Today’s parable from Matthew’s gospel is the continuation of Jesus’ ‘teach-in’ in the temple precincts on (what we would call) Monday before Good Friday. But before we dive too deeply into that, we need to remind ourselves of what the text doesn’t say.
The text doesn’t say that some bloke had a feast. That’s the version of the story in Luke’s gospel. Matthew’s account is explicitly a King giving a wedding banquet for his son.
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There’s a great sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look where David Mitchell and Robert Webb are playing SS officers from World War II. ‘Haz, I’ve just noticed something’ says Mitchell ‘the badges on our caps, have you looked at them? They’ve got skulls on them. Have you looked at our caps recently. The badges on our caps, have you looked at them? They’ve got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them… are we the baddies?’
In the world of social media, there are two ways to show people something new. The first way is to pay for it. There’s advertising everywhere, some of it quite subtle. You can pay for people who like poodles and live in Cunderdin to see your Cunderdin Poodle-grooming business page. You can pay for small business owners who don’t follow the social media account of one political party to see an ad for another political party. But this costs money. So the holy grail when it comes to disseminating a message is ‘organic reach’. That’s when you create content – maybe an image or some words or a short video – that people like so much, they want to share it around. Sometimes it’s blatantly an ad for fizzy drink, but it’s funny or sexy so people share it with their friends. Sometimes it’s inspirational. Sometimes it is something nefarious, designed to influence people’s perceptions and the way they vote. These bits of content which are shared organically are called ‘memes’. The definition of a meme is a small piece of information that self-replicates.
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There’s an iconic moment in The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep (playing a leading fashion critic) explains to Andy (her new assistant) how the fashion industry works.
I love that little interchange between Meryl and Anne Hathaway, because it kind of crystallises how little thought we give to how we got to where we are. There are countless things around us – whether clothing or household items or art or laws or customs that we just accept without considering how they came to be.
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Back in the dim distant path, I used to drive out from Dubbo into the West of New South Wales to take Sunday services in small communities. Sometimes I would drive three hours to celebrate the Eucharist for a handful of people, and sometimes this was a bit demoralising. Inevitably, someone would say ‘ah, but where two or three are gathered in my name…’ and they would nod knowingly, because there is a language system in Christianity. Whenever we are concerned that not many people have shown up to something, we refer to Matthew 18:20 ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’. It’s a gentle way of saying that it doesn’t matter how many of us there are, what matters is that God in Christ is present, even if there’s only two people at morning prayer or the Deanery Christmas party or whatever.
This week, the Christchurch terrorist was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In line with the wishes of the families of survivors, I will not say his name. But we are all aware that he is an Australian from the north coast of NSW, and that he held ultra-nationalist views, radicalised by the alt-right movement. This person became convinced that violent slaughter of innocent people was necessary for the advancement of white nationalism and the protection of white people. This is not a new or isolated concept. The conviction that peace and safety can be achieved through war and violence has infected humanity for as long as recorded history. Humans rationalise cruelty and murder with the misguided belief that some good will come of it. Whether it’s drone strikes on villages in Afghanistan or the removal of children from Noongar families – it’s astounding what vile actions humans can undertake in the pursuit of a purportedly lofty goal.
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It is a well-established practice in protest movements that when you want to make an impact and get attention, you go to the seat of power. So when Rio Tinto recently destroyed priceless ancient artworks at Juukan Gorge, an Aboriginal-led protest took place out the front of Rio Tinto’s Perth office. In resisting the bizarre changes to the US Postal Service in the lead-up to the federal election later this year, last week protesters gathered outside the home of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. And last year at the Diocese of Perth Synod, for the first time in history, as the clergy lined up in robes to process into the Cathedral, we could see hundreds of people from Save Perth Hills lined up across the road to protest the North Stoneville development. It had the desired effect. It got everyone talking, and made lots of powerful people feel uncomfortable.
There was a human being in the first century who was called ‘Divine’, ‘Son of God’, ‘God’, ‘God from God’ and whose titles were ‘Lord’, ‘Redeemer’, ‘Liberator’ and ‘Saviour of the World’. Most people, of any faith, would recognise those descriptions and titles as belonging to Jesus of Nazareth. And they do. But if you had mentioned that collection of titles to anyone in the Roman Empire in the first century, they would have had no doubt whom you were talking about – Caesar. It was the Emperor who was divine and the bringer of peace and salvation to the world. This was not even a religious belief as we might now understand the term – if you lived in the Roman Empire, the divine character of Caesar infused every aspect of life, whether financial, political, social or military. It was the theological foundation of the whole system.[1]
I don’t often preach about prayer, because the truth is I’m not very good at it. Oh sure, I can launch into a spontaneous spoken prayer at the slightest provocation – I have a natural flair for improv and one of the occupational hazards is being asked to pray without warning at any number of events. And I’m pretty good at writing prayers as well – next to forward-planning, my most favourite nerdy activity is stringing words together. But the really deep, connected life of prayer? That’s not my gift. I struggle with prayer. Struggle to put aside time for it, struggle with any sense that it ‘works’ and struggle with the idea that God is even remotely interested in anything I have to say.
The earliest followers of Jesus believed that the end of the world was nigh. They believed that the death and resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of a process which would see the whole world disintegrated, and a new world inaugurated.
This meant at least two things. Firstly, the current time was a temporary arrangement. The world as they knew it was a liminal space. Secondly, there was a real urgency about their work of spreading good news. They wanted everyone to be part of this new world that was coming, and to start living as though the new world had already arrived. I mean, why wait? There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth, in which there is justice, peace and equity for all – so let’s do that in our small base communities now, as a kind of entrée for what’s about to come.
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What does it mean to be spiritual? People sometimes tell me that they’re ‘spiritual but not religious’. Sometimes people tell me someone else is spiritual – ‘oh Doreen, she’s such a spiritual person!’. Or sometimes people describe something as being ‘really spiritual’ and there’s whole lines of books and websites dedicated to spirituality, but what does it actually mean?
Quiet things are often described as spiritual. Meditating, praying, reading, maybe listening to whale sounds or plinky plonky music. Walking a labyrinth – that’s definitely spiritual. But are noisy things, but extension, non-spiritual? Can you have a spiritual experience at a heavy metal concert or on a crowded train or at a rally?
Yesterday it became clear that a crisis is re-emerging in Victoria. The numbers are pointing towards widespread community transmission of COVID19 and restrictions are rapidly being tightened. In North Melbourne and Flemington, nine public housing towers have been totally locked down.
There is no question that action had to be taken. But my heart grieves for the people in those towers. Unlike others in the same suburb, those people are not allowed to leave their apartments for exercise or shopping. Five hundred police officers have been allocated to the towers to keep people in lockdown. There will be a police officer patrolling every floor.
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I despair of the way children are taught about sin. In many situations, it’s a sort of Santa Claus ‘naughty or nice’ approach, where there is a list of things that are good (like patting puppies on the head) and a list of things that are bad (like punching puppies in the face). So children are taught to do more good things and fewer bad things, and this makes God happy.
Sometimes the concept of Original Sin is introduced with little nuance, so some children are taught that they were born sinful, and they often interpret that as meaning they are intrinsically bad. This, of course, is merely part of a litany of grievances I have about how children are introduced to faith, but let’s just focus on sin for today.
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