Reform or Revolution.... or?

 

12^th March 2023

 

Introduction

 

Hello and welcome to the Open Space podcast: I’m Reg Bartlett and in the chair today. You can contact Open Space at openspacescotland@gmail.com. 

 

‘Help and Harm’, ‘Authority and Insubordination’, ‘Truth and Perjury’ 

 

Often the good we attempt to do can be accepted without any gratitude and at times rejected. On other occasions harm that is done brings some unintended good.  Healing for some can bring harm to others. Our actions can be well intentioned but seen as meddling and undermining. We can act congruently by our own values, attitudes and beliefs and yet these be portrayed as harmful and oppressive ‘untruths’.

 

The culture we live in today is trapped in this conundrum of intended and unintended consequences.  Caring for a minority and prioritising their rights can be somehow seen by others as undermining their ‘social position’. The ‘Culture Wars’ of our contemporary period are the perfect example. Rights for some are expressed as domination for others. Concepts and reasoning that used to fit and provide predictability to life are now changing before we have time to think things through and come to our conclusions. For some we are moving too fast, while for others the long road to freedom is far too long. 

 

Reform or revolution? If not now, then when? Relentless march of progress or the ‘the same old song, sung to a new melody’? Our position as disciples of Jesus demands that we do no harm, in fact, we should do good to those who would harm us! We are to bring healing to ‘hurts, habits and hang ups’. But how does it work out? Listen to the story …    

 

Story in John 5 about a healing, authority to heal and witnesses to healing. 

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew^[a] Beth-zatha,^[b]which has five porticoes. ³ In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed.^[c]5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ ⁷ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ ⁸ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ ⁹ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath. ¹⁰ So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ ¹¹ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.”’ ¹² They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ ¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in^[d] the crowd that was there. ¹⁴ Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶ Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ ¹⁸ For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

The Authority of the Son

¹⁹ Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father^[e] does, the Son does likewise. ²⁰ The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. ²¹ Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. ²² The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son, ²³ so that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. Anyone who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him. ²⁴ Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life.

²⁵ ‘Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶ For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷ and he has given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸ Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹ and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

 Witnesses to Jesus

³⁰ ‘I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgement is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

³¹ ‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. ³³ You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵ He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶ But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸ and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

³⁹ ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰ Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹ I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴² But I know that you do not have the love of God in^[f]you. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵ Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

 

If our actions do not bring healing can our values, attitudes and beliefs expressed by our reasoning be of any importance with what it means to be authentically human? Is there a pattern, a discernible order to things or are we simply the products of chance.  Can we manage the future, manipulate it even, by our current actions or is the presence of complexity in the world such that we are all in the end the outcome of unintended consequences and chance?

 

Let’s be upfront and open here. Our world needs to heal, it needs healing. World poverty, hunger, war, social and religious conflict, individual human rights violation, the environmental disaster looming in front of us, the care crisis, the mental health crisis and the pessimism of ordinary people as to the possibility of a better way than their traditional roots dictate all suggest that we need to heal. 

 

This is not new. This struggle for life has been going on since the beginning when we decided to meet our needs, mostly our own way. The occasional act of ‘altruism’ punctuates a story of mostly the survival of the fittest. We have found it difficult to think outside our own paradigms, our own biographies where we cast the participants in our own likeness and demonise others.  This gives us potential allies to meet our needs and objects to blame when it doesn’t quite work the way we want, and the unintentional consequences come to visit.

 

At times we sit helpless at pools of hope longing for someone to help us into the troubled yet healing water and at other times we walk on by while others wait for healing and justice. 

 

Every now then an opportunity for healing comes along. Mostly we don’t recognise it. In fact, we can see it as a threat. Gay marriage comes to mind. It is often portrayed as a threat to heterosexual marriage. This is interesting, because if for example we look at the reasons for divorce cited in divorce proceedings then I am confident that the overwhelming threat to marriage is not gay marriage at all. Similarly, with Trans rights. It is often portrayed as threat to women’s rights. Yet, if we had to survey the threat to women in our culture, I suspect that it would be ‘Toxic Masculinity’ that would be top of the abuse chart.

 

Why is this? Why indeed. The first century story that we read together pints in two ways at the same time. 

 

Firstly, to authority. Where does authority lie? And secondly what we cite as witnesses to the validity of our conclusions. 

 

In first century Israel / Palestine among Jews it was the TaNaK that was the sole source of authority or at least that was what was claimed yet Jesus states its His Father who has given Him authority and that the evidence of the TaNaK points to Jesus. 

 

The data is not contested (The TaNaK) it’s the interpretation of the data. The simple conclusion from the so-called facts that ignores the complexity of the real world of lived experience.  Simply applying data with no situated biography and an acknowledged paradigm for interpretation leads to ignoring complexity and drawing wrong, oppressive conclusions. Acknowledging this leads us into a state of perplexity. What interpretation can we trust? We find ourselves in the in-between state of faith and doubt the uncertainty space where we have to plot a new course with new information and paradigms of understanding.  (For further reflection on ‘Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity and Harmony please see the Work of Brian McLaren in ‘Faith After Doubt’). 

 

Ah yes, Harmony. That ever-elusive state for me but that some claim to have experienced. I’m going to suggest that Harmony is a process and that it is rooted in a commitment to the biography of the other. How does the other experience me? What is their lived experience of my presence? We can reflect on ancient texts and biographies if we like, but in the end I will need awareness of the other and my effect on their lived experience to act in valuing ways.

 

To interpret stories of identity in ways that creates insiders and outsiders is what happens in first century Israel / Palestine. In the end Jesus is murdered because He is seen as threat to the dominance of Rome and the Theocracy of Israel. There was no room for an alternative paradigm, and it leads to violence. It’s the same today. Making room for alterative paradigms, negotiation, reconciling, forgiving and accepting diversity is peace-making. This is the most urgent need we face today.     

 

Where to begin? Values; a commitment to do no harm and positively value all human beings: This is need is to Listen. Attitudes; a developing propensity to act mutually, together, in mutually valuing ways: We need to Reflect. Beliefs; perpetually question beliefs and interpretations that undermine the expressed experience of solidarity and community: Conclusions are temporary. Behaviour; The expression of values, attitudes and beliefs: Peace-making is always the final judge. 

 

The iterative interpretation of the biographies affecting our lives; this is the vehicle that we all have for saying that the divine community is in us and among us.  We are all image bearers. What will be the image you see in me?  

 

May your experience this day be a valued one, may our ways of action be characterised not by just what we are seen to deserve, but by grace a unilateral gift of love; may we come to know that beautiful mind who’s first and last act is for the preferential option for the oppressed. Amen