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Nirbhaya - A response

48 hours have now passed since I watched Nirbhaya at the Pavillion theatre in Dun Laoghaire and still I struggle to process and articulate the immensity of what I witnessed.  Sexual abuse and sexual violence is an all too familiar subject in Ireland today and yet the real and personal stories told by the actors in this play inspired and provoked by the rape and murder of  Jyoti Singh Pandey manage to break new ground.

I have been pondering what is different about their stories and it has only just dawned on me that in Ireland we have tended to focus on the perpetrators of sexual violence and their evil deeds and less on those who they have hurt, damaged and often destroyed. They have been simply described as victims or perhaps survivors but still our fascination has been with the abusers and not the abused.

This play redresses the balance and we get an insight into their experience as subjects not objects. Whether it is sexual and emotional violation, physical scarring or the enforced separation from a precious child we see and hear first hand their pain and their hurt and it is hugely disturbing and uncomfortable. And yet in holding their hands up and telling their story they have reclaimed their role as authors of their own stories and destiny. Their loss is profound and the impact on their lives hard to contemplate but it is their life and their loss and they are using it to ultimately bring about change and transformation. They are reclaiming control of their lives and refusing to succumb to being mere objects of the depraved cruelty of their abusers.

On a personal note I have to acknowledge that the fact that one of the actors, Poorna Jagannathan is a childhood friend and neighbour has made the whole experience particularly poignant - Our lives overlapped during what was a very happy if not charmed childhood in Dublin. The thought that after leaving those happy and innocent times in Dublin  and while still a child she was to experience repeated and regular sexual abuse at the hands of both a family friend and random strangers makes me very sad but I do not pity her.

Rather I admire her and stand in awe of what she and her sisters have accomplished in bringing this extraordinary play to the stage. It is not easy to watch but it is essential to witness and if there are still tickets available in Dublin or wherever it plays next go and see it! But, a warning, be prepared to be forever changed and challenged by it!

Nirbhaya - A Play you will never forget!

Friends - A favour to ask - Old friend and neighbour of mine from Ballsbridge days, Poorna Jagannathan is bringing this play to Dublin - This will never get the attention that the #GarthBrooks event/non-event has but it is infinitely more important and worthy of attention - Read the articles linked below, but for a flavour this is what it is all about:

Remember the story of: 'Jyoti Singh Pandey, who was returning from the cinema with a male friend, was viciously gang-raped by six men, including the driver of the bus, before they were mugged, stripped and thrown from the moving vehicle, which they then allegedly tried to back over Pandey, who died from her injuries 13 days later. The stop from which she and her friend had boarded the bus was directly opposite Poorna's old house.

"I felt that I could have been her, on that bus, in so many ways and my mind was unable to process the information printed later in the press."

She contacted the South African playwright Yael Farber, whose testimonial play about Apartheid, 'Amajuba', she had greatly admired. "I am a victim of sexual violence," Poorna told her via Facebook, "who has been silent all these years. By keeping quiet, I consider myself a part of what happened on that bus. Come here. Women in India are ready to break their silence and speak. There is no turning back."  (Source - Irish Independent Weekend Magazine 5th July2014 - Interview with Caomhan Keane)

The play is on in Pavilion DL (Pavillion Theatre DunLaoghaire) from 21st July - 2nd August and has won awards worldwide for its powerful depiction of this issue and the women who have been and continue to be abused not only in India but worldwide - Please share this via whatever media you can and come along if you can to see this most important work and brave witness:

Irish Independent - The Violence of Silence

Pavillion Theatre - Nirbhaya 

Praise for Nirbhaya
"One of the most powerful and urgent pieces of human rights theatre ever made"
★★★★★ The Herald
"Powerful and incredibly moving"
★★★★★The Independent
"One of the most powerful pieces of theatre you’ll ever see"
★★★★★ The Telegraph

Awards: Fringe First | Herald Angel | Amnesty International Freedom of Expression

Sermon for Sunday 9th February 2014 - Getting Over Ourselves - Living a Compassionate Life

'You are the salt of the earth.......You are the light of the world' (Matthew 5:13ff)

Immediately prior to these verses we have heard the Beatitudes, and in those teachings Jesus talks in almost abstract terms about how blessed are those who are poor, bereaved, meek, hungry etc. However in the final verse he turns it around and says 'Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you......'

This is no longer abstract and fluffy teaching - this is a teaching meant for his audience to act on and by extension it is meant for us to act on.

Today's Gospel is in direct continuity as it reminds the audience, you and me, that we are 'the salt of the earth' and 'the light of the world' and that with that comes a responsibility to be doers as well as hearers. We have been given gifts that are to be used not hidden and neglected. The teaching is clear enough but responding to it and putting it into practice is another matter.

The key to that implementation is to be found a couple of chapters further on in Matthew's Gospel: Chapter 7 v 12 in a teaching that has come to be known as the Golden Rule and is incidentally found in similar form in all the mainstream religious traditions in the world.

Matthew 7:12 ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.'

That principle is often summed up in the word 'Compassion' but we need to understand what compassion is - It is not pity for another person but rather it means 'suffering with' the other and arising out of that shared suffering a desire to alleviate it. Without compassion there is no connection or relationship with the other and no possibility of being the salt and light that we are called to be.

If we are looking for a model of pure compassion then we need look no further than the Cross, where God in Christ entered into our humanity and into the depths of our suffering.

Karen Armstrong a contemporary theologian and historian of world religions and the founder of the 'Charter for Compassion' (a worldwide interfaith movement which seeks to bring reconciliation and healing at every level of society through compassion) has identified some of the key components to living a compassionate life in the world today. (Karen Armstrong: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life). At least some of these are perhaps helpful to us as we seek to fulfil our Gospel calling to be salt and light in the world:

Our families, in all their diversity, are a place where we potentially learn how to be compassionate people. Part of being in a family is putting the needs of others before ourselves, subordinating our selfish needs to the good of the whole family. Families are founded on and dependant on compassion. They are a vital training ground for living a life of generosity and service in a world which increasingly demands selfishness and efficiency. It is in our families that we learn we do not live for ourselves alone.

We do however, without being selfish, need to know ourselves and to love ourselves if we are to love others. We need to be aware of the basic instincts that can sometimes overwhelm our compassionate intentions. Chief among these is fear of the other, and out of that fear we often act hatefully towards those we do not understand or appreciate. Ironically the things we despise in the other are very often the qualities we most dislike in ourselves. We need to learn to forgive ourselves and love ourselves even in our brokenness.  Fear is human - it is natural and it actually unites us with those we fear for they too are fearful people.  If we recognise that it may help us to open our hearts to those we fear and hate and that is the beginning of compassion. It surely has particular application in the current debate in our country on human sexuality and same sex marriage. Whatever our opinion on the issue we must not overlook the real people whose lives are impacted by our desire to be right, sometimes at the expense of being loving.

Compassion expands our horizons and sets us free from the chains of fear and hatred which ultimately will only consume us. If we are to 'suffer with' others then we also need to be aware of our own suffering - not to deny it or belittle it but to use it as a route to understanding the suffering of another human being. If we feel our pain then we can empathise with the pain of another. Better self knowledge then helps us 'get over ourselves' and focus on those around us. This echoes powerfully with our baptismal calling to die to our old selves and to be born again of the Holy Spirit.

Humility, not something that comes naturally to us is also a vital component in living a compassionate life. We need to make a place and a space for other people and their demands on us. To do that means letting go of our tendency to act as if only we know the right way to be and the right thing to do in the world. We need to acknowledge how little we know! This does not sit comfortably with the religious disposition but to quote Karen Armstrong directly:

'Religion is at its best when it helps to ask questions and holds us in a state of wonder - and arguably at its worst when it tries to answer them authoritatively and dogmatically'

She goes on to speak of Love which arises from Compassion and quotes Iris Murdoch (who in turn is quoting Simone Weil):

'Love, the sudden realisation that somebody else absolutely exists'

To live a life of compassion, to be salt and light we must take seriously the other in our lives. That other does not need to earn our attention by doing good to us but rather we need to recognise that by virtue of our shared humanity we have an interest in the welfare of others, even those that hate us. Again Jesus in his words from the Cross is a model of that compassion: 'Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23:34)

Compassion is the only way to break the cycle of fear, hatred and violence that dictates the agenda of the world. It is to be salt and light and to use the gifts that we have been entrusted with to be a blessing to the whole of Creation. May we walking in the footsteps of Jesus hear again those words:

‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.'

Amen.

Nelson Mandela & John the Baptist - Sermon for Advent 2 - 2013 - 8th December

It would be impossible to preach this weekend and not make some reference to the death of Nelson Mandela. The world has quite literally stopped in its tracks since the sad but inevitable news of his death was announced and indeed we have now seen days of saturation coverage of his life and his legacy.

There are some, albeit it a minority, who look at him in a less favourable light and see him as a terrorist rather than a freedom fighter. It is very hard for us to judge that at this distance and indeed the time that has passed since his active involvement in the armed struggle before his imprisonment makes it even more difficult. However it is undeniable that since his release from prison he confounded all those who doubted his character by seeking not revenge but reconciliation. He sought to unite the people of South Africa of all colours and creeds under one flag and do away with the remnants of Apartheid. He was not about settling scores and indeed had to campaign hard within the ANC and elsewhere to stop others going down this road.

          A few of his own words after his release demonstrate this commitment to peace and love as the way forward for South Africa:

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

          There is no doubting that South Africa is a better place for having had Nelson Mandela make his mark on it but it is a work in progress. There is still a huge amount to do. It is still a very dangerous and crime ridden society. I had occasion to drive from Johannesburg airport to the border with Swaziland a few years ago on a trip to Swaziland and the poverty that was visible on the roadside was very disturbing. Mile after mile after mile of corrugated tin shacks almost on top of one another (each about 100 feet sq) stretched out of the eastern suburbs. My companions and I were warned under no circumstances to even consider stopping on that road as hijacking was not uncommon. The contrast with the modern city we had just left was dramatic to say the least.

Apartheid may have gone but there is still a significant division between the haves and the have-nots. There is still a large amount of tribal tension and violence and the scourge of AIDS has left its mark disproportionately on the poor and disadvantaged. So Nelson Mandela did not live to see the total fulfilment of his dreams for a new, just and prosperous South Africa. That is in the hands of others who will have to take personal responsibility for making the dream a reality. They cannot rest on his legacy or things will fall back into chaos and conflict and a wonderful opportunity will have been wasted.

          There are remarkable parallels between the story of Nelson Mandela and John the Baptist. Where Mandela took the first steps toward the complete freedom of South Africa and all its peoples John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus to bring God's Kingdom closer to Earth. He (John the Baptist) saw many wonderful things in his life and ministry and had the extraordinary privilege of baptising Jesus but like Mandela he did not see the end of the journey, for that work is ongoing and you and I are also charged with working towards its realisation.

In this light perhaps the most significant passage in the Gospel today is where John the Baptist addresses the Pharisees and Sadducees:

‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

This is not just advice to the Pharisees and Sadducees but also to us - we cannot rest on our laurels or the legacy of others - We have personal responsibility for our faith and for our relationship with God. And the implication of that is that we are called to participate in the work of building God's Kingdom on Earth - bringing God's justice and peace and love to all peoples.

Part of that work is in South Africa where there is still a need for God's love and justice and peace among a people who have begun the journey but who like us have not reached its end. As long as there are those who hunger or thirst, who are sick and suffering, lonely and lost and have nowhere to lay their heads at night, whether that is on the streets of Dublin or Johannesburg there is work to be done and we are the only ones who can do that work. We are Gods eyes and ears, his hands and feet and it is through us that he can and will bring justice, love  and peace to all his people. So today we pray for South Africa as it mourns Mandela but we pray especially that all of us who are created in his image will respond to our personal calling to be workers for the increase of the Kingdom on Earth.

Amen.

St. Zacchaeus? - Sermon for 4th Sun before Advent/All Saints

Today, the 4^th Sunday before Advent is the closest Sunday to All Saints Day this year and All Saints Day is too important a feast to let pass without comment. The appointed Gospel for the day is not that appointed for All Saints Day but it does speak of one who can properly be called a Saint: Zacchaeus. (Luke 19:1-10)

You could be forgiven for wondering whether I am being a little generous to Zacchaeus – After all, up to his meeting with Jesus he has led, by his own admission, a corrupt life feeding his own greed at the expense of his fellow Jews and was an agent of the hated Roman Empire. Hardly a candidate for sainthood surely!

That would be the conventional wisdom and yet the Saints are a varied and diverse body and not all of them led totally virtuous lives.

To quote another unconventional and contemporary theologian:

“The saints are friends of God,” he said. But they “are not superheroes, nor were they born perfect. They are like us, each one of us.” “What makes them stand out, he said, is once they encountered Jesus, they always followed him.”

Those words were spoken on All Saints Day this year by Pope Francis who has shown himself as one not afraid to challenge the commonly held perceptions of what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

When we apply these words to Zacchaeus we find that they apply perfectly….certainly no superhero – he was a man of very short stature who had to climb a tree in order to see Jesus. He was not born perfect or certainly his early life was far from perfect unless one was to make a virtue of extortion and corruption. He was like us! We might not want to admit that but if we are honest with ourselves we have more in common with Zacchaeus than many of the traditional saints that we would prefer to be compared to.  We are all of us flawed and imperfect and hopefully like Zacchaeus we have come or will come to an understanding and acceptance of that. He was a friend of God – Well by the end of today’s Gospel I think we can certainly say that about Zacchaeus – Jesus has shared table fellowship with him (a hugely significant gesture in that time and place) and following Zacchaeus’ repentance/conversion Jesus declares that ‘he too is a son of Abraham’. That is more than affirmation - it is acceptance and through it Jesus is welcoming Zacchaeus into the fellowship of God.  So yes I think we can say that Zacchaeus was a Saint and indeed he was venerated as such from earliest times. Indeed it seems according to some early writings that he may in fact have become the first Bishop of Caesarea.

But there is more and it is the last line of the appointed Gospel reading that is particularly significant for furthering our  understanding of why we might consider Zacchaeus as a Saint:

“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost”

Another contemporary theologian, also speaking on this recent All Saints Day said this:

‘The Church has throughout its history struggled with ‘failure and weakness’…‘The answer is found in Christ who loves a broken church and brings new healing to our weakness, and makes us holy.’

This holiness was ‘seen in radical identity with those whom Jesus loves. Those whom he loves are the ones the world puts to one side. . . It is the poor of the earth. . . It is the persecuted. It is the hated and those held in contempt.’

Those words were spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury as he addressed the current 10^th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in South Korea.

Archbishop Justin, very much on the same page as Pope Francis, is pointing to how our brokenness and our imperfections can be the path to our redemption. It is when we come before God, like Zacchaeus, looking for mercy, and aware of our need of mercy that God can work in us most effectively and we can become agents of his Grace and Love in the world. It is when we are lost that we can be found!

But all of this still begs the question: Why does God not prefer perfection? – After all surely the perfect is a closer reflection of God? Why does God again and again come alongside the broken and despised, the flawed and the failed?

Because he can work with brokenness – Perfection is by its definition incapable of growth or improvement or change – Why would anyone want to improve on perfection? One can simply admire it and sit in its presence but there is no relationship. The perfect has nothing to gain from us and so has no need to engage with us. The only exception to that is God who out of pure Love and Grace reaches out to us and seeks to raise us to the potential that is in each one of us to become Saints of God.

Zacchaeus, an unlikely saint perhaps nonetheless maps out for us a path from brokenness to healing, from failure to redemption. He is a much more effective mentor or model than an image of purity and perfection that only leaves us feeling inadequate and hopeless. Zacchaeus on the other hand gives us hope that there is always a way back – there is always a way to God and that God as Jesus did in the story of Zacchaeus will come to meet us half way. That is something that we recall in the beautiful Post Communion Prayer in the BCP:

‘When we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home’

Zacchaeus shows us the way home in admitting that he is lost and in need of mercy.  All of us are on a journey towards God; we come from God and in Jesus Christ we are invited to return to God. Life can be very difficult and challenging and all of us bear wounds from living in the world and sometimes like Zacchaeus from making the wrong decisions, but those same wounds are also opportunities for God’s healing to enter our lives.

As those wounds are healed they become scars which are not marks of failure but signs of God’s work in us and points on our journey home. One contemporary theologian, Nadia Bolz Weber has gone so far as to say ‘Preach from your scars not your wounds ’ – As human beings we can become so pre-occupied with our hurt and our pain that we cannot see the healing that God is working in us. If we look at the story of Zacchaeus and see only the bad he has done and the hurt he has inflicted then the story makes no sense but when we see God working in him through the encounter with Jesus we see how the wounds are transformed and become a way for God to enter and to transform his reality and that of those who he has hurt and wounded by his actions.

His scars which are many are now signposts to freedom, to a new life in Christ.

And so we give thanks for St. Zacchaeus, flawed and damaged as we are but like us bearing the image and likeness of God and able through God’s Grace to find forgiveness, hope and new life.

The Church needs to get lost! (Sermon for Sunday 15th September 2013)

‘’Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”   (Luke 15:4)

The following is a Church of Ireland press release issued by Dublin Diocese last week:

In November, the Church of Ireland will be undertaking a ‘census’ of the worshiping Church of Ireland population for the first time in many years.

On three Sundays in November (3 November, 17 November and 24 November) clergy and parish officials will be attempting to ascertain the age profile and gender profile of those attending services in Church of Ireland Churches throughout Ireland. Worshippers on those Sundays will receive a card on which they will be asked to indicate their gender and age. The card will be completely anonymous.

The objective of the census is to provide information on the worshiping Church of Ireland population and to enable parishes, dioceses and the Church at an island–wide level to make decisions for the future based on an up to date analysis of the Church of Ireland’s population.

It is anticipated that the 2013 census will be repeated every three years in order to enable the Church to examine trends in worship attendance and ministry throughout Ireland.

There is no doubt that the results of this survey will be interesting and informative and may well be useful for strategic planning into the future but in the light of today’s Gospel perhaps it should come with a health warning which might be worded as follows:

‘This survey will present an incomplete picture of the ministry of the Church and should be treated with caution’

Why say that? Well let’s hear that verse from today’s Gospel again:

‘’Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

Jesus couldn’t have made this any clearer – Parables can sometimes be a little obscure but not this one! Our concern should not be primarily for the people who are at the centre of the community of faith, not for the gathered but for the lost and the marginalized. If we are in any doubt as to the meaning Jesus intended us to take from this parable then we only have to look at the one that immediately follows it, the Parable of the Lost Coin which hammers home the very same point – Its not about what we have but rather what we have lost! This was obviously a teaching Jesus wanted us to understand clearly and so he tells us twice.

The proposed church attendance survey may have some limited use but it is essentially an exercise in counting sheep and we all know what happens when you count sheep – yes you go to sleep! There is a very real danger that that will be the fate of the Church of Ireland as well if it just counts bums on pews as an accurate and complete picture of the ministry of the Church.

So what about the ‘Lost’? Before we launch out on any crusade to save souls left right and centre we need perhaps to remind ourselves that we may be among the ‘Lost’. One of the greatest weaknesses of Christian mission through the ages has been the assumption that we have the Truth and we are going to show everyone how to find it! The history of Christian Mission is often simultaneously a history of religious imperialism and cultural vandalism as diverse communities all over the planet had their lives destroyed by an arrogant army of zealots who imposed a very particular and often-inappropriate model of Church on a people who were living quite happy lives until the Church came and ‘saved’ them!  Sometimes being ‘Lost’ is not the worst possible fate! Indeed our modern guilt for that shameful history may be one of the reasons we are not so inclined to go out in search of the ‘Lost’.

It’s hard to see where that model came from because its not the example of a Jesus who came alongside people in any and all situations and listened to them and more importantly heard them. It’s not the example of a Jesus who very often turned the tables on the ‘righteous’ and recognized and acknowledged Truth coming from the lips of the despised. Its not the example of a Jesus crucified who says to the criminal beside him ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’.

Throughout Jesus’ whole earthly ministry we see him pointing not only to himself but to many who society perceived as ‘Lost’ and who were ironically those closest to the way of Truth. One contemporary theologian, Rob Bell has perhaps described a model for mission today that much more faithfully follows the example of Jesus.

In his bestselling ‘Velvet Elvis’ he describes contemporary missionaries as ‘Tour Guides’, not going out to tell everyone to come back to the centre but going out to the margins and identifying and promoting the places where God is already at work and doing great and wonderful things.

That is a task that all Christians are called to. If we sit at home counting sheep we will never see those things and we will miss the opportunity to participate in what Jesus seemed to think was most important.

So yes, we will fill out the survey and look forward with interest to the results but lets remember that its not all about ‘where sheep may safely graze’ but rather the lost sheep who will lead us into new adventures in following Jesus.

Amen.