“Some Trust in Chariots”

Karen Sloan 06/12/2020

Readings - Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8

So most of you would know, unless you have been living under a rock for the past  month, that I have celebrated my 60th birthday.  I know, I know, it’s hard to believe that at 60 I am still regarded as a junior in church circles!!

This past weekend I went down to Busselton with my extended family, my 3 siblings, and their children, and partners, and even a couple of grandchildren, not mine of course.

It was a terrific gathering of our clan, our tribe, representing 3 generations of our family.  Unfortunately not a 4th since my mum sadly died 4 years ago, but we had a toast for her and I think she would have been pretty chuffed to see us all together.

Our family history is not your typical one, and I think when mum died we could  have become a little more spread out.  But we have always been close, and continue to be, even though my older brother and sister are half siblings, my mum having been left with 2 young children when her first husband died at 35. She remarried and had myself and my younger sister, Christine, before my father also died young, at 51.  But mum was a survivor and continued to live life to the full until her death at 87.

So we have many many stories from our youth, when money was tight and mum worked almost full time,  and from the years when we all got partners, had our own children, to the times spent together celebrating milestones, visiting rotto or helping each other when things were tough.

In other words we have a family history, which we share and which has influenced who we are and how we live.  We care for one another, and in turn we try to care for others.

Each of you will have your own history, the things in your past which have shaped you, and that history will certainly have light and dark moments, just like mine does.

When we think of Jesus, however, do we think that he, like us, has a past, a history that influenced him?

Sometimes I think people believe he fell out of some divine tree, that he wasn’t really human, didn’t really feel pain and loss, and didn’t really laugh or cry or get angry.  Yet if we read the gospel accounts the story is very different.  He did all of those things and more.  He was human and like us was influenced by those around him and those that had come before.  He was Jewish and had a rich tradition that had seeped into his very marrow. A tradition of a God as close as our breath, but also a God who sided with the poor and marginalised.  A God of justice and mercy, compassion and love. And more importantly peace. 

Let me read an extract from Rob Bell’s new book, Everything is Spiritual… the section talks about his awakening to this Jesus, a Jesus with a past….

He says…

I kept reading the bible, and it kept reading me. 

I read more of the prophets, these poets and sages who spoke all kinds of truth to power.

Again and again prophets like Amos announce that if more and more wealth and power ends up in fewer and fewer hands everybody will suffer.

How had I missed this?

How had so many missed this.

The bible tells an old, old story about a small group of people and yet you dive into that story and the implications and insights for our world and our time are endless.

The prophets helped me understand the teachings of Jesus. He comes from that same line of prophets who called out the corrosive politics and practises of empire, announcing a new vision for humanity not based on greed and violence but generosity and compassion for the vulnerable.

On and on it went,

All of it coming to life,

Showing me that what is political is spiritual –

There is no division,

That how we arrange ourselves as societies and nations

Naturally flows from deeper spiritual impulses that are sometimes harder to spot but just as real as anything you can see with your eyes.

Bell goes on….

The bible was written by people living in the Middle East who’d been conquered by one military superpower after another.  The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Romans, this Jewish tribe had been on the receiving end of a horrific amount of imperial violence time and time again.

Because of this repeated oppression, the writers of the bible are very suspicious of dominating empires.  There’s a line in the Psalms–

“Some trust in chariots”.

The ones who trust in chariots are the oppressors, the violent, the conquerors who dominate everyone in their path.

Some trust in chariots, and today, as Bell suggests, we are the ones with the chariots.

…………………

The prophets of the Old Testament, like Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Jeremiah and others argued that peace could never be achieved apart from righteousness or kindness and justice.  That there could be no peace when there was oppression. We know many of the most famous passages well.  About loving kindness, doing justice, and walking humbly with our God, about turning swords into plowshares and spears into pruning shears. About letting justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

But in fact they were also signalling the need for a new leader to do this, one empowered by the spirit to defend the cause of the poor and needy. To bring wholeness and peace to people.  So while the prophets called out the injustices they also gave hope and a vision.

Jesus embraced these texts and then took up the challenge, the call. He was the leader Isaiah was hoping for, who would transform the status quo.

Because at the time of Jesus we know that things were not so good. It was the time of the Roman Empire, of peace though violence, and those at the bottom of the barrel were left to fend for themselves.   Corruption, in the rulers and in the priestly elite was rife, and those who wanted a different way of being, a different way of living were marginalised or killed.

Jesus is so many things to us, teacher, mystic, guide, but above all else Jesus was a prophet of his time.  In the end he was a non-violent revolutionary who spoke truth and love to power. Just as his ancestors did. When we think of his story we think of the stories of those who had come before.

Yet Jesus is remembered for this radical calling at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, which we heard today. Something written after his death. Why, because his story goes on.

This  Gospel is different from the others because while we read from the beginning of the Gospel there is no real beginning.  There are no birth stories here, just a quick introduction mentioning Isaiah, followed by the call from John the Baptist. Seems innocuous enough. But amazingly, it is actually quite subversive, as Ched Myers suggests, because Mark is announcing this new leader by adopting imperial language usually only used for the Roman Emperor.  Even the term Gospel, meaning glad tidings, was actually a secular term, most commonly associated with Roman propaganda. So from the first page we have a Jesus who is seen as radical by his followers.  Counter-cultural.

For Jesus is the opposite of a Roman Emperor, and the peace offered by Jesus is the opposite of that offered by Rome.  Peace through love and non-violence and justice, rather than a peace through war and violence.  It is actually a very profound opening. And would lead us to a very profound leader. A different type of leader, who called his followers, to be peace makers.  To be makers of wholeness and harmony, not just for themselves but for others. To stop the endless cycle of violence and oppression that had held people down for centuries.

I think of the Hebrew word, Shalom, when I write this. A word I love. Because Jesus was more than a prophet, he was also a mystic, in tune with the divine presence of the universe.  In tune with the life giving presence of God.

Shalom is often translated as peace, but it is so much more than an absence of conflict.

It is essentially a wholeness of life or body, a right relationship or harmony between two parties or people, an overall  feeling of fulfilment, as well as an absence of conflict or war.  The source of this shalom is God, the maker of peace and the creator of the whole.  

It reminds me of a sign I have seen. It read..

“may you enjoy harmony within yourself, with others and with God.”

Shalom is therefore both an inner and an outer state, and involves a God who is ever present, who never leaves and who somehow energises the whole package with light and love. 

Remember the comforting words in today’s reading from Isaiah, who reminds his listeners of this fact, even when things have gotten pretty dark for them in exile, after being conquered by the Babylonians and their city destroyed.  God brings comfort even in the midst of despair.

So Jesus’s idea of peace, gleaned from the prophets of old, was more in tune with the idea of Shalom.  Not just an absence of war, for war is the end product of all this conflict, but rather both an inner wholeness that comes with a right relationship with God, and a wholeness for all people, which involved seeking justice particularly for the poor and marginalised. We think of his greatest commandments, love God and love your neighbour, that highlights this joining of the two.

But Shalom or peace is not passive, not by a long shot.  It requires changing things.  To make peace or be a peace maker requires we take an active role, a dynamic role, a nonviolent role.  It involves rearranging things, turning things on their head, challenging the status quo, and not just wishing for it, or saying it.  Love instead of hate, forgiveness instead of judgement, inclusion instead of exclusion, justice instead of injustice, nonviolence instead of violence.  Those seeking shalom are to  give up what they guarded to welcome the other, be concerned for the other, protect the other and love the other, until there is no more other.

A big ask, because we know that being a peace maker can actually get you into trouble, a lot of trouble.  Trouble makers are marginalised, attacked and often killed, just as Jesus was. He was a disturber of the peace for the sake of peace and it got him killed. A non-violent revolutionary until the end. 

Just as many of the Old Testament prophets were. Because his story is bound to their stories.

……………..

So where are we now.  Today. 

What is Ken Jenkins with his choral mass for peace, and its use of sacred texts and poetry, which we heard at the beginning of this service,  the psalmist, the ancient Hebrew prophets and Jesus trying to say. Maybe it’s that we can be sucked in, we can be convinced that the way to life, for all, is through violence. Some trust in chariots, well, that’s sometimes us.  We are part of the empire that creates this illusion. Beware the one armed man as the mass says.

But violence is not just physical, it is emotional and psychological and economic and political  and involves  whole groups of people or just you and me.

Yet, I believe, our eyes can be opened, if we embrace the God of love, the spirit of inclusion and the gift of life and follow the way of Jesus.  Let the ancient texts speak to us.  As Rob Bell says, “You read the ancient texts, and then they read you.”

Peace is not just the absence of war, but wholeness, a fullness of life for all, not just for some. Shalom. Because it is not just the radical nature of Jesus life, but his radical connection with the source of that life, God, that can give us new life.

I suspect we all have some work to do in our own lives and in our community to achieve this type of peace.  Enough work for a lifetime.  For much of the mismatches we have in the world and which lead to violence and war stem from the inequality between those that have and those that have not.  As Rob Bell discovered, inequality was paramount in explaining the exile of the Israelites.  They were not caring for each other, they were not caring for the land.  They were divided and their entire system fell apart. It was not God but themselves who imploded.

So if Advent is a time of pondering, of joy but also of examination, true examination, then what is holding us and our world back from this wholeness?  There are some  questions we should maybe ask ourselves.

Do we really believe God is with us, do we find God’s spirit a source of hope and peace, or a distraction from the things we have to achieve and complete in our lives, today, tomorrow, next week?   Do we really believe the spirit is calling us to be part of a new world, here and now, full of love and new life?  And do we send time cultivating the relationship? For as Nadia Bolz-Weber says…. “peace is that place where everything is generous and open, where the virtues of the gospel, mercy and forgiveness and kindness, and love and justice, are the core and guide for living life.  So maybe peace is less of a feeling and more a way of being and doing that originates from the divine presence”  Because God and God alone is our real source.”

And what about our attachment to our lifestyle.  Sometimes it’s hard to face how enmeshed in and committed we are to the old regime.  It makes me cringe writing and saying this… We live here in Australia, plenty of food, plenty of opportunities, plenty of money.  Many of us benefit from those in other countries who are poor without thinking about it.  We go on holidays, or did before Covid-19,  and buy clothes and goods from places where the poor are marginalised.  We don’t consider the effect of climate change or environmental concerns will have on the poorest countries, while we worry about our gardens and our houses and our air conditioners. In moments of honesty some of these things are true. And it makes me squirm.

And what about our government, who regularly says that this can’t be changed or that policy can’t be changed, because we will let too many people in, or not the right people, or we don’t want people accessing money who don’t deserve it.  Or what about the ideas that we need to spend more on goods we don’t need to promote economic growth, or that we can’t support the poorest in our society because our debt is too high.  Our government has been attached to policies that do not bring harmony and wholeness but often inequality, sickness and despair. 

Peace, shalom is a dynamic activity.  It involves each of us turning around and resolving these mismatches, both within ourselves and in our society. We need to speak up and act for change, but also to change ourselves.  True peace is the bringing together of our inner world and our outer world into one complete whole so that others can also be whole. It is to follow the path of Jesus, laid out in front of us, calling us forth into the world. A challenge I know, but one we can take up at any age, even at 60!!!

 So to finish, although it is never finished!

Let me leave you with a quote from Frederick Buechner, who I think says it better  than I can….

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.  To see reality not as we expect it to be but as it is, is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily, that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”

And for the world’s sake, and our own, we have to believe that.  And act accordingly.

Amen