Meditation: IN CHRIST by John de Gruchy

IN CHRIST

II Corinthians 5:16-20

Acts 19:1-9

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.

One of the books I read as a student which has left a life-long impression on me was entitled A Man in Christ.  The book, by a Scottish scholar James Stewart, is about St. Paul, hence "man" in the title!  I took the book off my library shelf again this week and was struck by how much I had underlined, sentence after sentence, passage after passage.  It  is a study of Paul's  understanding of the Christian life and faith based on his conversion to Christ which began so dramatically on the road to Damascus, an experience that turned his life around. The whole of Paul's understanding of what it means to be a Christian was premised on what happened to him that day.  It was the hinge factor which changed the way in which he understood himself, as well as God and the world.  He became a new creation, he saw things in a completely new way, he had a new direction and purpose in life.  "If anyone is in Christ," he would later write, "there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new."

Even though some non-human animals may have something similar, it is generally thought that what distinguishes us human beings from the rest is our self-consciousness .  That is, our ability to reflect on our experience, whether of suffering or love, of fear or of hope, of one another or of God, in order to understand what it all means for us and our lives.   Self-consciousness is the ability to know ourselves, to know what is going on inside, in the deep recesses of our being.  Sometimes when we do so we throw up our hands in dismay and acknowledge that our lives are in a mess, they are falling apart, or as Paul himself put it, "the good we want to do we don't, and the evil we don't want to do, we simply go ahead and do" despite our good intentions.  We may even feel like that this morning.  That is why some people today go as regularly to a clinical psychologist or counsellor as they do to the dentist or doctor.  They need help to put their lives together. The truth is, at some time or other we may all need such help to find an integrating a centre to our lives that will hold everything together and provide stability as well as direction in our lives.

This process began for St. Paul on the Damascus Road.  His old self-disintegrated, and out of the broken pieces a new person began to emerge like clay on a potter's wheel.  To begin with he did not fully understand what was happening to him, even though it was clear that something dramatic had taken hold of his life.  But in due course and with the help of others he began to understand that the Christ he had formerly rejected with a passion had become the centre of his existence.  As a result the direction of his life changed and everything had a new focus.  And as he grew into his new life in Christ over the months and years that followed, so his perceptions changed and his understanding deepened.  He  found the words to express what had happened to him and what could happen to others as well: grace, forgiveness, joy, peace, and a deep desire to share the good news.  In addition, he no longer saw anyone from his old human point of view and within the confines of a narrow ethnic legalism.  In Christ, he declared, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free person, man or woman, for all of them are equally part of the Christian community. 

In one of his prison letters Dietrich Bonhoeffer refers to Christ as the "cantus firmus" of his life.  The term was originally a musical one that referred to the melody line in the work of composers like J.S. Bach.  But it equally refers to all types of music that have a similar structure.  If you watch a jazz band play you will know that there is a controlling melody played by all the instruments together.  But then, one by one, the trumpeter, or drummer, or saxophonist will take centre stage and improvise while the rest of the band keep on playing the melody.  The melody provides the "cantus firmus," it holds it all together, but it also allows each instrument to do their thing -- in musical terminology that is called  "polyphony," the many voices that make the music come alive.  But these many voices are able to do this only because there is a strong core, a centre, a "cantus firmus."  Christ, says Bonhoeffer, is that centre, the "cantus firmus" which enabled him to experience the "polyphony of life," life in all its variety and different parts, but without fragmenting.  With Christ the centre, Bonhoeffer is saying,  things no longer fall apart, there is in fact a new creation which is driven a love for others and a passion for justice.

Some refer to this experience of Christ as the awakening of a "Christ consciousness."  I think that is a very rich and meaningful description as long as it does not become some kind of vague spirituality that has lost its connection with Jesus himself.  For the Christ of faith who becomes the centre of our lives, the Christ who stopped Paul on the Damascus Road and whom he would later describe in Cosmic terms, is the sam Jesus whose story is told in the gospels but in a different dimension.  Whereas before his resurrection and the outpouring of his Spirit, Jesus  was confined to a particular time and space, to the paths of Galilee and the Streets of Jerusalem, now people were encountered by him on the road to Emmaus and Damascus.  Through the Spirit Jesus the Christ had gone viral.  But the Spirit remains the Spirit of Jesus.  So when St. Paul tells the church in Philippi that they should "have the mind of Christ," he immediately reminds them of Jesus, the one who, though he had every right to claim divine status, became the humble servant who gave his life for the world.  Christian formation in Christ is all about the transformation of our minds into the "mind of Christ." That is "Christ consciousness."

Volmoed exists, as our motto has it, to make broken people whole.  And that includes all of us.  The fact of the matter is that all of us continually need to regain our centre in Christ, all of us need to be renewed and become whole, all of us need nurturing in the mind of Christ -- it is an ongoing process, it is the journey into the mystery we call God.  So when we come here on a Thursday to celebrate this Eucharist together, with Christ at the centre, we are centring our lives again in him.  As we listen to the gospel story, eat bread and drink wine together, so Christ enters our lives afresh to shape the way we live in the world.  If any of us begins to live in Christ, we become part of the new creation that God is grinding into being.

John de Gruchy

Volmoed  12 November 2015

©  John W. de Gruchy

If you wish to copy or distribute this material please ask for my consent.  Please acknowledge source and do not change content without permission.

Meditation: EMBODIED WORDS by John de Gruchy

EMBODIED WORDS

John 1:1-5, 14

James 1:22-25

Be doers of the word.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (NRSV)

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. (Peterson)

When people who receive my weekly meditation by e-mail, and one of them is an Emeritus Archbishop, write to tell me that I spelt Zwelihle wrong in my meditation last week, I have to take note and gnash my teeth in contrition.  At the very least I should be,embarrassed, as I duly was.  After all,  I don't like it when people call me de Grunchy like most bank tellers, municipal officials, shop assistants  and the like, So I should take more care to remember names, and spell them correctly.  I can hear Isobel in the background saying "famous last words!" But at any rate I now know that there are some people who actually read my meditations, and that Zwelihle means "beautiful place." May the day come soon  when it will become what its name means.

Words are important, as the Book of Proverbs tells us, they can cheer people up and they can make them angry, and a word spoken at the right time can save a life or a nation.   Words are often trite and casually used, but sometimes they are powerful, moving crowds to action whether in a good cause or a bad one.  Words can encourage and comfort, they can also hurt and destroy.  So we need to take care when we use them to avoid misunderstanding, upsetting relationships, provoking bad actions.

Many people prefer the King James or Authorised Version of the Bible to modern translations like Eugene Peterson's The Message because there is something majestic about its language.  Yet, like Shakespeare's sonnets and plays, there are many words in that venerable version of the Bible that we no longer use or understand, words that have changed meaning over time. When last did you use "sanctification" in a conversation?  And when we talk about justification or election we don't mean what St. Paul meant.  Even the meaning of words like "salvation" or "sin", "grace", love or hope", "peace or righteousness" is not always clear, and even the word "God" means different things to different people and in the way we use it. And, of course,, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, and Jesus spoke Aramaic  So all the words in our Bibles are translations, and the words do not necessarily have the identical meaning of the original.  That is one reason why new translations of the Bible keep on coming, and why we have decided to re-write our Volmoed Prayer Book. 

The truth of the matter is that language develops and the meaning of words change.  Just think about "awesome", which in the Bible refers to holiness and beauty, but for our grandchildren it describes granmas' cooking or a rugby match.  Even the words Christian and Christianity convey different meanings to different people because they conjures up different images, much like the words Islam or Muslim.  The same is true in political discourse.  The meaning of "reconciliation" is highly contested in South Africa, and "transformation" is no longer politically correct in some circles.  That is why we need to find the right words to express our faith today, words that mean something to us and to others.  Words that unpack rather than hide or distort the truth; words that are not simply religious jargon, but actually communicate the message of the good news about Jesus.

This was something that bothered Dietrich Bonhoeffer while he was thinking about the future of Christianity shortly before his death.  He wrote to his friend Eberhard Bethge about it:

At the moment I am thinking about how the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification should be reinterpreted in a “worldly” way – in the Old Testament sense and in the sense of John 1:14.

For him, this meant in a way that ordinary and especially secular people can understand.  And his reference to John 1:14 -- our text for today -- refers to the way God chose to speak to us, not just in words but in the Word become flesh.   "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood."  A profound reminder that the words of faith are not just about ideas or concepts, they are words that have to be embodied in order to communicate what they mean..  When God wanted to tell us that he loves us, he did not just say the word, he became the word. The meaning of love  was demonstrated in action.   "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...it moved into our neighbourhood."

So while we need to find the right words to express our faith and tell about God's love and grace, we need to understand that the words of faith do not mean much in the abstract; they need to become embodied in life in order to have meaning.  You can say you love someone a thousand times, but love is not just a word, it needs to be expressed in order to have meaning.  You can say you believe in God as much as you like, but what faith means for you has to be embodied in the way you live. Yes, we need to find the right words, we need words that speak the truth to our time, we need to clarify what we mean, but in the end words only carry weight when they are embodied. That is why it is very difficult to understand a play by simply reading it, you have to see it acted out on the stage.  That is why we need to know the gospel story about Jesus, the drama of his life, in order to understand what it means to say "God so loved the world." That is why the word Christian has to be expressed in ways that reflect the true meaning of the gospel rather than convey the negativity so many people, for good reason, associate with Christianity today.

How then is the world to believe the good news that we as Christians are meant to share with others?  Or to put it differently, what is evangelism all about?  Is it about words?  Yes, it is, and we need to choose them carefully.  But our words need to be made flesh, our words of faith have to become embodied.  That is why in his letter, St. James tells us to "be doers of the word, and not merely hearers" or, for that matter, "merely speakers."People will never know what a word like "sanctification" means until they have met a real saint.  People will never understand the word "reconciliation" until they see justice restored in our land, or until they have actually experienced a forgiveness that changes relationships. They will never trust the word "transformation" unless things change for the good on the ground.   Zwelihle will not be the "beautiful place" it was intended to be unless there is the will and action to make it so. The gospel will never be good news to people unless they discover the renewing and healing power of Christ, unless they see that those who believe in Christ are truly making a difference for good in the world. Unless the Word becomes flesh and blood and moves into the neighbourhood no one will understand the grace and truth that is in Jesus.

John de Gruchy

Volmoed  5 November 2015

PS.  I am always delighted when people find my meditations helpful enough to want to share them with others.  But I have been advised to add the copyright note below, so I do so even if a little reluntantly.

©  John W. de Gruchy

If you wish to copy or distribute this material please ask for my consent.  Please acknowledge source and do not change content without permission.

Meditation: INTERPRETING THE PRESENT TIME by John de Gruchy

INTERPRETING THE PRESENT TIME

Luke 12:54-56

"Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

My father taught me when I was young that if even a small cloud settled on the top of Lion's Head, which we could clearly see from the veranda of our house in Cape Town, then it would soon rain.  However, if there was a "table cloth" covering Table Mountain, and a howling Southeaster blowing down into the city, then it would not rain, but it would do so in Johannesburg.  So I soon became an expert at predicting the weather by reading the "signs of the times" just as Jesus remarked to his disciples:

When you see a cloud rising in the west you immediately say that it is going to rain -- and so it happens.  And when you see the south wind howling you say, there will be scorching heat; and it happens.

However, Jesus then went on to say to his hearers that they were hopeless at interpreting the signs of the times in which they were living.  They were clueless about the significance of what was happening before their very eyes at that moment in history. 

You hypocrites!  You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

This, too, is true of many people today. We can all know what the weather is like from Alaska to Samoa by looking on TV or checking the web, but we are not so good at interpreting the times in which we live and therefore how we should respond.

There are many Christian preachers in the world today who claim to be interpreting the signs of Jesus' Second Coming to solve all our problems, so all we have to do is wait and pray.  But Jesus was not speaking about a Second Coming, he was speaking about "interpreting the present times,"  about what God was doing in and through him right there and then, not at some future date, and therefore about what they had to do in response. In his sayings and actions, Jesus kept on trying open his hearers eyes to see what God was doing in the unfolding events of his day.  Sadly, even his disciples failed to understand.  and I fear that is sometimes true of us.  We know what is happening in the world, but we don't interpret them in terms of what is God doing and what God requires of us.   So we respond in fear not faith, in terms of self-interest rather than the common good.  But Jesus pushes us to ask what is God doing in what is happening, and what does God require of us.   

This brings me to the two dramatic events of the past week or so -- the #Feesmustfall student protest movement and the huge protest march by the EFF in Johannesburg and Sandton on Tuesday this week.  These do not herald the Second Coming of Jesus, though that would be a relief for university administrators, stock brokers and the government.  Like them we might also wish that it would all go away so that things may return to normal, but they won't.  But what if we interpret these events differently, that is as a God-given opportunity to make our country a more just society?  After all, the students are rightly protesting against something that is wrong, something that needs to be changed not just for their good, but also for ours and for the future of our country.  I do not know any academic, from Vice-Chancellors to Lecturers who would not agree.   After all, the demands are for a living and fair wage for all in South Africa.  This is surely not outrageous, it is what the government has been promising for twenty years but not been very good at delivering.  It is about spending our taxes rightly so that wealth in our country can be shared not squandered; it is about everyone having what they need to live meaningful lives, not a few having so much that they don't know what to do with it.  Uncomfortable as it may be, as Jesus followers, we have interpret the present times as God's call to us to  help find ways to respond to this cry for economic justice.  We cannot continue living as if the enormous gap between the rich and the poor, Sandton and Alexandria Township, plush Hermanus and overcrowded Zwelihle is acceptable.  It is not, and something has to be done else the consequences are going to be far worse than an occasional protest march.  

Many years ago when Isobel, Steve I were driving through the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York we came across the legendary place where Rip van Winkle slept through the American Revolutionary War.  The story, written by Washington Irving and published in 1819 is a classic.  You probably know how Rip van Winkle went to sleep before the Revolution and when he woke up afterwards he discovered that the world had changed beyond recognition.  The story is universal.  We humans often sleep through a revolution that is taking place all around us. We prefer to turn out the light, go to sleep, and hope it will all go away.  But that is not an option for the followers of Jesus.  The present times are not the time to bury our heads ostrich-like in the sand, or sit back, blame the government and pass the boerewors around. 

If we truly interpret these times in which we are living as a God-given opportunity to work for a more just world and society we will have at least made a start as Jesus' disciples in discerning what we might be able do, and acknowledge that as followers of Jesus we have to find ways to share the wealth of our country with those who are in need.  So let us pray that there is much wisdom for government to manage the process and find solutions that achieve the outcomes needed.  Let us pray that big business will get the message the EFF delivered on their doorstep and respond in ways that help change things for the better.  Let us pray for the Overstrand Council to use its resources wisely and rightly especially where they are most needed.  And let us keep asking ourselves what can we do within our own spheres of influence and with the resources we have, limited as they may be.  

As Christians we know that we cannot throw up our hands in despair, or wash our hands as though all this had nothing to do with us.  We know it has everything to do with us, and many of our community are already are involved in trying to make a difference in our society.   So let us spend less time forecasting the weather and more time seeking to discern what God is calling us to be and to do in these present times. 

John W. de Gruchy

Volmoed    29 October 2015

Meditation: THANK THE LORD! by John de Gruchy

THANK THE LORD!

I Thessalonians 5:12-28

Give thanks in all circumstances

If you have been watching the Rugby World Cup on TV you will surely have noticed that the Springbok coach, Heyneke Meyer, thanks the Lord after every game we win, as he did again last Saturday when we beat Wales.  I think Meyer  must be a very devout Christian, for he gives the Lord the praise when we win, suggesting that Meyer himself thinks he has had little to do with it - and his critics would agree.  If we win, it must have been the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.  

Some of my less devout friends -- which is most of them -- get annoyed with Meyer for his pious refrain on TV, and note that while he gives thanks when we win a match he does not blame the Lord when we lose.  Surely if the Lord helped us beat Samoa, Scotland and Wales, he must have deserted us against Japan.  Or is it because the Japanese have a stronger deity on their side?  But if so, why did Japan not get to the quarter finals?  And if we are to take Paul's instruction to "give thanks in all circumstances," how come Meyer and the rest of us didn't thank the Lord when Japan beat us?  In retrospect we might well do so because losing to Japan woke up the Springboks.  But whatever, we will undoubtedly give thanks to Meyer if we beat the All Blacks this coming Saturday, and I am sure he will thank the Lord again on our behalf.  In any case, to quote St. Paul,  if God is on our side, who can be against us?  Presumably only New Zealand and the referee.  It's all rather confusing isn't it, but then rugby is only a game we play instead making war, and for that we should thank the Lord.

Now I would not have chosen this theme for my meditation to have fun at Meyer's expense.  After all, I am not as good a rugby coach as Meyer even though I captained the Under 11 team, and I am also sure that I am not half as devout a Christian as he is.  But I may be a better theologian, and even average theologians are a careful about claiming that God is on the side of their national rugby team , or more dangerous, that God is on the side of their nation when they go into battle.  Both Germany and Britain claimed that God was on their side in the First World War, but that did not prevent millions from being slaughtered.  And the apartheid government told its foot soldiers the same story.  How foolish that all was as we look back.  How dangerous it is to think in those terms.  You end up shouting  "God is great!" before you slaughter your opponents, or declare "God is on our side" when you and bomb towns to smithereens.  Then, to cap it all,  we hold thanksgiving services which reinforce this belief in the superiority of our divinity, instead of services to confess our sins in going to war in the first place, and mourning not only those of our number who were killed.  but the death of those we killed  And we can't say "sorry, we did not mean to kill them" for that is precisely what we did mean to do. There is no surer way of creating atheists out of thinking people than the kind of theological nonsense that thanks God for victory, and that includes some of the Psalms.  After all, as we know from Jesus, God is not on the side of the strong, but the weak; God is not on the side of those who conquer, but those who are oppressed and suffer.

So back to my text: "Give thanks in all circumstances." That sounds like good advice but when, as Isobel recently wrote:

            ... I wake to a morning

            dark and cold, with pain

            throbbing through my system,

            shutting down all thought of action,

yet opening shafts of memory,

flashes of past failures,

and difficulties still to be tackled,

till all is pain, grief, fear:

how can I be thankful for these?

Yes, it is very difficult for those who suffer, those who are victims of cruelty and inhumanity, to give thanks.  If I was a refugee fleeing my home, or a student unable to pay my fees,  or the parent of a child dying of cancer, I would not automatically say "thank you, Lord!"   But we can give thanks for those who are caring for refugees, those who are fighting for a free education, and those who are caring for the dying and seeking better cures for cancer.  

This week I received a letter from an old friend of ours whose wife of many years died a year ago.  He was still working through his grief, but his long letter was full of thanks, thanks for his memories and thanks that her presence still with him in his loneliness.  He gave thanks because he had learnt over the long haul, which included the tragic death of a son, that being thankful was the Christian way of being human.  It is not something we can turn on and off according to circumstances.  It is learning to live gratefully over the years of hard knocks.  I also recall how at the recent Kairos Conference in Johannesburg, I was deeply moved by the Palestinian Christians present who, despite their suffering oppression, remained thankful to God for all his gifts to them.  Being thankful was for them at the heart of being Christian.

Paul's counsel that we "give thanks in all circumstances" is not an absolute which excludes being angry or anxious.  It is a reminder that gratitude is fundamental to human well-being, something we learn in childhood, something we express at every meal however meagre, and something we celebrate at the Eucharist.  It is easy to be grateful when everything is going smoothly, though we often forget to do so, but it is very difficult when the road is bumpy and the outlook grim.  Paul knew this.  He was hunted and hounded, often beaten and downcast, and spent a good deal of his time in prison.  But gratitude had become ingrained in his flesh and bones.  He knew that giving thanks is often very difficult if not impossible, but he also knew that it was fundamental to human well-being.  I end with a prayer Isobel wrote, which reminds us that this is so:

Lord our God,

Thank you for our eyes that we can see the beauty of your creation,

even though we see so much of ugliness.

Thank you for our ears that we can hear music and laughter

even though discord and prejudice are clamouring to be heard.

Thank you for our tongues that we can sing and communicate love and truth

even though lies and hatred often pour off them.

Thank you for our minds that we can learn and find meaning in a world of chaos,

Thank you for emotions that we can feel joy and well as pain,

Thank you for our wills that we can give ourselves freely to you and follow your way,

to see, hear and talk of all that is beautiful and good,

even though we may find it hard to find,

in the midst of this field of  mud and dirt,

the buried treasure,

the gift of thankfulness.

John de Gruchy

Volmoed  22 October 2015