St Mary's

On our main highways these days we are invited to take some time out and refresh ourselves with a “cup of Tea” before continuing on our journey.  The point of that of course is to make sure we get to our journey’s end safely.I think that today’s gathering – with or without the cup of tea – is something like that – it’s taking time out to refocus on what might be best for us as a community of faith in order to continue with a certain confidence on our spiritual journey.

I emphasise what is best for us as a community of faith- we need to look beyond any sort of factional interests so we don’t bring about a fractional community – it’s the health of the whole which is important.  In the last few weeks Terry and I detect a certain ease within the community – a growing confidence in ourselves – a maturity, as the first reading suggests is the function of religion – to make us capable of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, non – violence and care for others. Confidence in the leadership of this community is important as is remaining faithful to our mission statement – to love tenderly, to act justly and to walk humbly with the Mystery in which we are all embedded.

Recently parts of Australia have experienced record flooding and this week cyclone. Yasi, the category 5 cyclone here in North Queensland – leaving towns, homes, businesses, crops inundated with water along with a trail of destruction and heartbreak.

People seeking safety inside their homes watched with a sense of hopelessness and helplessness as their livelihoods were destroyed before their very eyes.  In the floods people as well as livestock and wild life were swept to their deaths while others knew that if they stayed, they too would surely die.  People in North Queensland, prior to the arrival of Yasi crowded into evacuation centres – some people chose to stay in their homes and sought help at the height of the storm but it was too late.

Rationally, people knew they had to leave but emotionally, many were immobilised.

In his book A New Christianity for a New World Bishop John Shelley Spong states that  the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity, over the centuries of belief, have seeped into our minds and our hearts to the point where we can no longer think of the mystery that traditionally we name God, outside the boxes the creeds have created.

Drop by drop, the Christian religion as it came to be embodied in our creeds have given us a profoundly dangerous doctrine of God.  This literal understanding of Christian faith has covered our fields and destroyed the very crops that Christians were supposed to harvest as their livelihood.    As today’s second reading suggests – when we stoped teaching the contemplative mind in a systematic way some 400 – 500 years ago, we lost the capacity to deal with paradox, inconsistency and human imperfection.  Instead it became “winners take all and losers lose all”.

The creeds were a response to debate, designed to tell who was an insider and who was not.  A creed is a border – maker, the Jesus of the Gospels was a border – breaker.

In the creeds there is no mention of love, no mention of the teachings, of the gospel Jesus, no mention of the reign of God, no mention of God as the God of Being – GOD IS NOT A BEING.  Despite all our universities and churches in Western Christianity, we learn to choose one side over the other and if possible exclude, punish or even kill the other side.  That’s dualistic thinking at its worst, and it’s the normal mind that has taken over the world.  It creates very angry and often violent religious people.  I believe that as communities of faith, we must leave this stifling theology, the patriarchal structures, the mortality that our doctrines and dogmas are unchangeable or our sacred texts are without error.  We must leave the God of miracles and magic, the God of supernatural and interventionist power. Like what is happening in Egypt, the birthplace of Christianity, only a people’s movement from the ground up can bring about the change that is needed in the Christian church today.  When religion is not creating people who can reconcile things in a non violent way, who are capable of compassion, who can absorb contradictions and paradox – then religion isn’t doing its job.

The first three centuries of Christianity bore no resemblance to the last sixteen hundred years of belief, of creeds.  We would find more in common with the contemplative spirituality of early faith communities, that consisted of people who lived on the edge of society, that were persecuted by the powerful and the privileged, who had nothing in common with power, pomp, prestige and privilege of the Roman Catholic church that rose to power just as the Roman Empire was collapsing.

We are like those people caught in their homes as the flood waters rose or as cyclone Yasi raged and their home unliveable while they felt emotionally immobilised, rationally they understood that they had to leave, otherwise  they would die.

We too, no  matter how fearful and insistent the inner voices tell us of the danger of moving, we still have to move for the danger of staying is death itself.

What we are walking away from is a literalist understanding of Christianity which began with Constantine, an authentic spirituality, the long mystical/contemplative

tradition which has been the preserve of contemplative religious orders of men and women can bring about a springtime within Christianity. This tradition is also present in indigenous spirituality, in Islam, in Buddhism, in Judaism – here is what unites people of faith as opposed to belief systems, creeds that are dualistic, creating division, exclusion and religious violence.