Liturgies

This week we have had our fill of terrorism-related stories in the media, with an emphasis and aim of increasing our fears and vigilance as a nation. This heightened fear and suspicion lead in some cases to the desecration of mosques and the vilification of many Muslim people.

Some commentators believe this unwarranted escalation of the security alert has been a deliberate attempt by the government and its powerful allies to distract from unpopular domestic politics and policies, vindicating its cruel and inhumane asylum seeker policies and justifying our spending billions on another war in Iraq and the enormous security for the G20 summits. With such immense media saturation the general atmosphere created in the community becomes one of mistrust and suspicion.

Today’s gospel reading speaks to our situation in Australia. But on first reading it appears puzzling and unjust. With the labourers who had labored all day in the hot sun getting the same as those who arrive at the last minute. Allow me to explain how it speaks to our situation by starting with a Buddhist story from Thailand.

In a large temple north of Thailand’s ancient capital, Sukotai, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha. Though not the most handsome or refined work of Thai Buddhist art, it had been cared for over a period of five hundred years and had become revered for its sheer longevity. Violent storms, changes of government, and invading armies had come and gone, but the Buddha endured.

At one point, however, the monks who tended the temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair and repainting. After a stretch of particularly hot, dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold! Inside this plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia. Now uncovered, the golden Buddha draws throngs of devoted pilgrims from all over Thailand.

The monks believe that this shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover our innate nobility and divinity. Just as the people of Sukotai had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature. Much of the time we operate from the protective layer.

We forget that we are, or have what we seek – it is within us, but often clouded with all our seeking, that we forget our essential nature, like in the Poem from Rumi.

“I have lived on the lip of insanity,

Wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens.

I’ve been knocking from the inside!”

Or in the writings of St Augustine:

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! And behold, you were within me, but I was outside, and there I sought you and in my deformity I rushed headlong into the well-formed things that you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you."

Or, in the words of Meister Eckhart:

“God is closer to me than I am to myself: my being depends on God’s being near me and present to me …God is near to us, but we are far from God. God is in, we are out. God is at home (in us), we are abroad.”

But, when we have it, find it or discover it, it is enough – there is no need for more, like the labourers in today’s Gospel who are invited to see – Once you have it there is no need for more, nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. It is more than sufficient and if you have truly received it you will know.

You will not be grumbling about others receiving because you consider them less worthy. You will rejoice for those who also receive because the giver is generous and the gift is so wondrous and nothing can be added to it.

As the Sannyasi in this Hindu story from India reveals:

THE DIAMOND

A long time ago, a sannyasi (wise man) reached the outskirts of the village and settled down to sleep for the night under a comfortable tree.

A man approached him said “The stone!  You must be the one with the stone! Please give me the precious stone!”

“What stone?” replied the Sannyasi.

The man said, “Last night the Lord appeared to me in a dream and told me that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk I would find a man under a tree who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich for the rest of my life”.

The sannyasi rummaged through his bag and pulled out a stone. “Well he probably meant this one that I just found a few days ago” he said, as he handed over a very large diamond to the man. “You can have it”.

The man gazed at the uncut diamond in wonder. It was the biggest diamond he had ever seen and needed two hands just to hold it. He took the diamond under his coat and ran home with it.

All night he tossed around in his bed, unable to sleep.

At the crack of dawn he could not take it any longer, and placed his long coat on to go find the sannyasi again. As he woke up the wise man under the tree he said, “Please share with me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily.”

The inner wealth of the Sannyasi, who is content without material gain, is what people, rich/poor, truly seek, but cannot buy. If you have it, there is no need for more. In fact, what we have materially is often more than enough. What we are experiencing globally today is a spiritual crisis, where those who have want more and more depriving those who do not have. Those who have believe that having more will bring true happiness, but instead add to a greater global misery, and fear that what they have will be taken by those who do not have.

We see it acted out in the rich countries in their protection of their borders, in their anti-terrorism strategies, immigration and asylum seeker policies – where fear of the stranger extends to fear that there is not enough to go around.

Last week, I joined a group of concerned Christians from various denominations – Quakers, Baptists, Anglicans/Wesleyan Methodists and Uniting Church to express our concern to Peter Dutton MP Federal Health Minister about the deteriorating physical and mental health of Asylum Seekers in detention and in particular, the 699 children still in detention.

We decided to sit in his office until we heard from him some commitment to overturn his government’s inhumane policy of detention. It became an act of civil disobedience, because we refused to move until we heard an affirmation to our demands. We had written to him on numerous occasions without a reply. The police came and asked us to move on, on several occasions throughout the day. But we refused to move. We sat and prayed, meditated, shared not only our lives and thoughts, hopes and dreams for a better world, but we shared what food and drink we had brought with us.

I found it to be a deeply moving experience of connection and solidarity with people who shared passionately their hopes for a change to our hard-hearted nation’s policies to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. I believe we connected to that deeper Golden Buddha within, the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price – that aspect we truly yearn for and strive to obtain-that which will allow us to collectively give away or share the diamond, our so-called material wealth, the thing to which we cling as a nation. I believe connecting to this deeper reality as a nation will allow us to let go our ideas of difference, barriers of separateness and fears of division.

Although we were apprehended and removed from the office by the police, at the end of the day, they could not remove our joy and the glimpse of a vision of what is possible when groups of people refuse to embrace cruel and inhumane policies - when groups of people gather to embrace a reality beyond the material world where love and compassion, friendship and connection matter more than owning and possessing.

Thomas Merton glimpsed this vision when he wrote nearly 55 years ago standing in the middle of a busy cosmopolitan street in a big city. It speaks to our situation today so allow me to share:

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other”