In your dreams …

Aren’t dreams baffling things?  And intriguing.  What are they, and why?  How are they tied into our personalities; our fears and insecurities?
Answers to these and other questions, there are not, and no one seems sure about the science, chemistry or psychology behind them.

There are theories.  [Wikipedia, that expert of all things and usually the first hit of any web search, posits, “A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.  The content and function of dreams are not fully understood, and ….”  But that’s what I already said, right?]  One theory proposes that dreams are a defence mechanism by specific areas of brain from being ‘appropriated for other purposes’ while it is deprived of waking inputs.  That is, the brain keeps driving itself to function normally, in case some other function hijacks it while it’s asleep!
Other prominent theories suggest that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving, brain cleansing, or are simply a random, meaningless activity.

Much can be said, but the aspect that most messes with my thinking is the way I wake up and, usually, can’t remember what I was dreaming about.  It’s the darnedest thing.  I’ve been dreaming about something really important or intense or engaging, yet … what the hell was it!
In his novel Voss, Patrick White writes,

Henning Mankell commences his novel Faceless Killers with,

I appreciate these literary descriptions – they’re more accessible to me than dreams themselves.  They help describe what I can’t describe.

So, one morning I woke up from dreaming and madly wrote down what I could remember, before it evaporated in my mental pursuit of it:
On an industrial forecourt … someone was water blasting, up high … I was looking up.  Someone made a rude comment, and I noticed there was a young mother with children.  Chris Cairns was there.  We were sitting at a bright red table, and I was telling him I did most of my … [I can’t read this word – my handwriting at this hour was nearly as inaccessible as the dream].  He said he does all his own work, and he started lifting the table.  I began to slide backwards, and grabbed the table.  I noticed there were bright red Christmas lights, trimming round the table edge, and I clung on.  Pages from a science text book appeared, and I squinted to see what they were saying because I thought I saw my name written in the text …  [At which point I woke up.]

All right, ok.  I can remember dreams after all.  Just as well too.  It all makes so much sense to me now.  Dream on.

Ken F

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”

by Pat Lee

(Based on Mark 3:20-35, Gen 3:18-15)

Dr. Mickey Anders (Pastor of South Elkhorn Christian Church, Lexington, Kentucky) proposes: “Have you ever accused someone of being out of their mind?  Probably.  We are not unaccustomed to making such a statement about people we know today.  A friend of yours takes a bungee jump off a high tower, and you ask, ‘Has he gone out of his mind?’  On a lark, another friend takes a sky diving lesson and jumps out of a perfectly good airplane, and you ask, ‘Has she gone out of her mind?’  A person of modest income decides to purchase a house obviously beyond his means, and you ask, ‘Has he gone out of his mind?’  There are lots of situations in which we might ask that question of someone we know, but we are shocked when someone asks that question of Jesus. In verse 21, we learn that people are saying, ‘He is insane.'”

I think we’ve all done this (except for that last part). I know I have, and have also been on the receiving end of someone asking me, “Are you mad?” or “Are you out of your mind?”
Well I don’t think I am, but some may think so.

Actually, this scripture makes me feel quite sad. Jesus’ family didn’t recognize who he was and thought he was was out of his mind.
Families should be  safe places where we can express our views without fear of being asked, “Are you mad?” but sadly, that often is not the case.
We should be able to disagree with our parents, brothers and sisters on a topic knowing that we may, at the end of the discussion, say, “Let us agree to disagree on this subject.”  We should know that although there is disagreement, we are still loved, and love those, we have disagreed with. But in many families, some of the discussions they have become heated and often, sadly, violent or with words spoken that are divisive and hurtful and difficult to reverse and heal.

The reading from Genesis relates the first time a disagreement took place. Adam accused Eve and Eve accused the serpent.
If we go a little further in Genesis we find Cain killing Abel because he was angry with him over sacrifices made to God. So, unfortunately, it has been happening right from the beginning of time.

When we look back to chapter one of Mark, we see that Jesus has driven out an evil spirit, healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and many others, cleansed a leper, and caused a paralytic to walk. It is interesting to note that the evil spirit he drove out knew exactly who Jesus was, because it called out to him and demanded, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are … !” (v1:24)
This seems to me to beg the question, If the evil spirits recognize who Jesus is, why don’t his family and the teachers of the law? They all seem to think that Jesus is out of his mind. As one commentator says, “He has spoken in the synagogue with an outstanding authority, but a kind of secrecy enshrouds him which only the demonic seems to recognize; yet secret power breathes from him that will not be contained, as witnessed by numerous events of healing that mark his route.”

So instead of recognizing who and what Jesus is, his family come to restrain him, because they think he is out of his mind. They are closely followed by the teachers of the law who claim that he is possessed by ‘Beelzebul’, by whose power he is driving out demons.
I find this rather outrageous, because, as I have already said, the demons knew who Jesus was. So, Jesus  spoke to them in virtual riddles and asks them, “How can Satan drive out Satan?” It is not possible because anything “that is divided against itself, cannot stand”.

Michael J Marsh in his commentary says, “This division and inner conflict is a reality of today’s world and our lives. A marriage divided is a divorce. A nation divided results in vitriolic politics and, in the extreme, civil war. An economy divided yields poverty and injustice. A community divided becomes individualism and tribalism, prejudice and violence. Humanity divided is all these things on a global level. Faith divided is sin.”
And we do see all these things in today’s world.

Marsh goes on to say, “It’s hard to look at the division and inner conflict within our own lives. The beginning of wholeness, however, is acknowledging our brokenness. Where is our own house divided? How and to what extent have we created conflict and division within our relationships. In what ways do we live fragmented lives, parcelling out pieces here and there? What is it that shatters your life? Anger and resentment, greed, insecurity, perfectionism, sorrow and loss, fear, guilt, or loneliness?”

At the end of the reading we come to where Jesus was told that his mother and brothers and sisters had arrived, and his response is surprising. (“Who are my mother and my brothers?”) It sounds like a rejection of his family. Was Jesus rejecting them? No, I don’t think so. What he was doing was looking around at the gathered crowd and telling them that those present, and elsewhere, who had responded to the call from God in the person of him, Jesus Christ, were ‘his family’.

Unlike the people in the crowd, who had Jesus right there in front of them, we do not; but we have all been called to follow him. None of us has seen him, but we know him and believe in what he did for us on a cross, over two thousand years ago. We have faith in him and his teachings, so we can be assured that we, too, are part of his family.
Living by faith mean means that whatever happens here on earth, whatever we go through in our daily lives, we have confidence that we are part of Jesus’s family, and that should give us hope. 2 Cor 17-18 can suitably wrap this today: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  

Amen

Innocent

Imagine being jailed for something you didn’t do.  Not just an objective, academic ‘that’s-a-bit-unfair’ injustice, but the stomach-churning anguish of not being believed, of knowing you’re innocent but, with no advocate and no redress, you sit in your cell with little to think about but the irrational injustice of it all. 

Or worse, on death row.  The American justice system abounds with such stories (not to mention China’s or Iran’s or Guatemala’s or …).

In 1989, twenty six year old Carlos DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in Texas for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez.  The evidence against him was scant, the police investigation was incompetent, and numerous leads which would have exonerated him were ignored.  DeLuna himself claimed he knew who’d done the crime – someone else also called “Carlos”, an excuse ridiculed by the police and prosecution at trial.  But in 1994 a Columbia University law professor easily identified a notoriously violent Texan criminal called Carlos Hernandez, who had a long list of convictions and who had bragged of Lopez’s murder to a number of different people.  Carlos DeLuna was posthumously exonerated.  Not guilty. Innocent, but very dead!
[Refer https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death]

Or Walter McMillian, a poor African-American pulpwood worker from Alabama, who was convicted of a 1986 murder and sentenced to death: his conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury.  (At the time of the murder, McMillian was at a church ‘fish fry’ with dozens of witnesses, one of whom was a police officer.)  From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Appeals turned down four appeals before, in 1993, having served six years on death row, and after dogged championing by ‘innocence campaigner’ Bryan Stevenson, the Court of Appeals finally ruled that McMillan had been wrongfully convicted.  Dramatised in the 2019 movie Just Mercy. 
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_McMillian]

In 1989 the same Bryan Stevenson established the Equal Justice Initiative, an organisation that has since exonerated dozens of death row prisoners, plus people convicted of lesser crimes, and has documented the summary lynchings of 4,384 African-Americans in the years 1877 to 1950.  All innocent.
[https://eji.org/]

Not to trivialise the topic, but I recently experienced a personal case of being falsely accused and misjudged; of not being believed, of knowing I was innocent.  Certainly not death row stuff, or even judicial, but horrific to me.  It felt desperately unfair, yet there was no recourse to a higher court, no way to clear my name.  Despite my outrage, though, it served to deepen my empathy and compassion towards those who fall victim to really serious misjudgement, with life-crushing consequences.

One of the compelling aspects of the Christ’s crucifixion, in about 36CE, was his arrant innocence.  He was betrayed and falsely accused; his mockery of a trial earned him a terrible death at only 33 years of age.
[Mark 14:55-56: Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimonies did not agree.]

The moral from all this?  I can’t think of one.  Just confessing a newfound dismay at what countless human beings have had to endure, and endure today; and a determination to call out examples of real injustice wherever it is identified.  There is no justice where there is injustice, but at least we can name it.

Ken F

The Mystery of the Trinity

by Auriol Farquhar

(Based on John 3:1-17)

Trinity Sunday – my first sermon. I couldn’t help but overhear Joan when she was saying – with some glee – though a nice sort of glee – that I was giving my first sermon, and it was going to be on Trinity Sunday. I asked, ‘Well, what’s the problem with that?’ She then explained that it was a difficult concept for people to get their head around, and I thought, Oh, great!

So I set out to research.
I was rather puzzled when I looked at the Gospel reading – it didn’t seem to refer to the Trinity at all – but more of that later.

Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar; it celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the ‘three Persons of God’: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I read that ‘the Trinity is one of the most fascinating – and controversial – Christian teachings. The Trinity is described as a “mystery.” By mystery the Church does not mean a riddle, but rather the Trinity is a reality above our human comprehension, that we may begin to grasp, but ultimately must know through worship, symbol, and faith. It has been said that mystery is not a wall to run up against, but an ocean in which to swim.’
Well, don’t know about you – but I am floundering already!

We all say that we believe in the Trinity when we affirm our faith. I can remember reciting the Creed as a child when we talked about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. I wasn’t too happy about the Holy Ghost – ghosts are scary things, aren’t they? Holy Spirit is a much more fitting term; after all, ghosts are something that ‘appear’ – a spirit is something that is within you – that animates and inspires you.
Then I thought, if I don’t really comprehend the mystery of the Trinity – does it mean that my faith is weakened? The discussion of theology and debate about the meaning of scriptural text is fascinating – well I find it fascinating – but does it really make me a better Christian to spend time puzzling over the meaning of individual verses or words in the Bible?
We can tie ourselves up in knots in trying to understand how God can be equally three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are many analogies that people have made to try to help us – but often they leave us more confused, because they are human analogies and don’t really explain the reality of God. My thoughts are – is our faith supposed to be difficult to understand? Did Jesus want us to spend so much time in trying to work out the complexity of our beliefs – or, and I quote: ‘perhaps, instead of trying to work out how God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we should concentrate on the wonderful fact that this is how we experience God.’

  • .In the first place we experience ‘God-above’; God is our heavenly Father; loving us, holding us, guarding our lives.
  • Then we experience ‘God-with-us’; Jesus the Son of God; forgiving us, praying for us, leaving an example for us to follow.
  • And then there is ‘God within-us’; the Holy Spirit; empowering us to live for him and to live for others, when we invite the Spirit to enter our lives.

At the end of the day, it is not the doctrine or mystery of the Holy Trinity that is important. What is important is how we experience God in our lives and how we share that with other people so that they can experience God for themselves.

Trinity Sunday is a day to celebrate our experience of God in our everyday lives: God the lover, God the forgiver, God the empowerer.

And so we come to the text, to Nicodemus arriving to visit Jesus. Who was Nicodemus and why did he come to see Jesus under the cover of darkness? Well he was a Pharisee, a Jewish leader who knew the Mosaic laws that governed the Jews, backwards and forwards, and followed them strictly. Nicodemus was also a member of the Sanhedrin court, an elite group of Jewish leaders who taught and enforced the Mosaic laws. He was an expert and a rule-enforcing judge, and when someone broke any of these stringent rules or threatened the religious legal system, Nicodemus was one of the few who would get to determine the rule-breaker’s punishment. (Which – as we know in Jesus’s case – could be quite merciless.) Later on in John’s Gospel he tells the other Jewish leaders to give Jesus a fair hearing; he also comes with Joseph of Arimathea to collect Jesus’s body for burial. So quite a good bloke in some ways!

Now, Nicodemus probably chose to go to see Jesus at night because nobody would be able to see where he was going and find out what he was up to. Jesus was getting a reputation as a rule breaker – and the Sanhedrin were getting worried about the stir that he was causing – so they would not have been too happy with Nicodemus going to see him – and calling Jesus ‘Rabbi’, or teacher.

Nicodemus tells Jesus that he knows that he is a teacher come from God. He was struggling to comprehend the exact nature of Jesus and his relationship to God the Father; he wanted to have a clearer understanding of Jesus’s ministry. But Jesus turns the conversation into one about how Nicodemus can experience God, which is far more important. Jesus tells him that the rational approach is not enough – you can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born from above and, later, that you can’t enter the Kingdom of God without being ‘born of water and Spirit’.
Jesus’s words in this passage have been interpreted by some Christians as meaning that we need to be ‘born again’, something that puzzled Nicodemus. The idea has been interpreted as someone having to undergo a sudden moment of conversion, usually accompanied by an intense emotional experience, which is the sign of having truly accepted Christ as Saviour; this is a very real experience and has happened to many Christians. But in some church traditions, being ‘born again’ is the mark of being a true Christian; there are Christians and there are ‘born-again Christians’. It is treated by some as if it were a command from Christ: “What must I do to be saved? Or, what must I do to go to Heaven when I die?” “You must be born again!”

[Auriol tells briefly of her experience as a young person at a Pathfinder camp.]
I may not have had that sudden ‘conversion’, like Saul on the road to Damascus, but I have always believed and always felt blessed by God, and that I know that I want to live my life being guided by Him. I don’t believe that I am not a Christian because I have not had that sudden realisation.
For Jesus doesn’t actually say you must be born again. He says, ‘Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’ What does he mean?
I think that it means that we must be born into a life or start to live an existence where we love God and live out his ways on earth. It’s not a bargain – be born again and get eternal life. The Kingdom of God is not just something for the future it is for the now if we work for it.

We can go to as many church services as we like, we can attend as many Bible Studies as can be crammed into a week: we can do all that, but still not see the Kingdom of God. And the reason, quite simply, is because Christianity is not an observer-event. It is a way of living, a way of being with, of experiencing, God – of believing that you are blessed, and sharing that with others. The Kingdom of God is not a phenomenon to be observed: it is a gift to be received, experienced and then lived.

 When we are baptised, ‘by water and the Spirit’, we are baptised into the family of the church. And just as each family member has something to offer their family, each of us must find our place through participating in the family of the church. We don’t go to church asking, “What can I get out of this?” but rather, “What do I have to offer?” When we meet together in God’s name, we encourage and support each other in our faith. The greatest gift we have to offer one another … is just being here: to celebrate together the love of God for us as a family; and to go out into the world to spread that love. We need to consider tangible ways in which we can do that.

 We are not to be observers – we are to be participants: to participate in the life of the Church, to participate in the resurrection of Jesus, who died for us, to give our lives to God, who fills us with his Spirit and gave his Son so that we might live in an intimate relationship with him and serve him better in the world. Being born from above means that our lives are radically transformed; being born from above brings newness to how we live.
And that newness of life is what we celebrate today, this Trinity Sunday.  What we are sharing together is our lived experience of God, in which we participate every day of our lives and through regular worship together. We feel loved by God the Father; we try to live our lives based on the teachings of Jesus, God the Son, which is not an easy thing to do, and we experience God the Holy Spirit, guiding us and empowering us to live our lives as children of God.

As we leave this Church today let us consider how we share this with others as we go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Amen