Amen, Insha Allah – the only way to lasting Peace

 ‘Peace be with you …..’ (John 20:21)

Pic: Monastère de Tibhirine vue des champs

John 20:19-31 (Year A: Second Sunday of Easter 23^rd April 2017)

The scene is set by John.  The disciples are afraid; very afraid. They might have been in a 21^st century church in Cairo on edge watching the loner in the middle of the pews with a slightly bulky jacket …. The mind imagines and freezes in terror. You get the picture.

Fear is terribly raw and terribly ‘in the gut’.

Then something out of the ordinary happens. Jesus walks among them again. As he says every time he shows up after the resurrection and even today: ‘Peace be with you’. Perhaps it was not just the words ‘peace be with you’ that impacted on the disciples but the way that this was said. It was like the way that Jesus uttered ‘Mary’ in the garden where Mary Magdalene was searching for her lost One and did not recognise, at first, who this mysterious ‘stranger’ right in front of her was. There was something powerfully peace-giving in the way Jesus spoke and acted throughout his years of ministry that when the disciples heard this same voice they recognised it completely. In his ministry Jesus said (Matthew 7:16):

‘You will know them by their fruits’

What fruits do I, you, he, she, we bring today?  Are we, as it says in that famous prayer of St Francis, ‘instruments of peace’?

Peace means the absence of violence and disharmony. But, more than this, it is life, wholeness and joy. It is brought to us ‘that that through believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). Christ is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) speaks us today through the words of the psalmist:

When cares increase in my heart your consolation calms my soul (Psalm 93(94):19)

There are many, many other references to peace throughout the Bible and the Gospel of John is no exception. The peace that Jesus brings is no ordinary peace for he said (John 14:27):

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

The strong command not to be afraid is also strewn right across the Bible.  It is not easy to be at peace or without fear in moments of great danger. In possibly one of the best and most moving films ever made, Des Hommes et des Dieux, one can feel the fear and the peace side by side as events play out towards the final dénouement facing the brave Cistercian monks in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria in early 1996.  Dom Christian Christian de Chergé OCSO concluded his last testament prior to the capture and execution of this small band of modern witnesses to peace as follows:

If the day comes, and it could be today, that I am a victim of the terrorism……And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank-you, this "A-Dieu", whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha Allah!

Insha Allah. God willing. Mary, the mother of Jesus would have used very similar words and sounds in Aramaic in her response to God’s call at the annunciation.

And when our time comes to pass from this world may we find peace in the Prince of Peace who alone can fully console our souls:

Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace – in peace because they trust in you. (Isaiah 26:3)

And though we may not be able to see or touch or reason in the way our ancestors in faith did we are no less vulnerable and called to the challenge of faith in a world crying out for the risen life of Jesus.  Grounded in the here and anchored to the present moment we, too, can taste this risen life to such an extent that we cry out as Thomas did, ‘My Lord and my God’. There we will find that peace, that joy and that freedom that stands out in all of the gospel stories of the resurrection.

Leaving empty tombs behind

 ‘the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy …..’ (Matthew 28:8)

Matthew 28:1-10 (Year A: Easter Sunday 16^rd April 2017)

It was early in the morning: cold and dark.  Something extraordinary awaited the two Mary’s. We need not bother or speculate too much about the details.  There was no CCTV to record exactly what happened or how. The accounts from the four gospels differ in detail but agree on the main facts.  What we know from the testimony of the disciples that first day of the week and later is that Jesus had risen from the dead and his body was no longer in the tomb where it had laid.

Easter presents a huge challenge to people today – at least those who consider these matters carefully and thoughtfully.  Modern-day rational and empirical ways of thinking and dealing with the world finds the Easter story puzzling. Even well regarded theologians and clerics find it hard to imagine a type of ‘bodily’ resurrection. Refuge is taken in the ‘spiritual’ message of Easter implying new life and hope relevant to people today and not in the ‘actually happened’ event of an empty tomb, clothes neatly tied together (hint for those in a hurry in the morning!) and a person who turns up like a ghost and yet can eat fish and bread.  All very fantastical and mythological, some will argue or suggest in the act of theological dodging.

Dismissing the Easter story as fanciful post-death imagination and handed-on story telling by the early Jesus movement is easy but based, ironically, on a particular mind-Set that deals in a limited set of empirical possibilities. 

That Jesus rose form the dead in all the meaning that this entails is a foundational principle of Christian faith and living.  Writing in a letter to the church in Corinth some decades after the death of Jesus, St Paul had the following very relevant things to say about Jesus rising from the dead:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.    More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.    For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.    And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.    Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.   If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.(1 Cor 15:12-19)

The passage speaks for itself and does need commentary here.

And a very different type of story..

In short, if the resurrection is just a ‘story’ on the same level as a fairy-tale or a piece of fiction then we might hang up our boots, spend some time on a beach somewhere on Sunday mornings and find a life (not that Christians shouldn’t do such things as well on Sunday afternoons!).  Something happened on Easter Sunday that was so shocking, so profound and so capturing that the early eyewitnesses and disciples could only tell it the way they saw, heard and experienced it. Thus, Paul tells the brethren at Corinth:

 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,  and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.  After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.(1 Cor. 15:3-8).

A number of possible interpretations are on offer..

A number of possible understandings are possible including the following three (at least):

Uncritical realism – typified by a literalist, maximum reading of the resurrection narratives.  Some adherents of this approach insist on an objective approach that demands intellectual assent backed up – in case of any doubt – with historical ‘facts’.  Scripture is cited as in a law court and certainty with regard to ‘what really happened’ is part of the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’.  Moreover, great stress is placed on the physicality of the resurrection – not just spiritual rising but a resurrection of the ‘flesh’

Scepticism – typified by some strands of radical theology that sees in these narratives little or nothing more than the early Jesus movement trying to make sense of the experience of defeat, exclusion and new life in the immediate aftermath of the life and ministry of Jesus.  The notion of someone ‘coming back to life’ after death is excluded as impossible. Instead, the focus is on the meaning of resurrection as a story that inspires the followers of Jesus.

Critical realism – falls somewhere between the above two ‘extremes’.  Critical realism does not shy from the highly improbable ‘historicity’ of many of the details in the resurrection stories. However, it does not exclude the ‘realism’ of rising to new life which entails accepting the idea that ‘there are no bones around because the one who died is now risen’. This sounds like physical resuscitation. However, at this point the critical realist accepts that something extraordinary – supernatural – happened in the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus.  These extraordinary happenings were witnessed by many people. Something ‘real’, ‘objective’ and ‘historical’ happened and that something ignited a revolution in the minds and spirits of the first disciples of Jesus.  Exactly, what happened and how it happened remains difficult to access and explain – especially at a distance of 2,000 years and the intervening world-view sea changes.  Put another way, we are not sure what a CCTV outside the tomb, at the time, would have picked up.  No Gospel account actually describes what happened during the key moment or moments.

The core issues

Adhering to both an objective and subjective view of the resurrection leaves the open the following points of doctrine and belief that are mutually compatible and reinforcing:

-          The impossibility of putting limits to the sovereignty of God and the world of rational, direct experience and observation.

-          The weight of tradition and wisdom of Christians down the ages who received the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

• The importance of rising from death in the challenge to change an unjust world
• The importance of hope in life beyond this present sometimes beautiful, if very incomplete, world and with that the promise of fellowship here and now remaining and transforming into eternity.

In the words of the Nicene Creed, we say I or we ‘look forward to’ or ‘hope’ or ‘expect’ (expecto).  Not that I (or you) have seen, touched, proved, observed or established scientifically – rather I have entrusted my limited understanding to a higher order of truth. The point is that our faith may be two millennia old but our thinking doesn’t have to be.

To put it another way, I (note personal pronoun) think that when the authors of the Gospel report an empty tomb there really was a tomb and it was empty not because the body was stolen or imagined away but because something very extraordinary happened that goes beyond human explaining or witness. Even if many of the details of the narrative remain of unknown historical fact, they point to a deeper historical witness – that of individuals and communities resurrected, risen and transformed that the world may believe that Jesus is truly risen.

More to the point – writing in Eastertide 2017 – such experience has profound significance.  What is even more important than the historical question of the resurrection (important in its own right) is the significance of that event today. Hence, it is more important to say (while still passing the lie detector!) that We believe that Christ is Risen than merely ‘Christ rose from the dead’.  Christ is truly risen in me, you, us – if our lives shout out new life, freedom for the captive and bread for the hungry. Otherwise, intellectual assent to an orthodox formula is pretty dead – in a tomb somewhere.

We may leave behind our empty tombs of dead religion, dead relationships and dead ideologies and embracing the one true living and risen Lord in my life, your life, our lives.

And so what for us now?

For people held in captivity and who have been suddenly released, freedom can be a daunting prospect. Adaptation takes time. Reconditioning may be necessary. This may be captured in a few lines of a poem by Gerald McFlynn.

On the morning of the third day I went to the tomb and rolled back the stone. Out came the poor and destitute, the prisoners, Travellers..the old and forgotten… blinking in the sunlight all ready for a new birth.

Therein lies a key to a living resurrection in today’s world.

Not what or how but so what.

But Jesus remained silent

 ‘But Jesus was silent…..’ (Matthew 26:63)

                                                        picture source

Matthew 26:57-68: 7:11-14 (Year A: Good Friday 14^rd April 2017)

First, Jesus was brought before Caiaphas the High Priest, ‘in whose house the scribes and the elders had gathered’. He was put through a gruelling and hostile questioning from the High Priest. Here was a self-styled ‘High Priest’ talking to the real ‘High Priest’.  Here was a case in which God was being put on trial for crimes against religion. Here was the mob fuelled up as if they had been absorbing their ‘news’ from 1^st century social media. Here were many false witnesses ready to testify against Jesus on whatever pretext or manipulation of the truth.

‘But Jesus was silent’

He remained silent on the particular question posed by the High Priest, Caiaphas.  Caiaphas along with the scribes and elders gathered in that place knew their theology thoroughly. Their theology was a fierce one –

• logical (so to speak);
• literal (when it suited them); and
• ruthless (as long as it applied to others).

Jesus answered a different question but remained silent on the specific one posed by Caiaphas.  Then, Jesus was brought before the Governor.  The Governor represented the Roman Imperium. He would have been anxious to avoid disturbances in Jerusalem and beyond. At the same time, he would have been anxious not to fall foul of his Emperor or other seniors in Rome and across the Empire. He was confronted with what seemed like a silly argument about local Jewish theology and claims to authority.  The best approach in these situations, according to the manual of keeping the natives pacified and ruthlessly stamping out any whiff of challenges to Roman authority, is to make a very public and clear demonstration of the consequences of such perceived impudence. The plan, as we know, backfired. Jesus and his community after his death and resurrection would turn the world upside down and inside out.  But how were Caiaphas and Pilate to know? At least Pilate become world famous ever afterwards since Christians recite the Creed every Sunday:

….He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate ….

Pilate puts a key question to Jesus: ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’. Jesus avoids the question by saying ‘You say so’ (or simply ‘I am not going to answer your question’).  Accusations followed, again, from the ‘chief priests and elders’.   Accusation after accusation followed but Jesus remained silent and gave no response ‘even to a single charge’. Matthew tells us that the Governor ‘was greatly amazed’. He was probably amazed and furious.  The episode from Matthew’s Passion narrative reveals a mind game and at the same time a power game.  The Governor had all the power to kill, forgive, release, detain or torture Jesus as he wished.  He played on this power to evade responsibility for Jesus’s death by appearing to put the ‘chief priests and elders’ in charge of the situation.  He presented choices to them and they called for the release of prisoner Barrabas instead of Jesus.  A well crafted case had been prepared by the enemies of Jesus to convict, punish and kill him. Yet, here was the real power of Love standing in front of a bunch of power-hungry, religiously obsessed and insecure people from Governor to chief priest to elders to the fickle mob who followed the Tabloid Press of the 1^st century: ‘Let him be crucified!’.

If this was the fate of Jesus then we should recognise two things:

1. Our unacknowledged part in judging and convicting others even possibly in the name of Jesus or religion.
2. Our role as disciples and human beings in taking the brunt of the anger of others – justified or not.

When accusations fly:

Jesus remains silent.

When others seek to exclude us:

Jesus remains silent.

When others ignore us:

Jesus remains silent.

When others misinterpret what we say or do or not say or not do:

Jesus remains silent.

When others twist the evidence or the truth:

Jesus remains silent.

When others speak ill of us and put us down in front of others or behind our back:

Jesus remains silent.

When others seek to control, blame or undermine us:

Jesus remains silent.

But, silence is not necessarily an act of surrender. Silence does not have to mean complicity in the wrong-doing of others. In particular situations, silence is power. Silence is love. Silence is peace because the Prince of Peace who gave his life for us on this Good Friday walked our individual paths before us and still walks those paths as we gaze on the Silent One.

With the prophet Isaiah (50:7-9) we can take a quiet confidence and say:

The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

The lesson of Jesus for me today is:

• to be rooted in quiet confidence of the here and now;
• not give way to, or respond to, aggression from others;
• not to judge anyone;
• to remain at all times kind, positive, hopeful and forwarding looking.

We need to talk about Peter

‘And he went out and wept bitterly …..’ (Matthew 26:75)

                                         Basilica of Saint Apollinare

Matthew 26:14-27:66 (Year A: Palm Sunday Sunday 9^rd April 2017)

To experience betrayal is a gutting experience. This is all the more when the one who betrayed us was, perhaps, the closest and most loved of persons.  To experience betrayal as one who has perpetrated betrayal is also a gutting experience. This is all the more when the one who does the betraying does it to the closest and most loved of persons. 

Jesus was the one person who never betrayed anyone’s trust. 

The history of church is built on betrayal and redemption from betrayal. We might need to rid ourselves of any notions of a pure church apart from Christ or, indeed, a pure life based on certainty of our own merit and superiority. Put another way, church is a refuge for sinners and persons who once betrayed our Lord and have found refuge and healing in a shaky field hospital known as ‘church’. (In a postscript to this blog I underline the need for discretion when dealing with betrayal).

There is a lot to chew on in this extra long Sunday Gospel reading taken, this year, from Matthew.  For me, one episode stands out in particular in my reading of the text this year. It is the well known story of the betrayal of Jesus by the leading apostle, Peter. Peter was a reckless, passionate and unstable sort of person at times.  He was given into jumping into water (literally) and making rash promises (such as the declaration by Peter, ‘even though I must die with you, I will not deny you’ in Matthew 26:35).  Poor Peter; even his soft Galilean brogue gave him away that night when Jesus was on trial!

Here was the ideal disciple who would be remade and redeemed by Grace and Grace alone!  Not given to half measures, he had a fatal tendency to walk himself into trouble, over-promise and under-deliver. Worst still, at the most crucial of times when Jesus was arrested and put on trial with an inevitable outcome Peter runs away and when confronted denies any association with Jesus. Mind you, he was not the only disciple who ran away when they were last with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Only the women disciples courageously stood firm and stayed with Jesus throughout. The perils of openly confessing our Christian faith and witness are known in some parts of the globe where a Sunday gathering can be the occasion of a terrorist bomb.  If presented with such risks or even captured and tortured to deny Christ which one among us would stand firm?  We should be gentle on Peter.

Caught like a rabbit in the glare of the light, Peter denies, three times, the Lord Jesus. He fulfils what Jesus had predicted the night before (Matthew 26:34):

 ‘Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’

But, just as Peter denies Jesus three times he would go on to affirm him three times after the resurrection according to the Gospel of John (John 21:15-17):

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.

But that is not where it ended for Peter.  Jesus goes on to declare (John 21:18-19)

Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

Here is the man who betrayed Jesus multiple times. However, unlike Judas who despaired of God’s mercy, Peter turned and continued to recklessly, but not presumptively, throw himself into the merciful arms of God.  At the charcoal fire that night in the temple court he went out and wept bitterly. He was cut to the heart by his own betrayal. However, betrayal did not prevent him rising above this experience of utter failure and shame.  Peter would meet the Risen Lord again on the shore of a lake and once again beside a charcoal fire in the early morning. Peter had passed from the night of shame, terror and despair to the morning of a new beginning and commission that would take him, literally, to Rome.

This time Peter would find a supernatural strength which can find fertile ground in utter failure and utter incapacity. Grace alone wins but not without cooperation.  And the weakest of men found grace again. For his pains he would – according to tradition at least – be crucified upside down. Whether this is literally true is open to question. However, what is sure from various ancient sources is that Peter went to Rome where, along with other leading disciples, met martyrdom and death probably during the terror of Nero around the year 64.  The Church we know today was built on the rock of Peter’s faith, betrayal and redemption. It was sanctified by the blood of martyrs. So it was then and so it is today and so it shall be before all is brought to completion. Every step to what it is that we are, each, called to be starts with a simple step of recognition that we are nothing without God’s help and grace and mercy.

Postscript

It has been common place for some, including Christian ministers, to take advantage of Christian mercy and to continue betraying trust known or unknown. In any situation of life the ‘serial betrayer’ especially one who abuses trust at the expense of another needs to be mercifully cut off.  In some cases – such as betrayal of child safety it may very well be a case of ‘first strike and you are out’. 

In other cases such as in a marital situation it may be a case of a second or a third chance after betrayal comes to light. However, each case needs to be assessed by those directly involved guided by human compassion, common sense and prudence. Many the person or group of persons that were taken advantage of by the wily ways of the treacherous. We also need to be open to the possibility that we may have facilitated a situation of betrayal through lapse of trust in some way or another.

The best is yet to come

 ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him …..’ (John 11:16)

John 11:1-45 (Year A: Fifth Sunday of Lent Sunday 3^rd April 2017)

We choose a thousand things a day: to get up at a particular time and not another, to continue living and working where we are, to know and love another today and every day, to eat salad and not to eat salad, to sign up for social media or not to sign up, to cultivate positive frames of mind or not.  Some choices are hardly choices at all given our circumstances and commitments. Other choices are less given and, perhaps, we may be faced with major life-changing choices that cause us to pause and consider.  Then again, there are choices we freely make without hardly being aware of these as free choices.  We chose to take the stairs in the train station every morning instead of the escalator (or the opposite) and we never think about those sorts of very every-day and routine actions.

The raising of Lazarus (or Eleazar in Hebrew, the meaning of which is ‘God has helped’) is the final and seventh ‘Sign’ in the Gospel of John. This long Lenten Sunday reading from John is completely unique among the Gospels – as is much of the long discourses found in John as well as four of the seven signs of which this is one.  Because this story is unique to the fourth Gospel doesn’t mean that ‘it didn’t happen’.  We don’t know. What we do know is that the story is founded in the truth of the love and power of Jesus to raise people to new life not in some esoteric spiritual and metaphorical sense but, also, in a very concrete and ‘this worldly’ sense.  This can make for uncomfortable hearing and reading to the post-enlightenment rational mind. While it would be nonsensical to treat these long discourses found in John (or, indeed, all of the many sayings of Jesus scattered across all four canonical Gospels) as direct transcripts of what was said (for one thing, as far as know, Jesus did not speak in English let alone the authorised English found in the King James version of the Bible). Things can get lost in translation and the historical and lived experience of the communities in which stories about Jesus circulated in the first century shapes what is emphasised, retained or left behind.  We do well to remember that the evangelist closes his gospel (at least the copy version we have received) as follows (21:24-25):

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Not everything was written down and what was written down is not fully ‘history’ in the contemporary empirical sense. This is why we need to read the scriptures ‘on our knees’ so to speak. That is with an open and inquiring mind, a prayerful heart and a humble disposition respecting the wisdom and experience of our brother and sister disciples who we went before us. Meeting the Word of God in the scriptures is a living as well as a lived experience. The really important part of this encounter is not the analysis of what was said or is said but, rather, the transformation from death to life and from life to death.  We enter the tomb with Jesus and find new life where we least expect it.  In our daily Lenten dying we sow seeds of new Easter life.  The best is yet to come.  Believe it.

As one sent only for today

 ‘… We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day…..’ (John 9:4)

John 9:1-41 (Year A: Fourth Sunday of Lent Sunday 26^th March 2017)

What? A blind man presents himself to Jesus in the presence of his disciples.  Who sinned? Who was to blame?  You see (pardon the pun), the condition like poverty must have been someone’s fault. And to such a condition may be added plenty of other conditions known to modern humanity from divorce to expulsions and exclusions. Who was to blame? There must be someone to blame.  It didn’t just happen: it had a cause in the bad behaviour of someone or their parents.  If we are honest with ourselves we might even spot traces of such warped thinking in our own minds.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see is a well-known saying.   The worst type of spiritual blindness is that whereby we cannot see what others plainly see about us. Yet, what others see may be a distortion or, even, untrue.  Perception is a slippery surface. The ‘Johari Window’ conceptualised by Luft and Ingham is used to distinguish

1. What we know about ourselves and what others know
2. What we know about ourselves but others do not know
3. What others know about us but we do not know
4. What is unknown to us and others at the same time.

The last piece of the window is particularly significant. What are the intra-personal and inter-personal ‘unknown unknowns’?  Only God can show us if are open to such a discovery. The ‘unknown unknowns’ that nobody can see might include some or all of the following:

• A hidden capacity and talent that has remained submerged and unknown for decades
• An unknown illness or underlying condition
• An unknown fear, resistance or phobia about something
• A framework of thinking and assuming that is well formed but out of sync with the truth and goodness within us
• And much more besides.

Isn’t the human soul a mystery! And isn’t life a tragedy when the heights of scientific discovery, poetic skill and love were never uncovered, known, put to use or realised for the good of others?  How many lives have either been cut short or stultified over eons of times?

The story of the healing of a blind man speaks to us today.  ‘As long as it is day’ suggests two things: today is the only certainty we have and our opportunity to walk in the light any day including tomorrow is therefore time bound.  Sometimes, religious folks worry about the ‘day after today’ as in ‘life after death’. They might be advised to take Jesus’s example and attend to ‘life before death’ and live in the Light that Jesus offers us in the here and now. That way death will lead to life, blindness to sight and the ‘night will be as clear as the day’.

Each of us has a part to play in this world. We are sent for a purpose. And we are called back for a purpose. All is revealed in the fullness of time. In the meantime, we only have today – the light of today. Let us do the works God has given us to do today and leave this world a more beautiful, a more compassionate, a more just place.

Hard borders and high walls

 ‘… If you knew the gift of God …..’ (John 4:10)

John 4:5-42 (Year A: Third Sunday of Lent Sunday 19^th March 2017)

Typical of Lent as we draw closer to The Great Feast of Easter the tone and length of Sunday gospel reading become heavier and longer.   Enter John this Sunday.  Jesus crosses a ‘frictionless and seamless border’ as he left Judea and started back to Galilee going through Samaria. 

(It might be akin to someone travelling from Donegal to Dublin and passing through County Tyrone.  You have to do that to get to the south unless you go around a long way that hours to your journey.)

Now we are sitting near a well in a place called Sychar. It is a special place of religious significance. It is in the middle of the day. A traveller stops there for rest and for some of that precious cool water.  ‘Give me a drink’ says the traveller.  That was fairly direct and concise!  The conversation opens up. There is a play on words with deep, deep significance like the well of Jacob.  Jesus reveals himself as an unusual Jew. He is speaking in a public place to a woman and a Samaritan woman at that (‘They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman’ - v. 7).  Now, Samaritans were a somewhat different breed to the Jews but not that different as not to share Jacob as their common ancestor and the first five books of what we know as the Bible as authoritative scripture. In other words, they were very much outside the pale as far as Jews were concerned but they were frustratingly near enough in theology, expectation and ethnic roots. Does any of this even sound remotely familiar to an observer of religious-political-ethnic identity on the island of Ireland?

What do I thirst for?

When Jesus said to the Samaritan woman ‘Give me a drink’ he was about to prompt a discussion that lead from the ordinary and immediate thirst for water to a deeper, spiritual and lasting thirst for new life. On the latter point, it is us – the Samaritan woman and everyone no matter what tribe or creed or colour or orientation – who thirst. We thirst to be understood. We thirst to be set free of the images and representations that others may try to incarcerate us (or that we try to apply to ourselves If we only knew that it is that God is offering us beyond and underneath the conversations and actions of others including those who hurt us or mistreat us or who are different to us and do not belong to our ‘tribe’ (or ‘identity’ to use a more sociological term).

The conversation at the well leads to a realisation on the part of the Samaritan that she is speaking to someone extraordinary. She returns to her family and tribe and something has started. Other outsiders from this Samaritan tribe seek out this unusual Jew.  They invite him to stay in their town and Jesus ‘stayed there for two days’.  We have no further details but we may assume that, according to John, at least, there were some interesting conversations happening over 48 hours or so.  They knew, also, that they had encountered something wonderful and precious for ‘many more believed because of his word’ (v. 41). 

They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world. (v. 42). 

There are many strands to this story from the 4^th chapter of John but we should not miss that point that Jesus is, here, signalling a new departure from the religious culture he grew up in.  He is reaching out to other tribes and ‘religions’

Talking and hanging out with the ‘wrong’ people

Talking to people who are very different by reason of background, orientation, status or outlook in life says something about us. Not infrequently to be seen talking and associating with the wrong people – people who do not belong to ‘us’ or who come from the opposite or even enemy side in whatever stance, struggle or contestation ‘we’ are part of – attracts negative comment. Taken to its extreme, expulsion or marginalisation may be the price of ‘talking to the other side’ or sharing in their feasts. Hard borders and high walls run deep in our societies and in our hearts. The physical and visible borders and walls are not even as significant as those invisible ones that separate us from each other. This is where enmity and strife oirginate.

The unfortunate aspect of many human associations and belongings is that such belonging can be exclusive, excluding and sectarian. We are right; they are wrong. Justice and truth is on our side; wickedness, folly and betrayal is on the other.

Even today, many who claim to follow Jesus operate like as if they are part of a doctrinally pure, liturgically valid-only and error-excluding self-contained island. The One True Island with the drawbridges pulled up and everyone safe and cosy on the inside.  Sharing the Table of our Master’s Word let alone his Bread is seen as betrayal of first principles. One must ask what principles and whose principles?

Honesty with ourselves

For the week that is this we might reflect on the very first line of the ‘Confessions’ of the spiritual patron of our island:

I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to man

(see also 1 Timothy 1:15).

Perhaps a ruthlessly honest appraisal of where one is at is the best antidote to sectarianism, superiority, presumption and exclusion.

We would do well to aim to live by the Wesleyian maxim of ‘friends of all; enemies of none’ even if it is not possible to fulfil this at all times and with all peoples. It is worth the try.

Entering into a deep and respectful dialogue with the other is an exercise of compassion as much to ourselves as to the other. It liberates us from our preconceived notions and set assumptions. In this way, truth, beauty and goodness may have a chance of emerging in our encounters and conversations.