SERMON
PENTECOST
15 (Year A) 28 August 2005
May God open our hearts to rejoice in the diversity and
beauty of humanity . Amen.
A week or so ago I went to the National Gallery to see the
new exhibition by Bill Viola. It’s called Passions and has attracted a huge
range of responses. There was a particularly scathing letter in the Canberra
Times earlier this week by someone who obviously just loathed it. But many have
found it very moving and I will admit to being one of that number.
The exhibition consists of very slow moving photographic
images of people experiencing a range of emotions as they respond to life. In
some of the images you see what it is they are responding to, in others you
don’t. There are also a series of images where you just watch events: a woman
in her room, people emerging from water.
The incredible slowness of the images forces you to spend
time in front of each one. Indeed, at first, you think that the images are
static. It is only by standing for a while watching, that you see the movement.
But then, as you focus intently on one part of the picture to watch the movement
there, you realise that you have missed something happening on another part of
the screen.
An awareness dawns, or it did for me at least, of great
complexity and enormous movement where I had initially thought nothing was
happening, and I was drawn to reflect on how quickly we tend to skate across the
surface of life, gleaning impressions and responding to them, rather than taking
the time to experience life deeply. Indeed, it was fascinating to see how long
it took people to slow down and actually see what was happening in the images.
It is as if we live horizontally, zooming across the top layer of existence,
without tunnelling into the rich subsoil on which it all rests and which gives
it much of its meaning. We move on quickly, gaining a surface impression,
assuming nothing much is happening, when indeed much is going on.
As our attention spans, trained on a diet of 30 second
advertisements and 2 minute sound grabs, become shorter and shorter,
attentiveness and mindfulness are becoming lost arts. How often do we see small
children gazing for hours at ants scurrying along the ground? How often do we
give ourselves half an hour just to sit and watch a sunset or a storm? How often
in our prayer do we allow space for God to speak to us? Is our prayer
simply a matter of listing our needs, concerns and thanks?
If our dealings with God are always about our agenda, if we always pray
about the things that are troubling us, or we are praising God for the blessings
in our lives, it really doesn’t give God much of a look-in. Relationships are,
in their very essence, 2 way. A friendship or partnership where one person is
always the centre of attention lacks true intimacy, true communion. Usually the
other person, the one who is in the shadow, disappears, feeling de-valued and
negated. I suspect that this kind of dynamic is at the heart of the difficulties
in so many celebrity marriages – people who are so used to being at the centre
of attention find it extremely difficult to make someone else the focus of their
concern.
Back to God – what kind of relationship can we say we
have with God, if we do not attend to God? Today’s New Testament reading from
the Letter to the Romans sets a very high standard of behaviour for us.
It may feel onerous and, indeed, unachievable – yet another impossible
ask from God. But Paul’s statement flows from a sense of how we live when we
do attend to God, when we are in a partnership with the God who is love. To
think of it as task is to have it all the wrong way around. It is the outcome
of partnership, of relationship. The quality of our relationship with God is
reflected in the quality of our relationships with each other.
Which brings us to our relationships with those who are
other, who are not part of whatever group or tribe we are familiar and
comfortable with. As we celebrate Migrant and Refugee Sunday, we think
immediately of those who are recent arrivals in Australia, but differentiation
between all kinds of groups is an important part of identity building. I
sometimes jokingly but accurately categorise myself as a left-handed Tasmanian
woman. Joke it may be but the truth is that these are all important markers of
the ways in which I am different from most other people in the world. However,
the ways in which we differentiate ourselves from each other are not always
greeted benignly in our world. Indeed they are often met with suspicion and used
to justify discriminatory behaviour.
Once upon a time, for example, left-handers were believed
to be the instruments of the devil and enormous efforts were made to ensure that
we couldn’t manifest our left-handedness in any way. Historically, women have
been discriminated against in terms of access to education and employment,
property rights, earning capacity, and subjection to violence, to name but some
areas. And we all know about Tasmanians! For some reason, some groups seem to
become the butt of national jokes – such is the lot of the Tasmanians!
There is reason to think that even Jesus became caught in
this natural human tendency. There is a wonderful encounter recorded in the
Gospels where Jesus himself is challenged to move beyond his narrow
understanding of his mission to embrace all of humanity. A Canaanite woman asks
for his help but he argues, saying ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of
Israel’. Their exchange leads him to reach beyond his previous understandings
and respond to her request. (Matthew 15: 21-28)
We too are called to reach beyond our narrow understandings
and to see that beneath our various differences we share a common humanity. This
too was one of the deeply moving aspects of the Passions exhibition. What was so
clearly on display was our common humanity. There were no words. Even the titles
of the works gave no real indication of the passions being expressed, but we all
knew what they were. Shock, grief, self-possession, awe, anger, joy, disbelief
… we were invited along the pathway of our shared humanity to enter into the
emotions. We are all God’s children – regardless of colour, ethnicity,
gender, age, language.
As we celebrate Refugee and Migrant Sunday, we are reminded
of the struggles faced by so many people in our world as they try to find a
place where they can live in freedom and with dignity. The first inhabitants of
this land, those who have been here 40,000 years or more, have over the last 220
years, shared this continent with wave after wave of refugees and migrants. Some
groups have been more welcomed than others, some have found it easy to adjust to
a different society, some have not. All have contributed to the richly diverse
culture of today.
There is no doubt where God stands in all of this: whatever
our prejudices, we are called to welcome each other, to acknowledge our shared
humanity and to rejoice in our diversity. The quality of our relationships with
those around us, whatever their background, whatever their place in life, is a
reflection of the quality of our relationship with God.
Amen.
Sarah Macneil
August 2005