Liturgies

At a wedding ceremony, the pastor asked if anyone had anything to say concerning the union of the bride and groom. It was their time to stand up and talk, or forever hold their peace. The moment of utter silence was broken by a young beautiful woman carrying a child. She started walking toward the pastor slowly. Everything quickly turned to chaos. The bride slapped the groom. The groom’s mother fainted. The groomsmen started giving each other looks and wondering how best to help save the situation. The pastor asked the woman, “Can you tell us why you came forward? What do you have to say?” The woman replied, “We can’t hear you down the back.” In recent times I have found myself in some old traditional style Catholic Churches where it is difficult to hear down the back. Many of you may have had similar opportunities from time to time to return to the old churches of your past.  This opportunity was a chance to see with the fresh eyes of hindsight and to discern anew what I once believed and held dear. To observe with a detached view and a greater understanding with years of considered research and greater knowledge. What has become clearer for me over the years of being within the Christian Tradition is that Christianity was born because it appealed to a wide group of people within the Roman Empire. It begged, borrowed, stole and adapted all the stories and myths from religions across all the regions the Roman Empire occupied. It was set up to continually unify an Empire paranoid of disunity and another 100 year Civil War, the last nearly fatal one ending on the 2^nd of September 31 BC. This was the famous Battle of Actium between the Roman Octavian (who was later awarded the title Augustus) who defeated the combined Roman Forces lead by Mark Anthony and the Egyptian allied forces lead by Cleopatra.  The last thing the Empire wanted was further disunity within the Empire. A universal religion was sought which would bring further unity and harmonious relations within the Empire. Stories were written which would incorporate the highest ideals, creeds and dogmas were created and demanded to be learned and recited to determine membership and ensure continuity of belief. So as I sat in this Roman Catholic Church, this ancient sacred space, this living museum, I had a greater appreciation of the wider stories and myths which Christianity embraced. I see the stain glass window at the front of the church with Mary and the infant Jesus, but I also see the 4th Century BC image of Isis suckling her infant son Horus from the Egyptian Religion, I see the 5^th Century BC image of Semele holding the baby Dionysus from the Greek Religion. I sit in a classical Christian Church, but I also see the model Roman Centurion’s House and the standard first century  Jewish Synagogue. The Catholic Priest stands dressed in power as a Roman Senator in a sanctuary area with a marble altar in the centre of the sanctuary not unlike so many Religions from Antiquity but in particular borrowing from the Mystery Religions of Mithras from Persia and Dionysus from Greece. The priest stands below a Hugh cross, not unfamiliar to the people of Greece where Dionysus six centuries prior to the arrival of Jesus we see images of Dionysus nailed to a tree and given a crown of Ivy and dressed in purple robes and given vinegar to drink. Similar stories and images which predate the Jesus stories come with Attis from Asia Minor, Adonis from Syria where he is known as, ‘HE ON A TREE’. During the service the priest recites prayers which are not unfamiliar to the Adherents and followers of Mithras, Dionysus and Attis and the Jewish people familiar with the Blessing and Kiddush prayers of the Old Testament. The Catholic ritual prayers for the dead are not unlike the prayers from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and many of the Christian burial practices have an Egyptian origin. The symbols, prayers and rituals of the Christian religion are rich because of their origins and how they have been adapted and used over many years. Unfortunately like so much of the Christian religion many of the stories, myths and symbols were literalised giving them greater power in the short term, but long term are now weakened and damaged because they were taken literally. Part of their beauty is their longevity and their connection to another ancient long passed age. But their strength is also their weakness when they anchor us to a cosmology and theology which is no longer relevant or speaks to our age. Christianity’s inability to adapt and embrace change, which was its strength in its early infancy, will be instrumental in its demise, in particular in Western Countries where mainstream Christianity is in sharp decline. As we witness the steady decline and demise of the world’s major religions we are observing the rise of fundamentalism. The internal response to the decline is to return to a time when the religion was at its peak. A return to the basics and to the fundamentals.  The formula for going forwards is to go backwards. We have observed this in the Catholic Church after the attempts to open up the windows of the church from the Second Vatican Council to allow reform and renewal, fears of what this might mean systemically were too great and instead of progressing it has chosen to regress to a former age. The retreat to fundamentalism is also a retreat in uncertain changing times to simplistic answers and solutions.  Karen Armstrong, British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion observes, “Every fundamentalist movement I’ve studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.” Many fundamentalist Islamic movements believe that the whole fabric of Western Society is a threat to Islam and thereby needs to be exterminated at what-ever cost. At the heart of the rise of militant Muslim fundamentalism is a desire to eliminate all the elements that threaten the return to the pass glory days of the religion. One of the responding movements in the West is another primitive often ugly fundamentalism found in the comments and policies of Pauline Hanson and the Australian Government’s Border Protection Policies, the rise of Donald Trump in the USA, elements of the Brixit Response and the response to the Coup in Turkey, and the many European right wing parties and voices. The move to hang onto what feels secure and stable is a normal and understandable human need. The mistake we can all make is to believe that this is solely obtainable in the world of form. St Paul writing to the people of Corinth many years ago reminded these people who were getting lost in the worries of the world and the external of religion that what Jesus points to and what is at the heart of the Gospels is “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things that God has prepared for those who love.” (1Cor  2; 9) That the world of form, as the author of our first reading from Ecclesiastes exclaims, is nothing, that all is vanity, it is all passing and impermanent. And yet we so often cling to this world for our security. As Jesus in today’s Gospel explains that “people’s lives are not made secure by what they own, even when they have more than they need.”(Lk 12;15) So as I sat in this old familiar church with its rich history carrying stories of thousands of years both Christian and well beyond, the final song was being sang, and for me it had fitted perfectly what I had been musing upon. It was the Galilee Song. The chorus being, “So I leave my boats behind, leave them on familiar shores, set my heart upon the deep … At that moment as I sat there I thought, The boats I leave behind could be many of the externals of the Religion that I had clung so dearly to in the past and which helped transition me to where I am today. The familiar shore could be the church buildings I walk into that I have known so well, and have left behind. But the invitation to constantly SET MY HEART UPON THE DEEP, to move beyond the external, the material world of form which so attractively promises so much, but delivers so little. So little of what really sustains us in life. The invitation to set my heart upon the deep is an invitation to LET GO over and over my attachment to the external and to move into those seemingly empty spaces of stillness and there discover the pearl of great price. I would like to finish with this beautiful piece of writing by Wendell Berry ‘The Peace of Wild Things.’ Which captures something of the anxiety we feel when the material world seizes us and what it feels like when we can let it go. “When despair for the world grows in me And I wake in the night at the least sound In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake Rest in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things That do not tax their lives with forethought Of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, And am free.”