FROM THE BOUNDARY: Some beautiful words
Light and darkness: we transmit them in the things we do and words we say. To say ‘Shalom’ to someone means so much more than a perfunctory ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. It’s a ‘light’ word. It proclaims ‘peace’, yours and mine, and functions as a call to harmony with God
and all creation, and to wholeness. As ‘Shalom Aleichem’ it’s a blessing, ‘well-being be upon you’ or, as the Light Man, Jesus, would say, “Peace be upon you” (e.g., John 20:21). It’s a wisdom word, a beautiful word, a word uttered by an honest, a pure heart, a ‘Calon Lan’ heart.
Our word language is so critical, isn’t it? We know that concept words, like ‘Shalom’, or ‘mercy’, don’t just mean one thing, and that we must ask what the context is for their use. So the ancient Sanskrit word ‘Namaste’, given us by Hinduism, can be used as a cheap and cheerful greeting like ‘Shalom’, but it also has considerable depth: ‘The Divine in me honours the Divine in you’; ‘My soul honours your soul’; ‘I honour the place in you where the universe dwells’; ‘In sharing these things, we are one’. Beautiful. We are ONE.
Perhaps it’s that concept of ‘oneness’ which causes me to say I don’t ‘fear’ God. Fear the God of Love, like a slave? I fear the Divine, but not in the sense of His judgement. For me, the Divine is not an idol to be bowed and scraped to. But yes, I reverence, honour, adore and love Him. His dwelling is in me, as in you, and in all creation. Pope Francis calls this fear a “gift of the Holy Spirit”. Fear, he says, “is no servile fear, but rather a joyful awareness of God’s grandeur and a grateful realisation that only in Him do our hearts find true peace.” ‘Fear’ thus becomes a word of great beauty. Remember Jesus’ prayer from last week? He prays that you and I “may …be in us”, the Divine. And remember too that “perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (I John 4:18).
These words lie at the heart of our devotion. They pulse with love. It’s a love which lifts us up when so much conventional religious language is used to pull us down, couched, as so much of it is, in the mantle of judgement, even hate. A fancy title in the Church is no guarantee of anything remotely resembling Gospel values. Here’s the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Rev’d Henry Ndukuba, on gayness. “The deadly ‘virus’ of homosexuality has infiltrated the Anglican Church of North America. This is likened to a yeast that should be urgently and radically expunged and excised lest it affects the whole dough (Luke 13:20-21; Gal. 5:9),” he declared in January.
So that’s what it is to be “Most”, uttering ugly words? If you check his references, you’ll see they’re about ADDING to the mix, not sifting it clean. It’s all there to make the mix better. So the leavened mix which is heaven includes the blind, the dumb, the centurion, the Canaanite woman, the leper, and a host of other ‘oddballs’. Jesus turned none away and, come to think of it, we’re all ‘oddballs’.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has written to his Nigerian counterpart, expressing disapproval. Publicly, he’s described what he said as “unacceptable” and dehumanising. The Most’s language, he said, is “incompatible with the agreed teaching of the Anglican Communion” as evidenced by Resolution 1.10 of the Lambeth Conference 1998 which affirmed that “all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ…” The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, added this: “My prayer...is that we may find a way of living with our God given diversity and be a place of welcome and belonging for everyone, strengthened...to live Christ’s story together.” Beautiful words. Now let’s live them.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Beauty, from the boundary: “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).