"The Most Trusted Name in Fake News"

Hands down the best thing on television at the moment is The Daily Show. Jon Stewart is a comic genius who is also an intellectual and let me tell you those two things are not often found in the same person. Time magazine recently voted him one of the 100 most influential people of 2005. If you don't have cable and don't get to see it most nights on 9.30 on the Comedy Channel, never fear, The Daily Show with John Stewart: Global Edition is back on SBS Thursdays at 10pm. There is an interesting review of the show by Kenneth Nguyen in today's Age. The caption in the photo on the online version is all wrong though because, as the article itself makes clear, Stewart is anything but postmodern. Rather he is more often than not pointing out how the postmodern emperor has no clothes. The Fox Network prides itself on informing the public with unbiased reporting ("no spin zone" - what a joke!). But one commentator says we should watch the Daily Show becuase "it's even better than being informed"! Stewart is "the most trusted name in fake news." So until the ABC resurrects Shaun Micalleff from the dead make mine Jon Stewart!

An Argument for the Education of Clergy

Darfur Genocide

I am posting these eloquent words from one of my students, Megan Orrin, echoing her concerns and joining with those voices who are asking the media to give urgent attention to this crisis. I have forwarded this letter, as an expression of shared concerns to various media outlets and encourage any of the visitors to my blog to do the same. You can find out more here and here.

"Right now a campaign of rape, slaughter and displacement is currently being carried out in the western region of Sudan, the largest country in Africa. Government-supported troops have displaced 2.5 million people in the past two years, hundreds of thousands have died due to attacks, disease and starvation, and it is estimated that 500 men, women and children continue to die every day.

We must put pressure on our national leaders to take immediate action. President Bush and the United States Congress have recognized the situation in Darfur as "genocide," but it will take much more than words to end the violence and suffering in Darfur. In fact this recognition imposes a legal obligation, let alone the inherent moral obligation, upon governments to take action to stop the genocide. If our leaders made Darfur a priority, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved.

We don't do anything because we don't know anything. I am writing to you to beg you to look into this situation. We need media coverage to educate our citizens about this situation. We need to care and get our goverment to see that we care so that action can be taken to help these people escape their situation.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Darfur conflict:
The Darfur conflict is an ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited from local Baggara tribes, and the non-Baggara peoples (mostly tribes of small farmers) of the region. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supported the Janjaweed, provided arms and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the group. The conflict began in February 2003. Estimates of deaths in the conflict have ranged from 50,000 (World Health Organization, September 2004) to 450,000 (Dr. Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice. The conflict has been described by mass media as "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide"; the Bush Administration of the United States and the U.S. Congress have declared it to be genocide, though the United Nations has declined to do so.

President Bush once wrote in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, "Not on my watch.", yet it is happening again! Last time we just sat back and watched, let's not to it again! Please help me in calling for immediate attention to Darfur and more robust action on behalf of governments to support security efforts in the region. Please help get this message out!"

Some media you can alert:

onlinenewsproducers@seven.com.au

melbnews@seven.com.au,

todayshow@nine.com.au

today@nine.com.au

60minutes@nine.com.au

Trying to Speak Good Christian in Canberra

I attended the National Forum on Australia's Christian Heritage at Parliament House, Canberra on Monday and Tuesday. I was hoping it would not be a flag waving "let's take the nation for Jesus!" type of exercise and I'm glad to say it wasn't. Stuart Piggin, the principal organiser, made a helpful distinction between Australia as a "Christian nation" which it certainly is not, and Australia as a "Christianised" nation, which is just as certainly is. There was a wide cross section of views represented, with speakers and delegates drawn from across the denominational and theological spectrum and politicians from both the left and the right. Kevin Rudd, Labor Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs spoke about the Christian origins of the Australian Labor Party and spoke eloquently of the need for Christians to play their part in a pluralist society. The event confirmed my suspicions that recent concerns about an American-style take over by the "Religious Right" in Australia are often superficial and not suitably nuanced about the nature of "Christian Australia." (Michael Ashby's review of Dennis Altman's essayThe 51st State in the latest Eureka Street is worth a look). The fact is that Christian Australia is not exclusivley "right wing" nor even exclusively "evangelical." Though there were occasional cringe-worthy moments - such as when the photographer Ken Duncan criticised Aboriginal land rights as creating an apartheid system (!)- most speakers were moderate voices from a broad range of Christian traditions calling for the importance of celebrating and remembering Australia's Christian past and present.

Public discourse is an interesting thing to observe and learning how to speak "Christianly" in public is a skill in all too short supply. Robert Jenson says that “theology is the thinking internal to the task of speaking the Gospel" (Systematic Theology I:5), which is another way of saying we should think before we speak. Theology is always an act of interpretation because it hears the old word of the Gospel and it speaks that word afresh in a new context. We have heard the Gospel spoken to us; we must now ask what we should say and do so that the Gospel may be spoken again. The logical form of theology includes such statements as “To be speaking the Gospel say x rather than y.” Paul says “To be saying the Gospel say “Jesus is Lord” rather than “Jesus is cursed.” The church exerts her teaching authority when she says, “If you claim to speak for this community say ‘the eternal Son of God was made flesh in Jesus Christ,’ rather than ‘Jesus was only a Galilean peasant rabbi.’” It is the church’s dogmatic task to determine which statements about God speak the Gospel and which do not. The church is that community “which speaks Christianese” and a sentence like “Jesus is Lord” is a properly made sentence according to the grammar of orthodoxy. “God helps those who help themselves” is not very good Christian. "I can do nothing without God’s help” is better. Dogmatic (as distinct from doctrinal) statements emerge once the church has said “To be speaking the Gospel we must henceforth say ‘x’ rather than that other possibility ‘y’,” there can be no going back. Such a dogmatic choice irrevocably determines the future of the church. I remember Jim Ridgway when I took Systematic Theology as an undergraduate student saying, “You can say you don’t believe in the Trinity if you want to, so long as you realise that when you say that you place yourself outside of the church.”

During the Forum, Bronwyn Bishop, Federal Member for Mackellar, was responding to a paper given by Professor Robert Linder, who had given an address in which he had referred to an early Australian Trade Union leader as a Christian Socialist. This was too much for Ms. Bishop who insisted in her reply that there was no such thing as Christian Socialism. A socialist could be a Christian but the word “socialist” could never be used as an adjective to modify the noun “Christian.” The reason she gave for this was that the focus on Christianity is on the needs of the individual rather than on the needs of the group. Now this seemed to me and to many others not to be speaking very good Christian at all. She had also confidently asserted, in challenging religious pluralism, “My Bible says that Jesus said ‘I am the Way the Truth and the Light.’” [rather than the “Life.”) Another speaker had urged us never to forget “Sampson and his donkey” (!) These are forgivable errors. They are either slips of the tongue or minor misquotes. But to understand Christianity as entirely about the needs of individuals and to have therefore little to say about social needs or collective concerns seems to me to be speaking very bad Christian indeed. At least one other delegate must have felt the same as he called out “The Honourable Member’s time has elapsed!” This was the only genuinely discourteous, even if perceptive, moment at the forum.

Parliament resumed the day after the Forum and Mr. Howard now finds himself embattled with even his own coalition back benchers who have rejected his proposed "Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill" as draconian and regressive and seem likely to vote against the Bill with the Opposition. It seeks to amend the Migration Act of 1958 by expanding the offshore processing regime so that all unauthorised arrivals, including mainland arrivals, are processed offshore in detention centres. This will inevitably mean children in jails in Nauru. Do we really want to be doing that? Liberal MP Petro Georgiou in The Age today called it "the most profoundly disturbing piece of legislation I have encountered since becoming a member of parliament." To privilege border protection over the Christian grace of hospitality seems patently wrong to me. We cannot say to refugees, "You are not welcome here and if you come here we will jail you and your children" and be speaking good Christian.

In the Seed Shop with Jesus - Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost (18 June)

Text: Mark 4:26-34

Jesus often spoke in parables and these seemed to have been designed to puzzle those who only had a superficial interest in his teaching so that they would go away and say. “Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about; he sounds crazy to me.” At the same time, those who were leaning in to discover more about the kingdom, those whose hearts were open to the wisdom that comes from God would think on these little gems until they yielded their secrets. They are similar in some respects to the Zen Buddhist practice of using a riddle known as a “koan” to try to get the disciple’s mind to break through to enlightenment. They are questions or statements that yield a truth that may not be available to the rational mind but accessible to intuition. The most famous one is probably , “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?” Jesus’ parables are at the same time more straightforward as well as more profound than these.

At this stage in his public ministry Jesus was using the method of parables exclusively, according to verses 33 and 34. “With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable…”
However, when he was alone with his disciples he explained things to them more fully. They still didn’t always understand, but they had the privilege of a greater degree of access to the master in private than did the crowds. Parables were widely used among the rabbis of Jesus’ day. The rabbis with the best stories tended to have the largest followings. A parable functioned a little bit like a good joke. You went home and retold it to your family and friends and they retold it to others and pretty soon what had been spoken in secret was being shouted from the rooftops.

The use of parables in preaching and teaching is not so much in style these days. We seem to prefer straightforward no-nonsense, fact-based teaching. I am reminded of this now and then when in a classroom I read a poem or play a song or show a film clip to illustrate some theological point and the students will say, “But what does it mean?” or “Is this going to be in the test?” If you watch televangelists (who, remember, have huge followings) you will not find them using parables. They are straight-shootin,’ black and white-thinking’, no-nonsense tell it like it is preachers. Can you imagine Benny Hinn or Jesse Duplantis standing before a television audience and saying something like, “The kingdom of God is like a man who stumbled upon a beehive; the bees had a bad temper, but the honey sure was sweet.” I don’t think so.

Ken Collins reminds us that the problem with “tellin’ it like it is” preaching is that “like it is” eventually becomes “like it was.” (Ken Collins. “Why Parables and Not Straight Talk?“ www.faithandvalues.com) The fashionable sins of the day denounced in one generation can sound awfully quaint if they are still being denounced a generation later. You realise this when you read old sermons from a previous era which denounce certain fashions of the day. Parables on the other hand are timeless. They never date because they deal with timeless truths of the kingdom. Social mores come and go but the things spoken about in parables, because they speak of the matters of the kingdom, have abiding relevance. The two in today‘s Gospel reading are both about seeds. So today we are in God’s gardening show - In the Seed Shop With Jesus.

The Parable of the Growing Seeds seems to teach that the kingdom of God grows hiddenly and mysteriously and is not subject to human control or dependent upon human cleverness. …“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Wow, sounds so easy doesn’t it? All you do is scatter the seed on the ground and all day and all night the process is at work without your intervention at all. Whether you’re awake or whether you’re asleep, the seed is growing. All you have to do is wait until the harvest, get out your sickle and reap the benefits of all the mystery of that unstoppable growth. Now this doesn’t mean that farming isn’t hard work - a parable is meant to convey just one simple truth, it’s not an extended metaphor in which every detail of the story parallels with fact. The point here is that the farmer doesn’t know how the seed grows. He doesn’t cause the seed to grow. He can only arrange things so that he benefits from that growth and is there to harvest the crop when the time comes. So it is with the reign of God. It is God’s kingdom not ours. Whether we are awake or whether we are asleep God is at work in the world, his rule is sprouting and growing all by itself, it is bringing forth grain, first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. Finally the harvest will come.

We can see the signs of this growth if we look carefully enough, but often we are too busy to slow down enough to discern it. I read recently about a man who was travelling by public transport in a busy city with a monk. They needed to get across town in a complicated series of connections and the subway attendant told them that if they bought a particular ticket and went by a particular route they could save themselves twenty minutes travel time. They agreed, bought the ticket, and the monk promptly sat down calmly on a bench. His friend said, “What are you doing?” The monk replied, “I though we’d just enjoy the twenty minutes.” We are so obsessed with having to get things done and make things happen that we don’t get the chance to sit down and enjoy what God has given us with the assurance that whether we wake or sleep, whether we work or play, the seed of the kingdom is growing.

A mother once set aside a little plot in the veggie garden for her daughter to grown carrots from small seedlings. She told her that if she would water them daily, the roots would grow deeper and the green leaves on top would get taller and soon they would be able to eat the delicious full grown carrots. Time went on and the carrots seemed to wither, and die off. The mother was puzzled about this and said to the daughter, “Are you sure you’re watering them every day?” “Yes,” her daughter replied, “and I’ve pulled them out of the ground each day to see if the roots are getting longer, but they just never seem to!” Aren’t we like that little girl? We can’t trust God to grow his kingdom, so we interfere, but our interventions only make matters worse. Remember the Lord’s Prayer does not say, “Lord help us build your kingdom.” It says, “Your kingdom come…” Martin Luther said, “The kingdom of God comes of itself.” Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is among you.” To speak of building the kingdom is almost blasphemous when you think about it. Who are we to think that God cannot build his own kingdom?

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is similar to the parable of the growing seeds but makes an additional point about the kingdom. It reminds us that from the smallest almost invisible influences the kingdom of God can have a profound and extensive impact. The kingdom of God is “like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” When I worked for the Lane Cove Municipal Council in Sydney 25 years ago, I planted a couple of kilometres of gum trees in the harbour side suburb of Longueville. When I drive down that road now I am amazed at what those little potted trees have grown into! From little things big things grow. Look at David in today's Old Testament reading...Just a kid, the smallest and youngest of Jesse’s family, but he was the one God chose to defeat Goliath and succeed Saul to the throne of Israel. Secretly, quietly, and in obscurity God was growing that particular strippling until he was ready to be revealed to the world as David the Giant Killer! Or look at Paul in our Epistle reading - a small man, with a physical disability, not strong as a public speaker, with a murderous past, who faced constant undermining by his opponents in and out of the church, but God worked hidden and secretly in that man, until he brought forth a great harvest in the lives of those he served. In the end he knew that he was “in Christ,“ (his favourite term to describe Christians) and that if “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Many a bird had perched in the branches of the plant produced by Paul’s apostolic work!

These truths of the kingdom are open to any person at all. They are public knowledge, and those who have ears to hear will grasp them, whereas those with no interest in such matters will continue to scoff at or disregard them. God operates a freedom of information act so that his wisdom is accessible to anyone who wants to hear it. You can read the truths of the kingdom of God in a Gideon’s Bible, see them in a movie, read them in a novel, or hear them in conversation. You don’t have to be a Christian to understand, “First remove the log from your own eye, then you will be able to see to remove the speck from your neighbour’s eye.” You don’t have to be a Christian to understand that the musical Les Miserables is a parable about the redemptive power of forgiveness, or that the film Babette’s Feast is an extended parable of grace. The Christian symbolism of C. S. Lewis;’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was not lost upon film reviewers (some of whom hated it and saw it as something one had to get past). The Christian mythology behind Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is more subtle but it is there for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. However, believers are privy to a second level of information sharing. Verse 34 tells us that when Jesus “was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.” To be a follower of Jesus Christ is not so much to have exclusive access to the truths of the kingdom - this is available to all. Rather, it is to be in a close relationship to the one who is himself the embodiment of that kingdom, and so be able to gain more extensive insights into the meaning that lies behind all things - into what Lewis called “the deep magic.“

We need to keep our hearts curious and inquisitive about the truths of the kingdom not in an anxious way but in a trusting way, knowing that God is in control. Some people, look for truth in an anxious way. They are fearful that perhaps they may have missed something or that there is some vital truth that God has, which, if they fail to grasp may mean spiritual loss to them. So there is all too much anxiety in Christian circles. In the Old Testament the presence of God was something that would fall upon the people under certain conditions such as when everything was done properly in the tabernacle and temple worship and the glory of God would descend like a cloud upon the congregation. However a New Testament model of worship is different because God is already present as we gather. In fact the Greek word translated “church” is ekklesia - “the called out ones.” We have only assembled because God has drawn us to himself. We have no need to “call down” the presence of God but rather to recognise and announce it. Yet many Christians are striving to find some key to experiencing "anointed" worship or the "shekinah glory," or some such thing and strive to bring it about. These Christinas often look a little wild-eyed which is something you develop a bit of a radar for after awhile. But why would we want anything like that? What would be the point? We have Jesus. The New Testament teaches us that in him we see "the glory of the only-begotten from the Father, full of truth and grace.” Many believers have been taught to expect such an experience and have perhaps been trying to obtain it unsuccessfully and may be quite put off by my suggestion that such a search is futile and ill-advised. There are many believers like that, seeking the truths of the kingdom of God anxiously rather than in a trusting way. The Parables of the Growing Seed and the Mustard Seed can be liberatign for such anxious follwers of Christ, freeing them from the unnecessary burden of thinking they have to generate an experience. I have known many people who have driven themselves to depression and worse by worrying themselves either over doctrine or dogma on the one hand, or finding the latest spiritual ecstasy on the other. Parables help us instead to take a child-like and playful approach to discovering the truths of the kingdom. The kingdom of God has come. It began in small and unobtrusive way but it is growing, inexorably, certainly, and in God’s good time, it will become a tree so huge that many birds will rest in its branches.

Let me leave you with a parable of my own. See if you like it. “The kingdom of God is like a woman who put a cake in the oven. She watched Oprah and when she came back to the kitchen it had risen, hot, and ready to eat. And the whole family ate and was satisfied.”

Sermon for Trinity Sunday (11 June 2006)

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

In a year of national crisis for Israel, at the death of King Uzziah, the prophet Isaiah was given a transforming vision of the majesty of the Triune God. It was a dazzling vision of splendour too great for any human eye to really take in, but in those weak and faltering symbols which we call words, he tried to describe what he saw. The Lord sat on his throne high and lifted up in regal majesty, angels flew and sang the praises of God. The Lord was so holy that even the angels, whom you would have thought were used to being in God’s presence, even those pure and heavenly beings, covered their eyes as they sang his praises.

The whole place shook as they sang, the structural soundness of heaven itself was threatened as the very doorposts and thresholds shook in the presence of God. Here was no tame or domesticated god, like the gods of the nations, who could be housed in little shrines or carried around in the pocket and set up at a makeshift altar of prayer along the wayside. This was the Lord high and exalted, and there is no God like him. He reigns in majesty. No wonder Isaiah trembled in fear. "Woe to me!" [he] cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Isaiah was keenly aware of his own personal sin and also of the corporate sin of his people. As an Israelite he knew that no man or woman could look upon the Lord and live. As Reginald Heber’s hymn states, “the eye of sinful man your glory may not see.” Isaiah felt for sure that he was a goner. In searching for a cultural parallel to this I thought of the phenomenon of alien abduction. Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens from other planets, subjected to all kinds of examinations and experiments and then returned to the earth carrying the psychological, if not the physical, scars of their terrifying experience. Now, I am not saying that these experiences are real, but let me just ask you to imagine yourself into such an experience. You are going along in your usual workaday routine perhaps travelling somewhere and suddenly you are struck by a flash of blinding light. The earth shakes as a strange craft emitting eerie noises descends upon you and an alien creature the like of which your imagination could never have begun to conceive reaches out to you and it is clear that it means to take you as its captive. I’m not talking about a cute little cuddly ET either, but one mean alien monster with who knows what murderous intention on its mind. Now tell me you wouldn’t be scared out of your wits.

Something like this must have been Isaiah’s experience. He didn’t just sit back and enjoy a vision of God in the way that we might sit back and meditatively reflect on an icon or a Rembrandt portrait of Christ, or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. No, this was a vision which scared the living daylight out of him and in the light of which he could only cry, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

As an Israelite, Isaiah well knew the law that no one could expect to look upon the Lord and live. The light of God was so brilliant that no mortal could endure the sight of it. While we were in New Zealand recently we visited the glow-worm caves in the Bay of Islands. Our guide took us into the bowels of the earth and told us of how the glow worms emit their light so that at night unsuspecting insects fly into the cave attracted by the light never to return. Glow worms are arachnids (like spiders) which means they spin webs to trap their victims. Once the bug has flown toward the light it is caught in the web and the glow worm can then feast on it. This has gone on for who knows how many hundreds of thousands of years and the bugs never wake up to what’s going on, much to the benefit of the glow worm population. Isaiah was like a moth to a flame, trapped in a web from which there could be no return expecting to be devoured on the spot by the awesome majesty of the Triune God.

When Isaiah refers to the unclean lips of himself and his people the lips are serving as a symbol for the whole of the sinful human nature. In chapter 1 of his prophecy, verses 4-6, he had bemoaned the universal nature of sin’s power. “Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness - only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil.” (Isaiah 1:4-6)

Perhaps it is significant that Isaiah chooses the lips as a symbol for the sinful human nature, for as a prophet it was with his lips that he was supposed to serve God and with his lips that he had failed God. What do we do when we discover that our best attributes, the God given talents with which we have been blessed instead of being used to bless our neighbours and glorify God have been used instead for sin, have been twisted by our own selfish desires and motives? What do we do when we realise that all around us are in the same situation? That we are sinners and that we dwell among sinners? What can we do except what Isaiah did? Call out “Woe to me! I am ruined!”

Where is the Gospel this Trinity Sunday? Where is the good news in Isaiah? Well, here it comes in verses 6 and 7. "Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The Father’s majestic glory might hide from us his grace and compassion but the Son has come to make atonement for our sins and to open up a way back to God. He came as the friend of sinners. We don’t just worship a God “immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” We worship the Son who said, “I am the light of the world” - not a light against the world that consumes all in its path - but a light for the world, which shines a light on the pathway back to God.

Isaiah got the opposite of what he was expecting to get. He thought for sure that fire was going to come out from the altar and consume him on the spot leaving just a smudge where the great prophet once had stood! Instead the fire that he thought would consume him, took away his guilt and atoned for his sins. He got exactly the opposite of what he was expecting. Self righteous people, especially the religious sort, get the same - the exact opposite of what they expect. Some people spend their lives congratulating themselves for having avoided the more socially unacceptable, cruder, forms of sin, and for doing so much good for their neighbours in supporting worthy causes of various sorts. They really feel that God should count himself lucky to have them on his side. After all they bring so many talents and resources into the church for God to use. They fully expect a hearty pat on the back when they stand before the Lord to give an account for their lives. How shocked some will be when they hear instead the words, “Depart from me; I never knew you”! "And these shall go away," said Jesus, "into the fire prepared for them. " Yes, fire consumes but it also purifies. It depends very much on the timing of the application! Jesus said he would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Here a hot coal is removed from the altar and placed on Isaiah’s lips, the organ of the faculty of speech which he saw as the location of his problem was touched and purified, reminding us that in whatever areas we may have sinned, God’s purifying work can reach them and transform them through the atoning work of Christ.

The Triune God reigns in majesty; he cannot be seen through the eye of sinful humanity. But it is this same God who atones for sin, and who calls us into his service. Not only does Isaiah find that his guilt is removed and his sin atoned for, he is also given useful work to do for God, as we read in verse 8, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

During the recent Wesleyan Convention in New Zealand, I attended a seminar on discerning God’s call to ministry. The facilitator asked four individuals who were now ordained ministers to share with the group their own testimony. She also asked us to see if there were any common elements shared in each person’s individual story. One thing I noted was that each felt inadequate and unqualified when God first called them. God had to keep working on them until almost against their wills they entered the ministry knowing that only in this way could they follow God’s call on their lives. And aren’t you glad that it is that way? Otherwise the ranks of the church’s leadership would be filled with self confident blustering, arrogant people who feel fully equipped for all that life and ministry might throw in their direction! (As it is we only have a few such people in the ministry.)

The Father’s majestic glory is seen in the Son who opens up a way through his shed blood for us to be purified from our sin. But if we are going to serve God acceptably we are going to need the Holy Spirit - the life of God himself who enables us to accomplish the work he gives each of us to do. If we are going to be able to say ‘Here am I; send me” we are going to need more than morality, more than religion, more than idealism. We will need the life of God himself imparted to us as an indwelling , personal presence. And this is what we have in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Father sends the Son, the Son dies and rises again to provide forgiveness, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son to empower us to live the Christian life. You see, the Trinity is not just some philosophical speculation. The Trinity is God, and there is no Gospel, no good news, unless God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the theologian Robert Jenson has said, the Trinity is not a theological puzzle but the key that unlocks all the other theological puzzles. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, now is, and will be forever, world without end. Amen!

Glen and Lynnie Visit the Shire

Well here are some photos from our trip to New Zealand. After speaking at the Wesleyan Convention in Lake Taupo we headed north to the Bay of Islands. En route we stopped at Mattamatta where we took a tour to the Hobbiton Movie Set where all of the Shire scenes in the Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King were filmed. New Line Cinema did not allow the owners of the property who now run the tours to retain any of the design work on the hobbit holes and insisted that they be painted over in white, so they look a little different. The hobbit outside Bag End (above) is me.


This cute little hobbit is Lynnie O'Briensies. She's just had second breakfast and is looking forward to Elevensies, that why she's smiling.


This is the famous Party Tree where the Hobbits had a big party, Gandalf gave a fireworks display, and under which Bilbo announced his intention to move away from the Shire, slipped on the Ring and promptly disappeared!


This cute little Hobbit is of the tree hugging variety, and is known to be particularly attracted to the Party Tree.


I just love the symmetry of this photo and the way the lush grass grows down to the roofline. The grass in New Zealand is so incredibly lush and green as they don't suffer from any water shortages over there. Photos of our trip to the Bay of Islands will be posted as soon as I can get them developed and scanned. Watch this space!

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The Superhero Test

I took the Superhero test and much to my surprise I am not after all Batman! This is a major identity crisis for me. I am experiencing profound cognitive dissonance because my blog is called "The Batcave" and my display image is the Dark Knight, and yet I have tested as that irradiated arachnid, that pesky Peter Parker. I am going to need some extended time in the Batcave to sort this out. No - wait...I'm not Batman so where do I go to sort things out? My bedroom at Aunt May's house? Oh pu-lease! That doesn't sound one tenth as cool as "the Batcave." Maybe I can be a new superhero - Spiderbat! Mmmm. maybe not..

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% Superman 80% Supergirl 55% Green Lantern 45% Iron Man 40% Robin 35% Hulk 35% Wonder Woman 30% Catwoman 30% Batman 30% The Flash 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

The Gift of Prophecy

We have been discussing the gift of prophecy in our theology class and a couple of students have raised questions about my approach to the topic. It seem to me that there are some major problems with the contemporary expression of "prophetic utterances," “words of wisdom” and “words of knowledge.” They open up the potential for spiritual abuse and should be approached very cautiously in my opinion. All we need to know has been recorded for us in the Bible. No extra-biblical “prophecy” can ever add to this revelation so why is there a need for these so-called ”prophetic utterances”? If we believe God has some words of counsel to pass on to a fellow believer we should approach them as brother or sister and share it in a natural way, without any high sounding “thus saith the Lord” which claims an authority for ourselves that we do not possess.

It is true that "prophecy," "the word of wisdom," and "the word of knowledge" are spiritual gifts referred to in the Bible. However, in the case of the latter two, there is no other information given to us to explain exactly what those gifts were and how they functioned. Why could the "word of wisdom" not simply be the impartation of wise advice to another believer and the "word of knowledge" something one believer knows and then passes on to another believer for their spiritual help? The typical Pentecostal practice smacks of clairvoyancy to me - "I feel that somebody on this side of the room is having marital problems" or "somebody over here has back pain." In any representative room there would be sure to be more than one person who fits such descriptions.

Prophetic utterances in the early church were given in the absence of a completed New Testament when the church needed to be guided by oral proclamation in a more authoritative way than is true today. I do not need to consult the word of a "prophet" today when I have the New Testament in front of me giving me everything I need to know for life and godliness, and godly pastors and teachers who open up the scriptures in the gathered church. Also we should remember the indwelling Holy Spirit who is our Teacher and Guide. Prophecy was given for the "edification, exhortation, and comfort of the church." I believe all of these things are met through anointed preaching which has the authority of scripture behind it, a more dependable authority than the authority of a "prophet's" personality or his or her limited human perspective.

I don't mean to call into question the "prophetic words" that may have guided any person but for every one that turns out well there is at least one other that does not. For example, some years ago, the pastor in the charismatic church I was attending was secretly engaged in sexual immorality in the counselling room with a series of women in the congregation. At this very time, a well-known Pentecostal pastor with a "prophetic" ministry (I won't disclose his name but if I did you would immediately recognise him) prophesied along these lines (from my memory). "My children I say unto you that this man, your pastor, is my anointed one. He is a good man and there have been rumours and innuendos about his conduct which must stop. Touch not my anointed for he is my chosen one..." etc. (you get the idea). He was "outed" a short time later when one of the women bravely came forward to blow the whistle on him. Now this "prophetic message" could not possibly have been from God. This man spoke not from God but from his own imagination. The Old Testament was very clear on what was to happen to those who said "thus saith the Lord" but really spoke from their own dreams. They were to be taken outside the camp and stoned to death! These days we approach it differently. We give them national prominence, television shows and huge salaries.

It seems to me a safer way to go is to allow God's gifts to flow through us in the ordinary ways of preaching, teaching, counselling and mentoring. This will yield all the guidance that modern day "prophecy" is supposed to bring, but without the attendant problems of claiming to speak infallibly and authoritatively from God things which turn out to be falsehoods. You may not agree with these thoughts but please do not think that they come from any disregard for the Scriptures or any questioning of the genuine ministry of the Holy Spirit. I am simply trying to follow the scriptural command to "test the spirits" and "prove all things."

La Trobe Graduation

At Ludicrousity's request, here are some photos from my recent graduation at La Trobe University. My thesis was formally finalised in October of last year (after being submitted as far back as March!) but I had to wait until now to shake the Chancellor's hand and get my testamur. (The crimson rosella is known for its bright plumage.)

My doctoral citation.



Here I am with "the gadfly of Australian history," my supervisor John Hirst. Thanks John. Couldn't have done it without you.

Son of a Preacher Man

The Boy Wonder and I went along to see Harley Breen's one man show Son of a Preacher Man in Flinders Lane last Tuesday night. It was crude, rude, irreverent...and very funny. It would be easy for a Christian to be offended at the material but it would be all too easy to rush and in and smugly condemn without asking what truth is being offered here. We need to hear his perspective on why the church doesn't appeal to so many like him who have left the church disillusioned figuring it has nothing to offer. For those who think this show may be just a cathartic exercise in axe-grinding against repressive parenting - think again. It's clear that Harley loves, respects, and admires his parents and that he respects the choices in life they have made, even though he hasn't chosen to make those choices himself. More often than not it is the people in the congregations that his parents served that get the most stick, and if you're a preacher's kid too I'm sure you'll have a bunch of similar stories to tell about the strange people who inhabit the pews of every suburban church.

Harley is at his best when he is sharing funny stories from his childhood - sibling rivalry, puberty, and adolesence all yield their hilarious moments. The slapstick disguised as political comment against the Howard government in the Gummy Bears routine is great. The show is weakest in its middle section when Harley dons the clerical garb and plays the part of a preacher on the take. The effeminate preacher intent only on exploiting people is a wornout cliche. I have no objection to lampooning the clergy as such (we're all fair game) but a more original approach was needed to lift this part of the show beyond the humdrum thing we're used to seeing on TV. It's the real Harley Breen that works best, not the two-dimensional caricature of this all-too easy to deride target.

In the medieval world, the jester was ostensibly for the purposes of entertaining the king and his court. But he also played a subversive role. With skill and craft he could use his humour to point out the vanity or folly of the kings' character or actions, thus turning a mirror on the royal personage. As an innocent child was needed to point out the fact that the emperor had no clothes in Hans Christian Anderson's folk tale, so it was the court fool who often played the role of pointing out the pretensions of royalty. Harley Breen's show turns a mirror on certain attitudes found in the church that are positively unChristian and need to be unmasked and repented of - the idea that Christians are by definition better people than all others (clearly not so), that Christians often show little respect for indigenous cultures and seek only to supplant them and replace them with European "civilization" (often, though by no means always, the case with missionaries), and that Christians can at times be violent toward those of other faiths.

One of Harley's Dad's former parishioners told him that his show was evil and blasphemous and that he was going straight to hell, apparently without seeing the irony that this was a rather "hellish" thing to say to another human being. But there is a difference between blasphemy and criticism. I once rebuked a youth camper for telling a distasteful joke about God and told him that we should be carefuil not to use the Lord's name in vain. Later in the camp he overheard me telling a joke about the church and he decided to rebuke me in turn. I told him there is a difference between mocking God and laughing at the church. It's a healthy thing to be able to laugh at oneself. Harley's show doesn't mock God so much as point out the inconsistencies of professing Christians, which is a different thing altogether.

There's a lot of truth in humour - we have to take it seriously (pun intended). The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard saw the closest proximity between theology and comedy. Comedy sees tragedy from the viewpoint of its resolution, so comedy helps us transcend tragedy by placing it in proper perspective. This is why, for Kierkegaard, humour was the state of consciousness nearest to religion. Some like Harley Breen use humour to resolve the tragedy of the church's behaviour by walking away from it. Others, without denying the tragedy, choose to remain committed to the church, convinced that in its sinfulness it is really only a microcosm of all humanity, but convinced also that in the church (though not exclusively there) God offers his grace to those who need it. I'm reminded of the Docetists of the early church who were willing to accept that Christ was divine but could not accept that he was also human. It is the very humanness of the church, its fallenness, that many people find unacceptable. But the church does not claim to be a perfect society of saints (though admittedly some Christian movements have tried to make that claim.) It is always a "mixed multitide" of people on various stages of the way of Christ. And the Church exists also for those who cannot bring themselves to enter it or who walk away from it. It exists this way not because it is the only place where God is at work, but because Christ has united himself to his followers by calling them his friends, and, corporately, his Bride. It's okay to have a problem with the way the church behaves but if we have a problem with the Bride we do have to take it up with the Bridegroom.

In his final gag Harley tells of how he decided to try being a Buddhist for a day. He knew that according to the tenets of Buddhism he was supposed to respect all sentient beings, including the smallest creatures, so when he stepped on a bug, he grew angry with himself and kicked the dog. Now he felt even worse. Finally he saw a Buddhist monk, and he angrily and violently knocked him to the ground. Then came the punch line - "Well, I guess I'm still a Christian after all." If only the tragedy could be resolved so neatly. If violence or greed or bigotry or selfishness were uniquely Christian traits, we could solve the world's problems by getting rid of (or at least quarantining) all the Christians. But these things are human, not uniquely Christian, traits. The church tries to bear witness to a better way - to the way of Christ. That it does so inconsistently only shows that it is fully human. In the end, God is speaking both through and to the Son of a Preacher Man - for those who have ears to hear.

The Theology of the Superheroes I: The Incredible Hulk

Before Ang Lee made gay cowboy movies he made such chop-socky delights as Wo Hu Cang Long (that's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to most of you), and the much misunderstood and maligned Hulk. A lot of reviewers canned this movie as being either too long, not true enough to the original Marvel character, or too filled with pop psychology for its own good. Empire even had an article in a recent issue entitled "Hulk: What Went Wrong?" Well, I loved the movie, primarily because it captured for me most of the key themes of the Silver Age Hulk comics I enjoyed as a kid and still enjoy reading. (Like Hulk #120 shown further down in this entry which I recently bought on eBay). There was the setting in the American South-West, a gruff General Thunderbolt Ross, overly protective but at the same time distant from his beautiful daughter Betty, who alone could pacify the Hulk, attempts to contain the Hulk (from which of course he spectacularly escapes), and lots of tossing around of tanks and generally destructive mayhem. Even the updates were true to the spirit, if not the period, of the 60s comic. There were still gamma rays involved but the experiments were updated from nuclear testing to nanomed technology (and they still managed a mushroom cloud in a flashback sequence).

A lot of people complained about the CGI Hulk. But, hey how exactly do you depict ol' green skin accurately? A guy in a rubber suit? It certainly looked better to me than Lou Ferrigno (at left) jumping around in purple shorts in the TV series. Then there was all the pop psychology and the cosmic sequence at the end when Bruce's father David morphed into this weird creature in a final slugout with his son Bruce/Hulk. If you read a Silver Age Marvel comic however you find both these elements are quite common - after all it was Marvel who reinvented comics by focusing on the inner demons of their characters who, like us, were real people with real problems. As for far-fetched cosmic battle sequences, in which impossible to believe pseudo-science thinly explained the most way out happenings, these were in every issue of The Incredible Hulk. Listen naysayers, Ang Lee got it right! By the way, the Hulk himself agrees with me, according to his piece in The Onion, "Why No One Want Make Hulk2?"

Stan Lee says that when he and Jack Kirby invented the Hulk in 1962 he had two literary characters in mind - the monster from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson's story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is created by science (Frankenstein) but he can't control his transformation from mild mannered research scientist Bruce Banner into he who "smash puny humans" (Mr. Hyde). Hulk also serves as an interesting metaphor for the sinful nature. There is something inside of us which we can't control, something that has infected our nature, not something we were created with but the result of something having gone wrong in our creator's design. As hard as Bruce Banner tries to control his hideous transformation it lies beyond his ability to eliminate. "Don't make me angry," he warns, "you won't like me when I'm angry!" For a while there was an articulate Hulk who retained all of the intellectual powers of Bruce Banner. Fans argued back and forth over whether they preferred this Hulk or the one who said things like "Hulk smash!" and "Why puny humans hate Hulk?" or simply "Aaaarrrrggghhh!" The following letter is a good example of how intellectualized comic books became in the 1960's. It comes from a 357-member strong "Hulk Cult" at the University of Syracuse, New York, and was published on the letters page of Tales to Astonish #74 (Dec. 1965). "You have just ended the most prolific era in American literature by giving the Hulk a human brain...By inculcating a rational mind into Hulk's primordial psyche, you caused the downfall of Hulk's entire reason d etre. Your recent issue can be termed a resounding victory of Schopenhauer's will to live over the forces of human nature...What you have done is merely desecrate one of the most forceful genres in modern art - the mindless Hulk. Shame, shame, that's as bad as calling Spinoza a pragmatist...We are even considering switching our loyalties to John Paul Sartre..."

In terms of the metaphor I'm proposing both dumb Hulk and articulate Hulk are appropriate incarnations. Our sinful impulses can be blind, irrational, instinctive and overtly violent. On the other hand they can be wily, crafty, clever, and sophisticated. There is only one way to reach Hulk and to tame his wild and destructive impulses. The love of Betty Ross is all that can reach him. What US government tanks cannot do; what no supervillain has been able to defeat; what no superhero who has tried to take the Hulk down has been able to achieve (most often attempted by the Fantastic Four's Thing), is achieved by the influence of love. So it is with us - the love of God alone can heal our "Hulkiness," can tame the savage breast and restore us to the state our creator intended for us. Only the grace of God can conquer the beast within us all.

Here is a close up of the Eric Bana CGI Hulk, which is actually a composite of the faces of Bana, Ang Lee, and Jennifer Connelly who played Betty Ross in the film. One of the best Hulk sites is The Hulk Library. By the way the Hulk has his own blog. Check it out!

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Hell Took a Body and Discovered God

There is a big difference between “He is not here,” and “He is risen!” Mary, and Peter, and John, along with the other disciples moved in this direction in their experience that first Sunday morning (John 20:1-18). The body of the Lord was gone and it took a while for the realisation to dawn that he was in fact alive from the dead and not just a stolen corpse. They moved from a startled confusion to a settled conclusion. The moved from the real absence of Christ to the real presence of Christ.

When my daughter Sophie arrived in church on Good Friday morning she gave me a big hug, and said, “Dad, I had a dream that you had died, but you didn’t.” I’m sure we’ve all had that experience, when we woke from a bad dream and felt a surging wave of relief that the horrors we had experienced were in fact an illusion and all was well again. The disciples must have had an experience somewhat like that. When Mary saw Jesus standing in the garden alive and well - more alive and well than ever - all that had happened over the last few terrible days must have seemed an illusion - a bad dream. Now all was well again.

But they did not get to this realisation as quickly as we do. It is impossible for us to work our way back into the experience of these early disciples, because we know the end of the story. It’s like watching a grand final match on video; it’s nowhere near as exciting as watching the game in the first place because we know the outcome of the match. We try to enter into the experience of the disciples when we dramatise Easter throughout Holy Week, with our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday vigil, during which we try not to make mention of the resurrection. But as much as we try we can’t really do it, because the fact remains - we know the end of the story. They didn’t, but we do.

Hubert Beck reminds us:

Easter means nothing if we do not recognize, as did those around Jesus, that death is death in all its horrible reality. Our celebration of Easter is too often framed by an idea that the resurrection is a “springtime,” the season when it is celebrated in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps those in the southern hemisphere have some advantage..for there Easter must be observed in the fall of the year when all is moving toward winter and the browning of the earth. In [the northern hemisphere] it is all too easy to point to the return of the leaves, the blossoming of the flowers, the greening of the earth as though they were "pictures” of Christ’s resurrection. All of that is fine and dandy, except for one simple fact: The greening of the earth is not a resurrection from any death; it is, rather, a re-emergence of life in dormant plants. They enliven again, bloom for a period of time, wither and return to sleep for another winter after which they will again begin the round of lively existence and dormant waiting. Dead plants do not return to life in the spring. If they were dead in the fall, they will not live in the spring; and if they die during the winter there will be no spring for them. Dormant things are only “life-hiding,” not dead! Dead things are dead, and that is that. They will not return to life. One can only weep over them, for their laughter is gone. (Hubert Beck, “Sermon on John 20:1-18,”)

When you a buy a garden bulb it’s just a dirty looking round thing with a few scraggly roots hanging off the end of it. It already looks half dead. But that doesn’t bother you because you know that when its time comes that bulb is going to blossom into a magnificent flower. But look into the coffin and see a dead parent, a dead child, a dead wife, husband, or friend, and you know they are not coming back. They’re dead and you are never going to see them alive again. You will never talk with them again, never hear their voice again, never know their touch again. They are dead. Dead as a doornail. Dead is dead and that's all there is to it. The only spring time they’re going to know is the springtime over their graves. (The image is drawn from the sermon, “The Unnatural Truth,“ by Barbara Brown Taylor in Christian Century, 20 March 1996.)

Why am I saying all of this on such a bright and happy day as Easter? Why am I painting such a bleak picture in such dark tones? Because we have to overcome somehow this idea that the resurrection is just a symbolic representation of a natural process. It is not that. It is wholly unnatural. It is supernatural. It runs so opposite to the direction of nature that it overturns nature and institutes a new creation. Yes, this is a day of rejoicing, but not because there is a silver lining on every cloud, not because there are no valleys without corresponding hills, not because tadpoles turn into tree frogs or grubs into butterflies, but because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!

In the fourth century John Chrysostom wrote a sermon which became one of his more famous ones and perhaps the most famous Easter sermons ever written. In it he asks:

Are there any who are devout lovers of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Are there any who are grateful servants?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!
Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavour.
The deed He honours and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!
Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Saviour has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?
Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

What an incredible thought - “Hell took a body and discovered God! It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.”

The sceptic H. G. Wells once wrote: “When I think of the Resurrection, I am always reminded of happy endings that editors and actor-managers are accustomed to impose on essentially tragic plays and novels.” I think Wells was wrong. I think he was wrong because I believe in happy endings, and Easter is the happiest ending of them all. Next week on ANZAC Day we will remember our fallen dead. “Lest we forget,” is our national motto at that time. But Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, reminds us, “the New Testament never simply says, ‘Remember Jesus Christ.’ That is a half-finished sentence. It says ‘Remember Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.’”

I don’t like half finished sentences and I don’t like half finished stories. Every story has a denouement. The so-called "Lowery Loop" describes an identifiable shape to most narratives. We start with a setting, something occurs and there is a crisis, the crisis then deepens, then comes a realisation of how the situation is going to be restored, then comes the actual reversal in the situation. Finally there is the "denouement" - what happens after everything has settled. This pattern can be characterised by the words Oops, Ugh, Ah Ha, Yippee, and Aaaah. This cycle is certainly identifiable in the Easter story. "Oops," Jesus has been arrested and crucified. “Ugh,” he has died and been buried in a rock sealed tomb. “Ah Ha,” the tomb is empty, perhaps his words have been fulfilled and he really has risen. “Yippee,” he’s alive again! But where is the “Aaaah…!”? Where is the denouement? Where is the part of the story that happens after everything has settled? Sisters and brothers, you are the denouement! The denouement is in our Acts reading today (Acts 10:34-43). “They killed [Jesus] by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day [and now we are here to announce that] everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” This our Easter proclamation today: “Forgiveness has risen from the grave.”

There is the denouement of the story. The New Testament itself and the believing community are the ongoing outcome of these tremendous events. The message of Easter is not only that Jesus has risen but that those who believe in him are also risen with him and constitute a new type of community - the community of the resurrection. Paul told the Ephesians that they were raised up with Christ and seated in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). He told the Colossians “When you are buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Col. 2:12). Paul wrote in the epistle for this week, “This is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” (1 Corinthians 15:11). What the apostles saw, they preached, and what they preached you and I believed, so you and I are the denouement of the story.

Consider for a moment the impact of the resurrection. The religious authorities were greatly disturbed, violence erupted in city streets, persecution that lasted three centuries ensued. Steven was stoned to death. The believers in Jerusalem were scattered. King Herod arrested Christians, executed James and imprisoned Peter. In Iconium, the people of the city were divided at the message of the resurrection. In Lystra, Paul was stoned and left for dead. In Philippi, he was imprisoned for “throwing the city into an uproar.” Riots broke out in Thessalonica and people complained that the disciples had “caused trouble all over the world.” The people of Athens sneered at Paul’s preaching of the resurrection. Rioters opposed Paul and his colleagues in Ephesus and there arose a great disturbance about the Way.” In Jerusalem Paul had to appeal to his Roman citizenship to prevent his being mobbed to death , but he was arrested there, and just like his Master, from that point on his fate was sealed. Festus, Roman governor of Judea under Nero was totally at a loss to know what to do with his prisoner. “They did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected. Instead, they had some points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive.” The next day when Paul gave his defence Festus interrupted and said, “You are out of your mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you mad.” So when H. G. Wells and other famous sceptics scoffed at the resurrection, as people still do today, it really wasn’t anything new.

Can we move today from “He is not here” to “He is Risen”? Can we move from startled confusion to settled conclusion? Can we move from the real absence to the real presence of Christ? Can we move from the fear of hell to seeing hell in an uproar because it has been overthrown? Hell took a body but discovered God! It took earth, and encountered Heaven! It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Spring Street Wesleyan Methodist Church
Easter Sunday 2006

The final image on this blog entry is by Welsh artist David Jones "The Resurrection of Christ (from the Book of Jonah)" wood engraving 1926 8 x 7.5cm www.artwales.com

"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November"

I saw V For Vendetta last night with the Boy Wonder and Wisdom88. It's a corker. Best film I've seen this year no contest. How can the Warchowski brothers write two such great screenplays as The Matrix and this and churn out two absolute duds in between? Maybe it was the Aussie director on V that made the difference. It's Orwell, it's Brave New World, it's Bush's America, it's Thatcher's (and Blair's) England, it's the English Revolution, it's Anarchy in the UK, it's Zorro, it's the Phantom of the Opera and it's all rolled into one two and a half hour cinematic bundle. Why the original author of the graphic novel doesn't like it, I'll never know (it's way better than the last attempt to film one of his creations - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). OK, so it's propaganda for the Left but hey, haven't we been swamped with enough from the other side? Do yourself a favour and go see it.

Bring the Troops Home

America is stuck with 100,000 troops in a very ugly war in Iraq which shows no sign of letting up anywhere soon, and seems likely to become a full blown civil war before much longer. "Blowback" is a term first coined by the CIA to refer to the internal domestic chaos caused by their covert operations, and now being used in reference to the overt miltary invasion of Iraq. That "blowback" in Iraq is spinning completely out of control is clear. According to Gary Dorrien at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, even though the US is estimated to be killing 2000 insurgents a month, between April 2003 and April 2005 the insurgent population grew from 5,000 to 19,000 fighters! Added to this, the Sunni population supports the insurgents, Sunni and Shi'ite are at each others throats, Sunnis being particuarly angry that their persecutors, the Shi'ites, are collaborators with the US invaders, and so the Sunnis are increasing the number of their militia death squads to counter Sh'ite ones against themselves. According to the Washington Post, Iraq is attracting more and more foreign terrorists. Even the oppressed Kurds are getting more radical in demanding posession of Kirkuk an oil-rich area that Saddam populated with Arabs through forced migration.

The Americans made a big mistake invading the country in the first place. There were no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They got Saddam Hussein and now he sits in an Iraqi court and mocks the whole process! No one would argue that ridding the country of a dictator like Saddam was a desired end. But it was an Iraqi problem that they should have been left to sort out on their own with diplomatic pressure from foreign powers not firestorms. Why doesn't the US just cut its losses and leave? Dorrien believes that the continued US presence in Iraq is bolstered by an imperialist ideology and may only be the first of other first strikes on other non-democratic states (Bush has already brandished his sword over Syria, Iran, North Korea, and even Saudi Arabia and Pakistan).

"The aggressively interventionist ideology that guides the Bush administration and the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party goes by several names: unipolarism, global dominion, American Greatness, liberal imperialism, full-spectrum dominance. Begining as an especially militant form of anti-communism, it morphed into a vision of global empire after communism collapsed. It trades on the historic American myths of ionnocence, exceptionalism and manifest destiny, and offers a vision of what the United States could do with its unrivaled global power. In its most rhetorically seductive versions, it conflates the expansion of American power with the dream of universal democracy." (Gary Dorrien,"Nightmare in Iraq," Christian Century (4 April 2006), 38.) After 9/11 this ideology grew more aggressive. Apocalyptic militarism sees the war in Iraq as a holy war between two competing civilizations, one of which must triumph if the world is to be saved. If this is the case then God help us because no one could ever win such a war.

When pressed on the blowback problem Bush has replied like a schoolboy, saying in effect, "They started it, not us." "We didn't ask," he says, "for this global struggle but we're answering history's call with confidence and a comprehensive strategy." (Dorrien, 40) I don't know about you but that kind of cowboy politics makes me very nervous. Look, this isn't an anti-American post. I'm not anti-American in my outlook. I love Americans, many of whom I count as dear friends. The US is a beautiful country with a magnificent history that has made significant contributions to the betterment of the world. I don't enjoy the cheap-shot antiAmericanisms that Australians often trot out just because of their own cultural inferiority complexes. All I am saying is enough is enough. Please Mr. Bush end this madness in Iraq. Bring the troops home(you too Mr. Howard) Stop the killing. Admit your mistake. Humble yourself before God. All of us will have to answer to God for the way we have lived our lives. It's not too late to repent and withdraw from Iraq.

This Office Opposes the War in Iraq

A lot of people don't know that John Wesley was a pacifist. He could not see how Christianity could possibly be compatible with war and he saved some of his most stinging criticisms for so called Christian countries who went to war against their enemies or (as was most often the case in his day) against each other. In Sermon 22 of his Standard Sermons, Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount Discourse II he recalls how the pagans once observed of the early Christians, “See how these Christians love one another!” But would they say the same thing today?

“These Christian kingdoms which are tearing out each other’s bowels, desolating one another with fire and sword! These Christian armies, that are sending each other by thousands, by ten thousands quick into hell! These Christian nations that are all on fire with intestine broils, party against party, faction against faction! These Christian cities, where deceit and fraud, oppression and wrong, yea, robbery and murder, go not out of their streets! These Christian families, torn asunder with envy, jealousy, anger, domestic jars, without number, without end! Yea, what is most dreadful, most to be lamented of all, these Christian churches! – Churches (“tell it not in Gath” – but alas, how can we hide it, either from Jews, Turks or pagans?) that bear the name of Christ, the Prince of peace, and wage continual war with each other! that convert sinners by burning them alive! that are “drunk with the blood of the saints!” – Does this praise belong to [the Roman Catholic Church]? Nay, verily; but reformed churches (so called) have fairly learned to tread in her steps. Protestant churches too know [how] to persecute, when they have power in their hands, even unto blood. And meanwhile, how do they also anathematize each other! Devote each other to the nethermost hell! What wrath, what contention, what malice, what bitterness, is every where found among them, even where they agree in essentials, and only differ in opinions, or in the circumstantial of religion! Who follows after only the ‘things that make for peace, and [which] edify [others]? O God! How long?” ''

He then closes with a positive exhortation (I'm paraphrasing now). Fear not little flock. God will eventually put an end to all war and religious strife. All people will love as God loves and be made perfect at last. Even though that day hasn’t come yet, be part of the first fruits of that harvest now by loving your neighbour as yourself and ask God to fill your heart to overflowing with such love until “every unkind and unholy temper” is swallowed up in love!

Leaders of the "free world" take note. God puts you on notice - Love your enemies, don't bomb their countries and burn them to a crisp.

The Magic of the Black Disc

A friend emailed me recently and said that he had just purchased Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. It just so happened that I had been listening to a track from it that morning on my iPod ("Tough Mama"). I told him how those lines "Dark beauty / with a long night's journey in your eyes" and "with the badge of the lonesome road written on your sleeve" get me every time, and the way he sings them! There's something visceral about Bob's songs. In some kind of sub-rational way they just hit ya where ya live! My friend is doing Masters work in multi-modal therapy at the moment, liked my use of "visceral" and told me how his studies were moving him away from "the rational only [not irrational]...to a total experiencing...visceral is a good word...so descriptive....so...visceral...I havent got into ipods and probably wont....love my cd collection too much...love the fussing around with the cd's and ancient cd technology...so visceral." Well the use of an iPod hasn't superceded my use of and love for CDs. (Man, I still use vinyl!) Both CDs and vinyl records are objects of beauty in themselves and things I could never replace in my life. It's just that the iPod gives me portability and I love the shuffle function which keeps me guessing about what's coming up next. I've come to the realization that I love these objects because they are magic. When as a child I took a solid black vinyl disc and placed it on a spinning turntable, music came out of it for no reason that I could explain. I didn't understand or need or want to understand the technology behind the magic. The wonder of the music carried its own explanation. The CD revolution gave me the same experience without lessening my love for the magic of the black disc. Ditto for the iPod and the CD.

Visioneer Films

You can now view the Boy Wonder's (my son Jesse's) short films A Night of Fowl Play, Shelter, and The Waiting Room at www.visioneerfilms.com
You can view these with Quicktime in High Medium or Low resolution. Check 'em out. They're good (admittedly I'm biased), and leave a comment.