Liz Morris – 18 September 2022

Good morning. As always, it is a privilege to delve into God’s word with you, and I wish to thank Brooke for her preparation and leadership of our service today. Welcome to all present and to those online to what is a challenging, but important topic.

In Psalm 1, the psalmist writes that God blesses those who “find happiness in the Teaching of the Lord, and they think about it day and night. They are like trees growing beside a stream, trees that produce fruit in season and always have leaves”. (ps1 2-3) I am sure many of you have a favourite tree. There is something calming and beautiful about trees. Spending time in nature, immersed in the tranquillity of a forest can be grounding and hopeful. The comparison to us being planted by a stream to produce fruit and always having leaves is a lovely simile for how we grow from God’s teaching over our lives, and it isn’t the only place in the Bible where we hear such comparisons. We will be focusing on our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah today, and at the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, it says that he is called by God to speak with an authority that would uproot and tear down as well as plant and build up (Jer 1:10). Which brings me back to this rather less than impressive tree picture I’ve chosen today. On the surface, it has no visible issues, but you’ll soon see why I chose this picture instead of a more impressive one. The tree has grown and seems to be thriving, but when we dig deeper, this is the reality.

So, what has happened here? The roots of this tree have not grown properly, instead they have interlocked, growing over each other instead of going downwards, which means that the roots have started to restrict the flow of sap to the tree. This is what is known as ‘tree girdling’.

Arborists have commented the following about tree girdling and its effects on trees:

“Girdling roots occur when the roots of a tree grow next to or around the trunk of a tree instead of away from the tree. This condition can cause affected trees to slowly weaken or die. The damage caused by girdling roots is a slow process and it may be several years before the tree shows any outward signs of decline” (https://www.owentree.com/Girdling_Roots.php).

“Girdling roots can be tricky in that symptoms often appear long after the issue manifests. Without getting into detail here, girdling roots pose potentially severe and often chronic fatal problems for trees. Simply put, the tree eventually can “choke” itself.” (https://www.treefirst.org/girdling-roots)

I think it is important to pause on those facts as we head into our Jeremiah reading today. There are symptoms that appear long after the issue manifests and sometimes it is several years before any outwards signs of decline are revealed. I am sure you’re following me in my analogy here about our own metaphorical root systems.

Some important context to our reading today is that Jeremiah was a prophet who was said to be a ‘messenger of God’s justice and grace.’ Although justice and grace are synonymous with God, the message that Jeremiah brings sounds a lot more like destruction than it does justice. In the lead up to our reading from chapter 8, Jeremiah has warned the people of Judah that their idolatry would lead to destruction. They have been warned about pretending everything is okay and about complacency. The people of Judah have been told they must stop ignoring the marginalised, stop silencing those who point out injustices, and, importantly, those in political and religious leadership positions are told they must stop offering ‘empty hopes of peace’ (Jer 8:11). Jeremiah sees the roots girdling, but all anyone else sees is the perfectly ‘normal’ tree above ground. He is warning them of the tangling of roots below that will cause destruction to them if not tended to, to the point where he spends forty years telling the people to repent and turn back to God, foreseeing the destruction ahead, and no-one listens to him. Jeremiah is completely alone in his pain and in his struggles, and it is in this context that we perhaps understand clearly why Jeremiah penned the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is in a lonely position, and it is here that we hear him cry out with the following words:

‘I am burdened with sorrow and feel like giving up’. Our poignant opening words to Jeremiah’s lament touch us deeply, as a man who is grieving. Grief can be like the girdling roots for us, and today I wish to look at how Jeremiah grieves deeply for God’s people. Only recently, we have seen a communal outpouring of grief with the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and we have been appointed a day of mourning this Thursday to communally grieve. However, grief is deeply personal, and there are moments like these, where the burden of sorrow cannot be communally shared or understood and there tends not to be an expiration date on experiences of grief. In Elif Shafak’s novel, The Island of Missing Trees, one of the character’s wisely says: “If you weep for all the sorrows in this world, in the end, you will have no eyes.” Perhaps foolishly we ask God to break our hearts for what breaks His without stopping to consider the frailty of human hearts. The human experience of grief is, at times, overwhelming.

When I was 18, my friend’s brother died in a car accident. I was living in London at the time and remember receiving the news moments before I was about to go back to teaching kindergarteners. As the little ones walked back into the classroom, I was overcome with my want to protect them and their precious lives. This was my first real view of bone-aching grief.

When I was a little older, my maternal Grandmother died after a battle with bowel cancer. Her death was not a surprise to me, but what was a surprise was my grief. I remember not being able to sleep because of my raw tears that would not stop. I experienced, for the first time, what I now recognise as panic attacks which only stopped after her funeral.

At Christmas time, I have two precious ornaments with which I adorn my tree, alongside the usual baubles and lights. These two particular ornaments are wooden and have the names of the two students I have taught who have passed away in the short time I have been teaching. I hope to never purchase another ornament such as these, but I honour those young girls who were taken too soon from this world.

Recently, old friend grief has been my constant companion and the lament of Jeremiah speaks deeply to me. What does God have to say about grief? What does Jeremiah have to teach us and how do we reconcile these feelings of sorrow with a loving God who only wishes to see us prosper? It is in this context that we look at this topic today.

If you have a Bible or Bible App that you’d like to turn to, our reading is Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 and you’re most welcome to follow along as we delve into this pericope.

^8:18 I’m burdened with sorrow
    and feel like giving up.
¹⁹ In a foreign land   
my people are crying.
Listen! You’ll hear them say,
“Has the Lord deserted Zion?
    Is he no longer its king?”

The people reveal an expectation here that God will be there for them at any whim without any need to cultivate a personal relationship with God. Instead of choosing to strengthen their relationship with God, they put their trust in idols, and we see a narrative shift here in the second half of verse 19 where God responds to their question saying ‘Why did you make me angry by worshipping useless idols?’ Is this Jeremiah’s lament, or God’s? Perhaps it is both?

Continuing on, we hear more of the people’s complaints:

²⁰ The people complain,
“Spring and summer
    have come and gone,
but still the Lord
    hasn’t rescued us.”

Theologian, Garrett Galvin says: “We get a sense of people turning everywhere for some way to leverage their relationship with God. First, they try Zion. Next, they try idols. They seem to be turning everywhere except to God and each other. Even in verse 20, there is some sense that something magical would happen at the end of the summer harvest. The people have managed to make both idols and idols out of religious feasts at the year’s end.”

It prompts a response from Jeremiah about how crushed his heart is. We will return to verse 21, but verse 22 questions why the people’s sickness can’t be healed:

²² If medicine and doctors
may be found in Gilead,
    why aren’t my people healed?

As well as hoping for a magical harvest and idols to stop all of the issues and destruction, there  is a question about finding healing from Gilead in verse 22. This was, historically, a place that was fertile, a place east of the Jordan River. It was known for its creation of healing balms, but historians still do not know exactly how this was made. Philip Ryken has suggested that this balm was some kind of “soothing, aromatic resin made from a tree or a plant” and possibly is akin to “aloe vera”. And perhaps we can laugh at the idea that aloe vera was the proposed solution to all of their problems, but Jeremiah points out to us that even Gilead has no medicine or doctors who could help. Jeremiah’s lament moves from despair to utter grief by chapter 9:1 “I wish that my eyes were fountains of tears, so I could cry day and night for my people who were killed.” Hope does not seem to transpire. Idols, harvests, medicines, nothing fixes this, and Jeremiah grieves with a rawness that overflows.

I wish to return to the verse that is most steeped in grief for us. In Verse 21, Jeremiah agonisingly bleeds the following: “My people are crushed, and so is my heart. I am horrified and mourn”. There is a purity in this statement. It is presented as ugly. Jeremiah is horrified. His heart is crushed. He is telling God plainly and without reservation: “I am not okay”. There is a beauty in this because Jeremiah is doing what many of us fail to do; he is speaking to God frankly, without editing his prayer and models to us what we should do, which is to lay our grief at God’s feet. Jeremiah is not sugar-coating his feelings of helplessness and the raw confession of wanting to give up that begins our passage, and he plainly says he feels like he will never cease crying for his people. How many of us can say we understand this view of grief? The days where you carry a pain with you that is unrelenting. Perhaps you manage until you’re in a place where you can only cry out to God and say “this is hurting me”. How ever you are presenting yourself to us today, let it be known that this church is a place where your grief will be welcome. It sounds perhaps peculiar to be inviting grief inside here, but we fail time and time again in our church communities to truly let people grieve, also I believe this has been something that has been modelled to us recently with ways to reconcile previous grievances as a community. There is a temptation to want to move to comfort and reassurance. There is an innate desire to want to fix things. But, this passage calls us to sit in grief. Jeremiah is pressed to sit in his grief. He is lonely in it. He cries ceaselessly. He is burdened with sorrow. And he must sit with it. When the whole world is spinning perilously out of control, we need to slow down and we need to cry out to God and say “I am burdened with sorrow and I feel like giving up”. We do not need platitudes when it comes to personal or communal grief. Jeremiah understood that the destruction and devastation were so mighty, that all he could do was grieve. Perhaps, though, we do need to sit in it with God, and follow up our lament with a small, but mighty “help me”.

The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35 “Jesus wept”. Know that Jesus wept for you, and weeps for your sorrows. He stores up your tears in a bottle and counts each of them (Ps 56:8). Grief is a real and raw experience and is needed when our girdled roots can no longer hide what they restrict in our soul. The sap of life is needed, and the best thing about root girdling is that it is not a death sentence to the tree. This is where I return to the first tree we looked at with its girdled roots made visible to us. Our tree’s roots have been tended to so that healing can begin.

Jesus says ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.’ (John 15:1) Our once root entwined, suffocated tree can be pruned. We just have to be willing to let Jesus get to our root system and cut away all that is encircling us, even when we’ve left it so long that we are chaotically entangled.

At the end of our service today, whilst we move out to have morning tea together, I would like to offer up a space for you to come to the front and I will pray with you for whatever sorrows burden you. If others wish to also offer their prayer power, please join me. Grief is a real and difficult part of the human experience. Jeremiah was no stranger to this truth, but he does not edit his prayer to God when he cries out with a heavy heart, and may we learn from his example to speak to God in our grief with an unreserved heart.

Let us pray:

Father, let us mourn and grieve for personal and communal sorrows, knowing that the fountains of tears we shed in heartsickness and heart-sadness are seen by you. Let us be a church where we are able to grieve and process all manner of damages; physical, emotional, spiritual. When we have left our roots to girdle, restore us and renew us even when it hurts. Especially then. We pray all of this in your son’s name, Amen.

I want to give you a moment of solemn contemplation whilst listening to the words of a song. You can use this as a time to meditate, or for personal prayer. The song is called ‘Even When It Hurts’, and I hope it ministers to each of you in whatever grievances you bear as you continue to be a light for God’s love and people.

---

Images sourced from Arbor Rangers ™

Verse: St Paul in Acts, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God just as all of you are today.” (22:3).

Why do I believe in God [or not]? How do I express this? You might think such questions are straightforward, but I think not. When it comes to who we are spiritually we tend to assume a lot. We dwell in our personal history and rarely stop to think about where we have come from.

Paul was clear in his identity: He was a Jew in the multi-racial Roman Empire, so he believed in one God not the many of Greek and Roman paganism. He was a Roman citizen which gave him many privileges. It is implied because he was born in a Roman province (If Jesus was a citizen he could not flogged without an appeal to Caesar. He would not have been crucified.) Paul was educated at the feet of Gamaliel a pharisee and leader in the Sanhedrin. Paul as a Roman citizen was free to travel through the empire and as an educated pharisee he could teach and preach in synagogues where-ever he went. We see this in the Book of Acts. Paul knew the OT scriptures and how to interpret them as a pharisee. It was a good start, but he had to re-think it all after becoming a follower of Christ.

• Importance of Spiritual History

There is an amusing story about religious differences. In a small town there were four churches and a synagogue: a Presbyterian church, a Baptist Church, a Uniting Church, a Catholic Church and a Jewish synagogue. They each had a problem with possums. The Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do about them. After much prayer and consideration, they determined that the possums were predestined to be there and they shouldn’t interfere with God’s divine will. At the Baptist Church the possums had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a waterslide on the baptistery and let them drown themselves. The possums liked the slide and unfortunately knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many turned up the following week. The Uniting Church decided that they were not the position to harm any of God’s creatures. So, they humanely trapped the possums and set them free near the Baptist Church. Two weeks later they were back when the Baptists took down the waterslide. The Catholic Church came up with a very creative strategy. They baptised all the possums and made them members of their church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter. Not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue. They caught one possum and circumcised him. They haven’t seen another possum since.

I would invite you to think about your spiritual history. My background is liberal protestant: Unitarian on my father’s side and Presbyterian on my mother’s. But by the time I came along there was little religious observance in my family. I was baptized Presbyterian and we occasionally attended St Aiden’s in Narrabundah/Red Hill, which became Uniting after union. I went to Sunday school and got a prize for regular attendance. I cannot recall any religious conversations as a child. The big turning point for me was an evangelical conversion at university and joining the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a conservative Baptist-like church.  I became an Anglican minister in 1980. But my primary identity is Christian. I have been in and out of the Uniting Church.

What is your religious history? How has it shaped your identity? For example, it will be different if your family were practicing Christians. Some of you had a clergy parent. Or did you make a change-of-life decision at some point?

(5 minute discussion)

What shaped you as a child or young adult? How does your sense of religious identity influence you now? One area rarely thought about is what you consider sacred. For example, my attitude to the Holy Communion is sacramental, influenced by my Anglican experience. I see it as a ritual in which the presence of Christ is intensified, hence I wear special robes and use formal words. Many Christians see it as a remembering Christ and his death-resurrection. That is important to me, but I want to convey a sense that this is special or sacred. How do you think your attitudes were formed to such things as the sacrament of HC, baptism, the place of marriage, and sacred spaces?

What do you hold as sacred? What communicates God to you? Is it nature? Family? Animals? Perhaps the holy space of a church sanctuary. I remember a fete at Holy Covenant church when there was a display of dolls in the sanctuary. There was some reaction to cluttering up that holy space. Some found it offensive. It can be rituals, when I was the minister at St Pauls Millis (near Boston) someone was worried about the order of extinguishing the candles on the altar. I joked that because I was from Down-under or Australia I got it backwards. [it did not matter to me] I have friends who have found a pilgrimage such as going on the Camino to be a profound spiritual experience.

I don’t think that there is any ‘right or wrong’ when it comes to what we consider sacred. There is no ‘silly’ though some beliefs can seem that way to us. It is important to be aware of our sense of the sacred (especially when we react), also why we feel that way and to respect what we find in other Christians or other faiths. I think of Indigenous sacred sites which are more widely respected today.

When the Uniting Church formed in 1977, there were differences between the Methodist. Presbyterian and Congregational Churches. Over the decades these had to be worked through – so there is some history of this in the Uniting Church.

• Cultures

The Bible recorded huge cultural shifts. For example, the culture wars of the Hebrew people who effectively invaded what we now call the ‘Holy Land’. The prophets and their reaction to any compromise with pagan religious practices. And the clash with paganism of the exiles in Babylon. The huge tension in the NT between Jewish practices such as circumcision and dietary laws. How Jewish was the early church expected to be? That was a bigger question than we can imagine today.

At GUC we are well represented by people of a diversity of cultures. We incorporate a reading of scripture in a second language to welcome and honour people from different cultural backgrounds. I think it is essential that we respect different religious traditions, but we can only do this when everyone ‘speaks up’ to say what is important to them.

So a few challenges. If you identify as mainstream Australian be aware of your cultural assumptions. We tend to assume that what we do is normal but nothing is universal. How do we react when someone wants to do something different? The best stance is something like “I don’t understand, can you educate me?” If Australian culture is a second culture to you, much of what you experience will seem very odd. You will need to recognise and accept a degree of culture shock and gently inform the ‘Aussies’ of what may be important or sacred to you.

I think we face some challenges as a congregation. While people from different countries and ethnic backgrounds attend church at GUC, not many are in leadership such as being on Church Council. I know Prince is one of our reps to presbytery, but I would encourage others, if you have time and energy, to consider leadership roles such as Boys and Girls Brigade or helping to develop community outreach with Mustard Seed. It is also a good time since we prepare to elect a new Council. All this will help us as we recognize and work through the challenge of different cultures in our midst. We need cultural awareness at the highest levels of our church!

Conclusion

While we are shaped by what our various backgrounds. We can develop our awareness of what influences us. It can become a problem when we assume that we hold dear is right and others are wrong. We are then acting from unconscious assumptions, not from consciously determined values.

I would also want to add that we can make life choices to shape our future. I found this with my decision to follow Christ, a life changing decision that still determines how I invest my life. At the very least it has delayed my retirement. Think carefully about what has shaped you and your values to guide your future actions.

Finally, an opportunity to explore your family history and spiritual influences with two-hour workshop on the Genogram, a tool from family therapy, but very useful for creating a dynamic family tree. We will hold the workshop in two or three weeks – stay tuned.

---

Rev’d Dr Bruce Stevens is the supply minister at GUC this year.

TO DO: Look up Genogram on the internet and do an intergenerational drawing of your family which a special attention to religious history and cultural factors.

Message – Sunday 4th September – JJ Hamilton

---

I picked today’s readings, slightly different from the lectionary, because I decided that I wanted to talk about creation on the first Sunday of spring, and I wanted to talk about joy and community on the week before our congregational meeting.

I had Narelle and Sumira read the whole of genesis one, despite the fact that I am sure you know genesis one, because it is a narrative, because there’s poetry in the repetition, and I wanted us to sink into that.

But really, all I have today today hinges on 1:27. We read the CEV for english translations in this community, but the version I grew up with was NIV: ‘So God created mankind in his own image’.

The first thing we are going to pull from that is, of course, that God is a creator.

For some people that seems to first and foremost mean that God’s in charge. A sort of CEO mentality – if you make it you own it. And there’s plenty biblical about a narrative of God’s power, but today I want to talk about God’s artistry. Psalm 19 – the heavens declare the glory of God.

Nature is the classic vessel for feeling that God is awe-some. Many people go big to see the majesty of creation – think of the solar system or the universe. Of stars with vast impenetrable distance between them. The expanse of creation.

I get the most majesty out of going small. I studied genetics, and for me the awe in creation is in how much bigger it is on the inside. Sometimes I sit, and do an activity I think of as “going smaller”. I’d love you to do it with me. For this, we close our eyes. Preferably we are sitting outside, but we can use our imaginations here and conjure up a blade of grass. We picture it – the grain of lines going up and down the blade. Think of the tiny hairs. And then I zoom in. What this looks like for you will depend on your biology background, but for me it means seeing the tiny pores that the blade breathes through. Then going smaller to see the cells that make up those stomata, seeing their green chloroplasts, their nucleus, seeing the moving parts. Going smaller means seeing the strands of DNA, and the enzymes that transcribe them, and those that translate their instructions. It means watching the molecules join. And I like to hold these ideas in my head as I zoom back out so see me sitting on the lawn, peacefully surrounded by the frantic activity of life.

Imagining a God who *click* pulls a rabbit out of a hat, *click* brings more than three hundred and sixty thousand species of beetles into existence, is certainly imagining a God with a kind of power. But I personally get a lot more majesty out of seeing DNA replication as the brushstrokes of creation.

And sometimes when people talk about God and creation, they tie the awesome-ness to mystery. Not knowing why zebras have stripes, or bees smell like lolly bananas when they’re angry, is a key part of being impressed by creation. The idea that creation is majestic because only God can understand it, and that it is impressive because only God can do it.

I personally think that it is perfectly likely that someday someone will understand all the parts of biology that are currently a mystery. And gain the power to make things that I certainly can’t. But I don’t think that that would take away from God. And I don’t think it would be laughing at God to say “look, I can do what you can do!” I think that that enthusiasm would be shared. That God is laughing with us when we discover something new. 

Which leads to the second take-away from Genesis 1:27. That we are creators.

If a creator God made us in their image, how can we claim they don’t want us to make? I believe in a God who created us to be creative.

There is a tweet that I love that goes like this: “God blessed me by making me transexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread, and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation.” I don’t know whether you will also like that line, or if you are going to want to take some time to consider it and maybe decide that you don’t. But I love the narrative of a God who wants us to make, to bake bread and to build ourselves.

The author of that tweet wrote a book, in which this concept became a poem about a robot. The book is called “everyone on the moon is essential personnel” and they have it in the ACT library system because I requested it. And the poem version goes on to talk about how not only are we created by God and by ourselves, we are created by each other.

And I think that this is also a fundamental part of Genesis 1:27 – connection. A creator God did not create a painting. Did not stop on the 4th day. God created a world that talks back. And depending on how you frame your biblical narrative, sometimes the Good News is simply that God wants connection. company. Camaraderie. I know personally that that’s my favorite part of trinitarian theology. That God is fundamentally communal.

Some of us read Rachel Held Evans’ “Inspired” a couple of years ago, as a community within this church. Rachel has much to say about the bible and our individual and collective relationships to it, which I won’t spend time on today, except to say that she has a fantastic personal tone to her writing and nothing but reading or hearing it will do her justice.

But in this book she goes through the bible in some themes. And we would be interested here in the chapter on Origin Stories. So let me read you this section, where she says it is a misunderstanding to assume that the origin stories of the Bible have to be hard, literal, facts.

There’s a curious but popular notion circulating around the church these days that says God would never stoop to using ancient genre categories to communicate. Speaking to ancient people using their own language, literary structures, and cosmological assumptions would be beneath God, it is said, for only our modern categories of science and history can convey the truth in any meaningful way.

In addition to once again prioritizing modern, Western concerns, this notion overlooks one of the most central themes of Scripture itself: God stoops. From walking with Adam and Eve through the garden of Eden, to traveling with the liberated Hebrew slaves in a pillar of cloud and fire, to slipping into flesh and eating, laughing, suffering, healing, weeping, and dying among us as part of humanity, the God of Scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops.

At the heart of the gospel message is the story of a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross. Dignified or not, believable or not, ours is a God perpetually on bended knee, doing everything it takes to convince stubborn and petulant children that they are seen and loved. It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does.

And so we have a creator god, and creating humanity, a communal god, and so lastly a communal humanity. Thinking of our role in creation in this way, as some kind of artists collective makes me want to make things. Not proper art. Not necessarily anything I’m good at. It makes me want to get out the chalk and make the driveway light up with colours. It makes me want to poke at clay. It makes me want to build, to cook, dye fabric. It makes me feel that maybe I shouldn’t be in this room, but with the kids in Oasis, where whatever is going on sometimes ends in pencils covered in glue. To create with children so that I can create in a space of joy and sharing. Earnestly, humiliatingly, joyful creation.

I am lucky to have seen enough good parenting to be excited by the idea of God the parent sticking our art on the fridge. Of the divinity in lying on my belly with children, drawing together, and talking about what we have drawn. But I am the three year old, amused by the absurdity that an adult would colour the sky green. And God is the adult, infused with so much love for these children. Awash in it.

I believe in a God who is excited to be introduced to my plants, to the things I have raised with my hands. To coo over my newly darned socks. To have a taste of my dinner and have opinions on spice balances.

I believe in a God who is excited to show me a sunset. A moorhen. A cotyledon. A God who giggles to tell me how much can be made from atoms. Who is proud of all the stupid biological processes of NAD+s and FADS and regulatory pathways that were the dryest part of my degree. The same way my nanna was when she built a 3D puzzle of the Whitehouse. “Look at how much detail there is! Look at how everything fits together!”

How neat, how beautiful, to be made in the image of one who made us. A communal God building company. And how neat it is to be built to want company back. To all keep each other company in this circling comforting symbiosis.

And to consider for a second if God is simply created by us, if we imagined God in Our image, then how beautiful to define a god by creating and commune. To class as our defining traits, as our divine traits: creativity and connection. How beautiful to believe that that is what makes humans valuable.

I first and foremost want to pin my religion on a God who wants to be a part of it all. A God who is right there, feeling things, giggling at humanity’s Jello Salad stage – not in judgment but in joy. Joy at the absurdity, at the creativity. The joyful act of creation.

If you remember my first sermon I asked you to stand and make silly noises with me, because I believe that our pride and fear of foolishness is a barrier to connecting with each other. Today I do not have a silly game for you. But the call is fundamentally the same – to joyfully create bad art with other people. That is the community I believe God created us for. Thank you.

Apparently, there are 413 commandments in the Bible. Why so many? [you might ask] Well, there has to be at least one we can keep!

But there are some commonly assumed commandments that are not there. “Thou shalt not be angry” is not one of the 10 commandments (just do not take God’s name in vain). Nor is “Thou shalt not have conflict” (but try not to kill your neighbour).

Conflict is perfectly natural. As human beings we don’t always agree and, of course, some things matter and cannot be ignored. 

1. Conflict in the Early Church

There are lots of examples of leadership problems and conflict in the Bible. I will briefly look at the Book of Acts, which is Luke’s account of the first years of the Christian church. It is totally realistic about issues faced. Paul and Barnabas disagreed about whether John Mark should accompany them on a missionary journey (Acts 15:36-41). Paul was reluctant because he felt let down when John Mark left them in Pamphylia. Luke observed, “The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company.” (v39). Indeed, Paul chose Silas as his companion. Barnabas went to Cyprus with John Mark. It is clear in Paul’s letters that he had later reconciled with John Mark, but clearly this is an example of unresolved conflict on a missionary journey. Both Paul and Barnabas were in ministry with the common purpose of sharing the good news of Christ, Paul was an apostle, and presumably both had the Holy Spirit – but they disagreed and at that time the issue was left unresolved.

The early church faced a number of problems. There was a cultural division between Jews and Gentiles. Some preachers demanded that early Gentile converts be circumcised when they became believers. In effect, to become Jewish as well as Christian. Their message was “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15:1) This was a potentially explosive issue, especially when Gentile believers were flooding into the early church. Paul and Barnabas debated with them and they decided to go to Jerusalem to seek advice from the apostles and the elders. Luke gives the account, “The apostles and the elders came together to consider the matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you and that I should be one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news to become believers. And God who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us and enclosing their hearts by faith is made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the necks of the disciples a burden that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:6-10) James also spoke. After much discussion the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided not to require circumcision from the Gentile believers.

Now what has been called the Jerusalem Council has implications for the structure of church leadership. However, it is slightly ambiguous. I can assure you that Roman Catholics and Anglicans find a precedent for the eventual roles of bishops and priests, the Uniting Church can see an early assembly or synod, and Baptists argue for an early congregational meeting. It is important to note that the issue was faced, allowance was made for disagreement and there was a genuine attempt to seek God for an eventual resolution.

• General Principles of Conflict

We can always expect conflict in the life of the church. If there is no disagreement, then it is likely that NOTHING of importance is being done. So, it is natural to disagree. Issues will change with time, but a tendency to have different perspectives will remain.

The issue is not to avoid conflict but to deal with it in a healthy way. For nearly 25 years in my work as a clinical psychologist I specialised in helping couples in distress. The most influential researcher in this field is Dr John Gottman. He did a longitudinal study of couples and it led to a number of surprises that changed couple therapy. He found that healthy couples, who rated their marriage as satisfying, still had what could be described as intense conflict. And most of their conflict remained unresolved. The couples kept fighting over the same issues year after year. When I realised this, I stopped trying to fix issues, instead I tried to help couples find better processes. Indeed, Gottman found that what was most important was how a couple delt with being ‘gridlocked’ or stuck in conflict (important because about 2/3rds of issues never resolve in a satisfactory way). All this equally applies to family and intergenerational conflict.

Reflect: In your close family or intimate relationship, what are the issues you face? Are you any closer to a resolution after years or even decades of disagreement?

Gottman identified the four horses of the Apocalypse as destructive processes in conflict and highly predictive of eventual separation and divorce. This included criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.

I will highlight just two: stonewallingis cutting off all communication with a barrier of silence. Contempt is personal and it is a high ground moral judgement on the other person, saying “I am superior and you are worthless.” It is important to avoid personalising conflict, but to try to honestly face the issues and to accept that sometimes convictions will remain unchanged. Hopefully, like in a good marriage we can still get on with each other.

• Application to GUC

The GUC community here has been through a difficult period. People were divided in their reaction to the ministry of Pastor Darren. Not everyone, had strong feelings about this but the leadership of the church were deeply involved in trying to work out the best way forward. There was a consultation and eventually it was determined that Pastor Darren did not have a continuing ‘vitality of call’ and he left in January 2022. There was a recent congregational survey as part of the Life and Witness Program of presbytery and there was some indication of unresolved feelings.

Rev Elizabeth Raine has challenged GUC leadership including Council to address this in a healthy way. I have proposed a three-step process which begins with this sermon.

What is the problem? I can almost hear this being asked by some with the rationale that Pastor Darren has left, so what needs to be resolved?

I would observe that the GUC went through a trauma. I am not blaming Darren for this, ministry is challenging and it is impossible for any style of spiritual leadership to be appreciated by all in a given church. But many in this church have been saddened to find a deterioration in relationships. A number of people left and will not return. For some there is an ‘open wound’. It is inevitable that such pain, left unhealed, will be triggered in the future. To use a psychological diagnosis it is the basis for a disorder such as PTSD when a battle veteran keeps reacting to any reminders of say being in Afghanistan.

The following is a model for levels of conflict. Think for a moment about what level of conflict you were engaged in, especially if you’re a leadership, or thought about the possibility of leaving this church or acted on it!

The benefit of this model is that it has a zero level of conflict in which has the appearance of conflict being fully resolved but it lies dormant and waits for someone to “poke the bear” (Elizabeth Raine). I am not a prophet but I will make a safe prediction. If we fail to address this issue, then you will call the new minister in placement and sometime in the first 6 to 12 months an issue will arise, and suddenly there will be intense emotional reactions out of all proportion to the issue at hand. You will need to be able to see, hopefully with a moment of clarity, that it is not an issue ‘caused’ by the new minister but a legacy of a previous trauma.

The second step is to take 30 minutes or so, at a time that is convenient to you, and fill out a reflection. This is a handout which I have put together and uses some of the resources of Elizabeth Raine. Hopefully you can use it to think about some of your emotional reactions. I think it will be useful and hopefully will help you to recognise when you are being triggered in the future.

The third step? This will be revealed to those who have completed the second step. So wait and see …

A Story of Reconciliation

Internationally, the best-known building in Australia is the Sydney Opera House. There is quite a background story. When the New South Wales government announced a competition for the design of the opera house 233 entries were submitted. One was by a little-known 38-year-old architect from Denmark Jorn Utzon. He proposed a striking design for the head-land at Bennelong Point. What do you ‘see’? Sails or shells or the wings of seagulls? One of the competition judges described his entry as a work of genius.

Utzon would often say that everything about the opera house was to be on the edge of the possible so this creation would be a place of human delight. Unfortunately, Utzon and the Opera house management fell into a serious rupture. Instead of being the making of this young architect the project nearly ruined him. The assignment was ambitious and it was a vision that many did not understand. The New South Wales government had issues with deadlines and overblown expenses. They forced Utzon to leave Australia when the project was only two thirds finished. The final stages of construction were completed with little regard to the original design. Utzon faded into the background. In the following years he worked on very few projects and spent many years in silence. When the opera house was finally opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1973 Utzon did not attend.

Happily, the story does not end there. 30 years later, after decades of silence between Utzon and the Opera House Trust, the trust renewed communication with Utzon and asked him to prepare a set of design principles so that future stewards of the building would know his original intentions. Utzon agreed. Then in 2004 a small extension was added to the building and a sign was attached:

Western Colonnade Project Architect Jorn Utzon.

Utzon was 87 years of age at that time. And when the new Colonnade was opened by Queen Elizabeth in 2006 he couldn’t travel. So he sent his son, Jan Utzon. The Sydney morning Herald article remarked “Rifts between architects and their clients are commonplace, reconciliations are rare.” Peter Walker (principal of UTC) observed about this story, “The story of an architect of a troubled masterpiece on Sydney Harbour and over which he lost control. He did not think stop thinking about it even for a single day. But the architect was eventually returned to his rightful place and his son marked his presence at the time of reconciliation.” God, too, provided his Son to mark his presence at the time of our reconciliation.

I would also note that on the other side of conflict a beautiful building can be found on Sydney harbour.

I would encourage everyone who was affected by the conflict to proceed to Stage 2 and to find 30 minutes to fill out the reflection. And then later find 15 minutes to complete Stage 3.

---

Rev Dr Bruce A Stevens is a clinical and forensic psychologist. He is a supply minister at GUC.

Thought Experiment: You have forgotten your car keys and have to return to your house.  What would you would say to yourself. Hear the words, notice the tone. Were you kind or gentle on yourself? This will indicate whether you need to listen carefully to this sermon and perhaps download the workshop notes from GUC website to do some work on your self-care.

There is a story about a Tibetan monk who was held in jail for years by Chinese prison guards.  Later he was released and had an audience with the Dalai Lama.  He was asked about his time in prison and the monk said he faced danger a few times.  The Dalai Lama asked “What danger?” The monk replied, “Of losing compassion towards the Chinese.” We have a problem in that it is often hard for us to be compassionate to ourselves!

God as Compassionate

God is portrayed as compassionate in the Old Testament (eg., Daniel 9: 9) and in the New Testament the example of Jesus is central.  Believers are encouraged to put on or to wear “compassion” (Col. 3: 12). This is seen as an attribute of God and a virtue in those who follow Christ.  Mostly compassion is expressed to those in need.

But here is a problem. It is OK to be compassionate to others but seems self-indulgent to be compassionate to oneself. Christians are vulnerable. I think we are one of last communities to be guilt sensitive – so we tend to be harder on ourselves than almost anyone else. Think about the car key example: would you use the same words to describe a loved one or a friend?

Self-Esteem?

We often think about the relationship to ourselves in terms of self-esteem.  But this is problematic (Marshall, et al., 2015).  And ultimately it must fail because it puts us on a treadmill of ‘one success after another’.  Do I need to be better-than-average to feel good about myself?  Can we all be better than average – in everything? I am without musical or athletic ability but does this ‘limit’ my self-esteem?  This has been called the ‘self-esteem trap’. 

When I was training to be a psychologist, I remember the ‘feel good’ advice to write something good about ourselves, stick it to the bathroom mirror and daily remind ourselves that we really are an ‘exceptional person’.  Or beautiful, or intelligent, or special.  Did it work? Not in my experience, it feels like self-flattery which is never convincing.

We need a better basis than contingent self-esteem to relate in a healthy way to ourselves.  Can our kindness extend to ourselves when we are disappointed, feel a failure, or rejected and hurting?  Instead, we can learn to be self-compassionate: To recognize that we are hurting.  Then to hold ourselves kindly and gently (Harris, 2011b). And if we are left with profound regrets about instances of bad behavior, can we forgive ourselves? (Rangganadhan & Todorov, 2010). This leads us to the point of self-compassion – it works best when we fail!

Mindful Self-Compassion

Mindfulness is ‘in’. It is simply paying attention, internally or externally, in an accepting way. It is characterized by attention with a gentle curiosity. This has influenced the ‘3^rd wave’ cognitive behavioural therapies which include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and Compassion Focused Therapy.  All share a focus on relieving psychological distress through changing the person’s relationship to their problems. These two streams flow together in Mindfulness based Self-compassion. 

Mindful Self-compassion is a relatively recent addition.  One of the leading researchers is Kristen Neff (and I recommend her YouTube videos).

She has articulated three principles of Self-compassion.  You might consider them three portals or door-ways to being more self-compassionate:

• Self-kindness versus self-judgment SC encourages you to relate to yourself with kindness and understanding not harsh judgment. Sometimes it seems natural to be ‘tough’ on ourselves. We justify this with words like being ‘realistic’ or keeping our standards high. But I think it’s like punching yourself with the goal of making yourself stronger. Remember the movie Fight Club (1999) when the realization eventually comes that people are hitting themselves and not an opponent. 

When we are self-critical it leads to psychological bruises, at the least, and probably depression, at worst to self-destructive urges. The person we most often injure through self-criticism is ourselves!

The first skill is to notice automatic self-talk. A thought diary can help. Once we notice we can also see how bruising it is to talk to ourselves that way

• Feelings of common humanity versus isolation.  Do you expect yourself to be perfect? If you were to be perfect you would be a member of a very select group! (for Christians only Jesus would qualify). This is isolating. The alternative is to see your failures as part of a universal human experience. To be human is to err, well, to be imperfect. Understanding this can help us to feel connected to imperfect humanity.  Christians might think of the Biblical “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23).  Eastern religions recognize being finite or limited – but again being human.   This is our common ground.

To Do: Can you say to yourself (with conviction): I am human. I make mistakes. It is natural for me to fall short of what I expect of myself. (How does that feel?)

This can lead to a dramatic shift in how we evaluate and speak to ourselves. It is an important step towards self-compassion.

To Do: Can you visualize yourself as a drop in the ‘great sea’ of humanity? Or you are one grain of sand on the beach. Try whichever appeals to you.

• Mindfulness versus over identification. There has been a mindfulness revolution in mental health circles.  Mindfulness involves being aware of the present moment.  Mindfulness is also self-accepting.  This encourages us to change our relationship to negative thoughts (which are associated with low moods). Symptoms are secondary; acceptance comes first.

A thought is just a thought. Self-compassion encourages the balance of holding painful thoughts and feelings in mindful awareness, rather than avoiding or being overly fused with them (Neff, et al., 2007). 

Try saying something like: soften, soothe, allow.

The first response from self-compassion is to recognize that we are hurting and respond with care-of-self. This might be as simple as acknowledging that we feel an uncomfortable emotion, say frustration in a situation and then acknowledging that it is normal to feel that way.  It is not the stoicism of ‘grin and bear it’, it is active in offering soothing and comfort to the self (Neff, 2011).

Personal reflection: I had to practice self-compassion when one of my ex-patients committed a murder. I had seen this man a number of years before but in a fit of rage he killed his wife. Obviously, I didn’t cure him of any homicidal tendencies. I had to say to myself, in a soft compassionate way: “I am not a perfect psychologist. I make mistakes, but I am a ‘good enough’ psychologist and I’ve helped many people.” Note that both observations are realistic.

Theological Perspective

Self-compassion is rich for both spirituality and more specifically Christian theology.  While there are theologies of self-abasement, arguing for humility before a harsh cosmic Judge (we called this worm theology at college), this view of God is a distortion and does little justice to a profound theological reflection over the centuries.  There are many theological themes relevant to a more positive attitude to ourselves: Created in the image of God (Gen 1:26), salvation history including Israel chosen by God (“Let my people go” Exodus 5:1), and the redemptive love of Christ (John 3:16).  And this is simply three dishes of a smorgasbord truths to support Self-compassion from a theological perspective.

Ultimately any theology of Self-compassion will rest on a theology of how God sees us. Does God love us? This seems easy to assert.  But does God like us?  Are we likeable? This implies ‘as we are’ which I think is more theologically confronting.  So I turn to one attempt to articulate a sense of being liked by God.  James Alison is an influential theologian who has written On being liked (2003).  He is an openly gay Roman Catholic priest.  As might be imagined him admitting this in a largely conservative church, would draw adverse comment.  Indeed, he was expelled from his religious order.   He wrote, “God likes us. All of us. God likes me and I like being liked. It has nothing to do with whether we are good or bad, indeed, he takes it for granted that we are all more or less caught up in the sacred lie” (Alison, 2003, p. 15).  We have our categories, which we find hard to look beyond, but God’s category for us is created. And at the very least this means we are worthwhile to God.  

The word love can be over-used.  In Christian circles, according to Alison, it carries the sense of being forcefully rescued. But behind the word liked is an astonishing gentleness.  This can lead to self-compassion.  Alison also got to point of recognizing that he was emotionally bankrupt. He described going from England to Brazil, for graduate studies, but also to minister to those dying of AIDS.  Here he came to a realization “what was missing was the ability to like anyone. Either them, or myself.” (p. 67) Through a series of steps Alison discovered a capacity to be liked and to like.  In this inherent reciprocity, “There is something deeply non-moralistic about this, because it means that we find ourselves learning to receive the other as a gift.” (pp. 75-76).

Ultimately Self-compassion is about seeing ourselves ‘through God’s eyes’ – the Creator who likes what he made. As infants, when first born, we can only see ourselves through the responsiveness of a parent or care-giver. This has been called ‘the looking glass self’ (Winnicott, 1971).  If this is true about our parents, it is surely equally true about God.

Conclusion

There is a rich tapestry in self-compassion.  The threads of truth are woven together: the importance of self-care extending to ourselves, the nature of our common humanity, of the healing potential of mindfulness, of the devastation of harsh self-criticism, of this pathway to enhancing care of others, and of the spiritual or theological implications.  The challenge is to limit your Inner-critic and to strengthen your Inner-soother! (Neff, 2011a). 

---

Rev’d Dr Bruce Stevens is a clinical and forensic psychologist. He is the supply minister at GUC.

To Do: Self-compassion Scale go to (Self-Compassion)  Best to do it online as this is auto-scored and rated.