Faith and relevance in the 21st century
Last Sunday I preached on the outrageous request of James and John in Mark 10:35-45. This is a passage that has enormous relevance for our society today as we are constantly told to strive to be number one. But does Jesus condemn this?
I was recently at a training day where several ‘stations’ were set up, much in the tradition of the stations of the cross in the Catholic Church. One of the stations had a video showing of this guy called Matt who goes around the world being filmed simply dancing. Of all the stations I went to that morning, and all the reflecting I did, this one had the most impact on me. Although, looking at Matt’s website, it seems as though he is just doing this because he loves to travel, for me the following video speaks of something deeper. Through his dancing exploits around the world, he is bringing people together and releasing a sense of joy.
There is something about joyful dance that makes the spirit come alive. King David danced for joy, and for millennia it has been an expression of exuberant pleasure. What this video reminded me of was the fact that whoever and wherever we are, from the sights and smells of Jerusalem to the nearby occupied West Bank, to the wartorn mountains of Afghanistan, to the shopping malls of western suburbia, we are one people, living on one planet. We are all children of God; as Bono put it, “Jesus, Jew Muhammad. It’s true – all sons of Abraham.” Enjoy.
As we count down to Copenhagen, we have recently been told here in Australia that climate change has slipped 
down a few rungs in terms of priorities for us. I find that quite frightening. Whilst it is understandable that people are still concerned about the global financial crisis and the recent rise in interest rates, we face an inevitable, much larger, financial crisis if we do not become serious about what Kevin Rudd has called the great moral challenge of our time.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in issues of justice and human actions, it is the world’s poor who will be overwhelmingly affected by the changes to the planet’s climate over the next 50 – 100 years. As my colleague, Brett Parris, says,
“They are least able to protect themselves from its effects and they are least able to recover from climatic disasters. They tend to live in the most vulnerable areas, such as low-lying land prone to flooding, or marginal agricultural land prone to drought. They are the most vulnerable to the spread of tropical diseases. They are more likely to have to leave their homes in search of water or to escape flooding. They are the most vulnerable to the effects of the conflicts likely to arise from international tensions over water, energy and displaced people. Climate change will exacerbate poverty and the solutions proposed to help mitigate and adapt to climate change will affect the trajectory of every country’s future development.”
Fortunately though, there are plenty of ordinary people like you and me who are taking serious action in their local communities and online, in actions like Blog Action Day, to deal with this great moral challenge. Join them today and ensure you can look your grandkids in the eye when they ask you what you did to combat the major threat to our planet in the early years of this century.
‘Is it me baby, or just a brilliant disguise?’ – Bruce Springsteen, Brilliant Disguise
This one is all about integrity. We can fool many people with the masks we wear, even ourselves if we take the delusion far enough. If we fool others, we may say that no one is going to know. But that is not true. You will know, and you have to live with that. Everywhere we go we have to take ourselves with us. Keith Green sang many years ago that you can run to the end of the highway and not find what you’re looking for. People in 12 Step programs call it a geographical. The Pretenders also sang ‘let me inside you, into your room. I hear it’s lined with the things you don’t show’. Beautiful words of acceptance, love and the invitation to come in and be friends.
Such is the offer of Jesus. To broken people like us he says take off your masks and come and be healed. Jesus’ harshest words were for the hypocrites of his day, those who wore the masks and made out that they were far more holy than they really were. But Jesus saw right through them. He didn’t have time for their games. He sees right through us and wants to cut straight through the rubbish to the deepest parts of our soul, those parts where we often put on a brilliant disguise to hide our true selves, lest people find out what we are really like and reject us.
Who do you project to the world? Is the you that you project the real you? If not, what do we have to hide? What is the fear that underlies our hiding? When Jesus said he came to give us life he meant what he said. Soren Kirkegaard spoke of the leap of faith that everyone must make. If we take that leap of faith we will find that Jesus is waiting with outstretched arms.
This is the second in my ‘Power of a lyric’ series of posts, where I take a line of a song that has influenced me in my life and expand on its meaning and relevance for today. This lyric is from the late Larry Norman’s The Great American Novel.
‘Do you really think the only way to bring about the peace is to sacrifice your children and kill all your enemies?’ – Larry Norman, The Great American Novel
Many people say that those who stand for peace are naïve; that the idea of not retaliating is to have your head in the sand and not in the real world. It is seen as hopelessly idealistic. These people need to get their head out of the clouds. As Brian McLaren says, “It is not a matter of naïve ignorance about the power of evil or of deluded romanticism about the good heart of the enemy; it is rather a loss of naivete about the power of violence to cure violence. It is a dose of realism about the futility of seeking security through ‘living by the sword’ (Matt 26:52)” (Everything Must Change, p. 189).
As Barack Obama this week discusses the reduction of the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, we are reminded that the ones who are really naïve are those who believe that war will bring about peace. History is littered with the carnage of what war has brought. Conflicts sometimes rage for hundreds of years. Just take the Middle East or Bosnia as a couple of examples. And in the last 100 years we have seen the Troubles in Northern Ireland. You could probably name other wars and conflicts that seemingly have no end.
Martin Luther King reminded the world that violence only begets violence and hate begets hate. Just this week, on 21 September, the world was reminded again of the United Nations International Day of Peace. As part of the commemoration of the day, my wife and I saw a movie called The Day After Peace. This movie is the story of Jeremy Gilley’s attempts at launching an international day where the guns of the world would be laid down for just a day, a day for which there would be a global ceasefire. It is an inspirational story, one with many setbacks as well as much inspiration. Check out the trailer below:
What struck me perhaps the most about Gilley’s attempts to get this movement off the ground was evidence of the enormity of what those who work for the kingdom are up against. You see, the day that the UN Secretary General was going to officially launch the International Day of Peace in New York was September 11, 2001. As the bell was about to be rung that morning signaling the launch of the Day of Peace, the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. The thought that occurs to me about this is that it seems that there was something else going on, that there is indeed a spiritual battle occurring among the principalities and powers. The day that the International Day of Peace was to be launched turned into the day that unleashed the so-called war on terror.
A revolution is indeed needed in this world, but it is a revolution of love, of a bringing in of a kingdom where its soldiers march on their knees in sacrificial care and service to the most marginalised and needy, following their master Jesus on the road to Calvary. The irony of the Gospel is that the way to life often seems like the way to death. The way of Jesus is indeed the way to death. For many that includes physical death, but for all it involves a death to self as we work out our faith with deeds of compassion, building for a kingdom in which we can imagine, as N.T. Wright has said, what it would be like if God were running the show.
Is it really true that, when people travel to what we call the developing world, such as much of Africa, they see God’s Spirit move in powerful and miraculous ways which we don’t often see in the affluent West?
We live in a time which is the most materialistic in the history of humanity. In our culture, intellect rules. If you’re smart you will go places; if your IQ is not up there you will most likely be consigned to life as a struggling labourer, constantly battling to make ends meet, and having to live out your days in the service of the born-to-rule elite, those clever people who were smart enough to be doctors and lawyers and are now living it up in a great big office. That’s the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) message we have drummed into us every day.
Last Thursday, 3 September, marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities that began World War 2. SBS showed a brilliant documentary outlining the series of events of that horrible day in 1939 when Great Britain declared war on Germany.
The documentary, called Outbreak, detailed events as they unfolded hour by hour. As the viewer was taken through the day and shown (colour) footage, you could imagine the sense of anxiety that people felt as their worst fears were being realised. You could almost feel it.
Many in the environmental movement refer to World War 2 when they talk about the need to be on a war footing in our fight against what our Australian Prime Minister has himself called the great moral challenge of our time. They refer to the fact that, in the early years of the war, defence spending accounted for 33% of total Government outlays, and this increased to 70% by 1942.
If we could respond to such an emergency with such speed 70 years ago, there is no reason why we cannot do it again. Such an impending disaster as climate change will deliver demands nothing less than a response the likes of which we have not seen since that terrible war.
The issue is though, do we see the urgency? On 3 September 1939 there was no denying the danger that Europe was facing. Climate change though is a much slower mover than war and so we in the West don’t see the urgency just yet. However, if you live in parts of Africa, where you are already seeing the effects of a changing climate, you will be filled with not only a sense of urgency but quite probably a strong sense of despair and anger as you realise you are not only powerless to make real change, but that you also see the nations who really can do something about it continuing along their merry way as if there was no problem. It really does seem like we in the west are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
As we remember the mood of fear and anxiety that prevailed on 3 September 1939, let’s also remember how quickly we were able to respond and, with that in mind, continue to work tirelessly to convince our leaders that the changes to our climate are our moral responsibility in these times. We owe it to our sisters and brothers around the world, we owe it to our children, and we owe it to the good Earth that God created.
Every man’s question is “am I good enough?”, “am I a man?”. During the civil rights movement in the 1950s and’60s in the US, some of the banners that people would carry during their marches proclaimed ‘I am a man!’ Why? What does publicly affirming your manliness have to do with civil rights? Well, quite a lot really. For years black men in the US had been called ‘boy’, which for them was yet another degrading term which depicted them as inferior to the white man.
The words of a song can stay with you for years. A simple line can have the most profound effect, not just on our emotions, but on our very psyche. Over the coming weeks and months I would like to share with you some lines of songs that have stayed with me and shaped me into the person I want to become. The first one is below:
‘Would you love me if you really knew me?’ – Sheila Walsh
The cry of every human heart. Every single one of us has a fear that, if someone were to really get to know us, warts and all, they would reject us. Deep down we have a conviction that we are unlovable as we are. And yet into that fear comes perfect love.
We spend our lives wearing a mask. The Pharisees in Jesus’ time were known for that, and Jesus had harsh words for them. His harshness wasn’t solely for the fact that they would put on a mask; it was because their mask was about putting on a show of being all holy and superior, while not lifting a finger to help the poor. That’s why Jesus called them hypocrites. The word ‘hypocrite’ is a Greek word which was used to describe someone in a theatre play who wore a mask and played the part of a certain character. A hypocrite was an actor. Aren’t we all like that to some extent?
Would you love me if you really knew me, if you really knew the thoughts that I have at times, the things I have done, the intents of my sinful heart? My deepest fear is that you would not, and so I play a role, shutting myself off from the rest of the world, and not allowing you to get to know me as I really am. C.S. Lewis expressed it eloquently, as usual:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
When Jesus said that we must die if we are to truly live, he meant what he said. Life wasn’t meant to be easy said a former Australian Prime Minister. We put ourselves out on a limb when we take the risk of letting people into our lives. Some will accept us and some will walk away. However, this brokenness is where freedom lies. When I dare to reveal my deepest self, it can feel like death. This though is where God steps in. God steps in and unveils the thoughts and intents of the heart, and when he sees them, his first words are “I do not condemn you”.
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