Let’s see what’s coming up this Sunday, 2nd September 2018…

Song of Songs 2:8-13

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This is from one of the most delightfully sensuous texts in our sacred book – certainly apt for the first weekend of Spring in the lands south of the equator. Eugene Peterson cites the Song of Songs for the intimate language of prayer that points to the bond between YHWH and his chosen. No hard and fast doctrine here – just delight and anticipation in the presence of the Beloved – from one to the other and back.

Psalm 45

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Lest one think all sensuosity is locked up in the Song of Songs, Psalm 45 uses similar language filtered through a hymn of praise to king and daughter. One could be forgiven in losing oneself in the ambiguity. Is the praise directed to the king and his court, or maybe it’s God and God’s chosen ones? In the minds of the ancients, the two were often indistinguishable. The king was meant to represent all the aspirations and ethos of the nation Israel who, in their most aware moments, deeply knew that everything they were and had was as a result of being the apple of YHWH’s eye.

James 1:17-27

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Verse 27 is the well-known climax of this text, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” This is the outcome of the kind of relationship with the Divine that is spelt out in the earlier Hebrew texts. This text references the good gifts from “the Father of lights” and the reciprocal stance that is the natural result of receiving them – a benevolent stance towards one another, reflecting the love received from the Creator. The task of devotion is to lay aside all that does not express this loving relationship.

Mark 7:1-23

And here is the shadow of all the life, love, goodness and light in the preceding texts. Jesus, in whom all this is embodied, is opposed by the very guardians of this tradition. The problem is they have built so many walls around these precepts that they are no longer recognisable. The harshest words of Jesus are reserved for those who are so dedicated to enforcing the keeping of invented rules and regulations that the essence of receiving the gracious invitation to the fullness of life has become inaccessible.

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I’m missing engagement with the Revised Common Lectionary. I’ve lived and breathed it the 47 years I was in formal pastoral ministry. So here’s a quick glimpse at what’s coming up this Sunday.

1 Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11), 22-30, 41-43

A high moment in Israel’s story. Under Solomon’s reign, the first Jerusalem Temple is completed. Solomon’s prayer of dedication eclipses nationalism through a particular petition that the foreigner may find inclusion here – a particularly poignant point as news comes through that Australia’s Home Affairs Minister, the overseer and architect of our notoriously cruel and inhumane “border protection” regime, has resigned.

Psalm 84

This is a hymn of praise often used in the dedication of buildings erected for public worship and draws on the elation of those pilgrims who have ascended the Temple Mount of Jerusalem and entered its courts with praise and thanksgiving. The content of the text, however, draws attention away from bricks and mortar and focuses squarely on the affirmation of being orientated to God’s presence wherever we are.

Ephesians 6:10-20

“Put on the whole armour of God…” I recall the huge Sunday School anniversaries where we children, arrayed on Meccano-like tiers, watched a presenter dress a lifesize cut-out of a Roman soldier with helmet, breastplate, sword, shield and sandals. I think we learned more about ancient battlefield dress than what the metaphors represented – an ever-present alertness and preparedness to give account for the new way of being human together through Christ’s transforming intervention.

John 6:56-69

And so closes the lengthy “I am the Bread of Life” discourse. Jesus has given his hardest and most central teaching, often aligned with the mystery of the Eucharist. We are nourished by consuming Jesus as the Christ totally into our being – symbolised by “eating his flesh.” Not cannibalism, but a total merging of our conscious and unconscious entity with that entity that is Jesus in a way that he actually consumes us through our consent. A hard teaching indeed and many followers leave Jesus at this point. Jesus asks his close circle if they will also leave because of this teaching. Peter replies with the well-known response: ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

Yesterday I listened to a Roman Catholic priest address an ecumenical but predominantly Roman Catholic gathering on Baptism and Meditation. In illustrating the practice of meditation (properly “contemplation”) as an act of creating hospitable space for us to become aware of God’s constant hospitality towards us, he described how, following his full observance of the exhausting yet rich rites of Holy Week, including Passion Friday and the Easter Vigil, he sought refuge from liturgy and theology by attending his local Church of Christ, where he could simply “be.” He knew the minister, yet the church was large enough for him to be lost anonymously in the Easter Sunday crowd (or so he believed). Nevertheless, he was overwhelmed by the hospitality offered him as an anonymous visitor. He said this is what it is like to live out of our baptism which has more to do with relationship than correct liturgy and theology!

He reflected on the Hebrew word qahal (translated by the LXX as ekklesia, or in English, “church”) referring to the “ragtag band of slaves escaped from Egypt (through the waters of the Red Sea = baptism) and the journey to the Promised Land.” I discovered that Hebrew commentary on this term is more nuanced, but the history of Christian theology, particularly the African-American emancipation story, reflects such an understanding. The connections become apparent. One of the marks of the qahal was its hospitality to the foreigner in its midst. If the discipline of regular wordless contemplation immerses us in the grace of the Holy One, how can we not be hospitable to the other? How can our worshipping communities not practice this same hospitality?

I felt confirmed in my conviction that the best way Jenny and I can respond to our vocation in this new stage of retirement is to continue to expand the stance of hospitality through whatever opportunities present themselves.