Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 3                                    NOTES FOR REFLECTION                                  Fifth Sunday of Easter

Texts: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-7

Theme: The safe choice will be something based on the gospel passage; something like "The Vine and the Branches" or "Abiding in Him" shouldn't cause too much angst, particularly if the person reading the gospel remembers to lower his or her voice for verse 6.  For those of more adventurous bent the reading from Acts offers some enticing possibilities.  For lower grade excitement I suggest "The Teaching Ministry Goes On"; for medium grade, try "Where is Philip when we Need Him?"; and for high octane excitement, "Do you Know the Way to Azotus?", even though it doesn't scan as well as the original song on which it is based.  We could even find one or two possibilities entangled in the elderly ramblings in our second epistle: two possibilities with bite in them are "As He is so We Are" (v. 17) or "Perfect Love Casts out Fear" (v.18).

Introduction.  We start with this strange little story from Acts in which the bizarre and the eccentric, mixed with a little splash of Isaiah and a large dollop of exegesis, result in an alfresco baptism in a conveniently placed pool of water deep enough to immerse one man and part of another, followed by some mysterious form of "instant re-location" of Philip to Azotus.  There is nothing particularly strange about our second lesson, but a charge of being a tad repetitive may be harder to resist.  A good editor could have got the passage down to one paragraph of about 5-6 verses without omitting anything of substance.  We finish on a mystical high as we journey on through the so-called "Farewell Discourses": the image of the vine and the branches being, in many ways, equivalent to St Paul's concept of being "in Christ".

Background.  I have just begun reading a rather large tome from the wonderful scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, called Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence.  Her basic aim in the book is to examine the oft-made charge that religion is the major cause of war and violence in the world and we would all be better off without it.  [If you intend to read the book and don't want to know her conclusion, turn away now.]  She vigorously rebuts the charge – in fact, she buries it under a mound of evidence drawn, not only from Christian sources but those of other religious faiths, as well as non-religious traditions, teaching, and practices.  Perhaps more surprising is her conclusion that warfare was rooted in agriculture.  Only when our ancestors moved from hunting-gathering to tillage and (ultimately) raising livestock did the accumulation of wealth (in the form of food) become possible.  As always, accumulated wealth became a target for those without and therefore necessitated defensive measures by those with.  She says the first "city walls" appeared on earth only after humankind invented agriculture.  Ever since, she seems to be arguing (although I have only read the introduction so I may not be reflecting her views accurately) wars have been far more about territory and related issues than religion and ideology.

I suspect that I will be referring to this book for some time to come (you have been warned), but for now here is just one quote to be going on with:

Agrarian civilisations made this systemic violence a reality for the first time in human history.  ...  This inevitably had implications for religion, which permeated all human activities, including state-building and government.  Indeed, we shall see that pre-modern politics was inseparable from religion.  And if a ruling elite adopted an ethical tradition, such as Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, the clergy usually adapted their ideology so that it could support the structural violence of the state.

Sound familiar?

It's been an interesting time to begin reading this book, with Holy Week and Easter Day still fresh in my mind, followed by the extraordinary wall-to-wall coverage of the ANZAC commemorations, with all the usual myths, half-truths and downright lights that every nation's history becomes infected with.  Perhaps what I have found most hopeful this year is the gradual willingness to talk about the actual campaign as "an invasion", and to recognise that, as horrific as the ANZAC losses were, the Turkish losses were twice as bad.  Perhaps we are at last beginning to understand that war, this one included, and the Gallipoli campaign in particular, was not a Kiwi tragedy, or an ANZAC tragedy, but a human one.

And that point was brought sharply into focus for me by the extraordinary case of Scott McIntyre, which doesn't seem to have made the main news bulletins in this country, but has stirred up our ANZAC partner no end.  Mr McIntyre was a sports reporter for SBS television in Australia.  On Anzac Day he took to Twitter with a series of highly-inflammatory Tweets rubbishing the heroic image of the Aussie troops in World War I, accusing them of murder, rape, pillage, racism and goodness-knows-what-else in Egypt, Gaza and Palestine.  He was immediately fired by his employers, even though, it appears, he was not sending the Tweets during his working hours.

I wondered what on earth could have led the guy to be so grossly rude and offensive on Anzac Day of all days, and so I followed it up.  Nothing I found does, in my view, justify making those comments on that particular day.  But what I did find is a series of articles by eminent and respected historians stating that the allegations by Mr McIntyre were largely true.  In both World Wars the Aussies troops had been guilty of all the atrocities traditionally referred to as "spoils of war".  What are we to do with information like that?

The more I thought about it the more I came to the view that  Mr McIntyre was making the same mistake the hero-worshippers make on the other side of the history wars.  We do not remember them because they were good or bad, we do not lament their deaths because they were "innocent" and didn't deserve to suffer or die.  We lament their deaths because they were, like us, human beings, and the death of every human being is a loss of one of our own kind.  More lamentable still is the fact that vast numbers of them were killed by our own kind.

Think for a moment about the coverage of the executions in Indonesia this week.  Eight people were shot by firing-squad.  What do we know about 6 of them?  Virtually nothing.  What do we know about two of them?  Quite a lot, even though it was only the day after they were executed that I learned from the ODT that these two were known as "The Godfather" and "The Enforcer", and were serious criminals in the drug underworld.  My point is this: (with Helen Clark) I am totally opposed to the death penalty in any country, for any crime, committed by any person of any nationality.  That means in Indonesia, China, Saudi Arabia, the USA and anywhere else, whether we want a free trade deal with them or not.  So I do not lament the execution of two Australian men who didn't deserve to die because they had reformed: I lament the death of all eight who were executed, whatever their nationality, whatever their crime, and whatever their degree of rehabilitation.

And one day I hope to hear our Bishops express similar sentiments, even on Anzac Day.

Acts 8:26-40.  As always, it pays to go back a bit: start reading at verse 1, and follow the drama from then.  Stephen has just died his martyr's death, and Paul (Saul) is breathing fire and fury.  Christians are scattering in all directions, no doubt fearing for their lives, but "proclaiming the word" as they went.  Among those scattering was Philip, and of all places to scatter to, he scattered to Samaria (not usually a favourite resort for Jews), and, would you believe it, started "proclaiming the Messiah to them".  He was so successful in all he did and said that a local magician thought there was a trick to be made there and tried to join the new team.  He even got himself baptised – presumably the gift of discernment was not one Philip had received.  When news of all this reached headquarters back in Jerusalem, Peter and John were dispatched to Samaria.  They laid hands on the new converts who received the Holy Spirit.  For reasons that aren't spelled out, Simon was not involved in this early Confirmation service; but when he saw what was going on he was even more convinced that there was a trick to be made; so he offered cash up-front, no questions asked.  All he got in return was a right rollicking from Peter.  Peter and John then returned to Jerusalem, and the focus goes back on Philip.  We start with an angel whispering in his ear.  Okay so far?  Then we meet one of the most fascinating of the bit characters in the whole New Testament drama.  We are not told his name, but we are told his nationality, his sexual status, and his very high position in the royal court in his native Ethiopia.  What is never explained is why such a person would go to Jerusalem to worship, or why he would attempt to read Isaiah on the long difficult journey home.  I am intrigued by the passage he was reading, quoted in verses 32 and 33.  Is it not (at least as set out in this passage in the NRSV) a far more appropriate text to pay our respects to a fallen soldier than the verses from St John's Gospel that are usually cited?  The pattern of explaining the Scriptures follows that in some of the Appearance stories and serves the same purpose.  Following the somewhat impromptu baptism service, Philip is snatched away and finds himself in Azotus: unfazed, he "proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea".  So there is something in all this about the unstoppable spread of the gospel.  After all, it has reached us – how much further can we spread it?

Taking It Personally.

• Start with that question.  How far can you spread it?
• Notice the structure of the story: Philip is "prompted" to go and do something; he obeys and meets a person with whom he would not usually have any dealings; they converse; they bond; Philip teaches and explains; the man is convinced and seeks baptism.  One-to-one faith sharing 101!  Are you convinced?
• When will you try it?

 

1 John 4:7-21.  As you may have gathered, this is not one of my favourite passages of Scripture.  Most of it is a somewhat overdone version of his teaching in the gospel, and adds very little that is new.  However, verse 18 is a gift:  Ponder it deeply and often.  Hate is not the direct opposite of love in the Christian sense, because hate is emotional.  The opposite of love as taught in the New Testament is fear.  Fear is what turns our brother or sister into a threat, and our neighbour into our enemy.  That is why the highest and mostly uniquely Christian commandment is to love our enemies.  Our war records show how often we have failed the test, and as Karen Armstrong points out, how often we have adapted our Lord's teaching to support "the structural violence of the state" (a.k.a. the war effort).

 

John 15:1-7.  It is important not to try to approach chapters 14-17 at the rational level.  They are clearly the work of a mystic who is trying, through images, metaphors, and similar rhetorical techniques, to convey to us his own deep inner experience of Christ.  In this passage he uses the image of the vine for which the same purpose as Paul uses the "Body of Christ" – to express the deep sense of union he has experienced with Christ.  If there is a difference between the two, it is in the unity between the fellow believers.  For Paul our membership of the Body of Christ means that we belong in Him and to one another.  John's image does not seem to me to go that far: indeed, individual branches, although together comprising the vine, remain individual branches and can be (and will be) jettisoned if they fail to produce good fruit.  This harder approach may well support the widely held view among scholars that John's Gospel and Letters come out of a deeply divided community that has already suffered many defections.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

·        Put a pot plant in front of you and look at it for some time.  Notice how it comprises many individual branches.  Then snip one little branch off and lay it down beside the plant.  Then read through this passage slowly, and pray as the Spirit leads you.