Homily St Mary’s South Brisbane February 21-22 2015

Our readings today relate to many things- cleaning the waters, children playing, light of the world, washing of eyes and the authorities and there is another element that links these stories, that of clay.

This is the first week in Lent, a time of preparation for new light, new life. Wednesday initiated the season of Lent through the ashes.  In this nation the ashes could be confused with another form of Ashes however that is another religion. We all know that Australia won The Ashes however here at St Mary’s Community I wish to suggest that this Lent we lose the ashes. As a young teacher I recall being placed on the spot at my first school Ash Wednesday being given a bowl of ashes and told to say ‘turn away from sin and take up your cross’. When the time came to ash the children I applied a thumbprint of ash onto their foreheads not realizing that I should smear them as a cross. The heavy ash thumbprint therefore disintegrated and the ash fell like precipitation down their faces resulting in much sneezing, and I somehow recall that I had misheard the Sister who had delegated me this role as I said ‘turn away from sin and don’t be so cross’.

Our daily lives are no longer connected with ashes, as we no longer cook on woodstoves or have fireplaces. Indirectly it is through the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity, while pollution controls can remove a lot of the toxic waste from smokestacks, these toxins end up as coal ash which are stored in waste ponds or landfills which can leach sulfur dioxide and heavy metals into surface and groundwater; arsenic, lead, mercury and other poisons including radioactive elements. This process of creating ash calls for much consideration of how we care for our waters as the Jesus child did in our first reading.

The Jesus Child went on to play with soft clay. I was captivated, entranced and in awe, when first I made a form from clay as a child. I consider clay to be magic dirt! If your pick up a handful of loam from your garden try to create a form from disappointment occurs, however pick up a handful of clay and it contains infinite potential for new shapes! Clay is a plastic substance meaning that it can be changed or made into many forms. Today we associate plastic with synthetic polymers that are most commonly derived from petrochemicals or fossil fuels; plastic bags, containers and wrappings that end up in landfill or in our oceans causing great devastation to marine life; we are greatly in need of the child Jesus again!

I wish you to consider clay as a symbol for this important time within our liturgical year a symbol whose process brings about new form, usable and utilitarian; clay.

Pottery, an important human innovation, was more effective for holding and storing food than baskets or hide skin pouches and used for cooking in as an important development in food processing and preparation. 20,000-year-old fragments from China date to the time of the Last Glacial Maximum when scarcity of resources during that period forced people to develop better ways of collecting and processing food, suggesting that pottery predates the development of agriculture. Clay was an important part of Jesus’ life; the jars of water that were turned into wine at Cana were made of clay.

Clay is an integral part of our present lives; yes we spit into it, sit on it, coat walls and floors with it, make walls out of it, eat and drink out of it, even ingest it for what was referred to in rhyming slang as the ‘Jimmy Britt’s’. Some of you may recall having a tablespoon of white Kaomagma, which is Kaolin and Aluminium hydroxide or a clay and an antacid. The list goes on and on right up into space with its use ensuring safety for astronauts on reentering the Earth’s atmosphere as a clay tile on the underbelly of the Space Shuttle. During this period of Lent I invite you to become more aware of clay and its many forms.

Clay forms over long periods of time from the gradual chemical weathering of silicate-bearing rocks by diluted acidic solvents that migrate through the weathering rock and through hydrothermal activity. There are two types of clay deposits: primary and secondary. Primary clays form as residual deposits in soil and remain at the site of formation such as Kaolin. Secondary clays are clays that have been transported from their original location by water erosion and deposited as sediment, hence such places as Clayfield.

Should we go to the time that this continent was first peopled we would find the use clay being used in many forms. Foods were baked in ground ovens with hot clay lumps, clay was smeared over the skin to inhibit sandflies and mosquitoes, ingested when sick so as to cure stomach ache, used by children in their play and used as ceremonial body markings and for painting on bark, wood and rock.

As an art student clay once again captivated me, this time with its formation on a wheel and the need to repeat, repeat, repeat, the same actions over and over and over again so as to acquire an ability or skill, isn’t that what Lent is about, every year that you have lived there has been a Lent and this will continue to be, because we as people need such times, an introspective time of the self, inviting us to be a community of reflective and responsive participants.

This is the stuff of our being, our essence, our belonging to this our home. The need to reconnect, and that is what this time of Lent is about, a time to reflect and reform and renew life, Jesus acted as a light for the world by his actions, used clay and spit to create a balm which when placed over blind eyes enabled new sight and so we are encouraged to gain new sight, insights into our daily repetitions so as to acquire abilities and skills to better ourselves and our relationships with those around us, a reforming.

Finally there is another thing present in our readings and that is the authorities of the day and by whom Jesus met his life’s end. What is a life that does not respond to injustices, enabling a clarity of sight, the bringing of new light, playfulness and acceptance of all; do we wish for a life lived lightly which does not enter into the fullness and potential of its possibilities. This Lent is a time of considering those possibilities of life, to reengage, reform, renew- a time to consider how we may live simply so that others may simply live.

Today’s readings told of cleaning the waters, a child’s play, the light of the world, the washing of eyes and the authorities. In two of our readings the Jewish chief men the Pharisees are the authorities referred to and it is through our actions that we enable such groups to gain authority. Jesus demonstrates a leadership that challenges such authorities why because these forms of authority show no leadership. Leadership has a place beyond that of authority and should we have an authority of a style the stifles leadership then we can become complacent, as we are not challenged. Alertness can then be seen as the hidden discipline of familiarity.

On the table is a clay bowl into which you are invited to place your fingermark with white clay; this bowl symbolizes community, a community contained within its rim, a wavering, indefinable rim! After receiving the Eucharistic bread please come and clay mark this bowl while considering a way in which you are able to change or reform something within your life.

I wish to finish with a poem by David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You, I believe that if we allow Lent to be a time of re-formation then we will come to a time when everything, everything that life has to bring awaits us with new life.

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.