Prayer from the beach

I praise you, God of creation's joy, for this town where I have stayed the last five weekends. I praise you for the beaches and the headlands and the sea. I praise you for the house where we stayed and were happy together. I praise you for the kitchen and the table and the chairs, and I praise you for the trampoline and the swimming pool where the water dragons sunbaked, terrorising my children. I praise you for the chooks and for the eggs they laid for us, and I praise you for the outdoor pizza oven and for the mushrooms that tasted so smoky when we cooked them. 

I praise you for sunrise at the beach (or just-after-sunrise: for we always slept, I praise you, longer than we'd planned). I praise you for the meal of fish and chips that we ate from paper trays while the sun was going down. I praise you for the seagulls that smile indignantly because we will not give them any chips, and I praise you for the pelican that drifts on the water like a fishing trawler and then heaves itself into the air like a 747, fat and majestic, wonderful to see.

I praise you for the girls in summer dresses on the street, for the girls basking nearly naked on the sand, for the young men playing volleyball and running with their shirts off to show the world that they are young and strong, and I praise you for the old men in swimming caps who go down into the water even when it is very cold, and for the old women who walk their dogs and stop to greet one another beside the sea.

I praise you for the surfers and the kayakers and the stand-up paddlers, and I praise you for all the boats and for all who love boats and who go out on the water, and I praise you for the man who had built his own houseboat and told me gently with a sunburnt voice, 'You have time for things on the water.'

I praise you for the wide flat rocks where my children roamed at low tide. I praise you for my son who licked the glistening dry salt off the rock and said it tasted good. I praise you for my daughters' glee and horror when they found a crab in the little pool. I praise you for the terrible high rocks where we saw the teenagers playing, lying facedown while the waves swept over them (and I praise you that they were not swept away). 

I praise you for the Aboriginal woman who calls the whales, and for all those hours I stared at the water hoping to see whales spouting, and I praise you for those two unforgettable mornings when I woke from dreaming of whales, filled with gratitude that I had seen them even in my dreams. 

I praise you for the lake where we paddled with my friend while the dog swam alongside, right round that little island. I praise you for the way the silver light shimmered on the branches that hung over the water, and for my friend who said it was his favourite thing to see. I praise you for the way the dog rested his face on his paw on the side when we brought him on board because of his exhaustion, because he had swum so far and so well. I praise you for the fish that I saw jumping near the boat. And I praise you for the fish my children saw when they had waited a long time for it, looking. 

May your praise be always on my lips and in my heart. For life is not long enough to praise you; and were all the oceans ink and all the skies a scroll, it would not be enough to tell of all your goodness in a town like this, on a day like this, when the sun is in the sky and the water shines like glass, a mirror of your glory, God of creation's joy.

Gospel of John: audio sermons

I spent my weekends last month at the wonderful Terrigal Uniting Church, and I preached a five-week series on the Gospel of John. If you're interested, the sermons are available in audio. I love John's Gospel very much, and it was a treat to be able to speak about it.

My five texts and topics were:

1. The Word Made Flesh (John 1)
2. The Coming of the Light (John 9)
3. The Triumph of Life (John 11)
4. The Doorway to Eternity (John 17)
5. The Way of Discipleship (John 21)

I'd say the best response was to the fourth one, on John 17, which I did as a first-person narrative, seated on a chair with a shawl around my shoulders. I've never done that kind of dramatised sermon before, but I enjoyed the experience and found it quite moving. 

I gave similar versions of these sermons in the evening service, and these were filmed. The first video is available here, and I'm told the others will be added eventually too. [Update: second video available here.]

Devilish doodlings

by Kim Fabricius

Cardinal George Pell –

Death by climate – went to hell.

The archbishop, frying, said, “Jesus, it’s hot!”

The devil, denying, said, “Hot?  No, it’s not.”

What is the difference between Global Warming Denial and Holocaust Denial? Both are ideologically motivated and doctrinaire, overwhelmingly from the right. Informing both is quack science, and sustaining both are bogus statistics. Both concern anthropogenic phenomena reliant for their implementation on exceptional technological sophistication and public moral indifference. Both consolidate their identities by appealing to conspiracies against them. But here is a difference: the number of deaths due to Global Warming will finally, sickeningly, far surpass the Eight Million.

Certainly a great deal, if not all, human evil is a product of the inferiority complex.  Satan is the archetypal case.  He wreaks his havoc because, due to self-esteem issues, his “sense of injur’d merit” (Paradise Lost, I/98), he’s soooo pissed off.

The problem with writing fiction about Satan is that it’s really hard to make him the minor character he is.

Satan is the supreme intellectual. Sexual sarxian vices are mere peccadilloes compared to the sins of feverish cogitation. Of course, Satan may come on as a sexual predator, and boast of his amorous exploits, but remember, he is a liar. In fact, the Devil is impotent.

Being “spiritual” but not religious, and averse to the somatic, the material, and the quotidian messy – these too are characteristic of the demonic.  Satan – OCD for sure.

On Judgement Day, God will ask us not what we have done, or what we believe, but what we desire, what we love.

“Unforgiven Sinners” is any empty set.  If there are any sinners in hell, it is not because they are unforgiven but unforgiving – of themselves as well as others. 

Acknowledgements I’d like to see in a book on theodicy: “I dedicate this book to Satan, without whom it could not have been written. God, of course, carries the can for all the many errors it no doubt contains.”

What is the Free-Will Defence but the title of a theological Just So Story that for the liberal theodicist lets God off the hook of the Holocaust, and for the Arminian infernologist lets God off the hook of Hell?  And this is supposed to be a win-win discourse?  The apotheosis of human “choice” on the one hand, and either a morally repugnant or an impotent deity on the other? 

In the parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-8), Jesus (in)famously praises a crook for his sense of urgency, presence of mind, dedication, resourcefulness, and cunning.  A contemporary version might be called the parable of the Desperate Junkie.

When God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the knowledge-of-good-and-evil tree, he was saying that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

John cried, “Repent!”, not “Repaint.”  Not “Change the decor”, but “Here comes the wrecking ball!”

Mirabile dictu: thirty years of ministry and I’m still a Christian.  I put it down to the suffering and sorrow I have seen and shared, and to the unpleasant confrontations with intellectual and moral squalor. With a not altogether ungrudging nod to the Holy Spirit.

You can always spot an optimist: they are the ones who laugh at their own jokes.

“O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers …”

Jeez, I see a bunch of constellations like Orion and Cassiopeia named after pagan mythical figures.  And what’s with the Babylonian/Egyptian astrological signs, a goat, a crab, a scorpion …? 

O Lord, our Sovereign, how crummy is your astronomical marketing technique!

Despair is God’s strange way of keeping faith honest.

Happiness is a banquet for sharing; sorrow is a meal-for-one, picked at alone.

“Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing” (Matthew 13:34).  And the scribes and Pharisees said, “We’ve been counting the number times you use the word ‘Yahweh’ and ‘faith’ in your stories.  The concordance does not look good.  Furthermore, you seem reluctant to tell the crowds ‘The Torah says …’ on a whole raft of issues.  This excision of God from your manifesto is a scandalous affront to the national narrative. We’ll be endorsing Caiaphas.”

It is (as Eliot observed) a sign of faith’s decay when the Bible is judged on its artistic merits – and (I would add) when church music isn’t.

“Hey Jesus,” said Satan to Jesus at Golgotha, “the Romans are about to round up your disciples, rape your mother and sisters, and torch the town of Nazareth. And you’re just gonna hang there?”

Question: What is the “invisible church”? Answer: The Christian Right.

If the famous parable of Jesus were an allegory of religion and American politics, the brigands who mug the nation/world and leave it for dead would be the Religious Right, the passing priest and Levite would be Democrats, and the Good Samaritan would be – an atheist.

God invented the church to give atheists a fighting chance.

Once there were the New Atheists. Now there are the New New Atheists. Sort of like the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea. Prognosticating from the membership of the Popular Front of Judea, I suppose we can look forward to the Post New New Atheist. 

Prayer for a grieving priest

Lord Christ, today I saw a priest of your church weeping because of your people. What was this strange, silent grief? Was it because of some failure in your people? Or some inadequacy in the priest himself? Is there something he needs, but still lacks, for his ministry? Was there something I could give him? A book to read, a bit of theology? Or some encouragement and a friendly word? Or was it your own grief, the grief of your priesthood, that had entered his heart and broken it from the inside? When you wept over the lost sheep of Israel, was it because your priesthood was lacking, or because it was so full? 

Christ our shepherd, Christ our pastor, Christ our priest, have mercy on all priests of your church. Have mercy on all who have responded to your call, even when their task is beyond all human ability. Have mercy on all who have to announce your forgiveness, even when sin's burden weighs heavy in their hearts. Have mercy on all who have to bring your healing, though they can command no miracles and work no wonders. Have mercy on all who have to speak in your name, though your Name is an unsearchable mystery. Have mercy on all who have to approach your table, taking your body in their hands, breaking it, giving it away to whoever wants it, a feast for the life of the world – even when they, your priests, are still so hungry and so poor. 

Have mercy, Lord Christ, on all who feed others while they themselves go hungry; who pray for others even though for them the heavens are silent; who go on speaking your Word their whole lives long when they themselves have heard only the faintest whisper; who proclaim good news and pour out the oil of joy while their own hearts grieve – have mercy, and sustain them by the eternal Word of your joy and by the grace of your heavenly priesthood. Amen.

Theology events: Sydney and LA

For everyone in the Sydney area, there's a new website for theology events in Sydney – a great way of keeping up to date on conferences, public lectures, and seminars in this part of the world.

There's also a call for papers for the first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, on the theme "Christology Ancient and Modern".

I'll be back in LA for a month in November/December this year too, following AAR in Chicago. I'll be speaking at a church in Long Beach on the first Sunday of Advent – and if any other churches in the area would like a sermon or two, or some help with Sunday worship, I'm your man!

Doodlings du jour

by Kim Fabricius

God is wise, God is just, God is merciful, God is omni-this and omni-that.  And, of course, there is the awesome holiness and glory of God.  But it is a great pity that no doctrine of God I know includes among the divine perfections the silliness of God.  There – put that in your Piper and smoke it.

Of course I am aware that there is a deep sorrow in the heart of God, and an irreducibly tragic dimension to human life.  I’m not a fantasist.  So in a Picassoesque portrait of God, by all means daub a tear.  Just don’t forget the polyhedral grin from ear to ear to ear.

It is widely acknowledged that God is a dancer, but not so well known that God prefers break to ballet – and ballet in the style of Miss Piggy.  But God is not Lord of the line dance.  Line dancing is the choreography of hell.

Someone kindly asked me if I ever considered doing stand-up.  Only ex cathedra.

Each of us may get our 15 minutes of fame (Warhol), but nowadays you’re lucky to get 15 seconds of truth – and counting…

Luther said that “faith is under the left nipple”.  So too is politics – if it’s got heart.

Some ministers boast of increasing congregations, others despair of diminishing ones.  Same pastoral pathology.  We should, however, remember that Jesus started on a mountain with a sermon to a multitude, and ended on a hill with a homélie-à-deux, one of whom heckled.

WWJD: not what would Jesus do, but why would Jesus do it – that is the question that might give us some loft on an ethical trajectory.

What’s the difference between the kingdom of God and the church?  The kingdom of God is an asshole-free zone.  Jesus said, “Don’t be an asshole: this is the law and the prophets.”

There are some churches that, for their παρρησία, should have crash helmets in the pews – and others, for their bullshit, Wellington boots.

It is never pleasant to be called anti-Semitic, but when the epithet is hurled at you when discussing the colonising of the West Bank, best not take it personally: the abuse is really just a truculent compliment to the cogency of your argument.

The most hateful and violent people are also the most fearful and joyless, and therefore the most to be pitied.  That is why our enemies need our prayers of love and forgiveness.

We should have the lack of self-consciousness of a dog, and the acute self-awareness of a cat (cf. Jesus).  But with our contemporary “How do I look?” narcissism on the one hand, and our culture of lies (not to mention our inveterate propensity for self-deceit) on the other – well, it’s hard times for being human.

That we also live in a culture of fear has been well rehearsed and documented (pre-dating 9/11, by the way).  One harbinger of the passing of this particular social pathology will be the reappearance of the hitchhiker.

I often visit what the British now call “care homes”.  Actually they are harbours.  A few boats may be moored, a few others drifting close to shore.  But most are out at sea, and some right on the horizon.  The people on board are waving their arms.  But in greeting, farewell, or panic and desperation?  They are too far away to tell.  One imagines the Lord gently calling to them, “Ahoy.”

Will Self.  What will?  Whose self?  It’s hard to believe that this isn’t a satirical nom de plume of the sharp, iconoclastic British writer – but it isn’t.  And it gets better:  Will Self has kids named Luther and Ivan.  Seriously.

Drugs in sport?  The London Olympics were a paradigm example of sport-as-drugs, a media-injected amphetamine spectacle (cf. Guy DeBord).  The BBC even tried some uncharacteristic crack-pot patriotic cheerleading – though Gary Lineker was a broadcasting barbiturate, wasn’t he?

Jonathan Edwards – no, not the American theologian, the British athlete – won the silver medal in the Triple Jump at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and then the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games.  He still holds the world record – 18.43m – set at the World Championships in 1995.  Edwards was a charming, photo-friendly evangelical Christian, and a real psalm and dance was made of his faith at the time in marketing Christianity to young people.  Then Edwards lost his faith.  Now, in the London Olympics, Mo Farah has won double gold in the 10,000 and 5,000 Metres.  Farah is a charming, photo-friendly Muslim.  So…  

Moral: (pace Augustine, ambivalently, on Victorinus) the Celebrity Gospel will get you a gold medal in the Mug’s Games. 

Romney – and now Ryan.  Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Smith!

Tea Party politics are rewriting the science books: Moronic Design in biology; Continental Catastrophism in geology; and in physics, Even-Darker Matter, the Beelzebub Particle, and the Theory of Anti-Gravity (the Trickle-Up Effect).

If you want to see how utterly ridiculous is the theopolitical narrative of American exceptionalism, take a look at the tragi-comic version now playing in Russia, with its own themes of God, soil, and family, and its own cast of characters – messianic ruler, high priests, and court prophets with their hananiads – likewise drawn from the Christian Right.  Not to forget the scapegoat to secure national identity.

Idea for a Nativity Play this Advent: A Hard Time We Had of It, featuring the Three MagOi! from the East (who are arrested and tried for singing a punk Magnificat in the Temple); with King Vladimir (a Rufus T. Firefly of a figure), the Head of Secret Police and High Priest Kirill (famous for his miracle of the “immaculate disappearance of the watch”), and Pontius Syrova (renown for her laconic FOTF judicial rulings), stage extreme right.  The curtain closes as the MagOi! are escorted from the city “by another road” to a crib in Siberia.  Alternatively, a Passion Play suggests itself, with the same dramatis personae, and an opening scene entitled “Riot in the Temple”, followed by an unfolding plot of arrest, show trial, and punishment for crimes against religion, civic and sacral. 

The opulent, the desperate, and the bored are the meat and drink of superstition.  Hence its current obesity issues.

Imagine (if you can) in every café, mall, stadium, airport, the sudden vanishment of all handheld technology.  Imagine (if you dare!) the massive manual shock, feelings of forsakenness, and contorted looks of anguish and utter vacuity.  Only one artist could paint this horrific picture: Hieronymus Bosch.  It is called ipocalypse.

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must watch with joy and wonder the curveball of Sandy Koufax.