'Sticky Ideas'

Sermon for Sunday 25th March 2007
RCL Year C - John 12:1-8

‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

I don’t normally give my sermons a title but today I’m making an exception:
The title I have chosen is just 3 words and one of the words is LOVE!
No I am not about to tell you all that “I love you” – You know that already!
No the title of this sermon is “It’s LOVE stupid!”

Does that phrase sound familiar?...It should do!...If you follow international news and politics at all it should ring a few bells. It is a slight adaptation of a phrase coined by James Carville, an aide to President Clinton and used by Clinton, when he was campaigning for office as President of the United States. The slogan he used was: “It’s the economy stupid” and in those few words was conveyed a very simple and powerful message: All the electorate really care about – what really gets votes is: “How much money will I have in my pocket if I vote for you”? It seems very cynical and disappointing but it probably reflects political reality….and so the phrase or rebuke: “It’s the ECONOMY stupid!” By keeping that slogan to the fore Clinton kept his electoral machine on target or “on message” as is the phrase used today and achieved electoral triumph.
And today that phrase is everywhere – it is constantly quoted in Irish, British and European Politics – It is as compact and true a summary of our political motivation as you will find anywhere.

Simple concise phrases communicate so much and are far more memorable than long and lengthy philosophies of life…….the Bible is full of them…..quite literally: The Book of Proverbs is exactly that: a collection of seminal wisdom and truth expressed in compact, memorable and poetic language. The Sermon on the Mount equally expresses profound truth in succinct and rich phrases.

Our own contemporary language is full of similar examples…….take the phrase: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”…a proverb that has truly stood the test of time and can be traced back to the year 570BC! A recent book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath called “Made to Stick – why some ideas survive and others die” comments that this same proverb needed no advertising campaign or publicity budget to facilitate its spread across time, space and culture. It was a simple but profound expression of truth which was and is naturally “sticky”. The Heath brothers point out that these compact ideas are not to be confused with the contemporary fascination with the sound bite which is an unreliable medium but are in fact best described as Cervantes described Proverbs: “Short sentences drawn from long experience”.

So back to our Gospel : ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

It may not be as compact and as succinct a message as some of the examples we have looked at but it is an expression by Jesus of something that he and his followers say again and again: “It’s Love stupid!”
Perhaps not in that exact phraseology but in the rebuke that Jesus gives Judas, he points out that what was important was Mary’s motivation: her love for Jesus and perhaps her discernment of what was about to happen to him. Because of that there is an excuse for the extravagance of her Love in anointing his feet with a pound of expensive perfume as she anticipated (whether consciously or not) the Love that Jesus was about to demonstrate on the Cross. And so it’s all about Love – and Judas just doesn’t get it! Why? Because his mind is on other things! We’re told quite explicitly he is a thief who robs from the common purse and so resents this waste of money that he could have used to his own ends…..he doesn’t get it at all – he turns his back on Love and as we know it all ends in tragedy. “It’s Love stupid” is a phrase that we might long to say to him…..because of course we don’t identify with him in that story – Do we?

No we are all Mary…pouring precious perfume over our Lord’s feet and cleaning them with our hair! We know about Love and we are on the side of Love.
We have heard Jesus’ summary of the law from Matthew 22: “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself” In this simple but powerful formula we find the basis for the Christian life.
We have heard and read 1st Corinthians 13 perhaps more than any passage in the Bible apart from the birth narratives of Jesus – We know that “if we speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, [We are] only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”……that if we “have not love, [we] gain nothing”
We know all that so we don’t need to be told: “It’s Love stupid!” We know!

But wait a moment! – Judas knew all this – he walked with the earthly Jesus – he knew his earthly Love and presence and yet he walked away! He was distracted by other things which got in the way of the message of Gods love for him. Going back to our earlier political analogy he had gone “off message”…..even one so close as he had lost the plot and ended in oblivion. Scripture constantly reminds us that it is those times that we are especially close to God that we are simultaneously especially vulnerable…..our guard is down and we become complacent.

We do not all drift away from God’s Love in such dramatic fashion as Judas but there are more subtle ways in which we too go “off message”.

We do it when we treat our Church as an exclusive club with rules of admission instead of a place with no locks on the doors where all are welcome…..we do it when we meet the stranger and pass instant judgement on them because of the colour of their skin, their ethnic background or their religious tradition…we do it when we are more concerned with preserving ourselves and our own sanctity than reaching out to the broken and wounded people ….we do it when we say to ourselves thank God I am not as bad as this or that person….we do it when we fail to make peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ and yet claim to love Jesus.

It's all about Love and without it everything that we do will be in vain!
Living in Christ is not about doing the right thing! Its about doing the loving thing! It's about a "sticky idea": IT'S LOVE STUPID!

New Name - New Address - Same old Same old....

Hi! PaddyAnglican here! - I've moved from my old home at Paddy-Anglican (with a hyphen) and settled here leaving the hyphen behind! Give me a chance to unpack my stuff and I'll start posting again soon.
Stephen

The rights of children - Whose responsibility?

The proposed constitutional referendum on the rights of children is, as the government has been at pains to point out, not one that should cause division along party political lines. The great majority of right-thinking people will surely have no difficulty in making the constitutional protections for our children more explicit. The real danger that faces this proposed amendment is that it will be too narrow and therefore limited in its impact. There is already not insignificant provision for the rights of children in the Constitution. Article 42.5 states: “In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.”

The only proposed wording for an amendment so far comes from Barnardos, the children’s charity. While it strengthens the existing provision and adds another article which makes the rights of children “paramount” it is still not the substantive change that is required. It will be helpful in prosecuting cases of child abuse and in family law disputes it will give further and much needed protection to children caught in the middle of bitter disputes. This is good news but if it is truly to be a referendum on the rights of all our children then it has to go further and be a lot broader in its remit.

One of the early attacks on this proposed amendment came from John Waters in his Irish Times column (6th November), where he articulated the view that it will facilitate a “transfer of parenting rights from parents to the State”. I do not support his conclusion but I think he is right to draw our attention back to the role of parents in protecting the rights of children. No matter how big the budget, how plentiful the resources or how imaginative the legislation that might be based on any proposed constitutional amendment, the State cannot possibly be ‘parent’ to all the children whose rights are currently being denied. This is not just about the 5,000 children currently in the care of the HSE but about thousands of other children who are neglected by parents who for various reasons have neither the time nor the ability to properly parent their children.

Sadly we only become aware of this issue when it spills out onto the streets and affects our lives as well. An increasingly common manifestation is the senseless vandalism and violence committed by gangs of minors who roam our streets at all hours and in all weathers, and seem to have no respect for other people or their property. They are aware that there is little sanction that can be used against them, particularly when their parents in so many cases deny all responsibility for their children and their actions. This is the gaping hole in the Constitution that does need to be addressed. No parent, whatever the circumstances, should be able to deny that basic responsibility towards their own offspring, and with it a legal accountability for the actions of their children.

But even that is not enough! We also need to ask ourselves why things are the way they are? Why are so many parents failing to parent their children? Why do so many children want to do damage to their neighbours and their neighbourhood? Is it too much of a leap of faith to assume there is a connection? Of some comfort may be the fact that Ireland is not alone in dealing with these issues. Very similar things are happening in other countries but not all countries.

It is almost a cliché now but Ireland has experienced economic growth of a scale and in a timescale unparalleled throughout the world. Only last week the Lotto had to be raised to a guaranteed minimum of Two Million Euro, because One Million is no longer enough! Such has been the rate of change that our value systems are struggling to keep up with our new opportunities and choices. We have largely marginalised the Church and the family is increasingly seen as a curtailment to the freedom and individualism to which we aspire and which society tells us we deserve. In their place we have placed the Gospel of Prosperity which has nothing to offer to those who fall off the consumer express. Where we do show interest in the needs of our children it is more often in terms of the latest computer console or designer clothes. Even in the area of education we are more interested in school league tables which say more about our status-anxiety than the real needs of our children. We live our lives on credit, refusing to accept the inconvenience of waiting for our little luxuries and we worship shallow celebrity while mocking those who forsake material reward for moral integrity. These are the values that we are giving to our children!

Maybe we should be asking another question: Are the children who smash our windows and beat up strangers not merely the product of our own moral and spiritual poverty? Its easy to blame others but we all have a responsibility in building society and community. If the rights of all our children are to be protected then all of us need to ask some serious questions of ourselves. The Constitution is a good place to start but it is only a part of a much bigger picture. Let us hope we have the vision and the courage to do what needs to be done.

Who said we have a choice?

Sermon for Sunday 5th November 2006
Readings: Ruth 1:1-18 & Mark 12:28-34

‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

These most profound words uttered by our Lord come out of a quite mundane situation. Jesus is engaging in the banter and dispute so popular in the Jewish religious tradition. They love throwing six-marker questions and trick questions at each other! It is theological debate in its most raw form – almost like the kind of theology and philosophy that some people discuss over a cup of coffee or over a pint of the black stuff….and yet…in this ordinary setting comes the most profound ‘Summary of the Law’ which to this day is the center of what we Christians are about: Love of God and Love of neighbour.
It sounds quite simple – just two basic principles to remember and we should be pretty good Christians, but of course in practice its not quite that simple.

This tradition of banter and trick questions is still alive in the Jewish tradition and a story is told of a rabbi who asked his class of students: "Which act of charity is higher--giving out of obligation or giving from the heart?"
All in the class were inclined to respond that giving from the heart had something more in it, but they knew the rabbi was going to say just the opposite, because in spiritual teaching nothing is logical. They were not disappointed.
"Giving from the heart is a wonderful thing," the rabbi said, "It is a very high act and should never be demeaned. But there is something much more important that happens when somebody gives charity out of obligation.
"Consider who is doing the giving. When somebody gives from the heart, there is a clear sense of oneself doing something; in other words, heartfelt charity always involves satisfying our own desire to help others.
"However, when we give out of obligation, when we give at a moment that every part of us is yelling NO! because of one reason or another--perhaps the beneficiary is disgusting, or it is too much money, or any of thousands of reasons we use to avoid giving charity--then we are confronting our own basic instincts, and giving nonetheless. Why? Because we are supposed to. And what this means is that it is not us doing the giving, rather we are vehicles through which God gives.
( Source: David A. Cooper, Entering the Sacred Mountain: A Mystical Odyssey, Bell Tower.)

I love that story because it disturbs me – It really makes me think! It challenges so much of the culture of our day which emphasizes the value of personal choice, of personal integrity and freedom and the necessity for all our acts of goodness to be motivated from within. It is a culture that revolves around our needs, even if those same needs are capable of generating goodness, they are still our needs – our choices and not our obligations. As an example think how slowly we are coming to terms with the necessity to take care of our planet – Why? Because it is an obligation, not a choice! But does that make it bad? Is there something wrong with obligation? Why has it become a dirty word? This is a culture we cannot help but be influenced by, this culture which elevates choice and denigrates obligation, and yet the rabbi reminds us of the importance of surrendering ourselves to the will of another – the will of God! This is something we are obliged to do and this is something that is not comfortable, or safe or private or personal….this is about discipline and obedience…..and we are not very good at it!

Going back to Jesus and summary of the law – Is he not saying exactly the same thing? “To love our neighbour as ourself” To truly do that is a sacrificial act which involves giving up something of ourselves for another – that is not something that comes naturally – that is something that requires the Grace of God and through which God’s love is communicated and shared. Note it is a commandment: “Hear O Israel…You shall” Jesus knows this is a difficult thing!

It’s the kind of love we see in today’s lesson from the book of Ruth where Ruth against all sensible advice and any concern for her own well being pledges herself to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi whatever the future holds: Ruth said,‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die - there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!’
It could not be any clearer! “MAY THE LORD DO THUS AND SO TO ME”!!!
Ruth is acknowledging the authority of God in her life and in a strange way this authority does not captivate her but sets her spirit free to serve God in and through her service of her Mother-in-law Naomi.

In a world that worships the power and ability of the individual to chip away at the power of God we worship the God who desires to fill us completely with his Love and his Power and so free us from all that prevents us becoming what we have been created for.

I want to finish with an extract from Frederick Buechner in his book, The Magnificent Defeat:
“The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured one’s love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.”

Leaving Church

With a title like that you might think that this is something written in response to Richard Dawkins latest tome, The God Delusion, which urges all of us who are members of the Church or other religious institutions to realise the possibility of leaving and preferably to actually do it!

No this most recent book from Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church – A memoir of faith is something altogether different. It may not change your life but it does give the reader a front row seat to watch a life being changed. The book is in many ways an autobiography of faith. In it we learn how the author realises her goal of ordination in the Episcopal church (Anglican), and how through a variety of ministerial experiences, firstly in the urban environment of Atlanta, Georgia and then to rural Clarksville she finds success, fulfilment but ultimately a fatigue and brokenness that forces her to leave everything that she had thought was important. The habits of ordained ministry are however enduring and it is telling that like many a sermon this book is divided into three stages: Finding, Losing & Keeping. It might seem that her move from parochial life to lecturing in a theological seminary is not such a huge leap but as you follow Barbara Brown Taylor’s journey you realise how far she has come and how far removed she is from where she thought she would be. Many people of faith will recognise that feeling but few will communicate it with the clarity and depth that Taylor does. There is much wisdom in this relatively short book and there is much that will resonate strongly with those who have experienced life in the collar and come to appreciate the blessings it brings but also the burdens it invites.

In what prove to be prophetic words a bishop said to her before her ordination: “Think hard before you do this…..as a layperson you can reach out to people who will never set foot inside a church. Every layer of responsibility you add is going to narrow your ministry, so think hard before you choose a smaller box”.
In describing the burdens of priesthood Taylor remarks that to be a priest is “to wonder sometimes if you are missing the boat altogether, by deferring pleasure in what God has made until you have fixed it up so that it will please God more.” This often self-imposed pressure and the guilt that goes with it is familiar to clergy of all denominations. Taylor with her gift for words sums it up perfectly when she describes the feeling of moving from “servanthood” to “service provider”. She is a victim of her own success – a powerful preacher who attracts congregations of such a scale that at the height of her rural ministry in Clarksville there are four morning services to accommodate the crowds. As she says herself “the best of parish ministry did me in” and the demands of that ministry cut her off from the resources she needed to sustain that same ministry.

There is a wonderful parable in an experience she describes which seems to mark the turning point in her life. One afternoon a bird hits the window on her front porch breaking its neck. Taylor looks at the glass which the bird hit and in it she sees the reflection of mountains and trees and sky. “Poor bird,” she speculates “she had thought all that was ahead of her…….when it was really behind her, in the direction from which she had come.”

Taylor understands pain and manages to find in it lessons for life that make it bearable and meaningful. She deals very insightfully with the current bitter divisions within Anglicanism over sexuality and scriptural interpretation but the division it brought even in her own congregation was significant. She observes that her parish was no different than anywhere else: Whenever people aim to solve their conflicts with one another by turning to the Bible: defending the dried ink marks on the page becomes more vital than defending the neighbour…………human beings never behave more badly towards one another than when they believe they are protecting God. In the words of Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas, “People of the Book risk putting the book above people”. Elaborating on this point Taylor talks of her view of Scripture: “The whole purpose of the Bible is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake. For me this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.” Reflecting on fundamentalist biblical literalism Taylor reminds herself and the reader that the history of Christianity is about “beholding what was beyond belief” and that for us today “to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know”. This same tension was leading Taylor to the realisation that she “wanted out of the belief business and back into the beholding business….to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me though I am not sure of anything”

For all her liberalism Taylor has many evangelical traits, not least of which being able to identify the moment when things changed through experiences of divine disclosure. One such is the farewell party where people are throwing one another into the outdoor pool in fun and high spirits. She longs to be one of them, to be thrown in but the respect that goes with the collar seems to prevent anyone pushing her in until someone she describes as “her saviour” pushes her in and she finds herself “bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light…The long wait had come to an end. I was in the water at last.” This strange rebaptism is further interpreted by Taylor in quoting Walter Brueggemann: “The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you by the Grace of God”

One of the things that Taylor cherishes rediscovering in leaving behind her parochial responsibilities is the Sabbath. She probably strikes a chord here with most clergy for whom the Sabbath is not a day of rest. She goes even further in reflecting that it allowed her to “take a rest from trying to be Jesus too…..to take a break from trying to save the world and enjoy my blessed swath of it instead”. She notices also that people treat her differently without the collar, no longer like “the Virgin Mary’s younger sister”! She enjoys her new found freedom to move away from the centre and discover the wilderness and the forbidden places where God is also working but the places that were so far from the centre she previously inhabited that it almost seemed like disloyalty to go there.

But perhaps most significant is her rediscovery of the radical dimension of faith that seemed to have become domesticated in the church setting. She rediscovers the Jesus who made “unauthorised choices” in his love of God, who saw things he was not supposed to see, said things he was not supposed to say and wondered about things he was not supposed to wonder about and when the authorities told him to stop he did not obey them.
This provokes Taylor to wonder whether we need to rediscover the “edge” of faith where most of the stories of our faith happened.

Taylor finds herself increasingly alienated from the muscular Christianity so prevalent in America today and is perplexed at the use of the Cross as a tool of domination and violence instead of salvation. This is where she is at her most controversial for here she confesses her unease with the very symbol of the Cross because of its all too frequent distortion. However she does not give up on it and longs for a universal recognition in the Cross of “the God who suffers for Love instead of punishing the unloving”.

She still treasures her prayer book, hymnal and Bible and turns to them when she needs prayers wiser than her own, songs that she can sing, when to speak is not enough, and the canon of Scripture which in her favorite passages she hears “God speaking directly to [her]” and in those where “God sounds like an alien” she is reminded that God does not belong to her. She describes the Bible as a “field guide” but not a substitute for the field.

Looking at church as institution from the outside in, Taylor observes that “the way many of us are doing church is broken, and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it”. She quotes Reynolds Price a novelist who is in a wheelchair through spinal cancer. In his book “A whole new life” he comments on our failure to acknowledge death, not helped by those who tell us nothing has changed when what we should really be told is “You’re dead. Who are you going to be tomorrow?” Taylor has little sympathy for those who point to church growth as proof of health and well-being: “Where church growth has eclipsed church depth, it is possible to hear very little about the world except as a rival for the human resources needed by the church for her own survival".

Taylor now working in the seminary does not believe God lives there any more than he lives in the Church. God lives in the world and she gives the illustration of a friend of hers in a seminary in Manhattan where instead of inviting people to seminary to learn about God they are invited to learn what God is doing in the city and bring back their reflections to the seminary. This she says is how the churches need to see their mission: “What if people were invited to tell what they already knew of God instead of to learn what they were supposed to believe?.....What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in…"?

In the end Taylor reflects “I will keep faith in God, in God’s faith in me, and in all the companions whom God has given me to help see the world as God sees it-so that together we may realise the divine vision.”
Leaving Church is Good News and will bring hope to many a weary heart.

'Whoever is not against us is for us' - More alike than we like to admit!

Sermon for Sunday 1st October 2006
Trinity 16: Gospel: Mark 9:38-50; Epistle: James 5: 13-20

‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’

No doubt when John said those words to Jesus he was expecting praise and affirmation. Here was someone else – not one of the disciples casting out demons in the name of Jesus! How dare he? The cheek of it! And then Jesus responds in a way that nobody could have possibly expected:

‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.’

That statement of Jesus has profound implications for how we relate to one another as human-beings. We have a very narrow concept of the embrace of God’s Love and the extent of his mercy. We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that to be committed to Jesus means rejecting others who don’t seem to be doing things our way – The Right Way!

That is not to say that we embrace everything we encounter in some wishy washy haze of relativism! No! – There are times we are called to stand against evil whether it be personal or systemic. Yes - Jesus said ‘whoever is not against us is for us’ but that still leaves open that there are those people and forces who are against us and Jesus certainly encountered those forces, but most importantly for us he triumphed over them.


I was like many of you I am sure watching the Late Late show (Irish TV chat show) on Friday night and watched an extraordinary interview with a young woman Janette Byrne who has just published a book called: "If it Were Just Cancer: a Battle for Dignity and Life." Her story of institutional and systemic neglect and failure by our health services can only be described as a battle with evil – if we understand that evil is anything that is against God. The obstacles that the so called system put in her way to recovery and the fact that she had to take a court case to get her chemotherapy which had been cancelled 3 times due to shortage of beds flies in the face of God!

For those of you who didn’t see the interview I am going to read you a short extract from the book where Janette is attending accident and emergency in an attempt to gain access to the hospital where she has been denied admission by consultant due to lack of beds:

“I need to use the bathroom and I don’t know if I am allowed up and about. Still in my flimsy nightdress and nightgown I pad to the toilet in my slippers. No one bats an eyelid. So I carry on my way to the nearest toilet. This is located outside at the casualty exit. I am surprised to see gangs of injured and ill, people staring vacantly, waiting for help. I know from the other side that there is already no room at the inn. My heart gives a pang of pity for the aged and innocent, fear etched on their faces. It reminds me of a scene from one of those old black and white war movies we watched as children. Blood splattered the floor as a bandaged head bleeds through; an old lady sits crying, with pain I suppose; and a girl vomits over and over in a bowl already to small too accommodate her lot.”

That is surely against the will of God and surely something that we need to stand against! And it is no good simply blaming the politicians – this is all our responsibility and it is not good enough to simply pass the buck!

This is something we cannot distance ourselves from and yet like John who tried to distance himself from the ‘imposter’ – as he saw him, we too are inclined to distance ourselves from people and situations that make us feel uncomfortable. It is if you like part of our nature.

Jesus recognizes this and reminds John that we are not all that different from our neighbours who we do down to build ourselves up! ( ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’). We have a current example of this on the political stage. This is not a party political sermon but there is something very sinister going on at the moment and I not talking about the gifts, loans or whatever that our Taoiseach (Prime-minister) received.

There is no doubt that ethical boundaries were crossed albeit it in circumstances of huge personal stress and difficulty at a time of marital breakdown.
But what is actually even more significant is the distancing that is going on by some on a very senior level who are reveling in the opportunity to expose the failures of the most senior politician in the land and who are making some very self-righteous pronouncements which may yet come back to haunt them as indeed they have the Taoiseach.

Listening to public opinion there is no doubt that there is huge division but there is also a huge hypocracy in many who condemn this man and talk about him as if her were another breed never mind a fellow human being. I wonder just how many of us here can hand on heart say that they have declared every cent of their earnings to the taxman – how many people here have never been given a helping hand by a friend – how many people here have never helped a friend in need or done a favour for a friend that perhaps broke a few rules or guidelines?

And so I find it hard to understand that we expect our political and public representatives to be so different than the rest of us. Yes they have huge responsibility and power – yes when they are corrupt the implications are far greater than if you and I cross the boundaries but it is the same for want of a better word ‘sin’ that is in all of us. Why do we want to put such distance between ourselves and the mighty as they fall? Is it because the exposure of their failings makes us more aware of our own failings? And so we distance ourselves from them and try to unload all our shortcomings onto them.

We need to be very sure that that is not what is going on at the moment because if it is then we have fallen into the same trap as John did when he tried to disassociate himself from the man casting out demons in Jesus name who ‘was not following us’!

I know well that we need high standards in high places but we also need high standards in low places if those who exist in the rarified air of the high places are going to get the necessary support that they need in their work. There is a lot of temptation in the high places and we need to remind ourselves constantly that those who hold high office in this world are yes privileged and often enjoy the material benefits of their status, but there also exposed to a greater possibility of evil than we who have the often under-rated privilege to live outside the glare of the ever hungry media.

So what should we do when faced with what we perceive to be the failings of our fellow pilgrims. James has some very sound advice in his Epistle, Chapter 5:

‘The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. …………My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.’

This is a powerful reminder of the mercy of God and the possibility for redemption. It also emphasises the need for all of us to confess our sins to each other and pray for each other. That is not what is going on at the moment. Currently we are focussing all our attention on a man like us who has fallen in the same way we do and meanwhile things of a truly evil nature are escaping our notice. We are not called to ignore the failures of another but rather to build one another up so that together we may confront the real evils in this world. Let us remember those words of Jesus – “Whoever is not against us is for us”.

'The Protestant Bus'

The context of this was a dispute whereby a Roman Catholic family demanded access for their children to a VEC (Educational authority) sponsored bus which provided transport to 'Protestant' children to their nearest school, which in this case was Villiers School in Limerick city, a school of joint Anglican/Presbyterian foundation which is also open to children of other denominations and none. However in the case of Roman Catholic children their local school would be deemed to be the local Roman Catholic school. (Only in Ireland as they say! - No wonder we have had such sectarian strife when we seggregate our children from their earliest years, but that is another issue from the one discussed here). The family in question pass a number of other schools in attending Villiers but claimed rights of transport to Villiers on the basis of 'equality'. What follows is an article I submitted to the Irish Times, one of the Irish national newspapers, and which was subsequently printed on their OpEd pages:

Irish Times
Opinion Mon, Sep 04, 06
As a society we must clarify what we mean by 'equality'
Rite and Reason: Confusion and conflict between 'equality' and 'fairness' would not be so likely if those drafting equality legislation were clearer in their intent, writes Canon Stephen Neill.

The apparent resolution of the recent dispute in Limerick revolving around a VEC-sponsored transport scheme for "Protestant children" is to be welcomed, but some significant issues remain outstanding. Principal among these is the as yet undisclosed reason for the VEC's ultimate capitulation. Until this policy reversal they were simply implementing existing Department of Education regulations which provide for the free/subsidised transportation of students who live more than three miles from their nearest school. Taking into account the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, the VEC correctly judged that, in the case of Protestant children, the option of transport to their nearest Protestant school was appropriate.
The provision of passes to the Roman Catholic children concerned is generous but not consistent with either the Constitution or Department of Education policy and sets a precedent which is not likely to be ignored by others in similar circumstances.
Many commentators, including the local branch of Republican Sinn Féin, interpreted the dispute in terms of sectarianism and the denial of equality, which may have provoked the VEC into its panic-stricken and ambiguous response.

If this unnecessary confusion is not to be repeated, we need as a society to consider what exactly we mean by "equality". This little word is far from straightforward in its interpretation. Very often we hear people talking about "equality and fairness" as if they were the same thing or at least two sides of the one coin. One only has to look at the latest Cori (Council of Religious of Ireland) report, "Developing a Fairer Ireland", to see examples of this assumed equivalence. Most reasonable people acknowledge the importance of fairness. The question that needs to be asked is whether to be fair to all parties concerned in a dispute means treating them all the same; or, to put it another way, with equality?
The recently-retired American industrialist Dennis Bakke, founder of the multi-national AES energy corporation and strong advocate of employee-centred business practice, thinks not. In his best-selling book Joy at Work, which among others carries Bill Clinton's endorsement, he insists that "fairness or justice means treating everyone differently". To do otherwise ignores the individuality of people and their particular circumstances. He goes even further, suggesting that pay classification systems used by governments and advocated by trade unions are both arbitrary and unfair, benefiting underperformers and insufficiently rewarding star performers. In this context he demonstrates very convincingly that fairness is not necessarily the same as equality and that the two can easily be in conflict with one another.

This confusion and conflict between "equality" and "fairness" would not be so likely if those drafting equality legislation were clearer in their intent. There are two basic approaches to the whole notion of equality legislation. One is "equality of opportunity" and the other is "equality of outcome". The fact that the legislation governing this area is generally referred to as "equal opportunities legislation" is not much help, as almost invariably the success or otherwise of such legislation is judged by its outcome. That might seem perfectly logical and sensible, but to ensure "equality of outcome" involves trespassing on other very dear constitutional rights such as liberty and freedom.

"Equality of opportunity" means ensuring that issues such as nationality, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation and other similar characteristics should not circumscribe the potential of an individual citizen. As such, "equality of opportunity" is a fair approach and one which respects freedom and individuality. "Equality of outcome" is a different animal entirely; taken to its logical conclusion, it guarantees that everyone gets the same treatment and reward, regardless of their personal contribution. The implications of this are many and for the most part very destructive of society. It undermines the value of personal responsibility and feeds the growing litigation culture, which thrives in a climate where rights are paramount and responsibilities optional. To enforce "equality of outcome" inevitably means compromising "equality of opportunity", as it imposes arbitrary and unjust criteria on individuals and organisations which limit the freedom of those who are supposedly guaranteed "equality of opportunity". In this sense, ironically, equality legislation very often runs the risk of increasing inequality.

The British journalist and novelist Fiona Pitt-Kethley once famously commented in an interview in the Guardian newspaper: "I believe in equality. Bald men should marry bald women." As ludicrous as that sounds, it is no more so than the situation which now pertains following the "Protestant bus" debacle in Limerick. The whole issue of denominational education in Ireland needs urgent reappraisal, not least in the light of the growing religious diversity of Irish society. But as long as it is part of the Irish educational system it needs to be administered in a way that is consistent with the underlying and constitutional values of the State. The recent VEC U-turn in Limerick undermines that aspiration.

Canon Stephen Neill is Rector at Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary

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