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

“Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever” (John 6.49-51)

Living bread is not just religious memorial or practice. These things can mark our journey to what is and can help us get there. But they are not themselves our destination. God is. Truth is. The Living Christ is. We travel toward our destination not by our own initiative but by Christ’s initiative. God’s initiative.

God is drawing us to Godself all the time, in so many ways, through our religion, yes, but also through nature, Scripture, art, science, through each other, through the events and moments in our lives, through our senses, our minds, our bodies, even the food we eat.

When we eat mindfully, we touch the source and the destination of our lives. “I am the living bread”, says Jesus. When we take in the Holy Eucharist mindfully, we are filled with the body and life of the living Christ, of Creation, of the Creator.

Life, truth, what is real is never just memory work or rigid observance of sacred ritual. Jesus is clear that such an end, if it is indeed an end in itself, leads only to death. The Israelites ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. Clinging too tightly to tradition can blind the clinger to the presence of the “living bread” here and now. It is here and now that we might eat and live.

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I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3)

Saul thought he knew stuff. In fact Saul thought he was an expert in all things theological, religious and political. His ego was well massaged too by the finest education at the feet of the great teacher Gamalial, high honours in both Jewish and Gentile culture and, as and if all that was never enough, he thought pretty highly of himself too.

But that all changed on the dusty wilderness road to Damascus. Because somehow, even through Saul’s mighty ego, truth broke in. Christ got inside his head and shot like Love right into the heart of the super-Pharisee. Saul became Paul and everything changed. Paul started blind and needed the church to help him see. But when his eyes were opened by the Damascan Christan, Ananias, he could already begin to perceive “the breadth and length and height and depth” of truth. But no longer did they constitute lines defining his notions and concepts about God. Now, as the shell of Paul’s first half of life false-self crumbled into the dust, he was beginning to understand that God surpasses any sense of knowing.

The love of Christ dances through every molecule in creation. It is the cosmic life force. But these too are words. And they can never be enough. No word, no symbol, no myth, no science will ever come close to naming or claiming the Divine Mystery.

By Grace

and by Faith

we may walk in God’s Light

and so

step gently

to love and learn to love.

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Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.  (Amos 7.10)

Today we will read again the story of John the Baptist’s beheading and no doubt, as we do, our imaginations will be infused with some obscene images from the current and ongoing ISIS attacks across the Middle East and elsewhere. Whatever else fuels ISIS, they are prostituting religion for political cause.

In today’s psalm, we will read that, in God, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed eachother”. Christianity believes this Jewish Scripture. So does Islam. Amos, the rough farmer prophet, believed it. Amaziah, respected religious leader, it seems did not. Or, if he did, he had long since sold out his faith to the political hierarchy in exchange for an easy life. No wonder he thought “the land” could not bear the words of truth. Similarly, Herod Antipas, though stirred by the truth he recognized deep down in the Baptist’s prophetic ministry, sought to sever his own conscience by executing the prophet.

ISIS, Antipas, Amaziah, purveyors of contemporary imperialism, be they Western capitalistists or otherwise, will seek to harness privitized religion when it suits purpose.

Scripture tells us this is always wrong. True religion is not privitized. True religion says the way of God is peace, shalom, tangnefedd. We must beat swords into ploughshares and learn war no more (Isaiah 2.4 ). True religion recognizes Amos and not Amaziah. It is non-violent but its non-violence is radical and it confronts the privatizer and the oppressor. In true religion, mercy, truth, righteousness and peace, by the grace of God, meet and kiss. True religion does not sell out. Ever.

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He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals… (Mk 6.8,9) 

Keep it simple. Don’t carry what you don’t need. I’m not sending you to convince anyone about any philosophy or convert anyone to any religion. I’m sending you so people may be healed of their dillusions, the things that cripple minds and bodies, that they may connect with what is true, with the object of their hiraeth, with what they already know within their being: God Is. God needs no defence. The kingdom of heaven has come near (Matthew and Luke’s version). The kingdom of God is closer than your own breath. Stop. Be still. Know God. The healing begins right here.

I give you authority over the demons of self-delusion, new-age babble, fake religion, psycho or politico mumbo… You cast them out in your humility.

Oh and don’t worry about the ones who reject you. There will be welcomers too. Stay with them. If you are rejected, it is not for you to try to work out why. Just shake it off, like the dust on your feet, and move on.

And don’t go treading over everyone with big ‘I am’ boots. Wear sandals. Take the low ground. You know the sea stays low. And because the sea stays low, all rivers empty into the sea.

Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.

Amen.

https://uncorff.bandcamp.com/

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use headphones or good speakers. let the didj untie the knots. tangnefedd – peace…

https://uncorff.bandcamp.com/track/deepest-meditation

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http://thedidjman.weebly.com/

click on the file symbols to hear the prayers

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This is my commandment,
that you love one another as I have loved you.
—John 15.12

Though you are determined not to deserve it,

I love you.

Though you still fight,

I love you,

about who’s the greatest in the kingdom of God,

I love you,

and who’s ego deserves most to sit on the right or on the left of

the One

who truly

Is,

I love you.

Though, even now, you just don’t get it,

Don’t even listen,

I love you,

and if you blame me every time it goes wrong,

I love you.

When you spit on me, hit me, even crucify me to a tree,

I will not fight back…

I love you.

I love you

and

I am waiting for you.

When you are ready to open your eyes and see outside your cage, that cage you locked yourself inside, threw away the key and convinced yourself it was not you who put you there but they or him or me…

Ephatha. Be opened.

But you can see through the bars, can’t you? And when you are ready you will look outside your cage and you will see…

others.

Yes there are others, and they are looking at you. Maybe they see you as other too.

So look again,

when you are

ready,

and then look back at yourself, in your cage, and see the other inside of you…

The other side

is the same side.

You and me

And Me in you.

And now. Can’t you see? The bars are gone. There is no cage. As I have poured myself out for you, when you refused to be worthy, now I send you.

And this is my commanment…
that you love one another

as I have loved you.

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Some of this is adapted from poetry by Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes and some phrases borrowed. Where this is obvious, I place them in block-quote format, though they are adapted. You can read Pastor Steve’s work here: http://unfoldinglight.net/

I AM left dumbfounded at my own ineptitude. I stand here stranded. Hardly able to breathe or shout or cry. Like a rack of shields, I have built my faith. Others have melded the strongest and finest metals in the furnace of my mother’s family of priests, stoked by a paternal Hugeunot charism. You were sent to die for me and for all, and all is as it should be. It was your plan, long ago when some others, long buried, some evil, some confused or both, mocked you and beat you and nailed you to a tree. And I stand before your altar and preside over Holy Mysteries, your religion goes on, and your people are fed, all is according to your plan.

But this was not your plan, was it?.It is not supposed to be like this. You give me a garden and it is Paradise. I am naked as I walk with my love through the grass and across the sand. I am free with birds and flowers and the wild things and sea. All I need is here, all I could ever want and, when comes the cool breeze of evening, you walk with us in shade of Yew and Oak and Eucalyptus, and together we play the branches and the children and my lover dance.

The betrayal, the running away, The Cross… IT’S NOT OK! This is no comfortable fairy tale. It “is finished” but… it… goes on…

And I stand here, dumbfounded, stranded in my ineptitude. I crucify you as if I hammer in the nails with my own hands. I betray you when I cover my body with the world’s and cling to its precepts of control, selective, elective wealth and self-determination. When I build my defences it is you I shut out. And my people bomb children because they are born hiding in the rubble of an Other politico-religious machine. I mock your Cross when I continue to consume while my sisters and brothers starve and die from their unnecessarily thirst-poisoned, dirtied water…

O Jesus, Universal One,this terrible cross is not yours, it’s mine. I built it. I impose it.
And yet you die on it, suffer my injustice, and… forgive.

Into all my guilt and pain and unworthiness, you climb like slipping into my skin. Into all thin loneliness, all rage and flame, into my worst ugliness, my most horrific evil,
you enter and make a home.
My violence, my failure, the little pieces of my soul you gather in your arms.
My whole self you fill, your wine in the chalice of me.
You enter that dark chasm between me and you
and become it, and there is no chasm, no darkness, just
you, and me, and my love, and All, in you.

And still I crucify you and I push you away and walk proud and me into the day. Yet again and yet again you come to me and whisper, and sometimes loudly speak, my name. Again and again, until finally, I die in your arms and… I…am…free.

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Caminante son tus huellas ….. The road you walk, traveller
El camino, y nada mas ….. It’s just your tracks, nothing more.
Caminante no hay camino ….. There is no road, traveller
Se hace camino al andar ….. The road is made by walking.

This is my own translation of part of a poem by Antonio Machada, which he wrote a hundred years ago or a little more. I contemplate these words now as I begin to feel my spirit slide through the veil of another Lent. It is time once more to enter the wilderness, to walk mindfully on the forest floor or across the sea-salt marsh and down, with the river, to the sea. I will read something from the Scriptures along my way and I will listen to the birds and watch the creatures as they make their own tracks through the Spring-misted day. I will leave behind me all thoughts of knowing and ask the Creating One to speak like the earth with my feet.

No two walks on this beautiful peninsular could ever be the same. And this one will not give up all her secrets now. But through the years she will speak tenderly and patiently to my slow, quick mind, revealing a little deeper, each time, the mysteries of life and life and life.

Just like the walking, the Scripture book I carry whispers afresh as I stop to glance. It matters not at all how many times I have read, each return is new. I know that in truth the first

bible-word could never fully speak until John’s vision of Christ’s Return was complete, and all in between, and the writing of final words, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.” I shall not abstract any of the words from this book but will simply wait while they make their journeys through me and through you and all God’s children. God is in me and in this earth, and all creation is one. I breathe not one breath by the work of my lungs alone. They are not my lungs. They belong to the cosmos and I shall return them one day, though I and the cosmos will dance on.

There is no road here.

No cars.

But there is freedom

in my steps

and the grass soaks my feet

with

holy water

from the sea.

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One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.

THERE is such a sense of freedom in this image of Jesus walking among the corn fields with his disciples. It is a sense of freedom which pervades everything Jesus says and does in the Gospels. It is the freedom that sees what truly is. The freedom that walks in the cool breeze of the evening, in the Garden, with God, naked and not ashamed.

This is the meaning of sabbath. As usual, the Gospels’ self-righteous ones have got it all wrong. Their religion has constructed rules, albeit with the desire to please God. But the self-righteous ones have forgotten that what pleases God is human beings humbly receiving God’s gifts of love, so that they too can simply live and love.

The self-righteous ones do sense that they can never deserve, in their own right, God’s grace. They could never be righteous enough. No one could. And so the self-righteous ones are afraid of God. They think they need to make God’s gifts into rules. If they observe the rules and don’t step out of line, then God will be gracious to them, forgiving, rewarding, or at least not condemning.

This is religious thinking. It is wrong thinking. It is the kind of thinking that makes an idol out of ritual and surface faith. It is a pretense. An act. It is the kind of thinking that blinds the heart to the presence of God, who is right here, with us, within us, within all creation, right now, always.

The Bridegroom, the Messiah, God, Jeshua – God Saves – is there in the cornfield. His disciples, the wedding guests, are enjoying the fresh corn, mindful no doubt of the freedom of sabbath. The religious ones, the upstanding ones, don’t even recognize him. They simply scoff because God does not respond in the expected way to their puerile distortions of Grace.

And God’s response? God tries again, with patience and love, to teach his slow-minded children, “The sabbath was given to you, not you to the sabbath”.

Shalom.

Tangnefedd.

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