St. Stephens Blog

For those of you who have not seen the film Avatar, I commend it to you. Even if you believe you do not like science fiction films, I still recommend it to you. Sandy is not a science fiction fancier – she won’t even sit with me and watch Star Wars, which I think verges on an act of heresy on her part, but Sandy was, for some reason, keen to see Avatar and I was even keener to go with her. We have a choice of viewing the film in 2D or 3D. As a testimony to Sandy’s enjoyment of Avatar, despite her lack of interest in Science fiction films, she enjoyed the 2D version significantly to be enthusiastic about going to see it again in 3D which of course we have done.

The science fiction part of the film is not easy to explain, except that it is set on the planet Pandora, which is inhabited by a tall, blue skinned, humanoid race, with their own language and culture, called the Na’vi. As a part of a study of the culture of the Na’vi, and a means for a mining corporation doing their capitalism, scientists have developed a genetic means of creating a Na’vi identity that is controlled by humans called and Avatar.

One Avatar controller Jake Sulley, infiltrates the Na’vi and, in the process, falls in love with the beautiful Na’vi, Neytiri, and Jake enters into a fight to save Pandora from the ruthless, capitalist, mining company.

In the process of the movie we are made aware of the depth of the pagan spirituality, culture and language of the Na’vi. In particular is the Na’vi greeting, “I see you.” It is explained to Jake by his Avatar driver colleague that this means more than, “I am looking at you,” but carries the sense that, “I see you for who you really are.”

A part of the conclusion to the movie is a scene where the Na’vi, Neytiri, sees Jake as the human he is, rather than as the Avatar which he drives. Jake says to Neytiri, “I see you,” to which Neytiri replies, in great acceptance despite his being a part of the humans that are destroying her planet. “I see you.”

This is the problem for Saul when he is confronted, on the way to Damascus, by the sudden light that caused him to fall from his horse. When the voice of the light says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul responds, “Who are you, Lord?”

Saul does not see. He knows about Jesus, but he does not know Jesus, he does not really know who he really is. Jesus is simply a threat to Saul’s religion.

Compare this to the disciples who have gone fishing one night and have caught nothing. Jesus, although unrecognised by the disciples, is standing on the beach and gives them instructions to cast the net on the right side of the boat. Of course, when they do this, they catch 153 large fish. The disciple whom Jesus loved, probably John who is credited with writing this gospel, says to Peter, “It is the Lord!” There is no hesitation, Peter knows it also, dressing, he dives into the water and swims to Jesus on the shore, the other disciples follow in the boat dragging the full net.

When they get to shore, Jesus is already there with a fire, cooking some fish, and some bread. He invites them to breakfast. John writes, ‘Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord.’

There then follows an interaction between Peter and Jesus that seems to me to be reversing the Peter’s three-time betrayal before Jesus was crucified. But it is telling that Peter feels hurt because Jesus asks him three times, “Do you love me?” “Lord,” he replies, “you know everything; you know that I love you.”

Peter and the other disciples do recognise Jesus, the same but different through the resurrection. They see Jesus, and Jesus sees them.

The problem with Saul was that he did not see Jesus. He knew about him, he knew information concerning him, he may have even visibly seen him, but he did not know him, he did not see him.

We often speak about this part of Saul’s life as being a conversion. I the strictest sense, Saul does not change gods. However, Saul does make a leap in understanding about the person of Jesus in the God he belongs to. I can’t help wondering whether Saul is acting out of religious motives rather than faith motives here. We know he speaks of himself as once being zealous to the law. Now, clearly, this interaction with the risen Jesus, on the way to Damascus has brought him into knowledge of Jesus, ot just knowledge about him. Saul sees Jesus.

With the aid of a reluctant and fearful Ananias, through prayer, the Holy Spirit gives him understanding. Saul becomes Paul. The physical restoration of his sight, as something like scales fell from his eyes, is a metaphor that he sees Jesus. Paul, now no longer persecuting Jesus through his disciples, is baptised and goes out proclaiming that Jesus is the Son of God.

I am reminded of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25). The rich man leaves his three stewards a gift: one five talents, one two talents, and the last, one talent. Then he goes away. On his return he calls his stewards to give an account of how they have used a gift. The first two, five and two talent recipients, have doubled their money because they understood that they had been trusted with it. The third, the one talent recipient, simply returns what he had been given having buried it. The reason, he says, is because “he knew his master to be a hard man, reaping where he did not sow…” This parable seems to be indicating that our actions, with the gifts we have been given, will be determined by how we understand God to be.

I often hear stories about the members of certain churches, including our own, being full of people who lack commitment. I don’t think that is purely case. I think, the reason that people do not act and respond is because they do not, have not, yet come to understand the nature of God. They may know about God and they may know stuff about God and they may know the practices of their religion and tradition, but they do not know God.

The death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection, speak to me about the extravagant generosity of God to us. When we get the enormity of what God has done, what God has surrendered, what God has given, because of and for us, then that will change the way we act and respond in the world towards God. Then we will be able to say to Jesus, “I see you,” as he says to us, “I see you.”

Revelation 7:9-17

I don’t think that I am an angry person. By this, I don’t mean that I don’t get angry; I do. Much to the frustration of my wife, I tend to begin by becoming quiet, withdrawn. Then, when I have worked out what it is that I am feeling, I like to think that I am emotionally intelligent, I may speak about my anger and what is making me angry.

Very few people have felt the brunt of my anger in full voice. I don’t know whether this means they should feel privileged that I trusted them with my anger, or probably more correctly, I have been feeling absolute exasperation with them because I have not been allowed to be angry, nor heard in my anger.

Yelling, screaming, arguing is, in itself, not anger. It is either a poor expression or recognition of our anger or it is the result of our feeling that we have not been heard concerning the issue that is causing us to feel angry. Yelling, screaming, arguing is a symptom of unresolved anger, not anger in itself.

I feel that I am angry about a lot of things lately.

Just yesterday, I was driving my wife to her shift at the hospital. We were travelling towards the city down High Street and the car in front of me wanted to turn right into Belmont Shopping Centre. They correctly indicated to turn right, moved over into the right turn slip lane, and as I was about to pass down their left, swerved left into the lane I was travelling in, in order to make their right turn. So I blasted them with my horn. That, in itself, is pretty outspoken for me. But as I passed and looked back in the rear vision mirror, the passenger in the vehicle was making the finger gesture at me, mouthing interesting words. To my shame, and here I confess before you and God, I returned the bird with my own expletive, heard only by Sandy. My wife’s response was, ‘You should see someone.’

I seem to be angry about a lot of things lately. Most of them unexpressed and no one to express them to that will make any release to my anger.

I feel angry about global warming, being concerned about the amount of electricity I use, thinking about each time I get into my car, each time I fill it with petrol. And then, in the wee hours of the morning, I hear some hoon, somewhere in Belmont, doing donuts around a roundabout or an intersections – burning both rubber in their tires and excessive fuel.

I feel angry, in the first place, that I am regularly awake in the wee hours of the morning to hear the hoon screaming around some roundabout, or youth having shopping trolley races down the street, or drunks having arguments outside the vicarage on the way home from the pub.

I feel angry about the drought. Worrying about how much water I am using, collecting buckets of water and carrying them out to the garden. Even when it is raining, I worry about not collecting water in the buckets, letting it go down the plughole.

I get angry in the supermarket, when the shop assistant packs my shopping into the grocery bags that I have taken to the supermarket. I take the food out of the trolley and place it on the conveyor belt so that cold things go with cold things, vegetables and fruit are together, soft things together, and bottles together. And yet they still pack stuff so that heavy stuff is on top of my tomatoes, and my mushrooms are not the same shape as they were when I put them in the bag, and the bread is no longer a square loaf.

I got angry when I took my empty shopping cart to the drop off point to find that people had not even bothered to push the carts together, and one of the carts was protruding sideways, out of the (whatever its called) to obstruct the parking bay beside it. I get angry when people cannot be bothered to take their shopping trolley to one of the bays at all and leave it to obstruct a car park, or be raced around the streets in the wee hours of the morning by some wayward youth.

I am angry that our puppy has developed this habit of sneaking off into our bedroom, taking the box of tissues off the bedside table, and gently pulling out tissues one by one. It is not that she is pulling the tissues out – that is kind of clever and even cute – it’s that I have lost trust in her and have to close up the bedroom to protect my things from her inquisitive cleverness. I am angry that it is, somehow, my dog that is determining how I behave in my home.

Not only do I feel angry, I feel guilty. I feel guilty that year by year I stand up here during Stewardship Month encouraging you to think about your giving, knowing that, based on current giving, 65% of that giving goes to employ me.

I feel guilty that I am not doing all the things that clergy have done in the past, knowing that if I do those things I will not have time to do the things that need to be done to enable the church to grow.

And I feel angry that I should be feeling guilty at all – except for the rude gesture in the car yesterday – I should feel guilty about that.

I feel angry about so many things in our society, because they are not what they potentially could be. Like that old movie, Network, I think it was called, people leaning out their windows yelling ‘I have had enough and I won’t take it anymore’, or words to that effect. I am angry, because the world I live in is not like the world as I think it needs to be. I feel like an alien in strange land, not belonging.

I feel angry because I believe it could be, and should be, different to what it is. I feel guilty that I have trivialised the things that I ought to feel angry about and I feel guilty, because I know, in hoping for the world to be as it should and could be, I am a contributing factor to its failure to reach that state of being.

I wonder of John of Patmos felt the same anger as he witnessed his vision, and wrote it down, of something hoped for and was not yet a reality. That the very thing he was hoping for was the cause of his exile. He became an alien because he saw another way. We get a glimpse of that vision in our reading from the book of Revelation today. A picture of what heaven, or more accurately, the kingdom of God, is like.

These are the disciples for Jesus, like the disciples of Palm Sunday, entering behind Jesus into Jerusalem, waving their palm branches declaring, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38; NRSV) Here are the resurrected ones, robed in white, with palm branches, this time crying out, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:10; NRSV) And a glimpse of the kingdom of God in the promise, “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17; NRSV)

My anger, unspoken and unexpressed, and also when I feel that someone has finally heard and responded to it, sometimes drives me to tears. The promise of Jesus and Revelation is there can be another reality other than the one we presently live in. That other reality is the Kingdom of God and the present kingdom, the world, is often out of kilter with God’s kingdom.

As Christians, we should naturally, intuitively, feel angry when our experience in this world does not match the reality of the kingdom of God. We ought to continue to listen to that anger, helpfully express that anger and creatively develop activities, programmes and lifestyle changes that enable God’s kingdom to become realised. Working toward that day when we will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike us, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be our shepherd, and he will guide us to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.