NOT King

I’m posting this late, it was from 19th November

I’m going to go out on a limb here, suspecting some of you might be on it with me and say that we should NOT still be deadnaming Christ as a “king”. Human history is littered with examples of powerful men and their military machines using such language to legitimate their oppressions of others.

The lectionary uses interesting framing to pretty much rewrite biblical history but let’s chat about how it actually went down.

The Israelites said “God we want a king, give us a king”.

God said, “Nah you don’t want that, kings are a bit rubbish”

But the Israelites (and it’s a criticism of the way we do human societies in general) kept pestering and pestering like the toddler that wants a McDonalds meal until God (like a tired mother) gave in and said,

“I don’t recommend this but mess around and find out” and from then on tried to help with damage control. The damage control didn’t stop the kings from being oppressive. Even David, the supposedly good one had Bathsheba-gate and all his wars and all the women he collected as trophies.

That’s not a good start. But we need to remember it was humans that INSISTED on this nonsense it was never a form of government recommended or valorised by God, God merely tried to stop it getting out of hand. God has a questionable commitment to free will which seems to be why it’s been allowed to go on for so long even though it is a mess.

I can’t think of a single king ever that was not oppressive, though some did charity work to redeem their public image (which is what Jeff Bezos is also now doing I notice). They take so much of it away as their privilege and then they give a small fraction back where they choose with much trumpet blasting and proclaiming their generosity. Such are kings.

The second reading appears to valorise “thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;” as being created through Christ and for Christ. Mark Medley has produced a wonderful counter-reading of that which biblically makes sense. He sees in this section a “lyrical capacity to transform political and socio-cultural realities, as well as to empower and mobilize protest and resistance against imperial hegemony and coercive structures of domination” (Medley 2019). Rather than adding legitimacy to oppressive powers, Christ is the one who comes to call them into question and undo relations of exploitation and abuse. Today’s liturgical booklet seems to take a similar subversive stance, asserting “mystery” and that “Christ is among us” unlike kings who are a kept from nasty mob like us behind guards and locked doors.

Ask your heritage- if you have any blood of people who have been illegitimately annexed by kings. There are Irish people here, I myself am Latvian. Christ’s supposed kingship has been used against our people and against Kaurna people and Ngarrindjeri people and First Nations over the globe. First Nations did not have “kings” that was a cultural imposition from white empire-builders. The reign of white-supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchy needs to end, and it is a misuse of Christ, an idolatry, a blasphemy to reconstitute Christ as a poster-boy for wrong relations.

Jesus in the gospel is suffering and being mocked. This is not a triumph of Christianity it is not desirable for Jesus the man, the grown-up baby of our sister Mary to have been tortured to death just because he thought and said and proclaimed liberative possibilities and healed people. Why do we celebrate this and not Christ the healer? Christ the vine? Christ the wine-maker?

It’s his enemies that positioned Christ as a dangerous radical and a king as they could not conceive of a power that was collective or kind or healing- therefore he must like them be a military leader. When Pilate asked Jesus “Are you king?” Jesus was VERY clear that the word “king” was Pilate’s terminology not his own. When he defined himself he was a foot washer, a friend, an opinionated preacher- the Word, a shepherd, a fisherman, a mother hen, and after all his father was a carpenter. Of all the beautiful words of Christ, and all the beautiful deeds of him, why have we allowed our leaders to push on us a name Christ did not choose a name that benefited Constantine’s expansionism, not the sharing ideology of the early church. Poynting and Donaldson (cited in Rozitis 2021) have pointed out that the suffering male body is often portrayed as a necessary sacrifice for manhood, to establish male supremacy and homophobic ways of being. This can be seen in some valorisations of the cult of sport, in the celebration of the “sacrifice” of young men in wars and in the way abuse by boys of other boys is routinely normalised and ignored.

I’m a mother. I don’t want to torture and sacrifice boys and neither did Mary want that for her son. It’s not a cause of celebration, the heroism of dying on a cross or in trenches or by suicide if you are gay. NONE OF THAT IS GOD’S AUTHORSHIP!!!!! It was human greed for hunger and control that killed Jesus though it was the tenacious love of an earth that wants vines that brought him back. Christ came back to console and feed, like a sapling after a bushfire, like a river when the drought breaks, but not on the backs of slaves and prisoners-of-war like a king.

Jesus accepted the desperate plea of the dying man for recognition, dignity and friendship but he did NOT emphasise the metaphor of “kingship”. Let’s work on moving beyond kyriearchy to genuinely liberative possibilities of the kindom (no g), the Kindom of Godde.

In our silence and sharing time, I challenge you to think of a metaphor for Christ- from the bible, from the life of Jesus, from our sacramental life together that rings true and brings healing.

Medley, M. S. (2019). “Subversive song: Imagining Colossians 1: 15–20 as a social protest hymn in the context of Roman empire.” Review & Expositor 116(4): 421-435.

Rozitis, S. (2021). “Understanding and celebrating advantaged boys: education that excludes.” Journal of Educational Administration and History: 1-11.

Teaching as slow and immeasurable

Teaching is not planting a market garden,

the point is not speed or productivity.

Teaching is the patient work of planting

a rainforest of which you will only ever see

a tiny, hopeful part

if that.

It’s not “crops” and it’s not “result”

and it’s misleading to discuss “what works”.

Learning is an act of beauty

like the many coloured mushrooms that spring up in a day

and drop their spores making litter

to feed insects who are there for little birds

feeding birds of prey

meanwhile a seed becomes a slow, small, sapling,

reaches toward the light patiently and with endless hope,

branching out when ready to bear fruit

so that small mammals may eat and live and experience joy

and then die and cast their remnant flesh and bones

upon the roots of the trees feeding for more generations

of trees nurturing mammals and yearning for the light, the sky,

the canopy teeming with every type of creature

and all the time in the world

for flowers and butterflies.

Time wasted on beauty and fragrance and the soft trickle

of water over moss.

Noone can measure the life of a rainforest,

noone can measure what has been learnt or will be known.

We hold back from our wish to control and carve and mould

and we enable. We provide. We challenge. We are all

trees, moss, flowers, birds, beasts insects and mushrooms

caught up in the life-breath and soil of being.

We are no just woodchips, we are not just fuel,

we are not for harvesting

we are just for being.

Liberation is also for me

This post in particular (and all of them somewhat) is dedicated to Pauline Small who is a constant spiritual Grandmother to my blog and has been reminding me not to neglect it. 

Spooky Wisdom!

Lately I have been pondering my vocation. I have particularly thought about it in reference to seeing https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FABCReligionandEthics%2Fvideos%2F2015604118527439%2F&show_text=0&width=476“>this video about Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy. Seeing that video made me wonder again what it means to have a vocation? I hear God calling to me in the people I meet and work with, in the beauty of the sunset, the tenacity of the weed, the confidence of my cat. I hear the call in my period blood that I soak out of the pads and pour on the garden. I hear God calling me like words from my childhood.

…”to give good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind and bind up hearts that are broken” (have I told you lately God, that your Words are Spirit and life?) That was how I remembered the quote from childhood, from songs, from progressive church services, these words have always hit home into my heart. I have always known the truth from them, they tell me how to be human, they tell me how to be in an intimate relationship with God. They tell me how to be me. God would never hate or punish me when I fail to live up to them, but I become less, become a shadow of myself.

Yet to me the mystery remains. Where is the path? How do I remain faithful? Do I not glow with a passion for justice and liberation in my academic work, in my political work? I shared at church that I was once again questioning (being questioned by?) my vocation and my friend Pauline said (as part of a longer discussion) that she missed my blog. It seemed time to me to try to restart that for all that I feel too burdened and not eloquent or wise enough to keep speaking, speaking, speaking into the time. The blog feels so self-indulgent because I just write what I feel. Other writings get read and critiqued and redrafted and still I get told to tighten them up.

But here I am being self-indulgent again and trusting the reader to skim the parts they don’t like. This is the week it has all begun again.  Unlike the patriarchal priests, unlike Ezra, I don’t stand above the people, I do not have the backing of a church structure, perhaps I am not “reputable”. Any truth I claim to speak needs to be tested and discerned by anyone who reads/hears it. Should we not do this with all truths?

But for me also this is a holy day, this is a day when weeping ends and I rejoice in God’s continued call to me. Where will it lead?

The second reading talks to us about diversity. Without women’s ministry I believe the church has lost a limb that God intended it to have. It’s a misuse of this reading to assign essentialist roles, a hand can’t tell a foot what to do, nor can an ear tell an eye how to behave, but all can be true to themselves for the body to work. Men need to stop limiting women and thus crippling the body that is the church. There need to be fewer lies, less control, more trust that God can speak to and through us all! We discern truths on the basis of faith, hope and love not on the basis of some people having a privileged position over the rest of us.

In the gospel, Jesus is realising his vocation; coming of age to do his work. He explains his mission- liberation, healing, good news (not, it might surprise some “Christians” to hear, purity, hatred and division). Wherever the liberation is, Christ is working. Wherever we are healed, we feel her touch. Whatever words or actions bring good news into us, is the place where we might encounter God.

Grand words like “vocation” always make it feel like we should be doing more (and perhaps that may be true) but here in my little blog. I can work to make this a place of liberation, healing and good news. It’s a lovely burden to take up again, I feel a bit daunted it is true but mainly RELIEVED to begin again.

 

 

Eleison

So I skipped over the “Kyrie” and did not even notice until I was trying to contextualize the “Gloria“. Part of the reason for that I suppose is the way I grew up seeing it as part of the penitential rite, because it is tacked onto the end of it and at times you don’t “have to” have the Kyrie if it is embedded in the way the rite is worded (with the “Lord have mercy..,.Christ have mercy” used as a refrain within the list of things we are sorry for. So then when viewed that way the “have mercy” sounds like a plea to not punish us…or not too much…like a plea for forgiveness or clemency out of a knowledge of sinfulness. Or at any rate that was how I read it as a child.

And then of course the Kyrie is inherently problematic to me as I try to avoid “kyriearchal” thought and language and a cringing relationship with God. But when I have worked with liturgy I have been able to change the words to “Sophia eleison, Christe eleison” (Wisdom have mercy, Christ have mercy) to dispense with the Kyriearchy.

But is “have mercy” problematical too? What are we really asking? Is it a cringing in our sinfulness and awareness of a basic dirty worthlessness? It has been used that way. Or is it a request to be “saved” or rescued, a sort of damsel-in-distress positioning toward God the shiny saviour? How do we ask for liberation but not for rescue? It seems to me to be a fine line.

Then I wonder if I need to be more actively involved in this idea of “mercy” and I think back to my time in schools, two schools in the “mercy” tradition and their motto “Loyal en tout”. Loyal in everything. But loyal how and to what or whom?

And we deconstructed ideas of “mercy” at school and talked about how individual acts of “mercy” were only a start but social action was also needed to get rid of injustice instead of always just seeking a bigger bandaid to put over the hurts of this world. So “Sophia inspire justice, Christ teach liberation” becomes the intent of my cry in my heart. How do we deconstruct the injustices inherent in the system and how do we come to shared understandings that are more just and inclusive (and then again more just and more inclusive and again…as humans always having to renegotiate, never having found the silver bullet against all social ills).

But then can we sit back and ask God the holy ATM to dispense us parcels of this mercy or inspiration? Or is the cry more complex?

“Sophia show me how to be more merciful to myself

Christ teach me to extend a respectful merciful hand to others

Sophia integrate me with the earth’s mercy in more reciprocal ways.”

I met an atheist today, who seems to do my instinct what I need God and faith to inspire and teach in me. I see a lot of ethical atheists who honestly I can see have little or no need of religion, they seem to have an instinct for goodness and justice and I wonder why I do not have that. Why do I need God to call and motivate me out of my basic meaninglessness and lack of “good” action. If I did not believe I would not follow, I would just eat, drink and try to enjoy my time on earth and not worry about injustices too big for me to handle on my own.

But other people have a more evolved humanity than me and seem to do so much good without “believing”. So then my cry from the heart is,

“God give me meaning

Wisdom teach me to instinctively live love

Love go more deep in me than my overthinking”

because my ethical framework is still so deeply rooted in an understanding of being loved and accepted and called by God who is “other” to me, I have not fully integrated my ethics in myself. I am not fully independent and I admiringly wonder at people who can spontaneously find that within.

But let’s say at the end of the day that I can let go of “believing” in an other consciousness that is bigger and better and more loving than me and just do what is right and just for no real reason, just as an expression of my true being. Would I do that? Would I make my “goodness” my own if it meant losing the sense of being loved externally? I think of the loneliness I felt as a child and a young woman, my inability to access the imperfect love of other people or to respond or initiate love (and still I really struggle to express affection and affirmation towards others). Maybe I would not chose to isolate myself from the one ongoing relationship that has allowed me to dance back to other people I had alienated at various times.

There is something of the romantic in me after all, I crave intimacy and the acceptance of an “other”. My gratefulness when anyone likes me, wants my company or sees my worth is grounded in my growing reliance that God always likes, wants and sees me. There are bigger reserves of “goodness” accessible to me than my own. Perhaps the “good” atheists are also wrapped in this GOD that they don’t have to see or articulate (I would not try to tell them so).

God’s love is more than “mercy” it is grace and gift and growth.

P.S. I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing I hadn’t completely got it right. Trying to reduce faith to a dyad (God and me) is an indication of my own attempt to deal with being single for so long but it’s inappropriate to put that on God and anthropomorphise God in the process. That is, maybe it is Ok to get through day to day in this way but as an insight it isn’t really the whole picture. I lay there and remembered that I was linked in with refugees, and people trying to survive on centrelink; with old flames and elderly relatives; with fundamentalists who fear for my soul and rainbow youth who crave acceptance. With a little kitten who needs his litterbox changed and with the spiders, slaters and millipedes my preschoolers are obsessed with finding. With hurricanes and stars and sudden changes in weather.

To ask God to respond with “mercy” authentically, to attempt to be caught up in the act of “mercy” is to want to transform it for all of us- not just for me. I felt the very real fear of the way society seems to be descending into more and more injustice as we begin to face the consequences of not looking after the environment.

And then “have mercy” , also “may we have mercy” was a more fear-filled cry at three in the morning. And still asking for grace and gift and growth, but quickly and for all of us and in the knowledge that I would have to try harder to get caught up actively in bringing these things to myself and others.

The law? Integrity, liberation and who we really are.

I shred this reflection at church today based on these readings. It may have been too long but it represents about to weeks of agonisingly trying to reduce my complicated thoughts on this to a manageable size (and then trust others to fill in the blanks as well or better than I could).

 

What does it mean that the Spirit scrutinises even the depths of God?

 

I came to these readings with a feeling of suspicion toward their legalistic tone: long gone are the days when I could view any text as innocent. Everything that is written serves someone’s interests. I’ll leave aside the question of whose interests scripture might serve as that is a big question and one we probably wouldn’t all agree on, but the lectionary also is a text- the juxtaposition of particular readings is not inevitable and has helped to build the histories of interpretation that we are born and brought up in.

 

Ideas of law seem to me to be linked with power and I have not always experienced these positively from the church. People can find themselves outside the church for such trivial reasons. My great aunt could never receive communion again because she married for a second time while her first husband (taken away by an invading army years before) was never proven dead. As a child I learned that all the divorcees and gay and lesbian people in perfectly stable and functional relationships were considered to be in sin (and the outrage of some gossiping Christians that people “like that” come to church). We continue to hear with shame, hard-line rules against simple necessities like contraception, and we know there is a link between this and other archaic laws like barring women from being clergy.

But then it seems like the law that is so stringent on some, is more easy on others. George Pell seems very resistant to returning to face the secular law, which is interesting because his public voice has always been so legalistic in tone. When I consider the tendency for powerful men to escape consequences for whatever they do, then I realise I am not quite so anti-law in my own thinking and I can dive back into the first reading.

Think of all the calls for “de-regulation” these days, of the ideal that is preached of “freedom”. What a harsh sort of a freedom that is, the freedom of the market.  Basically in this world-view governments and societies will stop interfering with the flow of capital so that those who are rich and unscrupulous can be even more free to exploit, lie and cheat as they want. Protecting vulnerable humans or the environment would be a thing of the past in this terrible freedom.

The first reading compares law with fire and water. Fire can mean warmth, safety, togetherness, the ability to cook our food, light. Water can mean refreshment, cleanliness, peace, life. Law also can bring us together and build society fostering right relationship.

Fire can get out of control and mean burning, danger, death. Water can become storms, tidal waves, ruthlessness and also death. Law that is out of control we experience as oppressive power- it rips apart individuals and relationships. But despite the dangers of law it remains as significant as water and fire. Noone is to be given license to be unjust or harm each other.

I might have hoped that the second reading would tell me what the good law is- how to recognise it and maybe seven easy steps to follow to always be right. Not so. The law in this reading is according to a mysterious and hidden Wisdom of God. My heart leaps there she is again, we know Wisdom from other readings her values seem to be liberation and generosity although she is hard to follow and impossible to pin down.

It was unawareness of Wisdom which resulted in the death of Jesus. The need to put to death opposition, to silence critical voices and to maintain the status quo against all threats is a need counter to the agenda of renewing refreshing Wisdom. This is good news when I am the critical voice but the challenge is to remember it when I have worked hard to make something that seems to me good and someone else has an unpalatable opinion to share. It is significant that the reading talks about “this age” in the present tense. It is always “this age” when the voices that try to bring Wisdom’s compassion and liberation to a hurting world are silenced, trivialised or in extreme cases persecuted (content warning on the last link).

So there is no blueprint for knowing Wisdom, no infallibility given in any power that sets itself up over us. But the Spirit works for us to scrutinise all things, even the depths of God. Within Godself we find a deep integrity and an ability to be reflexive and process questioning from “the other”. We find that “otherness” even within the very identity of who God is. To anyone who has experienced being the “outsider” in some way this is unbelievably good news.

 

This gospel sometimes gets read as a sort of divine nit-picking by Jesus, a raising of standards for who can qualify as “good”. I don’t think this is an entirely fair reading. Jesus may be inviting us to reflect on the purpose behind a law, to enter into the spirit not just the letter of a law that coming from Wisdom must be aimed at transforming who we are to the depths of our being. The key here seems to be right relationships- responding to people in all situations with respect and love, speaking with honesty and not letting negative feelings fester and eat us up from the inside.

There may be hyperbola in the specifics, (as an enneagram 4, I see a sort of grandiose over-the top desperation to be heard here) but aside from that, the connection between what we do and who we authentically are may apply.

 

If you are on facebook and linked in with the left-side of politics you might have seen how the growing fear and dissatisfaction with many leaders has fostered a gleeful slogan: “punch a nazi”. This expresses the despairing frustration of many, as xenophobic and regressive ideas gain a foothold in society but it glorifies violence and reifies a “good guys vs bad guys” view of the world which probably does more harm than good.

The gospel acknowledges that the temptation within us can be to let anger and despair change who we are and how we treat people. Most of the people saying this awful slogan, would probably not really punch another person but Jesus in today’s gospel seems to be saying something that Foucault would agree with that we construct ourselves within discourses (both in our own heads and outwardly) and we become the ideas we circulate.

I hope you will enjoy entering into a moment of silence with these readings, or in whatever way is best for you.

We have an opportunity now to think over our own reactions and relationship to the law and Wisdom of God! We have a chance to think about our identity within ourselves and our dealings with others. Relationship moves from within each of us to others, so after some time in silence please if you wish share your thoughts with each other.

 

 

I did not know about your vocation, but I remained open to seeing the Spirit in you

In between the unrelatable metaphor of “servant” (exploited labour) and the nicer but possibly still dangerous concept of “light” to the nations the first reading is telling us that God’s knowing of us, relationship and call go back to when we were in the womb, pre-existing any decisions, social influences and learning we had acquired. This to me is what grace means, that we do not earn or compete for positions in the household of God but we are already called before we even take a breath. To be called into being is to be called into the household, the body of God.Our vocation is not a skill-set or an honour it is our deep and true IDENTITY. What God knows us as, is what we were always meant to be- beyond questions of recognition of the church.

We know this about Jesus. We read about the annunciation and the visitation and the baby in a manger and we are already seeing God in the swell of Mary’s belly, the kick of joy from the baptist (already following his vocation in the womb), the first staggering steps holding a parents hands begin the thousand steps of a ministry. It’s true for each of us. We are already physically star-dust and emotionally God-stuff before we choose how to inhabit that identity.

The psalm agrees. Our deepest longing is for God to come and recognise this in us, the deep longing to be fulfilled in the vocation to follow Christ (as toddlers follow the admired older sibling), to be bigger than our littleness- to strive into the fullness of God. Which is our essence. We are the image of God (we and all of creation) and we are ourselves truly when we honour the possibilities for deep love and hope in ourselves and others. “here I am God, a better thing than any sort of commodified “thing” of religion, more meaningful than sacrifices and offerings- here am I and my deep longing for and delight in your Word, in my potential to actualise you” I love the unsilenced jubilation of the final verse of this psalm, I have for many years on taken it on as a sort of motto:

“I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.”

I did not restrain my lips…but of course I did when I was young because I was told that women were supposed to. Luckily the sinful state of silent obedience was unnatural for me and God’s constant egging on broke through it. Of course once we unsilence ourselves we do become responsible for what we say. God’s justice (and some translations add loving-kindness) are worthy topics for ranting.

The second reading is very short, only just long enough to introduce ideas of being “called”, being “sanctified”  Part of our work is building a communion of the called and sanctified, that is recognising the Godness of each other and the vocations in others. It makes me a better person, renews my hope and sense of purpose to be recognised by other humans and it diminished and depressed me for years that the church could not and would not recognise me (but now for me “church” is whoever brings Christ to me and not associated with the hierarchy except sometimes by coincidence).

So then with the customary “Alleluia” we turn to the Word made flesh who chose and chooses to live with and in us. To Jesus the purest version of who we are supposed to be.John the Baptist as the established church is busy practising his ministry, at times having trouble being heard but having a power of sorts. What does he do when his younger cousin Jesus comes up filled with vocation? He not only moves over and makes room for the ministry of Jesus but he proclaims and assists that ministry. This is a part of the servant-leadership of priesthood that can be hard- sharing the spotlight, easing the ministry of others and the paths of people to the good news as proclaimed by someone who is not ME.

John did not “know Jesus” but being an open sort of a person he “saw the Spirit” alight on him. This is our challenge to remain open to the Spirit in each other and in nature. We need to look beyond ourselves and beyond our pre-determined ideas of God. In Scripture and beyond scripture. In the church however flawed it might be and beyond the church into the apparently sinful world and apparently dangerous nature and apparent heathens and queers and transgressives of all types. And even the hierarchy (Elizabeth Johnson does this well and shames me for so quickly dismissing the “church Fathers”).

John teaches us to look for and recognise God in our cousins and other young upstarts- but Jesus trusts John to work with him and comes to him openly too. The church is not one individual- it isn’t about superstars and heroes. We listen, affirm, work together. We see the Spirit in each other, we baptise each other and confirm the pre-existing touch of God in each life.

Our ministry is not judgement and separation. It is connection. It is love.

Free to collaborate in love

“Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Can this suggestion by Jesus undercut the overall tenor of the way these readings have been combined seemingly to try to argue for an authoritarian and patriarchal (based on the 12 patriarchs of the 12 tribes) view of church authority? What then if we refused to let our hearts be troubled or afraid but stoutly look for a transgressive reading that will liberate us from the more oppressively traditional interpretations?

In the first reading, some unnamed people have decided that they can speak with authority of the church and preach a rules-based slavish adherence to one part of the cultural heritage of the church. They say that you can’t follow Christ unless you are circumscised. Rather than reading this in an anti-semitic way, let us consider other church teachings over the years that have been needlessly prescriptive, oppressive or misguidedly heaped on the shoulders of the laity?

Unless you eat fish on Fridays you cannot be saved

Unless you go to church every single week you cannot be saved

Unless you are heterosexual you cannot be saved

If you use contraception you cannot be saved

If you disobey the clergy you cannot be saved

If you read and interpret the bible for yourself instead of trusting the church hierarchy you cannot be saved.

Some of these seem ludicrous to us today, but would have been the church’s common sense not so long ago. Some sadly there are still many people within the church who would subscribe. This is the prescriptive and narrow-minded side of church teaching, all of that which is dogmatic but not liberative and ignores the autonomy of the person to respond to God in free relationship rather than only through trembling obedience to the church. This compares to the circumcision argument in the first reading.

Along come Paul and Barnabbas from the apostles and elders and tell them they have no mandate to be so bossy. The wording is unfortunate “you have no mandate from us” as if Paul and Barnabbas et al run the church. The real point is “you have no mandate from God to be needlessly prescriptive and bind people into rigid, lifeless traditions”. The traditional reading here of course is that the “apostles and elders” are the proper authorities and the way we are church needs to always be guided by their authority. They are shown to be a liberative and wise authority that prevents abuses of power. OH IF ONLY!!!!

The fact is as women we know that the “apostles and elders”, or at least the officially sanctioned ones are all too often the ones doing the opressing, repressing and abusing. There are voices of abuse victims reverbating from several generations of having the courage to speak out and I think we risk a very serious sin indeed if we ignore these voices (like the blood of Abel calling for vengeance at the dawn-times of our tradition). There is also the present, ongoing prevention of women from having full participation and fair representation in how the church makes decisions about things that frankly men have amply demonstrated they neither understand nor are capable of understanding.

So the call to obey the “right authority” of the church is one that makes the hairs on my neck stand up. There is danger here, engage hermeneutic of suspicion! But the overarching agenda to reduce unnecessary burden on the believer, yes this is an important point. To do this well, I think we understand in the 21st century, needs a degree of democratic engagement (time for the catholic church to come out of its medieval cave and realise this) and a respect for boundaries and for the autonomy of the individual. That is I can have a rational discussion with you about whether contraception is good, bad or indifferent but if my life experiences are very different than yours, and I in no way (or in minimal ways) am able to support the consequences of what you decide, then I don’t really get to make that decision for you. This is called respect, it’s a side-effect of character traits like peace, gentleness and self-control which are supposed to be  fruits of the Holy Spirit. But the spirit of slavery that Paul warns about is rife in the church, in the way authority cracks down on people but also in us, in the way we accept unwise authority and do not take responsibility to think for ourselves.

Even though there is this picture in the second reading of a dazzling construction that is the “city of God” and perhaps a metaphor of the church, and it has inscibed on it the names of the Twelve, again appearing to lend credibility to patriarchal authority. There are significantly no temples or lights in the city. The lamb is enough. We do not need other rituals or lights shedding light for us, each one who comes to the city can directly look upon “the lamb” for light and for inspiration, each of us can personally worship not through the mediating influence of a temple. The Twelve are mere gates or foundations of tradition, but who says there may not be other ways to come to the lamb, to the only light.

Once again there has been enough in the reading to engage my hermeneutic of suspicion but I can respect that tradition has at times a richness without being bogged down in the tradition, I can pass on through to Godself. It would be easier and safer if tradition was reliable and if church authorities were infallible but there is light more than sun or moon for us. There is the lamb.

And so we pass onto the gospel and see what this “lamb” has to say.

Jesus here once again like last week shows that his words and deeds are identical to the words and deeds of God (here called the father). The Spirit is also brought into the discussion and we see the identical interests and work of the Spirit as one with the “father” and with Jesus. So in a sense there is grounding for trinitarian understanding here, but it is also about an alignment of interests and trusting collaboration as discussed last week. Love of Jesus is shown by keeping Jesus’ word. It sounds as if Jesus has made promises about the reign of God and if we love him we will try to keep those promises. But it is a mistake to see the vocation here as merely words, preaching in the narrow sense. The word of God is elsewhere called “alive and active” it actualises what it preaches. And that is what we do to keep the word of Jesus. So then we are brought into trinitarian action through love. I don’t say we become God, as I am not attempting idolatry here but we ARE CALLED to move toward becoming one with God in interests, intention and action. So that if our response to our vocation was perfect we WOULD be drawn into God’s identity but at least through our love for Jesus we achieve this partially (and more when the Spirit teaches us).

Lastly as a look forward to next week’s attention, if we loved Jesus we would rejoice that he was going to the “Father”. So if we selfishly hand onto the feet of Jesus and try to keep him here as a rigid idol or a fossilised token of assurance then we are not loving Jesus. Jesus asks for the same freedom and autonomy he is offering us. We become unified through the Holy Spirit’s movement and out love-response not through obedient or co-dependent toxic relationships.

And if that is Jesus’ desire then it really needs to become the church’s desire too. We the church will resemble our beloved Christ when we stop trying to control people, when we trust people’s free love-responses and movement toward the beloved. In a flawed and hurtful world that is very hard to believe of course. But this is what it measn to love God. Challenge accepted.