Morning run. Green grass,
ridge and furrow - the old land -
and my two new shoes.
Sermon: Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:1-13, Year C, 7th Sunday after Pentecost)
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a
young woman. Life had been difficult for her. Her first husband had gone and
she yearned for a new start. She wondered if life would provide it.
Now, the
woman’s brother had left home many years before and had moved to a distant
country where he worked among foreigners providing them with food. Knowing
this, and in search of her new start, the woman decided to risk everything. She
set out for the distant country and to join her brother. Many miles she
traveled and when finally, she reached that country she went and stayed with
her brother.
One day she went to her brother’s place of work and there she caught
the eye of one of the other workers, a foreigner. As time passed the two fell
in love and in time they were married. And in that distant land God blessed
them with children and what had begun as sadness ended with joy.
Does anyone recognize
that story comes from? When I first heard it it reminded me of several stories
in the Bible: I thought of Ruth the Moabitess traveling to distant Israel and
meeting Boaz; I thought of Rebecca living with her brother Laban in Aram and
one day meeting Abraham’s servant at a watering hole who invited her to travel
back with him to meet and marry Isaac.
But it’s not
their story: whose story is it Claudia? It’s your story isn’t it? Traveling
from Brazil to make a new start in life; meeting your future husband Alex in xxxx restaurant in xxxx where he was working with your brother. And today
we celebrate the second blessing of that relationship as we bring Charlie to
baptism.
I’ve told Claudia’s story that way because it introduces
the idea of overlapping narratives. I want to suggest that to become Christian is to choose to allow our stories to overlap with God’s
story, like bringing together the two lenses of a pair of binoculars to create a
single overlapping view. In Jesus we claim that the human and the divine lenses
overlap perfectly.
To become Christian is to allow the same thing to happen in
our lives. And we find that as God’s focus and ours come ever closer, ever more
overlapping, so our lives start to resemble Jesus’: his habits become ours; his
way of seeing and responding to the world becomes ours. We become Christian – a journey which starts a baptism and continues,
if we choose, for the rest of our lives.
In this
morning’s Gospel we hear about how Jesus gave us a prayer. It’s a condensed
form of Jesus’ views of and response to God. He gives it to us so that it
might become our view of God and our way of responding to God, so that it might
help in bringing the two lenses closer together. It’s a very short prayer and
I’m going to use it to sketch out what a Christian life might look like. We
begin with:
Our Father
Jesus refers
to God with the metaphor ‘father’ for the ancient world believed that the male
body provided the active ingredients for life and the female body merely
incubated it. With the advent of genetics we know that view is flawed. We
could, then, if we wanted, begin our prayer ‘our Mother’, or avoid gender
entirely: ‘our Creator’, ‘our Source’.
Whatever title
we use, the first of two things we learn is that Jesus views the source of the
Universe not as a random product of chance, but the creation of someone or
something that he can relate to in a loving way. To pray ‘our Father’ is to
start by remembering that life is meant to be a good gift and neither a random mistake nor a meaningless curse.
Second, we
learn that God is common to us all: our Father.
The prayer we make is not a private
one for with God there are no favourites. Civilizations in the past would
often talk about royalty as having a special relationship with God. Some Roman
Caesars called themselves the sons of God.
But Jesus’ prayer is democratic: all
of us are the beloved children of God, all of us together bear the imprint of
God’s image: rich and poor; titled and homeless; educated and illiterate; gay and
straight. Whatever divisions we think exist, all of them are over-ridden by a
shared relationship with God. Jesus teaches us not to forget this in the first
line of his prayer.
Hallowed be your name.
The second
line of Jesus’s prayer is about focus: may your
name God, your identity be kept holy: kept special. You not me.
I would like to think myself God –
I often behave as if I were. Ego can easily take over. But Jesus’ focus is on God
and so ours should be. Even though each of us does have remarkable and unique
gifts that we should boast about, that we should celebrate and encourage –
still, in the end, God is God, not
us. The position of divinity is taken and we need not apply.
This second line
reminds us that we can lose perspective if we try to control our lives and the
lives of others as if we were ultimately in charge. Our powers and our gifts,
beautiful and remarkable though they are, are limited. Jesus reminds us to be
human, no more and no less, and to make peace with our fragile, limited,
wonderful lives. In the end we are like a flower of the field. Only God is God.
Your kingdom come.
Again, the
emphasis on your is important. I remember
once I almost caused the former Conservative MP for East Reading to fall off
his seat. It was during an informal surgery and in conversation with him I
pointed out that as a Christian my
first loyalty was not to Britain – it was to God’s kingdom. I don’t think he’d heard
this before; I think he might even have thought it treasonous!
There are
many things to celebrate about Britishness – or whatever culture we come from
(even Brazil). But Jesus’ prayer reminds us to keep hold of a bigger vision.
We know from Jesus’ parables what Jesus thought God’s
kingdom looks like: it’s a topsy-turvy kingdom where social inequalities are
rectified; where the last become first; where those who feel lost and left
behind are found and treasured; where justice is given equally.
It’s a vision
of multinational corporations paying as much tax as the local corner shop; of kids
in comprehensive schools having as much of chance as kids in Eton of making it into Number 10; of rich
societies sharing wealth rather than putting walls around it; of a world in which
rubber dinghies are for playing in not for crossing oceans in search of a
better life.
And, of
course, to pray for this kind of kingdom to come is to live with discontent. And
it may well mean for us to choose to be part of its coming through campaigning.
Give us each day our daily bread.
From the
heights of kingdoms in the next sentence we come down to bread. And it may come
as a surprise that the word translated ‘daily’ doesn’t actually mean that.
The
best guess is that the word Jesus used originally meant something like ‘bread
for tomorrow’: ‘provide us with enough for tomorrow’ – just enough. We might recall
the story of the Hebrews having been freed from Egypt wandering through the
wilderness collected manna for the
following day, but no more… Jesus is asking us to imagine living like that.
To ask for our daily
bread is therefore a reminder against trying to live grandiose lives of
consumption – it is pray to remain humble. That humility is all the more
important as we know the consequences of our habits of consumption on the
environment.
And we can add to this what we are learning from positive
psychology: one of the most successful forms of treatment for depression and
anxiety is mindfulness. Mindfulness involves drawing our attention away from
the past or the future and focusing instead on the simple here and now: living
life now and valuing life now rather than
being caught up in anxiously trying
to control the future or re-write the past.
In teaching us to pray for our
daily bread Jesus asks us to focus on the now and its basic needs, to live
simply and richly with depth.
Forgive us our sins, for we
ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
There is
much to say here. I know that forgiveness is not easy. I have worked with
people who are in the midst of ongoing situations of violence or abuse in which
they have felt guilty for not forgiving, and I have had to warn them against
rushing too quickly to forgive.
In such cases to forgive without truth-telling
and without repentance on the part of the abuser might not be real forgiveness
but might lead to worse harm. True forgiveness involves the restoration of good
relationships not the covering over of bad ones, and it can rarely be rushed.
But if we leave those hard situations aside, to link
our own forgiveness with the forgiveness of others is simply to remember that
we live in community. I may think I am special but in fact I screw up just as
much as the next person, and so I must learn to grant others as much dignity
and respect as I would like to be granted.
It turns out that none of us is the
centre of the Universe. Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness keeps our egos in check
and, indeed, promises more than that: for to choose to cultivate forgiving and
asking for forgiveness can be hugely liberating. It can move seemingly
intractable situations on: it can bring new life. And finally:
Do not bring us to the
time of trial.
The
conventional translation has ‘lead us not into temptation’ which might give the
mistaken impression that we’re asking God not to deliberately place us in harm’s
way. Pope Francis is currently encouraging Catholics to revise their
translation to avoid such an in impression.
To pray ‘Keep us from the time of trial’ is simply to
ask ‘keep us safe’. It is, in the end, a prayer of letting go, of placing
ourselves into God’s hands. Because people who are not anxious about their
security, who learn to let go, are safer: for themselves and for others.
How should
we use the Lord’s Prayer? I suggested earlier that becoming Christian is like bringing the lenses of a pair of binoculars
together – allowing God’s life and ours to overlap. We might choose to use the
Lord’s Prayer in help this process. We might pray it daily or even several
times a day (perhaps setting a reminder on our phones); we might say it slowly
in our heads, thinking through the meaning of the words so that little by
little we might become more Christ-like:
Our Father
Good source of all Life
hallowed be your name
Help me not to lose sight of you
Your kingdom come
Your vision inspire me
Give us our daily bread
Help me to live simply
Forgive us our sins
Help me to live in community
Do not bring us to the time of trial
Help me, God, to let go.
Amen.
Surah 107 - Care
Have you seen someone who doesn't believe in judgement?
It's someone who turns his back on the orphan,
Who makes no effort to feed the needy.
Woe to those who don't take prayer seriously,
who put on a show,
but fail to care.
It's someone who turns his back on the orphan,
Who makes no effort to feed the needy.
Woe to those who don't take prayer seriously,
who put on a show,
but fail to care.
Commentary
Extensive rhyme and assonance throughout: -een/-eem endings (on judgement, orphan, needy and prayer), followed by -oon sounds for the final three lines (not seriously, show, care).
The surah appears to fall into two 3-verse parts following this rhyme scheme. The whole hangs together well linking depth of prayer with action.
Two views
This time now, looking
Back: life a tunnel receding,
Ever losing - Grace-fall.
Grace-fall - letting go
Into an open future.
Life now: this is Time.
Surah 108 - Everything
For sure, we have given you everything you could need.
So: pray to your Lord and give thanks.
Even your enemy has been dealt with!
Commentary
A little gem of encouragement. Rather than follow later commentators and concretize al-kauthar as a river in Paradise, I try to keep it simpler...
Each of the three verses ends with an '-r' sound. There is also a modicum of internal rhyme (give you / your enemy) and a repetition in first and third lines of a word often translated 'indeed'. The whole creates a certain sense of security.
Surah 109 - Faithless
Say this, "Hey, faithless!
Whatever it is you worship - I don't.
And you certainly don't worship what I do.
In fact, I will never worship what you do,
And you won't ever worship what I do.
You have your beliefs: I have mine."
Commentary
This is a surah of extremes: them-and-us.
The first two verses have an end-rhyme '-oon' (faithless / you worship) emphasising the link between unbelief and the worship of the others. The rest of the surah plays around with different tenses and cases of the verb 'worship' ('abd), which is used eight times and with some symmetry (I-you, you-me, I-you, you-me).
The word translated as faithless is often used as an insult to non-Muslims: Kafr.
Surah 110 - Help
When with God's help triumph comes
and you see people flocking to the faith,
sing your master's praises then and seek his forgiveness, for truly he is merciful.
Commentary
Nothing particularly striking about this surah. No obvious rhyme scheme. It reads like a prophecy before a battle, although a more eschatological reading might be possible.
Surah 111 - Old Noose
Damn the influence of Abu Lahab ('Father of Flames'), damn him!
May his fortune fail him and everything he has acquired!
He'll be burnt in a blaze of flames,
his wife the wood-bearer,
a rough old noose around her neck!
May his fortune fail him and everything he has acquired!
He'll be burnt in a blaze of flames,
his wife the wood-bearer,
a rough old noose around her neck!
Commentary
I take certain liberties with vocabulary. Technically the surah is called 'palm fibre', which I imagine a cheap rough material, and translate instead with the colloquial 'rough old...'.
Rhyme emphasizes 'b' sounds on all but the final verse (the words translated here: damn / acquired / flames / wood). The absence of rhyme in the final line adds bathos.
An obvious pun is made on Abu Lahab's name and the envisaged form of punishment.
Surah 104
Not all of the surahs are particularly poetic. Abu Lahab (111), a short tirade against a personal enemy, has very little by way of poetic style (my translation here). Nevertheless, some of the surahs are very highly sculpted. The following translation of surah 104 (al-Humaza - the Backbiter) attempts to mimic as closely as possible the Arabic rhyme-scheme and so takes liberties with the precise meaning of individual words. The rhythm is more difficult for me to notice in its current written form, especially with the vowels added, so I've not attempted to replicate that. In the original oral delivery I'd imagine that rhythmic patterns were far more marked. (More conventional trans. here and another by me here.)
In the name of God passionate, compassionate:
Woe to every bitcher and snitcher
hoarding his wealth, noticing any short-fall
thinking it has made him immortal!
No. He'll be thrown into destruction.
And what's it like, destruction?
A fire by God set burning,
over their hearts licking,
around them turning,
like pillars towering.
In the name of God passionate, compassionate:
Woe to every bitcher and snitcher
hoarding his wealth, noticing any short-fall
thinking it has made him immortal!
No. He'll be thrown into destruction.
And what's it like, destruction?
A fire by God set burning,
over their hearts licking,
around them turning,
like pillars towering.
Surah 112 - Unadulterated
Say this: "He alone is God,
God who endures forever.
He neither fathers nor was he fathered,
nor, indeed, is there anyone like him."
Commentary
This seems almost creed-like: an eternal, singular notion of the divine. There may be some anti-Trinitarian polemic, although just possibly the surah could be read as a rejection of a pagan pantheon. Different Arabic titles are given, including 'Unity'. I've chosen 'unmixed/pure' with the hint in English of a rejection of other divine relationships.
There is some end-rhyme: wahad / Samad (one / eternal).
Surah 113 - Daybreak
(Continuing a series in which an Anglican priest translates and comments on the Quran)
Say this: "I will look to the creator of the daybreak for my protection:
from the malevolence of creation,
from the malevolence of the darkness when it grows intense,
from the malevolence of women who make curses,
from the malevolence of the man who holds a grudge."
Commentary
I've aimed for a more expansive translation than other English versions adding pronouns, for example, changing some word-order and tenses for emphasis and paraphrasing a fair bit.
Rab (creator/ruler) is cognate with common words throughout the middle-east, including the Hebrew honorific rabbi and the Babylonian majordomo rabshakeh.
The word I have translated as malevolence (sharr) is repeated four times (possibly) in pairs: the final two evils, at least, reflect a gendered pair: female and male evil-doers (thus inclusive of all humans who seek to wound).
'Women who make curses' is my paraphrase of 'the female blowers on knots', a reference to some form of evil magic (are knots about causing us to be tied-up, i.e. for life not to flow easily...?). There is some nice onomatopoeia: 'blowers' is an-nafathat. The word 'protection' in verse 1 can be used in terms of warding off the evil eye.
There is a fair bit of end-rhyme: falaq / khalaq (v. 1 day-break / v. 2 he created) - notably both words emphasizing God's role in starting something; and ghuqad / hasad (v. 4 knots / v. 5 he envies); indeed the final word of the middle verse waqb arguably acts as a shift in the rhyme sequence by moving the -q- to the medial position.
Theologically, the surah replicates a problem concerning the origin of evil: v. 2 has 'the evil that [God] created', but in the cultural context of early monotheism (and without Augustine's more sophisticated discussion of evil as privation) this might mistakenly imply that God is the author of evil. Rather, I think the notion is that evil arises from a divine creation with free-will, and one prays to be delivered from this.
The surah is a prayer about how to deal with adversity from other people by seeking a more secure anchorage in the concept of a god who is the author of creation, in particular the one who breaks the night (the locus of evil) each day by bringing light. 'The Daybreak' is a fitting title. Christians will recognize the theme in 'Let there be light...' and in the Johannine Jesus referring to himself as 'the light of the world'. Of course, themes of darkness and evil abound in Christian (and other) writings.
In terms of human psychology here is an urge to re-frame the experience (or fear) of evil. Note that evil is not explicitly experienced but rather located in the (feared) intentions of others; the believer is to submit to trust in God rather than let his/her fears take over.
Say this: "I will look to the creator of the daybreak for my protection:
from the malevolence of creation,
from the malevolence of the darkness when it grows intense,
from the malevolence of women who make curses,
from the malevolence of the man who holds a grudge."
Commentary
I've aimed for a more expansive translation than other English versions adding pronouns, for example, changing some word-order and tenses for emphasis and paraphrasing a fair bit.
Rab (creator/ruler) is cognate with common words throughout the middle-east, including the Hebrew honorific rabbi and the Babylonian majordomo rabshakeh.
The word I have translated as malevolence (sharr) is repeated four times (possibly) in pairs: the final two evils, at least, reflect a gendered pair: female and male evil-doers (thus inclusive of all humans who seek to wound).
'Women who make curses' is my paraphrase of 'the female blowers on knots', a reference to some form of evil magic (are knots about causing us to be tied-up, i.e. for life not to flow easily...?). There is some nice onomatopoeia: 'blowers' is an-nafathat. The word 'protection' in verse 1 can be used in terms of warding off the evil eye.
There is a fair bit of end-rhyme: falaq / khalaq (v. 1 day-break / v. 2 he created) - notably both words emphasizing God's role in starting something; and ghuqad / hasad (v. 4 knots / v. 5 he envies); indeed the final word of the middle verse waqb arguably acts as a shift in the rhyme sequence by moving the -q- to the medial position.
Theologically, the surah replicates a problem concerning the origin of evil: v. 2 has 'the evil that [God] created', but in the cultural context of early monotheism (and without Augustine's more sophisticated discussion of evil as privation) this might mistakenly imply that God is the author of evil. Rather, I think the notion is that evil arises from a divine creation with free-will, and one prays to be delivered from this.
The surah is a prayer about how to deal with adversity from other people by seeking a more secure anchorage in the concept of a god who is the author of creation, in particular the one who breaks the night (the locus of evil) each day by bringing light. 'The Daybreak' is a fitting title. Christians will recognize the theme in 'Let there be light...' and in the Johannine Jesus referring to himself as 'the light of the world'. Of course, themes of darkness and evil abound in Christian (and other) writings.
In terms of human psychology here is an urge to re-frame the experience (or fear) of evil. Note that evil is not explicitly experienced but rather located in the (feared) intentions of others; the believer is to submit to trust in God rather than let his/her fears take over.
The Ritual (a poem)
The Ritual
Arriving early for Armistice Day, clutching
service orders, the huddled few
nod greetings. An awkward
waiting. Slow, then urgent, an avalanche
deposits the expectant crowd and we begin.
Names are read: bricks laid in memory's
mortar, an unfinished building.
The coarse rope slips through careful hands,
the flag descends - and silence.
Noisy halyard slaps desperately
against the pole: thoughts tug and
pull. The crowd stills, quickens,
a body crystalised by death, re-membered. Then
the Rouse: sleeper awake!
Hands shake, a deal done,
the waters pushed back - for a while - return.
It is finished.
(written November 2017 on the occasion of the University's annual Armistice and memorial service)