The Adventure is Now

Read Mark 6:30-56

The disciples return from what must have been a fascinating and arduous trip around Israel, performing the tasks that Jesus had set for them. Jesus’ sending of the disciples was last week’s reading and it has been on my mind, especially the bit where he tells the disciples that if they are not welcomed into a town, they should wipe the dust from their feet and go on. I’ve spent the past week in Namibia – a very dusty place. I received the most fabulous welcome from the men in Oshakati where I attended a workshop on masculinity. Our adventure in Namibia was wonderful and I have yet to wipe the dust off my boots, which remain scuffed and soiled under my Sunday best!

As with other adventures of this sort, I find I need time to assimilate and make sense of what has happened – I feel the need to retreat and dwell upon its significance. Perhaps the disciples felt the same way on their return, but they are instead plunged into a bizarre situation of having to feed more then five thousand people. My life is a little like that – I seldom have (or take) the time to reflect upon my experience.

Socrates said that the “unexamined life is not worth living.” How true. When our busyness prevents us from living in the present, we are not really living at all.

I found, even on our adventure, I was constantly focused on the future. “When we get there…” I wondered how the workshop would go. At the workshop I was looking forward to the adventure in the desert. In the desert I looked forward to being at home. And now I wonder what happened. Because I wasn’t really there. William, my fellow traveler, had an expression he used a few times on the trip: “The adventure begins now.” I want to live like that – in the now.

I have lived my life with a refrain at the heart of my being: “What is real?” It is has energized all my pursuits. It comes out in some of the stuff I have blogged here about Myth. In a story like the one in our text today, the same question may be asked: Jesus divides a handful of bread and fish into a feast for more than five thousand, he walks on water and heals people. What is real?

Our experience in Namibia taught me a little more about what is real. We got stuck for nearly three days in a river called the Guandegab (which is now a swearword in my dictionary). When they say that 4x4s are a good idea in Namibia, this is a very true saying. A motorbike fairs rather poorly in loose sand. We had to wait through the long hot day for the cool night when the sand is slightly firmer and the bikes could get traction. There was nothing to do, but wait. I couldn’t plan, I couldn’t act. Eventually day-dreaming also ends and one… is. I noticed the lizard nearby dancing his strange press-ups on diagonally opposing feet, so that the feet in the air can cool off. I noticed how still the leaf lies, infrequently gently stirred by a breeze out of nowhere, going nowhere. I was me. I was real. Just a few precious moments, I was present. I was alive.

The disciple’s didn’t get their opportunity to reflect, to rest. They were plunged back into the demanding tasks of compassion. When I returned from Namibia, there has been little opportunity to reflect, to rest. The daily tasks of life pursue me. I remember thinking in the desert, how nice it would be to hold Katie again. I remember how before I went to Namibia, I had been thinking, how nice it will be to have a break from Katie. Constantly living in the future, I had stopped living and am in danger of addiction to a future that never arrives.

The question of reality took a surprising twist when I got home and read Peter Wood’s blog about Velveteen Rabbit - a true story :-) – a favourite of Peter’s and mine. It was a fortuitous stumble. It reminded me that reality is more than just me.

That precious moment of drying out in the desert was not the only me. Me was also back home in Katie and Yvette’s heart. Me was also in the hearts of all my friends and family. Me is also in the heart of my enemy. I am not merely a “skin encapsulated ego” (Alan Watts) but also the being that is part of others, what they know of me, and what we share.

Real is when we stop the hurry of our fast-food life and listen to our souls. But real is also when we stop and love.

So I won’t clean my boots for a while, I like them real…

Sermon Ordinary Time July

Read: Mark 6:1-13

When I was exploring becoming a minister, I signed up to become a Local Preacher. Part of the process is that the Local Preacher’s Quarterly Meeting interviews prospective candidates. In those days, the deliberations about each candidate were held in camera, the candidates awaiting their fate outside the meeting. At the time that I applied, my parents had just gone through a divorce and our conservative congregation was rife with the hot gossip that Mom had left because of being a lesbian. Inside the meeting someone asked, “How can Greg be a preacher when he comes from a family like that?”

Fortunately for me, Rev. John Borman, who was chairing the meeting, flinches at nothing. I am told that he responded: “If you’ve been around as long as I have, you will know that the most beautiful lilies grown on the foulest dung heaps.”

I was accepted as preacher and started the long journey that brings me here. I wonder what would have happened, had I heard that question myself, instead of second hand some years later. I wonder what would have happened, if John had not stood up for me.

I wonder how many great people have been imprisoned by prejudice, stunted by their parents, their village or their friends. In this country particularly, what greatness lies buried behind mounds and mounds of destructive judgements.

Understanding Jesus’ situation a little better can help make the greatness possible…

Jesus is labelled the “son of Mary”. Not, on the face of it, a slight, but remember we are talking about 1st century Palestine where one was more usually referred to as a son of one’s father. Jesus’ father is in question. No doubt, if Mary had shared her story, that Jesus had been conceived by God, she would have been seen as a nutter. In all likelihood, Jesus’ father was simply not known. What was known, was that it wasn’t Joseph. And so every time a villager met Jesus they were reminded that he was a bastard.

The villagers also ask, “Where did this man get all this?” I am reminded by Sarah Breuer of the nature of this question in her reflection on the lectionary this week.

The culture of Jesus’ day, more so than Western culture today, was influenced by what anthropologists call “limited good”. The idea is simply that resources are limited and in order for their to be an abundance in one place, there has to be a scarcity elsewhere. But this applies equally to ideas, skills, values and so on, not just physical resources.

So the question from the villagers is actually, “How did Jesus come to have so much?” Their jealous question implies some illicit activity by which Jesus comes to his power. Perhaps he has stolen these ideas, perhaps the power he has comes from a nefarious source.

Not only is Jesus a bastard, he is also a thief. Can anything good come from this man? How can he be a teacher?

But Jesus is not held back by such ideas, on the contrary, we see him continue all the way to Jerusalem. What enabled him to rise above these conceptions? I don’t think this was the first time he had encountered such prejudice. Growing up in Nazareth it is easy to see how he may have been conditioned to believe these ideas about himself. On the other hand he may rebelled, in the way that we often do, a reactionary and futile attempt to stand up against the labels; labels we have secretly absorbed too deeply.

Jesus was able to rise above this because he was given - or knew - a different perspective. He believed in the generosity of God. He was not inviting people to help him divide up a limited pie, he was inviting people to a banquet so large that it might spoil for want of more people to enjoy it.

So Jesus invited prisoners, the sick, the poor and hungry to be part of the feast. He commits the double felony of claiming authority and power and then giving it to misfits. As everyone knows, prisoners deserve to be punished for their crimes, God punishes the sick for the sins of the fathers and those who are hungry and poor should get a job.

I have witnessed through the work of SHADE how women who have been told their place –and kept there with violence - from the day they were born have risen above this dominating oppression. They have not given in, nor have they merely rebelled, they have risen above it. And it is amazing how much they have accomplished with seemingly few resources. Liberation has a way of multiplying resources and making new things possible.

What have you come to believe about yourself as a result of the lifelong training you have received in the world? What picture of yourself is Jesus inviting you to appreciate?

Prison Break

To truly be alive, requires risk; the risk to relate, to be vulnerable, to journey, to believe. But to risk requires volition and we are not always free to exercise our will. Trapped by circumstance, fear, oppression, our past or a myriad of other prisons, we cannot make the decisive move. Freedom is a grace won at great cost. I think of the freedom of 1994 and what it cost. A woman sacrifices security and status to ditch an abusive husband. A man gives up his job to follow his heart. A child grieves a broken past and becomes an adult. But once freedom has been won, we have the energy to risk. And so we live.

Risk is dangerous and freedom is expensive. Prison is death.

Katie, Phoebe and I run past a house every day that has a big rottweiler and two small terriers in the yard. Every day, the big roti barks like crazy (and Phoebe goads him). The little dogs follow suit. As we run past, the roti gets more and more agitated and frustrated because he can’t get past the fence. Eventually he takes out either one the terriers closest at the time. When the roti turns back to the fence the little terrier is even more angry and crazy, having been beaten up, but aims all that animosity at Phoebe.

They said it

In the side bar you'll see a link to uMunthu Psychology. You may want to visit it occasionally as Chiwoza is starting to write... At the moment, Chiwoza's field of interest is why people in Malawi engage in risk bahviour even when they know it is dangerous. Obviously this has important implications for Afrrica's struggle against HIV. So keep your eye on that space...

Restless Rock has produced a flood of refelections on death. Sounds grim, but check it out. It left me feeling hopeful.

And if you need some light relief with satircal overtones and a dash of cynicism, don't forget Ze Frank...

Points Political to Ponder from Pres. Katie

I have been told that the world is producing too many girl children because apparently our environment is flooded with oestrogen. Wouldn't that be great. Obviously the scientists who concluded this never studied my family. This is a photo of my latest cousin Jonah Don born yesterday. I am now hopelessly outnumbered but this raises a very important political point. The ubiquitous presence of maleness should present no problem to the ambitious female. When surrounded, simply climb higher… It is particularly important when doing so that one is not held back by the fear of others. Here you can see how, despite my subject's obvious discomfort, I have not shied away from my desire to avoid the stairs. This takes courage and conviction, but the rewards are many, as the triumphant will always take the glory. So, welcome Jonah, your brother Llew will show you where to stand in the pecking order...

Skin Hunger

Whenever Jesus healed he touched. Given the society he lived in the most extraordinary part of these healings is that he touched. He touched women – something a Rabbi was not supposed to do. He touched women who were haemorrhaging – making himself ritually unclean. He touched people with skin diseases – who had been kicked out of their families and villages, forced to live in the wilderness.

Ever wondered why we shake hands? I like the explanation offered by some evolutionary biologists. Our ape ancestors needed to mark their territory but marking one’s territory is a problem when you live in a tree. So instead of using faeces and urine, like so many other mammals, apes use secretions on their hands and feet which automatically mark the trees they are climbing in. This is why your hands often sweat when the rest of you doesn’t or why our feet smell. Shaking hands is throw back to a time we marked our territory with our hands and bonded with family members by sharing our smell.

Shaking hands is like saying: “You and I belong together.”

The movie Fisher King is a modern retelling of the fable in which a prince discovers the importance of touch. The prince goes into the wilderness to test his courage and had a vivid dream in which he sees the Holy Grail surrounded by flame. When he reaches out to grab it, the flames burn him. When he wakes, the wound is real but the Grail is gone. He becomes King but is consumed by his wound and one day in desperation returns to the wilderness to try resolve his pain. Lying in the wilderness, delirious and dying of thirst, he is met by the Court Jester who asks him, “Tell me what I can do for you.” The King replies: “I am thirsty.” So the Jester pulls a chipped wooden cup from his bag and offers it to the King filled with water. As the King reaches for the cup he sees that it is the Holy Grail. He realises that it is not the jewel-encrusted treasure of his previous vision that he needs, but rather the battered old cup offered in the hands of compassion.

Not all touch is good. People who are fighting are touching. Sexual and physical abuse uses touch to injure deeply. Sometimes we refer to people with mental illness as “touched”. But appropriate touch is very important to humans. To loose touch is to cease being human. Touch is literally and matter of life and death.

In old age homes I have hear the term “skin hunger” to describe the peculiar loneliness of people in homes like these. Skin Hunger… We need to be touched.

Rene Spitz in 1945 studied infants in a South American orphanage that were starved of physical contact. Because the staff were under resourced they simply did not have the time to cuddle the babies. Despite having enough nourishment and medical care, a third of the children he studied died for want of a hug. The survivors remained permanently psychologically damaged.

Think of the people who need your touch. Remember the people who touch you. Which people are you afraid to touch, or are you not allowed to touch? Who do you long to be touched by?

When I baptised my first child I remember the sheer terror I felt having to hold this fragile being. I saw myself as incapable of holding something so precious. Deep down I didn’t think I was good enough. That child and the trust of his parents healed me. Nobody knew it, but that touch healed me.