Living Outside the Box

Sermon for Sunday 30th July 2006 (Trinity 7, Year B)

2 passages to begin – one from each of this Sunday's appointed readings:

“In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote: “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die” (2 Samuel 11)

“Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.” (John 6)

If you sat down all day and all night with the Bible in front of you I don’t think you would find two passages which show more effectively the huge gulf that can exist between rights and responsibilities. In the first passage David is exercising his rights – however repulsive his behaviour he is acting within his rights.
We think of rights as something which protect people from harm or injustice and yet the consequences of David asserting his rights are catastrophic for Uriah as David pursues his lustful desire for Bathsheba.

In the second passage Jesus is exercising his responsibility in feeding the 5 thousand. He doesn’t have to do it. He could have let the crowd go hungry but he doesn’t – He had a right to ignore their plight – after all they should have made provision for themselves – but he doesn’t, he rather embraces his responsibility towards them as fellow human beings made in the image of God.

In the world today we hear a lot about human rights – There is huge concern about the rights of innocent civilians caught up in the current war in Lebanon and Gaza.
We cannot fail to be moved by pictures of children with limbs blown off and faces shattered by bombs and rockets. No matter what our political outlook on this conflict it is abhorrent to see the young and innocent victims of war so horribly maimed. And as we know all too well the failure to protect human rights is nothing new……As long as men and women have breathed on this earth we have constantly failed to acknowledge the essential dignity and sacredness of the human person, no matter what their faith or ethnic background.

Even when we do acknowledge human rights we can be very selective when it comes to their observance – We live in a world filled with people and powers which like David are good at identifying their own rights but not so good about recognising the rights of others. We build our own little self contained worlds within which everyone on the inside is looked after and loved but we are inclined to forget or ignore the implications of our actions for the rest of the world.

Mark Edington a chaplain to Harvard University put it beautifully in a recently published sermon called “Right Angles and Straight Lines”. (See Links below)
Audio
Text

In this he describes how we go about constructing our models of Church and Community like we would a house with a carpenter’s square. This simple tool makes sure that all our angles are right angles and that the walls and roof match and fit perfectly. Using this analogy he says that once we have got the perfect structure with all the right angles we are happy. But we lack something – Our house (or our Church or Community) may have walls and a roof that are in perfect proportion to one another but they may simulataneously be in conflict with the surrounding houses (churches and communities). With a carpenter’s square you cannot tell whether the rooms in the house you are building are also square with the world outside the house – God’s world.

Edington looks to the prophet Amos for the missing piece in the puzzle. In Amos Chapter 7 we read the following:
“This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by;”
The plumbline is the necessary external point of reference that allows us to build our houses (our churches and our communities) in sympathy and harmony with one another. For the Christian that plumbline is Christ and he challenges the integrity of all of the little worlds that we create.
David was operating in a system that allowed him to exercise his rights at the expense of the brave and loyal Uriah the Hittite. As far as David was concerned he was acting with integrity and justice. He was living in a world of right angles and perfect proportion. When we compare what he did to the behaviour of Jesus in feeding the 5,000 we see just how out of synch, how perverted was David’s idea of right and wrong. His is the perfect example of how rights can become the fulfilment of selfish desire and nothing more than that.

The Church has always been wary of the language of rights – perhaps principally for the reason we have been just discussing. They can emphasise the perceived needs of the individual at the expense of the greater good. They can be a charter for the spoilt child mentality. What King David did was simply the behaviour of a spoilt child indulging himself regardless of others.
Rights too have come to be associated with litigation. Daily we read of cases taken by individuals who have no sense of responsibility for themselves never mind anyone else and expect others to reward them for their own carelessness.
Rights also seem to be expressed and exercised at the expense of responsibility and duty. For all these reasons the Church has been very wary of backing the human rights agenda and in some cases in human history has turned its back on and ignored some very genuine cases of human rights abuses. This behaviour cannot be justified by any reading of the Gospel. Jesus cares deeply about every single individual he meets. That is what marks him out – his extraordinary compassion for the individual – his love not just for the ‘idea’ of Creation but the ‘whole’ of Creation. He feels a deep sense of responsibility – stronger than that – A DUTY to all those who are created in God’s image. That is I think the key – when we recognise the other (whoever they are) as a Creation of the God of Love, then we have a responsibility or a duty to them as bearers of the Image of God. It is in that situation that rights can be derived and exercised in such a way that they will not violate the integrity of others.

Rights are not a secular issue – they are a deeply spiritual one which comes from the recognition of our common inheritance of the Kingdom of God. These are values that the Church must stand for because they offer a way forward that will not trample on the other. As Christians we have a huge privelage and a burden of responsibility in sharing these values with a world which is full of individuals and groups with carpenters squares but lacking the guidance of a plumbline. Without God the idea of responsibility and duty is lost – it becomes merely a choice and one without any ethical dimension. That is the consequence of living in a world made with a carpenter’s square but no plumbline. The most dangerous thing of all is that the Church can retreat into one of those perfectly square houses and pull down the shutters in search of right angles and safe boundaries. That is not our calling – we are called to be out there with Christ as our Guide and his Love as our way.

Advice for Travellers

Sermon for Sunday 9th July 2006
Gospel: Mark 6: 1-13
Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.
Some travellers advice from Jesus from today’s Gospel – If you were to give the same advice advice today people might look at you a little strangely!
Whatever about that advice one thing that would be a little less controversial is the observation that travel broadens the mind – Certainly it provides new experiences and information to add to the chaotic clutter that most of us have knocking around inside our skulls.
Last week on holidays I saw something really interesting that made me stop and think!
What was it?
A bin of all things!
I know you are probably saying he got too much sun while he was away and has gone slightly gaga!
But no it was a bin and a very interesting bin at that!

What was interesting was what was on the side of the bin apart from the congealed dripping of various unfinished ice-creams and drinks –
It was an advert for one of the local church communities obviously reaching out to the tourist market. It was called the South Tenerife Christian Fellowship and they had rented out the space on the side of all the bins on the seafront at Los Cristianos to advertise their existence. The advert itself was very cleverly worded – Beside a cartoon picture of an out of breath and heavily perspiring runner was the caption
“Feeling run down?”…..”Then call in for a “Service” and Sunday at 11am and 6pm.”
At first glance you might think this inappropriate – who would want to identify Jesus with somewhere you put your rubbish – somewhere you get rid of the things that are no longer useful to you? And yet it is strangely appropriate as we are reminded by Tim Costello a leading campaigner for social justice and a Baptist pastor who said the following:
“Jesus wasn’t crucified between two candlesticks in a cathedral in a sacred place. He was crucified on the rubbish dump outside the city wall. He was crucified in a cosmopolitan, multicultural place where the inscription above him had to be written in Greek, in Hebrew, and in Latin. He was crucified in a place where soldiers gambled, where smut was talked, and where criminals shrieked in agony as they died.”
When we arrived back from Tenerife on Friday night I was talking to a friend who was saying that he had been reading in one of the Irish papers last week how the Island was getting a reputation for itself as a centre of debauchery! If it is true I am afraid I missed it and would have to go back and look for the evidence. We were obviously staying in the quieter part of the Island and going to all the wrong places! The only vaguely over the top behaviour we noticed was in the wake of some of the World Cup games, especially the English when their hoplessly over-inflated hopes were dashed. However it is certainly a cosmopolitan multicultural place and no doubt there are places where one can indulge in debauchery if so inclined.
It is also a place where much of the suffering of the African Continent is coming to Europe. The Islands are just off North Africa which gives them a very pleasing climate but also makes them a popular destination for refugees who come to Tenerife on a regular basis on makeshift and un-seaworthy boats to find a safer and better life. However many of the boats sink on route and those that do make it are often carrying the bodies of those who have died on route. All this happens a few hundred yards from the tourist beach at Los Cristianos where we were staying and is carefully hidden in as much as is possible by the authorities who obviously fear for its impact on tourism.
It is a place where entertainment and enjoyment are the center of things. It is not the kind of place I could imagine living in but certainly it was a very enjoyable place to unwind.
However, very often people do not just go on holidays to unwind – very often they go to get away from something or even somebody that they have been having problems with.
The sad truth is that you can rarely run away from your problems – they come with you in the luggage and they can be even more debilitating when you do not have the distractions of work and other things to occupy the mind.
And so the ministry that this Christian community was offering was both valuable and necessary. And in using the bins as a point of contact they were not only using a highly public space but they were perhaps also saying that even when you feel useless and redundant God has something for you…….?
I don’t know – maybe I read too much into it but that is what it said to me.
It also highlights a big difference in the mission and ministry of the Church in the world today. In today’s Gospel Jesus has all sorts of salient advice for his disciples as they continue his mission – there is a lot of concrete advice about travelling and lodgings while spreading the Good News. There are also some interesting observations about the difficulties of preaching in familiar territories.
All of this is in the context of a world where the Church comes to the people…..where itinerant preachers like St Paul and others like him are going into new places and new worlds spreading the Good News. What possible relevance can this Gospel have for today we might ask? There are few corners of the Earth that the Gospel has not reached – there are very few places where the Church does not have a tangeable presence! In all our great cities around the world there are huge Cathedrals testifying to the Gospel. In most towns villages there is at least one church and in many a multiplicity. So is this part of the Gospel redundant – Is it irrelevant – Can we/Should we disgard it as an anachronism?
To attempt to get at the answer I want to consider for a moment another image.
This time the location is not so exotic – It is a pub in Dingle (I refuse to call it An Daingean). The pub is called Dick Mack’s and is very popular among locals and tourists alike. The pub is sited opposite the Roman Catholic Church in Dingle and has a very interesting caption on its side gate where the deliveries are made.
The caption is this: “Where is Dick Mack’s? and the answer underneath reads: “Opposite the Church”That is only half the story for there is a second question and answer under the first and it is this:“Where is the Church?” and the answer reads: “Opposite Dick Mack’s”
This to me is almost a parable. The first question and answer represents the place of the church in society until perhaps only a couple of decades ago. Other places are defined in relation to the Church. It is the center of peoples lives.
The second is the situation as we find it today where the Church is defined in relation to a new and rapidly shifting centre or multiplicity of centres.
And so as the centre of society moves so inevitably does the Church and to do that it once again needs to acquire the tools of pilgrimage and mission. Things have actually gone full circle. Christianity started on the periphery and gradually moved to the centre and became the centre – now we once again find ourselves on the periphery and we need to put on our walking shoes again.
Jesus observed in today’s Gospel that “Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house”. It just may be that the Church has become too much at home and taken its place in society for granted – has stayed too long in the one place and finds itself compromised by its accommodations to the world. To use another cliché “Familiarity breeds contempt” – It seems to have lost its cutting edge – the challenge that is not just designed to criticise people but to bring out the very best that they can be! That is what God wants for each one of us…..that is what Jesus died for….that we might have life in abundance and if the Church is to communicate that wonderful message then it has to make sure that it is in the places that it needs to be.
And where are those places? – Those places are everywhere, from the darkest and most vile to brightest and most wonderful places. The Good News has the power to penetrate into all situations and we sometimes need a little more confidence in the message we carry. It means going to places that for us are the periphery of our world and places we do not want to go but places that are the centre for some other human beings who are also created in the image and likeness of God.

Into the Abyss?

Sermon for Sunday 25th June 2006
Gospel: Mark 4:35-41
‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’
Can you imagine how rebuked the disciples must have felt when Jesus spoke those words? – They must have really stung! Jesus does not attempt to hide his frustration, his disappointment, his incredulity. The disciples are at sea in more ways than one! They are lacking in that essential gift that is Confidence – Confidence in Christ. Throughout the New Testament it is a phrase that occurs frequently, whether in 2nd Timothy, Hebrews, the letters of John – it is seen as a mark of the early Christian, a characteristic of their faith – confidence in the one whose name they proclaim…confidence in the person of Jesus Christ.
This story is but one of many where the disciples show again and again their lack of confidence in the one whom they follow. Right up to the Cross and beyond we see this crisis of confidence as a constant in their discipleship.
But that was then – this is now: Where do we see ourselves in that story? Would we be with Jesus despairing at the lack of faith of the disciples or would we be cowering below decks – fearing for our lives?
I suspect that a lot of the time and despite 2000 years of Christian history we would spend a lot of time below decks fearing the worst – hoping the storms would go away.
We are not that different than the disciples – We lack confidence – we demonstrate that in the way that we witness to the world and what is more our lack of confidence is becoming increasingly obvious to the World. We Christians are failing to inspire people with a confidence in Christ and that is something that ought to really worry us because that means that we are not engaging properly with the world in which we find ourselves. We need to remember that our faith is one of Incarnation – Word made Flesh - and that has implications.
In another age the Church was the centre of society – It was the powerbase (for better or worse) – It was the centre of community – of learning – of education – of medicine – it worked hand in glove with kings and governments. Everybody came to the Church for something or other – because the Church had power.
That is no more – those days are gone (and incidentally perhaps not such a bad thing) but the problem is that as Church we have not woken up to the fact that we are no longer the centre of the Universe – the centre of peoples lives! We still expect the world to come knocking on our door! Any recent surveys in church attendance will show that increasingly people are not knocking on our church doors – the Church is increasingly marginal in their lives and does not seem to be a part of the new world in which they find themselves.
And how do we respond? – We sit scratching our heads – trying to dream up strategies that will make church more attractive – we seek to make it more relevant – to find new ways to bring people back to Church (and if we are really honest with ourselves ‘Back to God’). There are a couple of problems with this approach – the first is that nobody’s listening or watching (or at least not the people we want to reach) – We are outside of their field of vision! The second problem is that we assume that the Church is where we are and that it is they who need to come to us! And of course we have a lot of arguments on our side – the Church as we know it has a long history – a great tradition and a historic witness to Christ through the ages. But as I said before the World has moved on and now we find ourselves in a lonely place where only occasionally we are intersecting with the wider society and the World.
So where do we go from here? The answer is in the question, and the answer is that we need to GO – go out – go into new places – uncharted waters (like the disciples in todays Gospel) but with confidence in the presence of Christ always with us. Indeed if we go back to the beginning – to Mark Chapter 1 (only a few chapters before today’s Gospel) we hear Jesus calling his first disciples.
And what was the call? Come on over to my place? Make yourselves comfortable – set up camp and everyone will come to you? NO – The call was this: “Follow me and I will make you fish for people”
I must say that the older translation “fishers of men” while not PC sounded a lot better, but in fact the more modern rendering of that verse makes it clear that we are called to action that is ongoing – we are not called only to be, but to act, and of course that action is made even more explicit in Mark Chapter 16: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation”
We are not very confident in the face of such a charge or a challenge – Like the disciples we want to know where we are and we don’t like going into uncharted territory – much better to stay in familiar waters and wait for everyone to come to us. Part of the problem is that we misunderstand God’s relationship to us. We want a roadmap for life – something that will tell us what to do at every turn when in fact what God gives us is not that, but in fact something far greater: His Presence. That is what he gave to the disciples in Christ on the lake that day – his presence – not a course to avoid the storm or a forecast that would have stopped them encountering the storm but a presence that will hold them and help them through the storm. God knows that that is what we need – he knows that we as Church are a mixed bag - he knows that the Church is made up of sick people – hypocrites – dysfunctional – inconsistent and weak people and yes even that word which I confess to having a difficulty with sinners! We try very hard to make the Church the community (or a club) of the perfect and the righteous and in so doing turn many away who feel unworthy or ashamed to come to us, but God knows what we really are. He knows that we need his presence – that we are far from perfect and that even if he gave us a map we would probably read it upside down anyway and end up even more lost. It’s a bit like stopping somebody and asking for directions – They can respond in 2 ways: 1 – tell you the way or 2 – go with you on the journey. I believe that God does the latter.
So we too are called to go on a journey with Christ. We have a choice we can follow or we can find somewhere comfortable along the road and make it our home. That is what the Church has done since time immemorial but its not working anymore!
People are pushing out the boundaries – People are going into uncharted territories in search of new realities and indeed in search of meaning – WHY? Because they can! – Because the World in which we life offers possibilities and potentialities our parents could never have dreamed of! And the Church for the most part is not going on that journey – it has decided to stay at basecamp! Centuries of tradition have given us too much to loose! And yet if we read today’s Epistle from 2nd Corinthians there is that wonderful phrase; “Having nothing and yet possessing everything” . Perhaps we really do have too much to loose. We want to be possessors when in fact we are being called to be seekers and followers…..and like all who go on a long journey it is easier in the long run to travel light. We lack that basic confidence that is the mark of the disciple – a confidence in the presence of Christ in our midst. That was the recurring problem for the first followers of Jesus and that is our problem too. We don’t like uncharted waters…. And when we loose confidence in Christ we put our confidence instead into institutions like Churches which of themselves have no life except that which Christ breathes into them. It is a difficult truth to swallow but Church if it ever was is no longer a static entity but a fluid reality more like a river in which many of our people are being carried along. Can we let go of enough to join them on that journey – can we really embrace that vision of “having nothing and yet possessing everything”? I leave you with that question. I’m not sure I know the answer yet but I know it is something that we will have to face up to if we are to fulfil our calling to “proclaim the good news to the whole creation”.

Who gave God redundancy?

Party conferences are guaranteed to provide headlines. They are the shop window of any political body. It is at such occasions that politicians often choose to promote their most popular and populist policies. Tax cuts are always a winner, and so it was hardly a surprise that the radical proposals unveiled at the recent PD conference attracted more than a little attention. Everyone likes good news and this was really good news. So good that in all the fuss something much more radical got in under the radar.

In her leader’s address to conference Mary Harney made the following statement: “This party remains rooted in the belief that social progress and economic success go together. They’re one and the same.”
Unless I missed it nobody seems to have batted an eyelid! There was a time when such a statement would have been immediately challenged from a variety of quarters, principally the churches who would have responded very negatively to the suggestion that the quality of any society could be determined by economic prosperity alone. Indeed many others who would be otherwise unsympathetic to the role of religion in society would equally question the ability of democracy & capitalism alone to create or maintain a society of shared values, traditions, institutions and interests. It is not often that I find myself looking to Papal encyclicals for guidance but I did come across this in the writings of the late Pope John Paul II. He observed in his encyclical: ‘Centesimus Annus’, “As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” ]Centesimus Annus – para 46] Value systems are not the preserve of religion alone but they are a very important dimension of most religious traditions and so it is all the more surprising that this statement caused not even a stir!

The churches were in fact creating a stir in recent weeks but it was about something else altogether. The ecumenical Mass in Drogheda where Fr Iggy O’Donovan and Rev’d Mike Graham concelebrated caused the official hierarchy in both traditions a certain amount of embarrassment as they tried to walk a tightrope between censuring the two disobedient clergy and acknowledging the hugely positive public reaction to this act of Christian generosity and reconciliation. Regrettably, both Archbishops seem to have fallen off the tightrope and having nursed their wounds walked firmly in the direction of censorship. The ongoing debate has filled hundreds of column inches and seems to have become increasingly focussed on the internal divisions within Christendom and the theological justification for these divisions. This is all very interesting but it only serves to make an already cynical society more cynical about the Church and it’s self obsessed behaviour, pushing it further out onto the margins of relevance.
Sadly the Church seems to have, in part at least, accepted this arrangement and spends more and more time on internal relationships and disputes and less and less on the meaningful and challenging encounter with society. That is perhaps why Mary Harney’s shallow definition of society went unchallenged?

Within our own tradition of Anglicanism we have spent the last four years tearing ourselves apart, apparently over the issue of human sexuality and the acceptability of homosexual people holding positions of leadership within the Church. This is of course an important issue with repercussions beyond the Church, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the debate is no longer about homosexuality but rather about who has the Truth and how best preserve it from corruption. In the midst of such a struggle it is very hard for the Church to say anything meaningful or helpful to the World. This sort of behaviour is repeated again and again as Christians of various traditions in a concern for purity and the Truth attempt to isolate themselves from any possibility of contamination. The current Presbyterian Moderator has refused in these last few weeks to attend an ecumenical service because of the presence of Roman Catholics at the service. Another nail in the coffin of dialogue between religion and society! Little wonder then that Mary Harney ignores the transcendent side of life when its chief protagonists do such a poor job of representing it!

Despite all the baggage that the Church has accumulated over the years there are still glimmers of hope! The Church is thankfully becoming aware that it is missing the point when it allows itself to get so distracted by internal division and debate. There is an increasingly vocal constituency within all Christian traditions crying out for the Church to rediscover its role in society. There is also a realisation that there is a hunger for the transcendent dimension of life and its associated values.

Having already quoted the Pope it might be instructive to see how the media of the Roman Catholic Church sees the current situation. A quick perusal of the Roman Catholic religious press in the last couple of weeks is very enlightening. The Irish Catholic (20th April) reports a survey in the UK where “an overwhelming majority of people in Britain believe that Christian values are good for their country and should be maintained.” While only a third of those surveyed believed in heaven and even less in the importance of the Bible, well over seventy percent said that Christian values remained valid and that Christianity should continue to be taught in schools! The same edition of the paper carries a report on a recent statement by Father Gerry O’Hanlon, head of the Jesuits in Ireland, where he identifies a growing realisation in modern society that we cannot get by without “a religious input”. We seem to have no answers he says for the problems of drug and alcohol abuse, gun crime, suicide, failures in the health service and road deaths. In all these issues he points to a lack of ‘vision’ and ‘soul’ which cannot be provided by pure secularism. Another Roman Catholic newspaper, the Universe (April 23rd) carries the results of a study in America that reveals that regular churchgoers live considerably longer than those without a spiritual discipline, sometimes as much as three years longer!

It seems that the Church does have a role to play after all and that there are still those prepared to listen to a Church which can rediscover its authentic voice and again communicate with integrity its message to the world.

It is all too easy to criticize politicians and it has become a national sport on this Island to scapegoat them for every failure and disappointment in our lives. Mary Harney’s sentiments reflect not so much the failure on her part to appreciate the deeper things of life but our part as Christian leaders to share the message with the World. Again looking to our brothers and sisters in Christ I have seldom heard it so well expressed as it was by Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick in a recent address entitled “What it is to be a Catholic now”. In these enlightened times we can happily acknowledge that his address could equally well have been entitled “What it is to be a Christian now”. Discussing this very issue of the Church’s relationship with society he says this:
“The complexity of modern life is both a challenge and an opportunity to recognise God’s presence. ……… No Christian before our time has been involved in multi-national companies, the Internet, the advances of technology, growing urbanisation, globalisation, multi-culturalism; none of these have existed in the same way before. The danger is that large sections of the lives even of believers remain untouched by the Gospel. In many cases individual Christians – still less groups of Christians – have not thought and prayed and talked about what the presence of Christ in these areas might mean. But if that is the case, does this not mean cooperating with the notion that God has only a limited place in our lives and that in large tracts of life God is not relevant? If that is so, there is no use complaining about how secular the world has become and how deaf to deeper values. If that is so, we are creating and maintaining a hidden culture which excludes God and also excludes our deeper selves.”

Bishop Murray has clearly identified the challenge – It is up to those of us who claim to be Christian to respond and restore the vital dialogue between faith and the whole of life.

You Ain't Jesus, Preacher!

This from Reallivepreacher
For those of us who just don't know when we've reached the limit of our abilities - Or perhaps to put it another way: It's ok to screw up!

The Persistence of Faith

This is the title of a book by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks which I have just finished reading/devouring. The subtitle is "Religion, Morality and Society in a Secular Age" and this is exactly what it is about.
In addressing subjects such as the state of the Family, Pluralism, Fundamentalism and the breakdown of Community it is exceptionally topical - all the more so when you consider it was written almost 20 years ago! This is one man who can really read the signs of the times - Get it now! - read it! It'll get you thinking. Buy from Amazon

The burden of being God!

I was filling my car with diesel the other day and while I was waiting in the queue to pay an elderly gentleman in front of me was giving considerable verbal abuse to the proprietor because the air compressor for pumping tyres was broken. To hear the abuse being given I would have assumed that this was a matter of life and death! He was a loyal customer he said who had given the garage much custom over the years and he declared that he would never be back if they could not even provide a decent basic service. With that he stormed out leaving a deathly silence behind him. Trying to lighten the mood I commented to the proprietor that the man had obviously got out of bed on the wrong side. She told me that it was nothing unusual – something that happens every day! People she said are getting more and more angry and impatient – and not just young people either. Talking to my wife who also works in the retail industry I hear similar stories of an increasing level of aggression and hostility that she and her staff face in dealing with the general public on a daily basis. Why is this? Why are we so angry? Why are so many people only one step away from boiling over?
I wonder is it partly the consequence of modern culture which has so emphasised the importance of the individual. Modern Gurus and New Age spiritualities tell us that we as individuals can do all things - that the world revolves around us - that the answer to all our problems lies within us. This is all very well when things are going well but what about when things start to fall apart? How do we cope when we are spiritually and physically exhausted and the World is still telling us that we only need to empower ourselves and all will be well? It is an impossible burden to bear - this myth that we are all powerful and that we don’t need anyone else. It is little wonder that we fail miserably. Unfortunately when we do fail we tend to hit out at those who are in our immediate vicinity because the additional burden of our failure is too much to bear and so we blame others.
The Christian message is very different – It is one which upholds humility as a virtue not a weakness. John the Baptist was a wonderful witness to Christ but he was not Christ. He knew his limitations and in that he found comfort. He could not bear the burden that Christ was going to have to bear. He knew that he was not worthy to even “untie the thong of [Christ’s] sandals”!
The prophet Isaiah in todays lesson from chapter 40 brings comfort in the knowledge that the Lord will “feed his flock like a shepherd” and “gather the lambs in his arms”. We are not God! – We are his children and we need God and we need each other. This is not a sign of weakness but rather of Grace. As we continue our Advent pilgrimage let us wait on God in the sure and certain hope that he will not let us down.