Final
reflection at Bellingen Uniting July 2013
On biblical diversity, women and men as God's image, Gay marriage and what really matters instead, not judging, and proper Christian fundamentalism.
A slightly polished up version of my spoken notes. Not perfect by any means but good enough.
Readings Colossians
2:6-19 and The
Lord’s prayer (either version)
Colossians 2:6 encourages us to continue to walk in Christ (often translated
“live in”). This travelling metaphor
isn’t something the Uniting Church made up.
Jesus- follow me. Paul talks of
faith as a marathon, Colossians - walk in Christ.
Paul was always leaving messages for congregations.
What message would I want to leave with you?
What final dot points?
One is that it’s exciting, empowering, and necessary to read the scriptures,
the biblical witnesses, seriously, not just devotionally and certainly not just
literalistically.
To have a hard look at Colossians, for example, and notice that a lot
of it doesn’t sound like Paul. For
example this next bit about the fullness of God dwelling in Christ.
In the letters which everyone does agree are written by Paul, there’s
none of this divine Jesus stuff.
Which is why most scholars think Colossians was written later on, by
someone else in Paul’s name, as Christian thinking continued to develop and
diversify. Faith is always on the move.
So we end up with the Synoptic gospels- Mark, then Matt and Luke (and
Paul) in which Jesus is Messiah and Lord, and John’s gospel and Colossians which
attributes greater divinity to him.
The diversity of opinion about who Jesus is (his nature), is
accompanied by diversity in opinion about what his life means. How it all works. As the lawyer put it to Jesus, “what must I
do to inherit eternal life?”
So we have Paul: Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins. This is magnified in Hebrews: Jesus the high
priest and ultimate, perfect once for all sacrifice. We have John: the need to believe in his
name. And the synoptics, Jesus puts it
quite differently.
The lawyer asked, “what must we do to be saved?” Jesus’ answer: Love God, self and neighbour. Do this and you shall live.
In the Lord’s prayer he says forgive others. “Forgive us our sins,” we should pray, “ as we forgive those who are indebted to
us.”
Mark, Matt and Luke all contain explicit expansions of that claim by
Jesus- being forgiven is caught up in forgiving.
So, salvation: was it all done for us as a sacrifice (as Paul argues)
or as a legal satisfaction in heavenly court (as Colossians says), or do we
have to participate (and Jesus argues in Mark, Matt and Luke). Is it about beliefs (John) or actions
(synoptics)?
My point isn’t to settle the argument, but to remind you that the
arguments are there, in scripture. Being
a disciple means joining in the argument, praying and discerning, not simply
memorising answers and trying to believe them.
Of course we do have to decide, and what we decide will shape what we
think the gospel is and what we are inviting people to, but we decide knowing
that there is a diversity of contrary opinions, or at least other emphases.
I don’t want to settle the argument, but I will say that for the most part I’ve tried to focus on Jesus’
understanding of his nature and mission, and our responsibilities, as far as we
can work that out, rather than Paul or Colossians or John.
It is strange that some churches listen far more to Paul than Jesus
when they try to work out who Jesus was and the point of his life.
“Your kingdom come” Jesus invited us to pray.
Not the kingdom of the world, of power and privilege and violence. But the kingdom of leaders being servants,
the first being last, of love of neighbour including and perhaps especially the
neighbour we’d happily see burned out of house and home.
As Colossians puts it, Jesus divested himself of the rulers and
authorities and made a public example of them.
Usually translated here as Jesus “disarmed” the rulers. But the word more often in scripture is translated
as divested. Separated himself from,
disassociated with.
UCA in NSW recently decided to divest itself from the fossil fuel
industry. To separate itself.
“If it’s wrong to wreck the earth, it’s wrong to profit from wrecking
the earth.”
We live in a world where we’re pretty enmeshed in dozens of systems we
don’t like and would change if we could, but maybe there are things God is
calling us, you, to divest ourselves from.
When our grandchildren or great grandchildren look back on this time in
history and ask us what we did about it, what will be the things they most want
to interrogate us about? What will be
most want to be able to say we divested from?
Resisted as people of faith?
Instead of just leaving that with you, I made myself think about it.
The first, from above, is obviously that I resisted various arrogant,
narrow, alienating and blatantly false attempts by some Christians to say that
their simplistic, selectively collected summary of the faith was the Faith. That the bits of the bible they likes was The Bible.
It should hardly be an issue anymore, but clearly we continue to
affirm, in so many ways, that women are less important and competent than
men. In the OT reading for today Hosea
is told by God to marry a whore and get her pregnant as a symbol of Israel’s
wanton ways.
That God would be willing to use a woman as an object in such a way,
and the constant comparing of Israel to a slut wouldn’t have batted an eyelid
back then, hopefully it would now. The
idea that women are stupider than men, found in the New Testament, because it
was Eve who was fooled and not Adam, hopefully wouldn’t pass our lips serious
in worship today.
But we do constantly give the idea that God is more like a bloke than a
woman in our singing, which is a big chunk of our worship, and our prayers and
so on.
It is impossible that this doesn’t have a negative effect on girls self
image. It gives a false teaching about
the God the Spirit, who is of course no more male than female.
God as father made sense in a world where fathers commanded allegiance
and loyalty. As did Lord. They are metaphors, no more.
The amount of angst caused by positing out the obvious, even as I heard
it resulting in some of you being interrogated around town as to whether the minister
has _really_ said God was a woman (which of course I didn’t) would be funny if
not so disturbing.
Did the minister _really_ say women are as much the image of God as
men. Well, yes he did.
Even worse than equating women and men appeared to be trying to
persuade the church that of all the issues facing us in the world today,
whether two men or two women marry is way down the list. Personally I’d go much further than that, and
affirm that whether a couple is treating each other in the way Jesus taught is
more important than their gender.
But for those who disagree on that, surely a church which wants to
defend families should be much more loudly heard on issues like providing
sanctuary to families fleeing war, challenging a world where 1% of families
control most of the world’s wealth, making other families starve. In a town where unemployment and poverty is
so high, government policy on welfare and tax breaks for the rich will have far
more impact on people’s well being than their sexuality. I’m reliably informed that one man in town
owns 70 houses! That is far more
important for the dynamics of this town than his sexual preference.
Our other reading for this week was the destruction of Soddom. In popular culture because of the men’s
homosexuality. In the story because of
their same sex rape of Abraham’s guests (putting aside the disregard Abraham
showed for his own daughters). But in
Ezekiel we read God’s judgment of Soddom:
“She (or course it’s she) had pride, more food then she needed, and prosperity,
but did not aid the poor and needy. They
were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them,
when I saw it.”
It follows that if God was going to judge Australia along the lines of
Soddom, if a decision to allow gay marriage even registered, it would be way
down the list behind being a proud nation; with plentiful food; and yet not
aiding the poor and needy.”
The church should be preoccupied with managing the earth’s resources in
such a way that families of the future can supply their needs, and I’d add the
families of the many other species we share this planet with. Gay marriage will have far less impact on
families and individuals than the latest measurement which shows we have
exceeded 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Our great grandchildren will be far angrier, will suffer far more, if
we fail to support groups like 350.org and beyond zero emissions, than if we
fail to stop gay marriage.
The author to Colossians finishes by reminding the congregation that
people will always tend to focus on the small stuff, and be quick to condemn
those who don’t agree with them.
Instead, stick to the fundamentals:
Walk in Christ, the head: the source of our movement. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and
strength. Love yourself. And likewise, love your neighbour.
Most especially the one you despise, at least in part because like the
loving Samaritan, they may be the one to show you the path to eternal life.
