I have some potent readings today, and there’s plenty to say about them. For me, the readings today speak about ‘What is God”? And the pure creativity that is God. Unfathomable, unpredictable creativity and destruction. And also, they raise the question, “how can we know what is God?”

Jesus speaks a lot about “who am I?” and about knowing, how to know — discernment — “Judge rightly, don’t judge by appearances” (John 7:24), and “For this I was born, for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice” (John 18:37).

This is all quite cryptic, or it’s ok to understand it once you do understand it, but from the outside you can’t understand it; there’s no access except by understanding, and I think that’s exactly what Jesus means when he says, “I speak in parables so that the wise or spiritually superior won’t be able understand” (1 Matthew 13:17, Luke 8:10, Mark 4:11-12). They won’t be able to use their intellects to understand. There’s no way to understand this stuff except by understanding it!

“I thank you father that you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and you have revealed them to the childlike.” (2)

First, I’ll come to the reading by Isaiah: “Look! I am doing a new thing!” We’re hearing: Leave behind the old things; creativity, life, has the power to make all thing anew. God tells Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit” All things can be destroyed and all things can be created anew. There is power - to change.

I’m currently reading Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt for my psychotherapy training. It’s a book about the vital importance of meeting the needs of children in the early years of womb life and infancy. In one of the final chapters in the book, it talks about what to do if you’ve left it too late, what to do once the child hasn’t had those early years of proper nurture and attention. Sue Gerhardt says, “Some degree of real healing can be achieved” at this stage, at any stage of life. She says it’s easier if it happens in the early years, because then the neural networks are very plastic, very malleable, they just change; if it doesn’t happen in the early years, it can still happen as we get older. To re-work our emotional strategies, new networks in the brain can be established: she says, “the new form of regulation must happen over and over again until [the new networks] are consolidated.” (p206) So it is possible.

We can see, with God, there is that pure creativity that can happen, like in the baby, where it just happens. It’s almost like the baby is more in tune with God in his pure essence of creativity. As we get older, we get more rigid patterns, we have to fight harder to break them down. They can be broken down, nothing is impossible with God. And even with our own levels of less-pure creativity, we still have power to change; we can still put the work in and get that change, and make things fresh and know the power of life and healing can come into us.

We’re not here to console each other in our hardship, we’re here to worship God and be alive to life which brings radical transformation and healing and new life. We can hope for more than commiseration in this life.

And that happens in itself, it happens in the power of the word, in the power of the moment, it happens through discernment and it happens through listening to God.

There are no rules, it is a real lie that the rules work in any kind of systematic way — apart from God, that is. When Jesus says, “you must hate your mother and father”(3), he is teaching us to first love God. There is no love without love of God, everything else is idolisation, effectively creating bread out of a stone (we can do this, and live in delusion, but what is the point?). The only way we can know if love is love is if the love is love of God.

But how do we know? How do we know?! What are the rules? To anyone who thinks there may be rules, just look at the Gospel passage we have from John: who would have said that to wash the feet of Jesus with our tears, to anoint the feet of Jesus with costly nard, and afterwards, wipe his feet with our hair would be the way to go?

It was an act of pure creativity from Mary, spontaneity, unique and completely from the heart! Utterly abandoned and responsive to the moment: “no-one’s will but yours be done, Father.” Judas is no different to the other disciples, he is lacking all comprehension when he criticises Mary for her act of love. Jesus, who listens with his heart, recognises the difference between the stone (that we dress up to look like love) and the bread (that truly nourishes and is life giving).

Jesus doesn’t seek the consolation of making false bread from a stone, he doesn’t seek the consolation of giving money to the poor, which will be a temporary fix to a lifelong problem. That’s not where Jesus is coming from. Though of course, this has to be held carefully, because of course, it’s not about not giving the poor either! Just like when Jesus tells us, “you have to hate your mother and father first!”, Jesus isn’t telling us to hate our mother and father! He’s telling us to love God first.

“Unless the Lord build the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, in vain does the guard keep watch. In vain you rise early and stay up late, in hard toil for your living — all this God gives to his beloved in sleep” This is actually from the next Psalm, Psalm 127 (Psalm 127:1-2). Psalm 126 tells us that everything is up for grabs, everything will be transformed with the love of God. Restoration. Tears into joy, desert into rich and fertile land.

So Jesus defends Mary strongly, “leave her alone.” There will always be the poor amongst us, “among you”, so long as we don’t follow love. Love, first. It has to be that way. Anything else is labour in vain, a clanging gong, just like Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13.

People can struggle with this desire that God seems to have for us to “love him first”, how Jesus says, “I am the way…” “I am the way! Love me first! Follow me!” To some people this can appear to be very demanding, as though it was a narcissistic demand for attention, for love, for being first all the time ! It is a complete lack of understanding of what’s being said. This is what Paul means in the reading from today from Philippians, when he says, “The justice I possess is that which comes through faith in Christ,” there is no other love. We just have to understand it. There’s no other love than love of God, because God is the definition of love. And until you come into Love through that — like Jesus said, “there is no way to the Father except through me”, unless you come into love in that way, you won’t be able to see it. It’s a way of having eyes. And it feels impossible, because it’s like you have to give birth to yourself in order to feel, in order to be able to see. It’s something that happens… Suffice it to say, it’s not Jesus being narcissistic.

Jesus says “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the father except through me.” As I was saying that to myself, it occurred to me that this is, perhaps, a riddle from Jesus ! “I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the father except through me. Who am I?”

As Pope Benedict said in his book Jesus of Nazareth, “it’s the Jewish Mashal, meaning parable or riddle”.
This is where we need to dwell, in this question, “who is it, how is it, what is it that is ‘the way’ that Jesus describes?” if we are to understand this rightly?

When Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?” it’s a real question. We might even say, it is for us to decide. To live with and embody our answer to this question. Then, we’ll be in a position to approach God, with our tears, and have them transformed into joy, our hair and oil be transformed into the anointing of our love. Our response, then, will be of God.

This is the “race” that Paul is compelled to. But how can we understand this “race”? When Paul says, “My entire attention is on the finish line as I run toward the prize—the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”, it suggests a linear run: if we keep going and keep focused, keep going fast enough, we can make it, in time. But for me, the race is very much more complicated and takes us all over the place…. Think John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, rather than the Olympic sprint.

We keep running off course and completely losing sight of the destination, of the finish line. And we get into all sorts of scrapes and sometimes very terrible places. And it’s very hard to see clearly. So Pilgrim runs into the Giant’s lair, at first seeking shelter,

“The pilgrims now, to gratify the flesh,
Will seek its ease; but oh! how they afresh
Do thereby plunge themselves new griefs into!
Who seek to please the flesh, themselves undo.”

To get some shelter and sleep seems like a very sensible option at the time, what’s wrong with that!? And doesn’t even the Psalm say, “in vain you rise early and stay up late!” Well, yes! It’s complicated! It’s complicated and there are no rules! We only have to listen. And it’s impossible to communicate. We can’t tell someone “do it this way” because that isn’t true! So the Psalm says something, and we think, “we’re going to get some sleep, God will take care of us!” But no! Because we’re in the wrong place and we get captured by the giant! Or we’re stuck up to our necks in the Quagmire of Despair! Not a linear race track! If only it was so simple, if only we weren’t so blind! The race is complicated and complex, and impossible to discern. But it isn’t impossible, and we aren’t blind, and Paul’s saying to us that we aren’t blind. We have God. And everything else is garbage by comparison.The race is always a race to discernment.

Is it really true that what seems like a sensible option at the time only becomes apparent as an error when the consequences are manifest later…? Isn’t it the case that on some level, we know before that as well? Is it rather that we find it difficult, impossibly difficult to listen? And impossibly difficult to listen in that finessing way, deeper and deeper into the listening, risking making an honest response to what we hear, and practicing that honesty, as we get more and more discerning, and more advanced in our “race”?

So the “race” is complicated and complex, and you might say it’s impossible to discern. But anything is possible with God. Impossible and supremely possible — at the same time.

Paul speaks to us, compels us, to realise the urgency, the vital necessity of our commitment to God, our commitment to reach God by the Way, the Truth and the Life. The journey to the Heart which no other person can judge, and even we ourselves can’t tell how close we are, and when we will turn the corner from the worst possible depravity to the greatest possible abandonment to love — see the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

So when Jesus says “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”, think of it like a riddle. And maybe it will help the people who think this is Jesus being very narcissistic to think of it this way. “I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me. Who am I?” “Who am I, that I say this?” Who is it, how is it, what is it, that is “The Way” that Jesus describes, if we are to enter into the knowing? It is the “race” that Paul talks about. And it is the roar of pure destruction and creativity from God that we hear about in Isaiah. “To live is Christ, to die is gain”.

Footnotes

  1. — Matthew 13:13-17 “This is why I speak to them in parables, because ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. ‘Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: ‘You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.’ “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” — Luke 8:10: “He answered, “Knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God has been granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that ‘they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.’ ”” —Mark 4:11-12: “He answered them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that ‘they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.’ ”
  2. “I thank you father that you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him” (Matthew 11:25-27).
  3. Luke 14:26 “If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

Today’s readings:ISAIAH 43:16-21
Thus says YHWH, who made a road through the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who led chariots and warriors to their doom, a mighty army fallen, never to rise again, snuffed out and extinguished like a wick: “Forget the events of the past, ignore the things of long ago! Look, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth—can’t you see it? I’m making a road in the desert and setting rivers to flow in the wasteland. Wild beasts will honor me—the jackals and the ostriches—for I will put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink, these people whom I formed for myselfso that they might declare my praise.

PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14
If they think they have the right to put their trust in external evidence, I have even more right! I was circumcised on the eighth day, being of the stock of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew origins; in legal observance I was a Pharisee, and so zealous that I persecuted the church. I was above reproach when it came to justice based on the Law. But those things I used to consider gain, I now count as loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss in light of the surpassing knowledge of my Savior Jesus Christ, for whose sake I have forfeited everything. I count everything else as garbage, so that Christ may be my wealth—indeed, that I may be found in Christ, not having any justice of my own based on observance of the Law. The justice I possess is that which comes through faith in Christ. It has its origin in God and is based on faith. All I want is to know Christ, and the power of the resurrection, and how to share in Christ’s sufferings by being formed into the pattern of Jesus’ death—perhaps even to arrive at the resurrection from the dead. It’s not that I have reached it yet, or have already finished my course; but I’m running the race in order to grab hold of the prize if possible, since Christ Jesus has grabbed hold of me. Sisters and brothers, I don’t think of myself as having reached the finish line. I give no thought to what lies behind, but I push on to what is ahead. My entire attention is on the finish line as I run toward the prize—the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

JOHN 12:1-8
Six days before Passover, Jesus went to Bethany, the village of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they gave a banquet in Jesus’ honor, at which Martha served. Lazarus was one of those at the table. Mary brought a pound of costly ointment, pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair. The house was full of the scent of the ointment. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples—the one who was to betray Jesus—protested, “Why wasn’t this ointment sold? It could have brought nearly a year’s wages, and the money been given to poor people!” Judas didn’t say this because he was concerned for poor people, but because he was a thief. He was in charge of the common fund and would help himself to it. So Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. You have poor people with you always. But you won’t always have me.”