that when we let go, we fall – not into the abyss – but into the free, no-strings-attached- gift of God’s great love, generosity and mercy. 

Other times the transformation comes as sudden as an unexpected earthquake.   An unlikely Christ comes out of nowhere and blasts open our hearts, offering words of freedom and healing.  “An old priest finds us hiding with our pain, our guilt, our lack of love and breaks through our self-hatred.  Our hearts are hatched open.  We are ‘unparalyzed’ and on our feet, striding out of the place we crept into, knowing that forgiveness, love and walking the resurrection life are the same thing.[6] 

Christ is risen….

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[1] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity 2003, p.149.

[2] Borg, 2003, p.151.

[3] Borg, 2003, p.153-154.

[4] John Shea, Eating with the Bridegroom: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, 2005: 67-68.

[5] Richard Rohr, adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate ... Seeing God in All Things  Center for Action and Contemplation  cac@cacradicalgrace.ccsend.com, Wednesday, 18 April 2012

[6] Shea, 2005, p.68.

A Sermon for Easter 2: 15 April 2012

Readings: Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

It’s a week since Easter Day – a week since we celebrated that central focus in the life of the Christian church – a week since the bare church was transformed with the vivid, joyful colours of dahlias piled high on the communion table and the choir candles returned to bring light, signifying our hope.  It’s just a week – seven days since we announced once more that even in our most hopeless times, even when all seems to be destroyed, the sun does break through again.  It was just a week ago we affirmed that in God, all things can be transformed.  A week can be a long time.  In seven days, new worlds can be created – and destroyed; births and deaths can change our lives; our life stories can take many twists and turns. 

Of course, for our culture, Easter is over... the story is old news: the eggs and hot-cross buns are now ‘out-dated stock’; the long weekend is over; the Easter sales make way for ‘mid-season’ clearances.  But, for the Church, Easter has just begun – again.  For this story forms the framework of our being – it provides the way of shaping meaning for our lives.  And, for that reason, every Sunday, throughout the year, the Christian Church celebrates the amazing good news of that first Easter conviction: that, in God transformation is possible.  And, the church will continue to observe the Easter Season over the next few weeks, as part of the Christian Liturgical Year, because, for us, Easter is anything but over:  as we sang in our opening hymn “Christ is alive and the universe must celebrate”!  

As I mentioned last week, the words “Christ is alive” and “Christ is risen” are shorthand phrases Christians use to affirm that life emerges from death and that joy breaks through the clouds of despair.  In claiming “Christ is risen”, we are not being asked to suspend our rational minds; rather, we are being asked to open our minds and our hearts to something ‘more’ – a way of living that deals with all our present joy, our pain and hurt – a way that releases us from our deathly despair into transforming love and hope.  There can be nothing more promising than to assert Christ is risen!

The resurrection is the Christian way of describing a life-time journey.  It’s a way of writing our life-story around a central commitment to a process of “dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being”.  Throughout his teaching, Jesus used the image of deaths and resurrections as the way to abundant and flourishing life. Sometimes we experience this as a single, dramatic moment of being confronted with the amazing possibilities of new life, (described by some, including Jesus in his encounter with Nicodemus, as being born again) – more often, we have “simple, gradual and incremental” daily experiences of choosing and experiencing life over death and despair in this way of the cross, which is our life journey.[1] 

It’s worth noting that this way of living out our story – this path of dying to the old and being reborn into the new, is a “process at the heart not only of Christianity, but of the other enduring religions of the world.  The image of following ‘the way’ is common in Judaism, [where] ‘the way’ involves a new heart, a new self centered in God.  One of the meanings of the word ‘Islam’ is ‘surrender’: to surrender one’s life to God by radically centering in God.  And Muhammad is reported to have said, ‘Die before you die.’ Die spiritually before you die physically, die metaphorically (and really) before you die literally.  At the heart of the Buddhist path is ‘letting go’ – the same internal path as dying to an old way of being and being born into a new.  According to the Tao te Ching, a foundational text for both Taoism and Zen Buddhism, Lao Tzu said: ‘If you want to become full, let yourself be empty; if you want to be reborn, let yourself die.”[2]

Let yourself die ... let go what is holding you back so that you may experience new, transforming life – in all its fullness.

Marcus Borg[3] suggests there are two transformations necessary in the Christian way – the way of individual and personal transformation and the way of communal, social, political, transformation.  Today, I invite you to consider the way of your personal transformation. How is your life story being written as you live the resurrection way?  Did last Sunday’s celebration help you celebrate the delight of Love waking again – even and especially when hate and sorrow seem to overwhelm everything?  Did you carry that hope high through the week; or did life circumstances swallow up last Sunday’s tender shoot of possibility? Was the seed of something new planted in your heart; or did your rational mind refuse to entertain any idea that things could be different?  O, yes, we all know how doubt and fear seize us in our daily lives.

This weekend, Rod and I have been in Christchurch – a city that knows so much about hope waiting to be reborn, even as it grieves tremendous loss;  a city where resurrection promise, encouragement and spirit is evident; a city urging itself – and urged by others: kia kaha – keep strong; a city where waiters in cafes have printed on the back of their t-shirts – walk tall.  We were in Christchurch for the Ecumenical Board of Theological Studies graduation ceremony.  There, we celebrated resurrection moments in the lives of women and men, all of whom were in what might be called the second half – or even third age of their lives.  These people had dedicated themselves to study by distance, over many years and, on Friday night, with their families and tutors, they celebrated the growth and transformation which had occurred in their lives through their in-depth studies of bible, church, ministry and theology. 

Guest speaker at the graduation was Professor Colin Gibson, who invited us all to consider how ‘stories are never innocent’ – ‘never up to nothing’ – always doing something - taking us on a journey of self-discovery.  As I listened to Colin take us through a Margaret Mahy[4] story with its invitation to refuse to be fearful and timid – but rather to claim the abundance of passionate life – I found myself reflecting on the Easter Stories, with their similar themes. 

As we noted last Sunday, the resurrection story in Mark’s gospel ends with dumb-struck amazement and fear.  This morning’s first reading, another resurrection story of the early church, is about the transformation of a community into a people of extraordinary compassionate generosity; while our gospel reading describes the way in which Christ’s peace can transform locked down terror.

“Like all stories”, Colin Gibson reminded us on Friday night, “this story knows about you and me.” “Stories hold up a mirror of so many people who might be me.”  When we enter the story, consider who we might be within it and imagine ourselves determining its ongoing journey, transforming hope is possible. 

Who are you in the resurrection story – and how is your hope-filled life shaped by that story?

On this Sunday, a week after Easter Day, are you one of the women, whose fear and terror cripple you – preventing you from speaking out the wondrous possibility of hope?  If this is you, you might ponder how the story came to be told (and continues to be retold) – if the women didn’t ever speak....

Are you one of those disciples who shut themselves away behind locked doors ... huddled tight, terrified of how others might cause you dreadful harm?  If this is you, you might ponder how Jesus’ offer of peace breaks through fearful lockdowns....

Or, are you, like Cleopas and his companion, so busy talking and rationalising all that has happened in your life, that you can’t see the presence of Christ – walking alongside you, offering you something different, something more?  If this is you, you might ponder how hope emerges, when strangers are invited to share food together ...

Are you like Thomas, holding out from any full commitment until you have proof – proof that this way of Jesus will overturn all your fears and doubts – now!  If this is you, you might ponder how hope is found in touching the nailed hands and pierced bodies of those this world crucifies each and every day ...

Perhaps you are like the early church described in the Acts reading, already fired by the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit – compassionate and generous, wanting to live out your faith in grace and love.  If this is you, you might ponder how your enthusiasm will be shared with this community so that others will catch your vibrant vision of hope.

On this Sunday, a week after Easter, what ever way your resurrection story is being lived out,  may you, like the writer of the Gospel of John affirm, my story is being written so that all who read it may have life – transforming life, in all its fullness.

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[1] Marcus Borg, “Born Again: a new heart”, The Heart of Christianity, 2003, pp103ff.

[2] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 2003, p.119.

[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, p.103ff

[4] Margaret Mahy, The man whose mother was a pirate

A Sermon for Easter Day 2012

I heard it three times last week ... on three separate occasions ... from three different people:  “I’m not doing Easter this year” they each explained.  These were not people who were taking advantage of the long weekend to have a last-gasp search for sunshine before the long months of cold set in; no, they were people making a deliberate choice not to attend worship services for this weekend’s rehearsal of arguably the central story of the Christian tradition.  And those were the ones, who felt strongly enough – and safe enough – to tell me of their decision.  Although the reasons for ‘not doing Easter’ were vastly different, underlying each was deep pain – personal, theological or institutional – pain that they could only assume would be heightened by attending Easter services.  I imagine there might be many others, unable to articulate their concerns, but who also wouldn’t dream of coming to Church when life was tough.

In no way do I want to judge these decisions.  I think they come out of the deepest part (some would call it the spiritual part – or the soul) of  those who are yearning for ‘something more’ in their lives – that universal innermost longing we all have for the ultimate horizon and ground of our being, that which some of us call God.  And yet, somehow, for many people, coming to church does not guarantee one will be given a space and a place in which that longing might be helpfully addressed.

I find myself deeply grieved by this – deeply disturbed that the church (and here I mean not just Knox or the PCANZ, but the church universal) – has become so actively unhelpful, so passively irrelevant that its central message, instead of bringing hope, peace, justice and mercy into peoples’ lives is, for some at least, betraying, deserting and denying the transforming Gospel experience of Love. 

So, I want to begin by being rather provocative; by suggesting how the church has failed – and then, hopefully, constructive as we probe the Easter message for today.

I believe the church has failed when its people think that Good Friday is about a so-called loving God deciding the only way to fix ‘his’ wayward people is to kill ‘his’ only beloved child.  (One might wonder if God had been perceived as mother, would such a theory ever have been entertained?) “Jesus died for the sins of the world” does not mean that God decided a brutal death was a great way of teaching us how we have strayed. Jesus, who taught us the way of Love through forgiveness, non-violence and reconciliation, points to a vulnerable, loving God with outstretched, compassionate and welcoming arms.   “Jesus died for the sins of the world” is Christian shorthand, reminding us of our human shortcomings – how we can get caught up with the crowds shouting crucify – how we can betray others – or collude with forces of evil.  Jesus’ death reminds us: our thoughtless behaviour has consequences – sometimes even the death of innocent people.

I believe the church has failed, when its people think that Easter Sunday is about a well and truly dead (but not truly human) god-person miraculously resuscitated. “Christ is risen” does not mean that a cold, already decomposing body, somehow was kick-started back to life. The gospel story is about being born anew in God – about Love waking again, when hate and sorrow seem to overwhelm everything. “Christ is risen” is Christian shorthand affirming the ongoing resurrection moments in our lives – reminding us that “there is never a time for hope to die” – asserting that we continue to meet the risen Christ through miracles of love, wonder and justice in our daily lives.  When we say “Christ is risen”, the church announces that even in our most hopeless times – even when all seems to be destroyed – the sun will break through again, for in God, all things can be transformed.

As Marcus Borg puts it: “At the heart of Christianity is... a path that transforms us at the deepest level of our being. At the heart of Christianity is the heart of God – a passion for our transformation and the transformation of the world.  At the heart of Christianity is participating in the passion of God.”[1] 

The church has failed – and will continue to fail, if it does not invite people to bring their tortuous, joyful and sorrow-filled lives in all their complexity and completeness into God’s passion, which we know through the living, dying and new life of Jesus.

I find the gospel of Mark’s story about that first Easter Day the most engaging, because of its simplicity and ambiguity.  The women come to the tomb to perform the traditional task of anointing. They come grieving, expecting no miracle – just wondering how they will manage the heavy stone that blocks the entrance to the tomb.  “Something’s dead inside them – some yesterday’s been slain ... their thoughts are dull with pain.”[2] The message given to them at the empty tomb fills them with terror and amazement.  Mark tells us “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them: and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8)  And that’s how the Gospel ended (...until a few centuries later[3], when interpreters found it all too unsatisfactory ... and so wrote other alternative endings.... wanting to tie up the loose ends – rather than remain within the ambiguity).

And yet, for me anyway, there’s something very hopeful about this ending, with its challenge to look elsewhere (away from the tomb) for meaning – beyond pain and death.  The picture painted with its juxtaposition of terror and wonder as two sides of the same coin resonates with my own life journey with its muddly mix of chaos and order, sickness and health, pleasure and anguish. Like all of you, I imagine, I find fear, pain and hurt rubbing shoulders with delight, joy and amazement.  And what keeps me going – through the good times and the hard patches, the uncertainties and the securities, is the knowledge that we are all held – in and through it all – by the encompassing Love which never ends; Love which casts out fear; Love which is God. 

Novelist Fiona Farrell knows all about that holding of terror and wonder together.  She had planned to write a book about walking.  It was to be a “travel book, following the random habits of thought associated with a walk through a landscape.  It would ramble.  It would detour. [But] then [the Christchurch] earthquake shook [her] from bed and ripped up the map entirely.  The quake” she wrote, “sent a jagged tear right through my text.  The resulting book [aptly named, “The Broken Book”] shows how an earthquake can change everything in a flash: the words you were writing, the house you were living in, the thoughts that preoccupied you, the faith you relied in.”[4]

“Writing about walking is not so straightforward any more.”[5]  Now, “we have fear folded like a handkerchief in a handbag.”[6]

In the midst of (and possibly even because of) that jagged, broken, quaking fear, Farrell recognised resurrection moments of wonder and delight in her walks.  At the edge of the Alps in the French Riviera, she encountered limestone cliffs made up of “Billions of sea creatures like the bryozoa, each of which lived with its own little box with a hinged lid that could be flipped up for feeding.... Each tiny being... liv[ing] for a few weeks before performing their clever trick.” She wrote. “They appear to die.  Within their little box they rot to brown sludge.  For a spell they remain inert.  Then, miraculously, they stir to life once more.  They begin to take on their former shape: gut, bum, nerves.  The creature is reborn.  Three times they do this..., before they die for good.  The shelly box dissolves.  Some particles go to form a new box for the young who have budded from their parent’s body.  The remainder filter down through the tidal waters to settle and form a reef like the one that has risen from beneath a primeval sea...  The town is overlooked by the remains of creatures who acquired the knack of resurrection.”[7]

The gospel story reminds us that our lives are over-looked by the story of Jesus, who also “acquired the knack of resurrection.”

Human living is not easy ...

Sometimes, earthquakes happen – and our lives are shattered

Sometimes we face incredible odds – which are almost impossible to overcome

Sometimes our children get sick – and even die

Sometimes our friends or partners let us down, betray us – desert us in our time of need

Sometimes the government – or the church – oppresses, destroys or crucifies

Today, we do not ignore the pain of our lives; today we do not use familiar phrases tritely; today we place our feet squarely before the cross, celebrating that even in the midst of our fears – in the midst of our deaths – in the midst of our sorrows, Love comes to us in many shapes and forms – coming again and again, to embrace and hold us.  We can say: “Christ is risen” ... ‘for in the darkness, we can see God dancing in the rain’[8]....

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[1] Marcus Borg The Heart of Christianity, 2003, p.225.

[2] Reference to the hymn “Something’s dead inside me” by Joy Cowley, Hope is our Song New Zealand Hymn Book Trust, 2009, #123.

[3] The Shorter Ending of Mark: “This one verse ending was added to a manuscript of Mark sometime after the 3^rd century CE.  In one manuscript where it appears, it directly follows 16:8 as the ending of the Gospel; in some manuscripts, the ‘shorter ending’ is followed by the ‘longer ending’ (16:9-20), and in a few manuscripts, the ‘longer ending’ is followed by this ‘shorter ending.’  Like the ‘longer ending’, it changes failure into success to end the Gospel on a positive note.  It uses language found nowhere else in the Gospel of Mark.”

The Longer Ending: “was probably added to a copy of Mark sometime in the late 2^nd or early 3^rd century CE.  It is not found in the earliest or most dependable Greek manuscripts, and while it appears in many others, it is often marked with asterisks or crucial notes indicating its secondary status.  It appears to be composed of a mixture of elements from the other three Gospels and Acts.  In two manuscripts, the ‘longer ending’ contains an addition after v.14 about the rule of Satan, which comes from a considerably later date... On a number of manuscripts it is combined with the ‘shorter ending’.”  Mary Ann Tolbert, “The Gospel According to Mark”, The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, Abingdon Press, 2003, p.1844.

[4] Fiona Farrell, The Broken Book, Auckland University Press, 2011 – back cover blurb.

[5] Fiona Farrell, 2011, p.9.

[6] “The teacups” in Fiona Farrell, 2011, p.196.

[7] Fiona Farrell 2011, p.46.

[8] Joy Cowley, “Something’s dead inside me”