Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin

He (Elisha) picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.   (2 Kings 2.13)

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.                                   (Galatians 5.1)

‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’                                                                        (Luke 9.62)                   

        SOME OF us are still reeling from the shock of last week’s referendum result and consequential “Brexit”. Others are no doubt celebrating what they see as a triumph for democracy, maybe some even dubbing it pertinent to the notion, “freedom”. Either way, our calling as Christ’s disciples is not related to such claim, except in that, no matter what political system we find ourselves living with, be it oppressive or liberative by nature, we are free.

We are free because “Christ has set us free.” He wants us to be free for freedom’s sake. True freedom is realised when the choices we make, in freedom, bring us in full flow straight to the heart of God. Desiring consciously what we intuit unconsciously brings into the stream of God-consciousness and there we find ourselves to be totally free. This is the meaning of all the Law, the Prophets, the books of Wisdom and the New testament itself. All Scripture, all history points to this, and Christ is its fulfilment.

However, such freedom can only be so if we have also the freedom to reject it and choose the way of self instead. Many do. The whole Euro debate centred on ideals of self, revolving one way and the other on arguments about economy and immigration. How can Britain get the best deals for herself and best protect her borders so that whatever wealth she can muster for herself may not dissipate? These are selfish concerns that so easily “submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

What would a prophet like Elijah or Elisha say into this time, in this place? What would Jesus prophesy? What will a prophetic church do?

She must pick up the mantle that has long since fallen, put on the cloak of Christ and make lucid once again God’s freedom song.

“Oh won’t you help to sing…?”

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‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’[ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him… (1 Kings 19.4-5)

 

‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’  (Galatians 3.28)

I WAS asked this week if I would marry a couple in church, two people who would very much like to bring their love before God and be bound together sacramentally, according to God’s will and purpose. Sadly, I had to tell them that the Church in Wales will not allow me to do that. Why? Because these two, who love each other and want to love God, happen to both be women.

This discrimination, with which I am by my priestly association with the church complicit, makes me angry, sad and deeply ashamed. I am ashamed that the church, for all claims to the contrary and pretty words designed to compensate and placate, persists in the bigotry of an elitist perception of created order. The church of today is still “no better than my ancestors”, and I, of priestly line within her, can only accept my own share of the responsibility. I long for a church that takes seriously Paul’s words about slave or free, male or female. I yearn for a church that does not disown the very teachings and Spirit of Jesus Christ but rather stands up according to her name in Him. Bishops, priests, lay people, please stop wallowing in past societies’ festered prejudice; please, just rise up and be counted. You are Christ’s body! The church is supposed to be a gift to the people, walking with them, hand in hand, in the Way, the Truth and the Life.

There is hope yet. Its fruition will, however, need the church to lie down, like Elijah, and be ready to die. Only then, may the noise of self-importance and inflated ego finally subside, and the still, small voice of JaHWeH, the One Who Is, LOVE her/him/itself, break through the conscience barrier.

‘…and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind…’ (Luke 8.35)

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“Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”                                                            (Luke 7.39)

 THE PHARISEE sees the sin of the woman who bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears and with her worldly possessions and with her love. The One who has the Father in him and Who is himself in the Father sees the woman for who she truly is. The first is a professional religious leader, the second a person of God. The perceptions of the religious one are governed by the rules and precepts of a theo-philosophical structuralism pressed on him, studied, practiced and inculcated by him. Such a thing might well have sprung from initial authentic experience of the divine but between that experience and the Pharisee there are many intellectual lenses of human design. Jesus, on the other hand, lives each moment pure in a stream of divine consciousness.

The Pharisee cannot see through the lenses of his religion because he does not live in the stream. For sure, he prays. He is a professional prayer and no doubt an expert in making a show of it.  “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets”, says Jesus (Luke 20.46). Pharisees were required to pray three times a day with the formula, “Thank you God that I am a Jew and not a Gentile, that I am free and not a slave, that I am a man and not a woman.” If such formulae constitute one’s prayer life, then that can surely be really no prayer life at all!

Jesus looked at the woman at his feet with the eyes of God. Jesus’ consciousness was divine because he lived in its stream through contemplative prayer. St Paul, though a Pharisee, learned to do this. The earliest Christians did it. Contemplative prayer is simple and it is by God’s grace available to all, that we might look, and so help others to look, at the world with God’s eyes, with God’s heart.

“…we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ …I died to the law, so that I might live to God” (St Paul, Galatians 2.15-20)

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Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity

                                                                                                 (from the Trinity Sunday Collect)

 

Thus says the wisdom of God: Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?

(Proverbs 8.1)

חָכְמה (hochmah): noun, feminine, wisdom

THIS morning’s collect, as is often the case it seems to me, retains a distinctly masculine, even patriarchal voice. Its linguistic flow is toward a God of power and majesty and it invokes confession of a singular “true faith” in that Almighty and eternal, monarchical God. There is, I think, a helpful edge to this language, in as much as it lends a certain humility to the position from which the human being, by God’s grace, prays to, through and into the transcendent, imminent and present Divine. But it is also the lexemic remnant of the promoted and carefully refined religions of successive patriarchal and fundamentally political empires, who have put such language to use in the bolstering of their channels of control and in affecting the suppression of alternative philosophy or culture. At worst, such language still has the power to divert the spiritual flow of the religious, from its natural source and destination in the Divine, to the mechanics of state religion. Such extreme aside, it can still leave the praying Christian with an overly legalistic and domineering God-image to relate prayer to, in which the Christ and Holy Spirit parts of Holy Trinity are subsumed into a hierarchically supreme Father. Somewhere along the historical line, the feminine Divine has, by deliberation or otherwise, been all but lost. Its suppression leaves many worshipers with a chronically depleted understanding of the God to whom their worship relates.

If Trinity Sunday is of any use, it is that it reminds us that God is not hierarchy. Nor is God distant or separated from us. God is Community. She/he calls us into his/her divine, cosmic and eternal dance.

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       So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11)

…suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, like fire, appeared among them… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…   (Acts 2)

…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you…      

“MANY think differently, feel differently, they seek God or meet God in different ways. In this crowd, in this range of religions, there is only one certainty we have for all: We are all children of God,” said Pope Francis in January this year. Then he asked us to pray, “That sincere dialogue among men and women of different faiths may produce the fruits of peace and justice.” Finally, Pope Francis assured us, “I trust in your prayers.”

For me these are words of hope, born of love, prayerful words that can come when a person is open to and moved by the Holy Spirit. Precious few such words, it seems to me, can be found on the lips of the hierarchically most influential Christians through the sweep of Anno Domini history. Yet there has been much backlash among the many denominations in response to the Pope’s video message (you can watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6FfTxwTX34 ). I find this very sad but I am not surprised. It is the usual reaction for people who live according to fear as opposed to living by and through love.

Pentecost is about being empowered by the Holy Spirit to go the other way, to walk the road less travelled, live according to the Way, the Truth and the Life. The people of Babel described in Genesis 11 lived by fear. They wanted to be in control. They wanted to build a tower to heaven, control destiny. They wanted one language, so that all communication could be monitored, comprehended literally, quantified, nothing left to conjecture or shot through with poetic ambiguity. Much religion is squeezed between similar narrow lines. Why? Because it lends the fearful an illusion of stability and aids the cause of those who would control them. Such condition is confounded in God. God scatters such conceit.

But have faith, says Jesus. Don’t be afraid. I will send you the Paraclete, even the Spirit of Truth. She who will receive this Spirit, poured out for all, accepted by the brave, will no longer live or behave according to fear. She will love and so bring light into the world.

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As you, Abba, are in me and I am in you, may (the believers/spiritual ones) also be in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one…  

                                                            (John 17.21-23)

Push a million “separate selves” together in a crowd, and they cancel each other right out, because everyone else is too far away.

BE yourself. Stand out from the crowd. Be the best. These are the chants of Western-style societies in the twenty first century. Since the rise of capitalism, ‘right’ living has been measured in terms of social climbing, quantifiable career enhancement, building of personal wealth (often with charitable add-ons of course) and championship of the strong. The wisdom of the elder is all but eradicated; even prime ministers and presidents are, more often than not, first half of lifers, privileged, groomed for office and completely devoid of any meaningful life experience. Nominal religious belief or, ideally, none are preferred to someone of faith when it comes to leadership selection.

This kind of thinking has led to indigenous peoples all over the world being either made extinct or confined to government designated reservations, except for the ones who have been willing and able to be blandly assimilated into the ‘mainstream’ mind set. The prevailing societies of this time have been built on genocide, slavery and the exploitation of plant, mineral and animal resources wherever they have been ‘discovered’.

Such way of being is opposite to the prayer of Jesus that the Fourth Gospel has recorded and which we will hear read in our churches this first Sunday after Ascension Day. Jesus knows the oneness of the stars and all space with the earth and her creatures, seas, rocks and plants. Jesus knows the harmonies of a cosmic dance between creator and created, between God and human, parent and child, through the one holy breath pervading all that lives. Jesus embodies the harmonies, at once dancing on the earth, Christ fully human, while traveling like light into every moment of space and time, timeless and timed, Christ fully divine. It is a dance and a traveling into which the Cosmic Christ calls us, each one of us and all of ‘them’ too. You see, in Christ, there is no dancer nor traveler.

There is

simply

the dance and the travel.

Tangnefedd i chi, blentyn Duw.

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When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’

                                                                      (John 5.6)

WELL do you?

Filled by cosmic energy, blocked by reality

Are you ready to give up expecting others to carry you to the water or blaming them if they don’t? Are you ready to give up your religious nostalgia about Jesus, man of history, and trust the call of the Cosmic Christ, who always was and is and who forever will be?

There is security to be found in being helpless, in expecting the worst, stay embedded in the drama of disastrous circumstance. Are you ready to forego the attention of the concerned, let go the known state, the accepted map of self-prescribed limitation?

Well are you? Do you really want to be made well? Because you know, don’t you, that if you take up that mat and walk, there will be consequences. Someone’s going to point out to you that it’s not legal to walk alone, or to be strong or to think for yourself. You can be sure of that. It’s far safer to stay on your back than to be pulling down any temple. And those new legs you walk on, you’ll have to get used to them too.

Oh and then there’s the voice. Not that loud, shouty one that commentates on everything you see or keeps insisting that you’re better or worse than him or her, or who blames God or fate or that woman or those people for all the mishaps and sadnesses in your world or in that one out there. No, I’m talking about the small voice, the gentle one, that seems to live in your heart, the one the shouty voice tries so hard to make you ignore. Oh friend, it is dangerous to listen to the quiet voice. There is no end to the adventures she will cause you to travel. This is the voice of Wisdom, the Christ voice, the timeless, universal One. You will learn from this One that you are not alone, not separated, not delineated but free and one with One and All.

Do you really want to be made well? Well do you?

What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself… Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable.  (Alan Watts – philosopher)

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Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.’  (Genesis 22.16,17)

DONE what?

Detail of  The Sacrifice of Isaac, Donatello c. 1418

Abraham has not lost his son but he was prepared to sacrifice the one thing he loved most on this earth, for his faith. Even though God seemed to be demanding that Abraham do something that must have appalled him, filled him with dread and fear, and with the deepest sadness, Abraham kept faith, trusting that God’s will and judgement transcend his own. This a spiritual warrior traveling through “the Dark Night of the Soul” to spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual master, Eckhart Stolle, describes what happens in psychological terms to people who experience this: After a collapse of a perceived meaning in life, which is programmed and false, they “…awaken into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind.  A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer.  It’s a kind of re-birth… The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die.  What dies is the egoic sense of self.  Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died there – only an illusory identity.” This makes way, says Eckhart, for the birth of the true self. The fear driven protectionism of immature life falls away, allowing the enlightened spiritual warrior to truly look outside the self, the tribe, the blood family, the accepted situation, and love unconditionally, in the image of God’s love. This is the agape love Jesus speaks of in his New Commandment. The spiritual warrior is thus made able to lead his/her people. The story of Abraham is about the spiritual journey of a true leader, as is the story of Peter in today’s reading from Acts. It is a journey which, in the twists and turns of all our lives, God holds open to each one of us. That we might walk, God has given us his only son.

Donatello sculpture, housed in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo, Florence.

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So the (religious ones and the political ones) gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’                                     (John 10.24)

TELL you what exactly?

That, yes, I am the Messiah? But what does that mean? You have drawn your religious and political lines in the sand and called what’s between those lines Messiah. Am I an invincible and righteous warrior king, who’s going to lead you to victory against the Romans and then set you on the thrones of the New Jerusalem to administer law and justice over all the world, in the name of Jahweh, your God? Is this what you want me to say? You’d understand that, wouldn’t you? But that doesn’t make it true.

Or shall I tell you, No, I am not the One whom all Scripture has been pointing to and leading to, that I am not the fulfillment of all prophecy, that I have not come to set all creation, all beings free? Would that leave you feeling safe or wise or justified? Would you be satisfied then?

Tell us plainly, huh? And you are the ones your people think they should turn to for spiritual things! I have told you, but you don’t believe.

Alright, I’ll speak plainly. The tao that is called the tao is not the tao. The unnamable is the eternally real…

Oh. I see you are not ready for that. Look, I am the shepherd. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

Come on. Stop screeching what you don’t understand. Open your ears. Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church…

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