“Bread for all and roses too”

19^th week Ordinary Time: year b. 8.8.2021

Stef Rozitis

“Bread for all and roses too” the quote from suffragist Helen Todd, which has become popular in the unions is on my mind as I reflect on today’s readings.

The religious people in the gospel are under the misconception that familiar, ordinary things, cannot be divine. They know Jesus, he’s ordinary he’s one of them and they are reluctant to see more in him. He’s remarkable in not being limited by that.

In my life, I have had teachers who have said “Look, there is something inside you, you can be more than this.” or they say “what you are telling me is true,” and help me articulate or develop it. Jesus did not have that support, he was lost among people who wanted to push him down, to prevent him from overtaking them, to put him back in his place. Maybe this was even well intentioned, when people do this to their children they call it “managing their expectations”. We need to stop trying to “manage the expectations” of our young, we need to stop telling them they can’t have roses and their bread must be stale and made from ashes.

Every child we meet might be a powerful prophet- imagine if Greta Thunberg had been taught to know her place and dial down her voice?

I’m not subscribing to the narrative that she will save us. We’re overburdening the young when we tell them they are our leaders, they are our saviours, they are our only hope. This is a twisted role reversal, it’s an abuse. We should hear the children and teens who are asking for a cleaner, fairer world and then WE need to oppose fracking, and refuse to vote for alleged rapists, and stop buying so much plastic!! WE need to do something for our beautiful earth, for our living bread, for the body of Christ- the body we are born from and feed on.

The women’s suffrage activists, the union women said that we should have more than bread. We should have roses too. They meant that a human life cannot be reduced to “basics” (the Indue card is all wrong). Jesus said something similar “You cannot live on bread alone”. He was talking about the beauty of the Word, but roses are a Word of beauty too. They are scented like heaven, the petals are so soft and velvety that when I was little I couldn’t stop rubbing them on my face until the poor roses were bedraggled. Roses are so sensuous, and strangely hardy even in an Australian summer. For butterflies and bees they are like bread- they are the necessary food to sustain life and keep their species going. If we love our non-human cousins we will grow them flowers.

Flowers are surprisingly important, despite often being seen as a symbol of the unproductive and the vain.

In the first reading, God shows us how to deal with someone who is too depressed to be “productive”. Fed twice, Elijah’s energy and willingness to live and do God’s work comes back. I love that the feeding happens twice…we often try to rush people into being “better” the minute we do anything for them. God realises that healing is like gardening, it takes time, you have to commit to it. Fed twice, Elijah learns that God will not abandon him. Fed more than just the once Elijah realises he is cared for and the care will not only be in proportion to his usefulness. We are so quick to establish “mutual obligations” or conditions when we help someone, to turn it into a debt not a gift.

When I say “We” I am aware that there are people in this community and other parts of my life who are the opposite, who are only ever generous but we need to spread wider that sort of energy to society not just in individual interactions. As a society we give up on people too easily, or use them. We encourage them to give up on themselves.

We are told not to make the Holy Spirit sad in the second reading, as a child I read that in an almost gaslighting way- as if I was never allowed to feel angry or stand up for myself or others. I don’t think it means that- for example I am not going to smile and feel cosy that billionaires are wasting precious resources of the planet simply to make expensive joyrides out beyond the atmosphere. They could put that energy to better use to solve the world’s problems- or just stop stealing the wages of the poor and pay their taxes.

Nevertheless we are responsible to God for the cultures we build, and for our interactions; the ways of treating people that we normalise and for seeking to be respectful even when we disagree. A small point that I like at the end is where Christ as a sacrifice is said to be a “fragrant aroma”. Roses again!

I’ll be honest I don’t know what “eternal life” means. This life here and now is mystery enough and I can leave the rest to God. But Jesus says he comes to us as bread. He comes to feed us. His flesh is here for the life of the world. We also are called to become bread- to be the presence that feeds, strengthens and brings life. I’ve put pictures of bread in the prayer-sheet today which are not just basics for grudgingly keeping an exploitable body going. I have deliberately chosen to picture bread of luxury and enjoyment.

The life we are called to (bread AND roses) is rich in meaning, connection, and every good thing. Let us reflect on bread which is better than manna, a sacrifice which is fragrant, rain on rose petals, crusts falling open to reveal the softness of bread.

Women in the church

This is an old talk I did back in 2013. i found it when I was sorting computer files. I would not narrow my identity to “woman” these days this was a sort of last gasp of that while calling myself “queer/lesbian” was still new and unfamiliar.

I’ve only been given a very few minutes to talk about gender which upsets me because I have an awful lot to say about it and I would like to do it in a fair and balanced way. But given the shortness of the time I won’t try to look at all points of view, or be polite or nice or sugar-coat what I need to say. I will narrow gender to speak almost exclusively of women, and I will construct a very biased woman’s point of view which can’t possibly speak for all women, however is a beginning and part of a lot of things that may need to be said by a lot of different women. I give myself permission in it to be as angry and abused and broken as I in fact am and I am going to name and blame the patriarchy of the church for my anger and experience of abuse and brokenness, for my estrangement from God and for my lack of a sacramental home. I would like to say an awful lot about that because the church does it to a lot of women and unlike me not all of them still even have one foot in the church or play along, lie back and think of England or stay for the children. Some are lost completely. Others stay and smile and lack my ambivalence. Are they happy and whole? Well they will have to speak for themselves sometime.

But in so little time that is all I can say of myself and my identity as a woman broken by the patriarchy of the church. So I will move on to show specifically one example of unhelpful theology and how I have moved to more liberative possibilities that if we dare to treat seriously would destabilise quite a lot of our church and how we view wider society. Would God ever want to destabilise society? Whose interests does society serve? Where are God’s interests?

The first problem for me has always been the problem of Mary and her Virgin birth. She is always presented as the woman who has it all, when in fact we treat her more as the woman who is allowed to have neither. I am coming from a Roman Catholic background here bear with me if the cap doesn’t fit a modern Anglican “rational” point of view perfectly because I will move on as soon as I can. Mary, while not allowed to have had sex, presented as a passionless and obedient sort of an automaton is also not allowed to be free from men either. She is raped by a sleazily constructed and male appearing holy spirit, told to deal with it by a male (arguably, even if he is a pretty male) angel and then married off to Joseph (who she may or may not have sex with but we all like to argue about that as though it makes a lot of difference) and ultimately bossed around by her son. What a role model that was to grow up with! Well I have done some of those things, all bar the virginity bit or the bit where God claims ownership for the abuse and possession of what is after all a human being.

What a God that is. A God who gets a young woman pregnant in a patriarchal society. Yeah well done mate! So we feel a bit uncomfortable with that idea so we ditch it, we go all rationalist. She wasn’t a virgin, of course not. She didn’t see an actual angel. She was raped by a roman centurion and made up the rest as a sort of narrative of survival. Well actually in some ways I like that explanation better because the idea of an awful rape and Mary having to pull her wits together and survive tells us a lot more about how the real world is for women. Then Joseph does her a favour by marrying her and they all live happily ever after and raise a critically thinking son who goes and gets himself crucified. So I could be tempted to subscribe to that theory, however the problem with that is it doesn’t really have any spiritual implications. To have spirituality there needs to be mystery. Also then I become really ambivalent about celebration the whole idea of Christ when it took a rape for that baby to be conceived and born. So while I would be saying “well done” to the cute little family we are saying survived it I don’t want to be part of a religion which rests on two such awful violent acts – a rape that causes a conception and then of course the crucifixion which I do believe we over-focus on in all sorts of unhealthy ways (but I won’t go there today).

More recently a few different changes in my life converged in a way where I have begun to see things very differently, to begin to break out of the self-loathing that has always dogged me, that I thought was a not-negotiable part of who I was as a Christian woman. Like Paul I was riding off madly to persecute a Christian (in my case the one I was persecuting was myself and my ugliness and shame and stupidity as a woman) although I called myself a feminist I was always doing this and there was in fact a bright light a very frightening event that struck me off my horse and told me I was blind and needed to heal that before I would be good for anything else.

So I put a stop to a few things I had been doing, and I let myself move blindly, gravitating to what I thought was healing and away from what was not. And I wouldn’t say I became a great apostle, I was a petty persecutor and I guess I will be a petty apostle too but I have rediscovered a sense of calling, but this time I see some obstacles whereas in the past I simply wondered what was tripping me up.

And out of that new headspace of not hating myself for being a woman, and not hiding behind a man or an attempt to be joined to and validated by a man or men or by any authority at all I now turn again with post-enlightenment naivety to examine the idea of the virgin birth.

And now, in a different headspace the virgin birth becomes a liberative idea (for all that it is not one that sits comfortably in rationalism). Depending how we view God, the virgin birth could become a conception without a man. I am not trying to man bash. But as a woman I deeply need a way to be things and do things and become things without the control always being from a man, or a group of men.

As a church we are really bad at ever having a space or a story or a moment like that.

I am not proposing a historically accurate “true facts” of the story. I don’t know what “actually” happened in any part of scripture and I think that asking those questions too much sometimes takes us away from the spiritual and sociological implications of what IS happening in the church and in the believer’s heart when a story is told. We have to live in the now and relate to God and let Mary’s story inform our own faith journey and for me I have been able to refocus on her as a woman who is radically undefined by men (except in so far as the church colonised her after the event). She hadn’t “known” a man, I listen from my place in a patriarchal culture, in a women de-affirming church and my heart leaps.

 I have been taught that I am meant to have this heterosexual gravitational pull toward a man, to need to have him in the picture, for him to define my femininity, my motherhood, my self-concept and God help me I have tried to play that game by the rules even when it sat uneasily with the feminism that comes more naturally (and that has ever more impact if I allow myself to think or to read anything).

That need for a man, when I reference my actual emotional and spiritual needs is a false need, like the need we have in our consumer society for pretty things and fashionable things and cool things. It’s a need that can take over from all other concerns but when I examine who I am in God it is in fact almost the opposite of my true needs.

But if the particularly feminine call to Mary, is not constrained within a narrow hetero-patriarchal idea of her place in the world then what implications does that have for God’s call to and acceptance of women in the centre of the church? I am no longer just talking about ordination as I used to, and we are all pretty aware that these days women priests exist. But who is a woman in church? What is there in the language of church that affirms, recognises or allows women to participate? Very little if any really.

We get to consider male traditions and male stories in male parameters and then go home and cook Sunday lunch. The mainly male bishops have put collars on some of the more troublesome women to try to clergify them in the hope that they will behave (and be an example to the rest of us). I am saying that, but I don’t wish to trivialise women priests. They have achieved some changes, and if not silenced might keep changing what the church is, but this alone has not changed the church enough and will not serve to make the church women-friendly. It’s sort of a liberal feminism approach to the real problem of deep, deep misogyny all through our tradition and culture. It would be like saying all women in australia are liberated because our prime minister is female. Sorry I am not so easily appeased.

Then I return to the idea of the virgin birth and the way it undermines men’s power and the heterosexuality used as a weapon of women’s subjugation. This is not to say women shouldn’t desire men sexually (some women anyway), it is pointing out what heterosexuality IS used for, not implying that it has to be that way.

It is easy to dismiss the idea of “virgin birth” because the idea of virginity was used to try to erase women’s sexuality and make us all feel dirty. However we now live in a very different society. Women are objectified, sexualised, trivialised in the media and all around us every day. We seek and need sexual agency and instead we get pornography and are told that it will liberate our sexuality. Well it doesn’t. Existing just to be penetrated, how depressing. And how untrue for so many women and in so many ways!

Then it stops being oppressive to think of Mary’s virginity as the idea that of course she must have been penetrated by someone is just the same old story of powerlessness. Perhaps there was a completely open, hopefully blissful and affirming moment in time where she encountered the Holy Spirit and the generative possiblity of God within that. Let’s not assume then that God in that moment is a powerful male inscribing something upon Mary’s weaker femaleness. Let’s assume that that moment was transformative and respectful. Let’s not assume maleness into one part of the gospel that is blessedly free of it. Could it be that the Holy Spirit called forth something from Mary, something that was already there rather than planted an alien seed in an obedient and passive soil?

Vocation is like that, deeply respectful, frighteningly intimate and immensely patient. We say it is a call, perhaps it is a wooing. God does not force, threaten or impregnate us: God works with who we are, in our place and our time and in our bodies. And some of those bodies are female and God is in that female place and that female consciousness with us. As much as God is male, God is also female. As much as God is not female, God is also not male.

I am seeing things differently not to be difficult but because I deeply need to. A religion which rests on a woman being magically impregnated by a colonising male god is no sort of a place for me to live or breathe or bring up children in.

I want to talk about Mary while pregnant travelling to see Elizabeth, her pregnant cousin and the way the women share secrets, support each other and even the child in the womb of one leaps at the voice of the other. I want to talk about the deep needs that Mary and Elizabeth can only fill in each other although both have a partner.

I haven’t even really begun to unpick the complexity of what women are and want and need in the church and who we may not be reaching, or worse who we may be blocking from God. The church needs to stop patting itself on the back for having ordained a few women and look at how the culture of the church may shape and support or undermine their ministry. This isn’t just sour grapes because I didn’t have what it takes to make it through the ministry process. With all my heart I celebrate the contributions of the women who did get through and the way their presence in the church has been part of the liberation I can glean even in my more than half-outside place in the church.

But every woman is walking with God – dancing, or running, tiptoeing in fear or resistantly fleeing. High heels or fluffy slippers or bare feet with nail polish. We don’t need protection, we don’t need a tokenistic acknowledgement that we exist. We demand a voice and a language and a constant presence representing ourselves. We are not fallen women or love interests, missus somebody or hidden under umbrella terms like “mankind”. We are complex and agentic and we too are Christ!

Questions

How comfortable are you in the church as a woman/man?

How does God relate to you within your gendered life and identity?

Who is not in our church? Where are they and why not here?

Who is Mary to you as a christian? What was she like? How do you know?

Why was Jesus male? How does his maleness contribute to or inhibit his ministry?

Name a woman (real or fictional) you look up to (not just admire but look up to). If that is difficult see if it is any easier to think of a man you look up to.

Fallenness…sin…human nature?

Are we “fallen”? Is there something really flawed and ruined about humanity? Do we need “saving”? Some theological perspectives would answer “yes” to these questions, or ones like them. In that sort of a theology, usually Jesus’ death is seen as the salvific act, the death is a necessary sacrifice, a good thing. I approach a perspective like that with extreme caution, even suspicion. What does it do to our collective psyche if some human deaths and suffering are necessary or “good”? I don’t like the implications of accepting the pain and sacrifice of another too blithely.

But we do need to grapple with understandings about our own nature and about who God is. These questions seem to me to go back to today’s first reading.

In the first reading Adam has sinned by listening to the “woman” who listened to the animal. He has embarked on a human pattern of othering any part of himself that causes him shame. He is hiding away from God, afraid and conscious of his own nakedness. Nakedness has ceased to be an innocent state, he needs a barrier between himself and the environment. Incidentally this is the first “nudey-rudey” self-shaming episode that many children internalise as parents battle them out of embarrassing habits.

God in this reading accepts Adam’s assertion that it was “the woman’s” fault and her assertion in turn blaming the serpent. God appears to be sanctifying the hierarchy we know so well. What is going on here? Why would an all-knowing and all-loving God create humans with not only the capacity but the yearning to “fall” in this way? Why give “Adam” such a flawed companion? Why allow the serpent to speak? The idealised “perfection” of Eden thus becomes reconstituted as a death-trap. Some theologies hold that God planned it all that way to make Jesus’ saving act all the more spectacular.

This also is problematic.

Let’s assume that God set up the fall and the resultant disconnection in order to make necessary and meaningful horrific violence and abuse many centuries later. At this point I can see some sense in the mocking atheists, the “spaghetti monster” people etc. If I understand my faith this way it does seem violent and compassionless. If I understand myself as so “fallen” I can see a need to repress my own emotions, my own impulses, my own over-loud heart.

I grew up with a faith related to that, and it didn’t do me much good.

But outside of this pericope, Genesis also tells us that we are made in God’s image. There must be some inherent beauty and goodness (ie grace) in our identity, whatever about “original sin”. How can we be made in God’s image and yet made only to fall and be fragmented and driven asunder? How can we be made in God’s image, yet in our very nature demand and need the violent death of another? What is “God” then?

Last week I mentioned George Monbiot’s assertion that human beings are intrinsically altruistic. While the bible does not specifically say so, this idea fits with many biblical stories and thoughts. It fits with the idea that we are made in God’s image. It fits with the idea that God loves us (why would God love the irretrievably fallen?). It fits with Jesus’ tendency to spread food and wine and joy together with his wisdom; to spread healing together with forgiveness; to spread love and hope in the world. To take blame and judgement as the main products of our faith is to miss the point.

“Out of my depths” of yearning to be more than some narrative of “fall”, I pass through the psalm where all things are redeemable into the second reading. Like the author of the second reading “I believe therefore I speak”. I may be wrong in what I say, but my theologising comes from a position of faith- my faith in God is important enough for me to have made this commitment. I am called to put in the hard work every week and write something, sometimes also to preach it. I often fail at this and other vocations in my life, but I also often break it into small enough steps to succeed at some of it.

There is more than fallenness and passivity and waiting in my relationship to God. I sweat real sweat of hard work over the computer each week. I shake with real anxiety when I stand up before people to preach. My collaboration with God is imperfect because I am a still growing-toward God little unfinished image, not because I am completely without hope and “fallen”. I sin less (I believe) when I think about what I am doing, when I focus my motivations on others (particularly on God) and when I make an effort. It is very easy to slide into all sorts of unhealthy relationships with myself, others, food, money, work and leisure. While I can’t make myself perfect through an act of will, or a decision or even through hard work I can make myself better or worse by trying or not. I need God sure, but God also requires of me a commitment of will and effort.

Seems like I am in a more complicated relationship with God than merely “fallen” or “saved”, each day I make choices (some without noticing) about who to be and how to be. I am like the babies I work with, I sometimes over-reach and other times I am tired or lazy or angry and do not try enough. I am human. I am flawed. I am imperfect. But I am intrinsically good.

I am made in God’s image.

The gospel cautions us against sin against the Holy Spirit. This is a debated text, but for an every-day reading I like to reflect on who the Holy Spirit is and where we encounter her? In the context of the reading, the Holy Spirit is to be encountered in Jesus who therefore should not be mocked or dismissed. We know from Jesus that we find him (therefore also the Holy Spirit) in our neighbour.

We are called to look for traces of good in each other and to recognise and honour the Holy Spirit in all. Are we willing to see these traces in our Muslim neighbour? In our lesbian neighbour? In our politician neighbour? In our militant vegan neighbour? In our private-school educated neighbour? What about the noisy child? The strangely dressed or pierced teenager? The overly talkative old neighbour? We are all made in the image of God and the good things we do (however fleeting or however consistent) all come from God’s Spirit. God’s creation cannot fail to have goodness at its core.

It is a denial of God’s spirit to dehumanise others, even others we disapprove of or disagree with. It is a denial of God’s spirit to be so cynical about humanity that we advocate violence or nihilism. It is a denial of God’s spirit to only value animals, plants or rocks only by how much money we can extract from what we do with them. Are these ways of thinking unforgiveable? I hope not. I hope God’s Spirit dwells so tangled and burrowed deep into our DNA that it is impossible to completely de-Spirit us.

That is what I hope, but Jesus DOES caution us not to be too small-minded to recognise and honour the Holy Spirit. If we mock Jesus, or if we mock those who have hope and idealism then we are doing a dangerous thing to our souls. Perhaps it’s not about getting our theology or our creed right in the end, it is about getting our relationship right.

Because if we manage to live according to the Holy Spirit- for a moment or a lifetime then we ARE Jesus’ family. That is what we are made for and always called back to as human beings, as earthlings. Let us pray that we know and do the will of God. Let us trust in God, our souls trusting in God’s Word. Let us love generously, recognising the family resemblance in all creation.

Embodying “temple”

The readings this week are about being called. Samuel greatly admires his teacher, but outgrows his teacher and finds his own vocation. Eli here is wise enough to know his own limitation and to point Samuel to a direct communion with God, putting himself out of the loop when it is time. So it is with all mentors or teachers and students, the time comes when the learner needs to stand on their own feet and decide for themselves. But there is an inner voice of integrity, a call to be greater than just self-interest and ego. Another way of saying this is that our potential is grounded in the will and wor[l]d of God.

The second reading contains that old saying that many of us grew up with, that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. This teaching was often misused to make girls in particular feel fearful of their own sexuality and guilty of any sort of sensuousness. That interpretation however is not really borne out by the text itself. A temple is not a delicate and fragile thing, so prone to desecration- it is something that has integrity. If my body is a temple to the one true and beautiful God, then my body has integrity. If my body, in its bodiliness was sanctified then my body’s abilities and desires also can point to Christ/Wisdom. This is not to say that selfishness and overfocusing on the body itself, or giving into every impulse is desirable. People can work into a beautiful church and feel no sense of the sacred. They can admire the fine architecture and art. They can enjoy the singing of the perfect choir or find serenity in the colourful, scented flowers and incense and warm amber light through stained glass and yet never think that there is more here than pleasure and momentary peace.

In the same way we can live in our bodies in a way that focusses us on narcissism, lust, gluttony and all the rest of it and never touch Godde in ourselves or others.

But how unhappy to try to correct this possibility by smashing stained glass, banning choirs, throwing out art or defacing architecture, banishing incense and flowers and denuding the altar an sanctuary of anything that is beautiful or that adds pleasure to the experience of the sacred. Granted we strip the church (partially) for Good Friday, but this is an expression of our loss and grief and solidarity with Godde’s loss and grief in this time- it is not the ordinary way we approach Godde through a rejection of all the good things of the earth.

Why does communion flatbread have to taste of cardboard? I like that Anglican churches tend to have a good quality port as communion wine. God is in pleasure of the senses as much as in the strength of being able to face deprivation.

My body in its beauty and capability is a place where I or others can encounter Godde. I was deeply aware of this, this week as I returned to work at the childcare centre and had children clamouring for a cuddle and a story and I told them that my arms were long enough to cuddle more than one friend at a time (this was necessary). Then they measured their arms too by how many friends they could reach and we laughed together at the joy of being human with long arms that long to embrace. We told stories, the older children who are on the threshold of leaving for school have listened to my stories and asked me to stop and listen to theirs for a change. In church we do story-telling, and it is called the liturgy of the Word. In church we touch with affection and claim ourselves as part of the “otherness” of God no less than the other (each other in the sign of peace and penitential rite and Godde herself in the Eucharist). I am sure other professions too can find parallels with worship (nursing comes to mind, but even politics has something).

In the gospel Jesus is being cosy and friendly and giving nicknames. To be friends with Jesus is to go out of our way and to get to know him, this includes going to visit him in the elsewhere mentioned “least of my siblings”. To be part of Jesus’ group is to be changed, to gain a new and more difficult identity to learn to be a “rock”- strong and dependable in the tides of life. I think I have mentioned before how much I relate to the flawedness and well-meaning bumblings of Peter- his impulsivity and excess of emotion. Jesus in the readings calls Samuel and Peter but he calls each of us- the female body is a temple no less than the male and the Holy Spirit dwells in the specificity and even the limits of beautiful human architecture.

I am a temple

I am a rock

I am a reassuring touchstone for those

who need to come to God’s presence.

 

I can embody liturgy

I can embody prayer and praise

I can bring a moment of sanctity

of challenge and reassurance to the days

of God’s beloved

 

You are temple,

You are rock

You are there to show me something

bigger than myself

 

You embody Godde

You channel Wisdom

You are a lovely work of art

depicting her beauty

 

They are temple

They are rock

They are something firm and sacred

that we much treasure and preserve

 

They embody our call

They embody our sacrament

They call us to the altar

of the one we yearn for

 

…they are part of “we”…

 

We are temple

We are rock

We are stones together building

something bigger than just “I”

 

When you’re Samuel

I am Eli

getting ready to allow you

to hear more than I can tell you

to be yourself and speak with God.

Creed (yes again)

What with my right to exist being debated all over the country at the moment. I felt the need to throw in a little extra post affirming my faith and the continuity I see between being this God-created lesbian that I am and my faith in God’s endless love.

Let us pray to the God who is love as we consider what rights to grant our brothers and sisters (and ourselves)

I believe in God, who out of love made the universe;

who made all creation in her own image

who called humankind to know that we are made in the image

imperfect mirrors of perfect grace and and loveliness.

 

This God created me and knows me, knit me together in my mother’s womb

brought me out into the world and called me “beloved daughter”.

And God saw that creation was good, even humanity.

 

I believe that divine Wisdom, became flesh, became Jesus Christ in human history.

Jesus spoke a lot about love and acceptance;

Jesus had more tolerance for honest sinners than for judgemental hypocrites.

We don’t know whether Jesus loved anyone romantically

it is possible he was straight, it is possible he was gay.

He had at least one “beloved disciple” though we are not privy to what went on there.

 

Jesus was put to death, for being more interested in human rights, than personal purities.

He was against the way religion can distract from God’s kindom.

He called people to be fair and loving.

Wisdom has always done this, but Jesus did it in human flesh

so that we would relate to her/him.

 

I believe in the Holy Spirit who loves me and calls me to be kind and authentic.

I believe that all love is from the Holy Spirit

and that God is consistently calling me to love.

For love we are supposed to give up all things,

all prejudices,

all fears,

even traditions if they go against love.

We are uncompromisingly called to love.

 

Sometimes we fail, and yet we are still deeply loved by God’s loving Spirit.

 

I believe that “marriage equality” is a secular matter

and needn’t threaten the church, whether or not we agree

that the love between two women, or two men may be sacramental.

I believe that we need to protect families from hate and exclusion.

I believe that the loving and authentic Christian has no need to fear.

 

I believe that I am fearfully and wonderfully made

yes even as a lesbian

yes even if you consider my flaws as a human being.

I believe that no one ever went to hell for loving too much.

I believe that at the present time God is calling the church

to be great-hearted and loving, courageous and generous.

 

I believe in “yes”.

I believe in broadening our definition of sacramental love to protect families.

I believe in God who out of love

made us, walks with us, calls us to deeper life and love.

 

There is never a contradiction between godliness and unselfish love.

 

This is my faith. I feel the need to try to put it into (imperfect) words. Amen.

On Sebastian’s Confirmation

My youngest was confirmed and I was privileged to be allowed to speak (preach?) on the day. There were also two baptisms and so I wanted to tie the confirmation in with them. Here is what I said…

Sebastian was baptised a long, long time ago. We had all the same hopes for him that parents do at baptisms. We didn’t feel we needed God to “change” him or “fix” him in any way, but we wanted to show our commitment to bringing him into the Christian community.

His community of faith was a joyful, accepting one. I had been asked NOT to step down from serving at the altar when I was pregnant (although I was allowed to sit down and take breaks when I needed to)- we celebrated the baptism at the Adelaide College of Divinity, intentionally choosing ecumenical territory, Matthew and I bringing our families and our friends together and Sebastian was not for a moment short of arms that wanted to hold him and faces that wanted to smile at him.

It was like any baptism of a baby that way. There were the symbols- water- death and resurrection, oil, candle, white garment. There was the love and the welcome in everyone’s hearts. I felt sure that baptism for Sebastian would not be a one-off event but would be the beginning of a journey. Over the years we have been part of several church communities- but what Sebastian has found there has been people who offer to babysit him and bake him sausage rolls, people who sewed a tiny cassock so he could be boat boy and people who made sure there were some kids drinks at morning tea after the service. He has been taught about the bible and about the sacraments and about how precious is God’s creation- human and otherwise.

At Cabra chapel Sebastian has been accepted with enthusiasm but also respect for his boundaries as he gets older. He often gets asked to help out in various ways, but the asking is never forceful. When I have the temerity to walk into the church without Sebastian, I always know people are going to ask me where he is. He has been allowed to become an important part of this community, because that has been his baptismal right. Baptism makes a place like this, a church community “home”. The baptised Christian is always called back by God to be amidst the love, support, inspiration and nurture of their community and that has been the case with us.

But now Sebastian is ready to be confirmed and confirmation works together with baptism as a sort of divine circle of security. You probably all know about the circle of security where parents work with the child on separating and reconnecting easily with trust and for the needs of the child –reassurance and encouragement to be met as the child manages to do more and more for themselves, but returns to that safe base. The sacraments work similarly, and in confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit as our mentor and inspiration. The Holy Spirit already knows Sebastian well I am sure and will work with Sebastian’s deepest God-given nature to find Sebastian’s unique work in this world. We all have unique work for God’s kindom and a unique (though sometimes difficult to understand or respond to) call.

In baptism, Sebastian has been called into the nurturing heart of his Christian community, in confirmation he will be sent out, commissioned to walk with God in the world. There is no contradiction here, any more than there is in the circle of security. He is simultaneously sent out and called back in. So are we all. Sebastian is no longer the baby he was and we must trust him and God to decide exactly how he will follow his sending out and his call inward. But we are pleased that he is our family, we are pleased that he is our church.

His journey of faith reminds us to look to our own ongoing journey of faith and his young flame of Wisdom and Courage, Joy and all the fruits of the spirit is one we will still nurture with our prayers, acceptance and community life.

We are privileged to assist God in nurturing these young lives and welcoming them into our midst. Come Holy Spirit. Fill our hearts today and always.

The vision still has its time

Ok I guess I am addicted/afflicted/called to this because I am missing it horrifically and need to come back to it. Every week at church I get strong words echoing through my mind about what I could have or should have said in the analysis I did not do, and actually i do waste a lot of time feeling helpless and not getting anywhere on the job seeking or the academic writing so I may as well continue to do my blog because at least that is something, even if it is not everything.

And today at feminist theology group I heard from braver more persistent women than me who have been silenced, mocked and reproved by the church for decades now and yet live to give life and wisdom to others. This made me realise that small as my voice may be I mustn’t let it be silenced, even by my own weakness.

So I google the lectionary and as soon as I see the first reading I think, I have made the right decision because it expresses my mood perfectly. I am puzzled as to why the bishops in their dubious wisdom chose to leave out verse 4 because I think it really well sums up the modern world, the refugee “crisis” and the attempts to prevent gay families from simply living and being.

And then God’s answer is actually sort of reassuring (if only we can believe this is God speaking and not just God’s publicity team via the bible):

” the vision still has its time,

presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.”

“The vision” for me is of finding meaning in life, of finding my own dignity as the person I am and a place and way to help others be themselves in their own dignity too. The vision is the chance to really teach, not just hold a place for others and of being published. The vision is also bigger than me of course, the reign of God bringing justice and joy everywhere and including all creation in radical liberation. Eco-feminism and then some. And I would like to think that my own lack of energy and ability notwithstanding the vision is still pressing forward. Older people than me began it in my lifetime and before then there were foundations laid even further back. I do not have to finish it either.

“The just one because of her faith shall live” reminds me to be just, not to “sell out” to any of the seemingly easier paths. Of course this is easily talked about and more difficult to live out in every day decisions and courage. But the call is there. Let’s go to the psalm.

If today you hear Her voice harden not your hearts. Am I hearing the voice of God in my world? Who do I harden my heart to, because that may be a clue to where the voice of God is for me. Am I hardened against those who are suffering? Those who call me to put to one side my privilege and relate more authentically? Those who wish to give me the good news that I am loved and lovable? Those whose vision is greater than mine or those who lag behind in their fear? Where is the voice of Wisdom in my day?

The verses speak of joy, praise and thanksgiving; then of acknowledgement of God and of our belonging to God’s reign and community (I am deliberately overlooking the kyriearchal framing here); “oh that today we would listen” weeps the final verse, showing us the history of the “fathers” whose faith failed and who sought to control not receive God. How do we set ourselves apart from the failure in faith of our father and the reluctance to justice that they bequeathed to us too? What transformation is needed so that we would accept God’s offer and take her hand and walk to the somewhere of liberation and love?

The second reading reminds us that, that flame of God is already within us waiting to be stirred into life. I don’t agree that we have it from the imposition of hands of some patriarch, but we have it even before that (my capable child philosophy) through the womb walls that were our first ever touch and the midwifely hands that caught us and in a sense confirmed life. And yes then the patriarchal church has to make a ritual of the obvious that God is already in our everyday we are seeded with the flame, better we are small anam cara, twin flames of God herself (though imperfectly nurtured by our fears and our situation).

God is waiting for us to be true to our spirit of power and love and self-control not our spirit of privileged first-world and patriarchal cowardice. Our true nature is the flame, not the dying of light…and here I weep at myself and my inadequacy, even job seeking is too hard for me let alone the real work of salvation. And I scream to God a yearning need of help, tinder to keep the tiny flame alive, for God to stand between me and the winds of the world to keep the flame safe until it can grow to something. And that i suppose is one of the reasons why church communities are needed. None of us alone can keep the flame bright in such darkness of our own limits.

Paul (or whoever is claiming Paul’s identity to stir us) here offers us the solidarity. Yes there is hardship in the journey but so it has been for all the great ones of the faith. For Paul. For our flawed and silence mothers, our flawed and privileged fathers. Paul offers for this, not an easy answer but a reminder of “the strength that comes form God” and the “Holy Spirit” within, helping.

Reading this I think of a small child I saw yesterday, a two year old with “global delay” and yet so determined to communicate, so determined to walk. She held my hands tightly and refused to let go and walked many steps that looked painful, leaning heavily and almost falling and then smiled at me and said what I think must have been “Thank you” repeating it many times and only smiling when I finally realised what she meant and said “you’re welcome”. That flame to walk and talk, I need to kindle it within myself as a globally delayed child of God. I need to follow God around with the same determination and the same grasp and the same grateful persistence.

In the gospel Jesus is using hyperbole to remind us that faith is powerful and transformative. Reading his metaphor from the perspective of earth however jars. Should my faith be like a mustard seed (a weed) and should it uproot a fruitful mulberry tree into the sea? I’ve always been taught to try to rehabilitate this metaphor but as an eco-feminist I have to make a face and admit that it jars!

And then being told to simply consider myself a servant before God, I am too marxist and critical to be prepared to do that. I don’t see that there is an “obligation” to do God’s work, I appreciate that there is no great riches and status in it, but we are not just “servants” we are also members of families and communities and may be tired and hungry and expect to be paid fairly for our labour. Servants in a kyriearchy, wives in a patriarchy- I don;t see a need to accept being ordered around by some privileged individual even if that privileged individual were the almighty God. Jesus here is referred to as “the Lord” is that a clue of the caution needed with this gospel? I am not sure how to make sense of it, after such good readings this gospel seems kind of anti-climactic and less than useful. I will look forward to seeing how my church community makes sense of it (or perhaps remain uneasy).

But this is a week of St Vincent de Paul’s day (think of the poor) and of St Therese of the child Jesus (one of the very few female doctors of the church, think of women’s ministry and teaching) and I will seek to use my faith to make progress toward better life, not in the vanity of my admitted desire for security and success, but remembering that God’s vision of transformation serves all our interests as flames of that flame.

My heart sings to attempt this wrestling match again. Alleluia.

It is interesting to me, how the  Pentecost story disrupts the orderly group-think of church. And yet as church we are really uncomfortable with heterodox thoughts and even diverse ways of expression aren’t we? I wonder if the Spirit was moving in the words of the apostles or in the ears of the hearers to make sense? I love that there was not one message, in one voice, in one language but understanding was brought into the culture and world of each “in our own languages”. This fits with the psalms portrayal of creation as “manifold” and diverse, yet all going back to the same source, the same God.

I have felt recreated this week in some of the happenings of my life. I feel God patiently waiting for me to get over my flaws and reluctance. I had a paper to write for university, an academic piece of work with no direct connection to God or to my Vocation. I could not get through my anxiety and writers block, and in the end I recognised that this was exactly the same anxiety and writer’s block I feel every week about my blog posts, and especially the weeks when I am “actually preaching”, giving the talk to a group of people.

So I did what I do when faced with that block, I prayed that God would help and inspire me to bring me through the block. Then I apologised to God for praying this in a secular matter “I can’t pretend it is for your glory” I said, feeling guilty and shallow when surely there are far more important things in the world than my paper. I think God shook her head, she seemed to say to me “All this time we have grappled with this and still you do not understand! What other evidence do you need? Your real life, your identity, the things that give you joy and put fire in your heart are not opposed to your vocation. I call you as you are. I call a nerdy person who wants to write academic papers. Did I ever ask you to stop? No. I want you to stop doubting and trust me and use your gifts.”

I tried saying “after this God I will return to things that really matter.”

God said, “Try to have integrity in your work, in everything you do. There does not need to be seperation between your life in yourself and your life in me” And then God added “but you do need to show more love, thoughtfulness and care for others. I am not letting you off from that higher duty.” God’s spirit is radical and unsettling, but it is a spirit of good news and being humanised. We work to orient our lives and our motivations to her, but we DO live on this earth.

This brings me to my quarrel with the second reading. I think that we are made “in the flesh” and we can and do please God “in the flesh”. I’d love to rehabilitate that idea of the Spirit being higher than the Flesh somehow but I cannot. We are fleshly creatures and our spirits live in flesh and have the needs and desires of flesh and when people try to be “higher” than the flesh too much and repress their flesh then all sorts of unhealthy extremes result. On a simple level if I am too holy to eat then I will collapse. If I am too holy to sleep then my mind will be compromised and I will lose the ability to relate to others. If I set myself apart from human interactions or over/above the earth itself then I will fall into sinful arrogance.

If Christ is in us, then the BREAD of life is in us. Bread. Food. Material good. Christ walked upon the earth and with hands that touched the skin of another human being and laughed and cried and coughed and sneezed and yes even relieved himself. The church has attempted to “put to death the deeds of the body” and has shunned women who are less able to be out of touch with bodies that bleed or swell with new life. But without their mother’s fleshly life which of us would have life? Without the hands that perform base chores like feeding and washing and holding what would we be? We would not even be human, we would not live long and our lives would be nothing.

And there’s the flaw with the spirit of “adoption” theory (sorry to Paul or whoever wrote the letter to the Romans) because it is grounded in a FATHERHOOD from a very patriarchal time,where fatherhood was far removed from the reality of baby vomit, nappies and such mundane fleshly matters. But what if we are adopted instead by a nurturing God who holds us as we are and loves us even when we are less than pristine? Because how can we say “we have suffered with him” whose real flesh was torn by nails and thorn and scourged, whose heart broke at the physical sound of taunting voices and lost, grieving followers? How can we tell Jesus who told the women of Jerusalem to look to their own suffering, how can we tell that Christ that with him we simply rise above worldly messes.

This sort of apolitical thinking, this sort of compartmentalised way of being is a trap of privilege. In the church it has been spread and glorified through men, largely white men and through those who wield power over others. I cannot agree with what this reading seems to be saying, God does not call me out of my flesh, God calls me to let the Spirit into my flesh and allow her to orient my life toward happiness. Happiness does not mean self-indulgence but it may involve self-care as well as care for others.

And so having dared to quarrel with scripture I move on to the gospel. Jesus here equates love with keeping words. There is a unity of purpose within the trinity, in that the “father” with Jesus and the Spirit all love on each other’s behalf and all move on each other’s behalf and it it that life we are called into. The life where we participate in that unity of purpose and that love is what we are invited to, but in acknowledgement that we are still learning how to live it and be it the Spirit comes to us as a teacher, to “teach us everything”. The Spirit who is always new must be aware that there is a movement in teaching toward play-based and inquiry-based pedagogies. We don’t sit in rows spouting rote-learned dogma, we live our lives and follow our interests while paying attention to the rich, deep learning offered by the spirit in how to be love.

In the words of Miriam Therese Winter: “Come Spirit come and be, a new reality, your touch is guarantee, of love alive in me” And to each of us she will come in a language we can understand. “May my meditation be pleasing to her”