Mustard seeds and statistics

Kingdom Parables
Lately the Sunday readings have been about Jesus' parables that start "The kingdom of heaven is like..."
We have had a sower sowing seeds in different soils.We have had the mysterious growth of wheat. Then there has been the wheat with weeds amongst it. There is the story of the mustard seed and the woman working yeast into bread dough. Each parable has its own message but there are a couple of things that have hit me.

1. The Kingdom has an ordinariness about it. Wheat was just an ordinary crop. You till the soil, sow it, harvest it and then process it into flour. It was run-of-the-mill seasonal events. The mustard seed was an annoying weed bush, there were even laws about not planting it. Yeast was considered a symbol of that which is not pure - evil even. Working yeast into bread dough was women's work, lowly work by second-class citizens. Now if people dreamed of the kingdom of God similarities they would want to choose things like the mighty cedars of Lebanon, amazing beautiful flowering plants or some mighty powerful waterfall ... or anything "grand". But Jesus chose - duh - wheat, a weed and mould-like yeast. So ordinary!
2. The second thing that hits me is the mysteriousness of the Kingdom. What on earth is the mysterious life force that makes a seed, or wheat grow? How on earth can a little bit of yeast make a difference to a big lump of dough? Mystery, unknown - even in today's world not fully comprehended, but grow it does!  

I got to thinking about this. How we like to align the kingdom with the flashy, big, super-seen-to-be-succesful, big name programs. We count statistics and have "how to" conferences, books etc. on mission etc. ... I am not sure that was Jesus' style. I think he even avoided getting hero worshipped. I got to thinking about the statistics I have to report on about chaplaincy. I have to report the numbers of "contacts made". I report the numbers of "people accessing the service". I report the general topics of the work conversations I have had. I am meant to report the topics of the conversations I have on personal issues, but I don't do that on principle. Now this is meant to convince the management that the chaplain is worth the money paid for his services. Such reporting defines what I do. Crap... Chaplaincy to me is not the special times when people come with "issues", the times when they "access the service". Chaplaincy lies in the "ordinary". I sit and eat my lunch and we compare sandwiches. I learn that they painted their fence on the weekend. I get told about the young guy's new smart phone and he shows me what it does. They sound off about the rugby. They grump about what is going wrong with their computer. I hear about their exercise programs. Someone shares a text joke they got on their phone. I listen to their frustration about the teenagers, or "the wife" or "that husband of mine". Most often they are not issues they are accessing the service about, they are just talking, sharing and most important of all, just "being" and being accepted. You can't make stats about that! It is just so ordinary, but I believe it is of love, of God and of the Kingdom. It is mysterious, because somehow when it happens, you can't explain it. but when you relate in love healing, growth and affirmation happen and people are just better off. At the drop-in centre we just relate in ordinary ways, but I believe love, healing and wholeness grow in the midst of offering people a sausage, playing pool and sitting yarning. Ordinary and mysterious... but not flashy, vain and plastic coated showmanship.
A different kind of "knowing"
I often struggle to put my experience of life, and particularly the inner-life, into words. Sometimes when I am reading a book I suddenly say to myself, "That is what I want to say! What a great way of putting it!" In my last post I made these statements; "I think too that when we have not given ourselves to his servant lifestyle, Jesus is just a vague belief in a metaphysical saviour, and not a dynamic-life-changing-life-enhancing-mentor and "presence".  He comes alive for us when we risk all..." and "It is easy to love in the ideal, much harder to love in reality.... but again, even with the difficulties, much more rewarding and fulfilling. When we do that one's "religion" becomes real."  I am reading a good book at the moment, The New Believers Re-imagining God by Rachael Kohn. In a chapter entitled Re-souling Psychology she is writing about Thomas Moore a former Catholic Monk turned psychotherapist. She writes: "Thomas Moore is urging his students and readers in a direction that is dynamic - he is saying there is a deep knowing in the doing, in  the loving and in the living. Self-understanding in a clinical sense is not a necessary condition for unconditional love - the chief expression of the soul - and may even stand in the way of it."  That is what I find. There is a deep knowing in the loving and living of the way of Jesus that is just so hard to communicate ... it is found in the doing. When I was young I bought self-understanding books and spiritual growth type books to try to make sure I knew myself. I figured I had to "get my shit together" (to use a modern phrase) before I could properly minister. But that is not how it happens. Somehow when you forget self and focus on the needs of others faith, "your shit" comes together - there is a deep knowing in the doing. Jesus said it too. "When you lose your life you find it." ... anyway it is a good book I am enjoying it.
Funeral cancelled... postponed!
In my weekend post I mentioned that I had a funeral on Monday. Well it turned out that it was cancelled!   No there was not a resurrection! The snow covered everything and transport to the funeral would have been tricky. The funeral director said, "We are not going anywhere!" The same time on Tuesday morning we held the funeral. That is the first time in my forty years of funeral conducting that a funeral has been postponed!

A "square peg" person....

I just changed my bio on mybloglog. In it I had said that I was a "liberal" follower of Jesus. Well I am not sure I fit that category, though much of my intellectual thinking is resourced by theologically liberal thinkers. But where on earth do I fit? I don't think I fit any of the categories? I hear more and more about a new category named "progressive Christians". May be that's me? But no one seems to come up with exactly the slant I have or the priorities I have. Here is one thing I feel is an important recognition.

It's in the "doing" that the truth is known....
Because we come from western background and Greek philosophical thinking we tend to try to analyse, intellectualise and dogmatise truth. We think it must be able to be written, dissected and defined in language. But what if there are important aspects of truth that are "known" in different ways?

When I was courting my wife, she asked me once "Do you love me?" We were sitting in a bus stop. I replied, "Define 'love' and I will answer you." Well she attempted to and I debunked every definition she came up with until she was nearly in tears and "we" nearly never happened. How do you "know" love?

In the Bible it is stated that Adam "knew" Eve, and we all know that that did not mean he had an intellectual dissertation about her. He made love to her... its a different way of "knowing". In the New Testament this experiential style of knowing is referred to when Jesus talked about "this is eternal life, that you 'know' me..." and in the Greek there are a couple of passages in John and again in Ephesians that correctly translated should be "truthing it in love". They tend to be translated into English weakly as something like "telling the truth in love" ... which really is a different thing. They point to a different way of "knowing" than western analytical thinking.

A story is told about a great dancer who performed a dance on stage. A reporter came up to her afterward and asked her what the dance meant. She replied, "If I could explain what it meant in words I would not have bothered dancing it!" Again a different way of "knowing".

I find myself getting frustrated with the various Christian writers from whatever part of the theological spectrum. I find myself reading books and saying to myself, "Yes that sounds great and scholarly, but that's not where its at!" I have bookshelves of books that one day I will throw out, because they now seem irrelevant to me. I believe important truths about life, about Jesus and the sacred are discovered and "known" in the "doing". In John's gospel the writer has Jesus say,
"They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me;and those who love me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
And a little later;
"Those who love me will keep my word, and my father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

John's concept of "believe" involves "doing," sharing the love of God. Some how in the "doing" the reality of the sacred presence is known. I guess that rings bells for me in my experience. It is when I have decided to step out and love as Jesus loved, that there has come into my life a sense that I am part of an eternal flow of life, that I am in fact a co-creator with the divine or that the partnership with or participation in Jesus has become real, and meaningful.

This sort of "knowing" has become a big part of my experience and while I enjoy reading theologians, philosophy and analyses this alternative style of "knowing" leaves that discussion and study for dead. It is real, relevant and empowers. The "faith" becomes not dogma, nor mental assent nor mystical believing but an internal force and passion... John's Jesus talks about "a spring which will provide him with living water, and give him eternal life."? That is the experience in this type of knowing!

I am a square peg in a round hole, and cannot find a place to fit because there do not seem to be many writers whether "liberal", "conservative" , "pentecostal", "evangelical", "progressive christian" or whatever other label, who seem to give due recognition to this type of "knowing". Yet in my experience it is so real and in line with what I read of Jesus. Words, study and even worship are weak, easy, off the hook alternatives to the reality. But the reality of attempting a loving lifestyle brings a "deep, real and lasting high sense of connection" that defies description. I guess "incarnational"- as in attempting to make real the truth in life, is the label I would put on me.

I kind of suspect many will read this and say, "Duh! What's he on about?" - Perhaps I should not have bothered attempting to write about it.... "If I could explain it in words I would not bother living it". After all the ultimate divine communication was not a book, philosophy or dissertation, but a life lived - Jesus of Nazareth.