bloody exams

THOUGHTS FROM EXAM SEASON (a few months ago)

Aargh! Yours Truly has exams over the next ten days, and may be a little distracted. When I was dismissed as Dean of Waiapu I decided to pick up a diploma course on Conflict Resolution. I have been muttering imprecations in my own direction ever since. Whatever was I thinking? Apart from anything else I’m not entirely convinced by the quality of the course (and in fact Massey University is canning it after this intake). But as I come towards the pointy end, with just (just!) two exams and a Practicum to go I’m really not wanting to fail.

When I did the first paper back in late 2016 I was somewhat shocked to find that exams still existed. I hadn’t sat one since my Divinity degree back in the mid-80s, and am seriously sceptical about their value as a method of assessment. As I went on through the course in 2017 I discovered to my relief that the exams were a diminishing part of the assessment, so I was somewhat shocked earlier this year to discover that they are 60% of these papers.

Oh well. A wing and a prayer. I feel chronically under-prepared. 

But maybe there’s a parable in this somewhere? Good old Christian doctrines of judgement (= assessment?) have taken a hammering over the years. The methods by which Christian teachers and preachers kept their flock in a state of terror over the centuries were not dissimilar to the methodology of examiners: “on judgement day …” Of course if you were lucky (or blessed or whatever) there were a few ifs about grace and about being found in Christ and ransomed by his blood et cetera, but basically the message was unchanging. “Be afraid, be very afraid,” as Quaiffe says in The Fly.

I will preach and teach often about not cosying up to “God-bro” (or “God-mate” in Australia, “God-chum” in UK, “God-buddy” in the USA, if you get my drift). As a people of God we should err on the side of grace. God is the God who creates grace, who welcomes us to the divine feast, who bridges the gap between our fallibility and divine perfection. I don’t think God (or St Peter) has a check list. But at the same time as we extend divine manaakitanga, divine welcome and hospitality to those outside our faith community, we need to keep remembering that we aren’t chumming up to God by dint of our spectacular worthiness. Not to bash ourselves up, just to “re-member” (as I try to put it, on purpose, in the Eucharistic prayer). It’s God’s feast, God’s church, God’s eternity (whatever that is), not ours.

God ain’t our bro. God invites us and will invite us eternally (whatever that means), to join the feast of joy. God invites all, and, I believe, will continue to do so – eternally. Whatever that means! We just need to make our lives reflect that inviting attitude, too.

I just wish my examiners would.



PS ... I passed

neutered gospel?

NEUTERING THE PROCLAMATION OF FAITH
(notes from an old pew sheet ... Waiapu Cathedral, 17.08.14)

I write in my “Gospel Comment”* of  the gift that is flowing from uncluttered, pre-scientific cultures back to our rationalist, materialist world. In its wackier forms it may appear as the “tree-hugging, alfalfa-munching, muslin-wearing” naiveties of New Age and neo-hippie groups. I am no fan of forms of angel-touting mysticism that sidestep the brute realities of the Incarnation and the Cross, but if push were to come to shove I would prefer that idealism to the cynical rationalism that reduces the central truths of Christianity to fairy tale status, labelling itself “progressive” while dismantling the great Christ-stories of hope and comfort.

In some areas we have grasped this well. We have reclaimed the wonderful respect, for example, that Māoritanga can give us for Ranginui and Papatuanuku, rightly speaking out when we exploit and destroy God’s earth. With the Celts we murmur our “amen” when we lament an attitude that sees “the earth [as] a witch and we still burn her, Stripping her down with mining, and the poison of our wars …”.  We voice our opposition (I hope) when that is, as it so often is, the dominant trend in our greedy exploitative culture. We must, for when we do not we are failing in our obedience not so much to the “marks of mission” but to the very commandments of our faith: we are stealing from God’s garden and from the hope-baskets of our descendants.

But we are doing so, too, if we take the texts that are texts of comfort in our whakapapa of faith and render them meaningless. The balancing act is fraught. Karl Marx famously called religion “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” It can be, if we allow it to be; if it leaves us cosy (which was not what “comfortable”, that maligned word of liturgy, meant) and complacent. “She’s right, Jack” is not the gospel-message.

Nor, though, is “if it can’t be measured it don’t exist.” When I am confronted by the recent horrors of Gaza or North-East Iraq, Central African Republic and Sudan, I will try in some puny human way to respond, giving to aid organizations, writing to politicians, what Paolo Freire called “consciousness raising.” I will also stutter prayers, often wordless, participating strangely in that mystery St Paul called “the groaning of the Spirit.” When a child dies (more obviously back in the days when clergy saw more funerals) I will offer words and touches of comfort, but, more importantly, I will whisper prayers, entrusting this and all brutal contexts of grief into the weeping heart of God that is also, inexplicably, the eternally-dancing heart of God.

For, beyond the child’s death, beyond her parents’ grief, beyond our speechlessness, God dances “amen” to and with all creation. That resounding “amen” of course can’t be measured, for it is eternal. That is why it is the last word in the New Testament.

*On Matthew 14. 22-33 (NRSV)

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."

He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came

toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.   And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

It’s dangerous to put modern interpretations on an ancient text. Matthew wants us to see yet another example of the mustard seed faith that Jesus called for back at Matt 13:31-32 (or three weeks ago in liturgical time). Here in this woman is the great faith born of desperation and proximity to disaster. In the “Global North” (“West”. “First World”, whatever) we have tended to rationalize such faith away, making it an intellectual proposition. Listening to the stories of Indigenous and other non-rationalist believers I am increasingly unsure that this is wise: should I poo-poo the stories of those who have cried out in the face of evil and experienced the hand of God? Despite all the ransacking of the Global South “pre-scientific cultures,” that went on in the name of “progress” it may be the mustard seed of faith that is the gracious gift of the dispossessed, given back despite everything, back to those of us who believe safely from the comfort of our armchairs.