Addressing power and joy on Palm Sunday 10th Apr 2022 - gathering of #Unitarians and friends associated with Ringwood

Our gathering on 10th April this year coincidentally fell on Palm Sunday for the western Church, which may not feature strongly in the landscape for many Unitarians, even among our group.  

But the president for the day had this to say: “We have been open that, in the past two years, some of us have become much more interested in the classical Unitarian heritage endowed to our denomination, and in the shared language of Bible stories.  But we maintain that these are to be considered inspirational, and the stuff of legend; myths underpinned by world views we may not adhere to.  We see Bible stories and biblical language as kinds of short-cut to forming an understanding in common, and not in any way a legalistic or definitive framework.”

We use stories in all sorts of ways in our gatherings.  At this April gathering, at the lighting of the candle in our chalice, instead of hearing a short maxim or proverb, or a dedication, we heard a folk tale:

An elderly grandfather says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me.  It’s a terrible fight between two wolves.  One is evil — greedy, fearful, arrogant, jealous, cowardly, deceitful, divisive, closed in on himself.  The other is good — humble, trusting, modest, generous, courageous, honest, peaceful, loving.  These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’

After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’

The old man smiles.  ‘The one you feed.’

Regular readers of this blog will know that it is important to us to include wordless activities, which we can take part in together without nailing down what they mean to each of us privately.  And so it was with this gathering, which included a short period of personal reflection rounded off by the words, ‘This is what the Sacred asks of you; that you act justly, that you love tenderly, and that you walk humbly in its presence’ (Micah chp 6 verse 8).  We also included a longer period of silence for personal practice; perhaps meditation, prayer, contemplation, mindfulness, intercession.  And yes, still on Zoom this time, we included the by now familiar muted singing, of Unitarian hymns, for those who get benefit from the activity.

The readings were both taken from the Christian tradition.  The first was Jesus’ teaching regarding the need for leaders, for those in authority, to act and be as servants; as set out in ‘The Good Word of Jesus’ under the authorship of Mark, in the Bible.  The second was from a book by a Franciscan monk living and working today in the USA, namely Richard Rohr ("Things Hidden — Scripture as Spirituality”, Richard Rohr 2016, pub. SPCK).

The president for the day then gave quite a personal reflection, starting by saying how angry she has been for several years now, regarding the climate and biodiversity catastrophe threshold at which we stand, and the parlous state of democracy and world politics — at the very point when concerted, joint action is needed, if we are to undo the damage that humans have done.  The invasion of Ukraine was referenced, as was the outwash yet to be fully realised from the COVID19 pandemic, and the deliberate plans by the UK Government to drive away migrants, treating some migrants as more worthy than others.  She said the basis of her anger was misuse of power, and that anger is necessary to drive change, on occasion; but also that prolonged anger always comes with the risks of wearing a person down, of making them hard to live with, of risking their health and relationships close to home.

She said: “I am getting bored with my own anger.  I want to return to joy.  I recall a story from a church worker in among Salvadoran refugees in Honduras:

‘Every time the refugees in Honduras were displaced and had to build a new camp, they immediately formed three committees: a construction committee, an education committee, and the comité de alegría — “the committee of joy.” Celebration was as basic to the life of the refugees as was digging latrines and teaching their children to read.’  (Joyce Hollyday, published in 'Resources for Preaching and Worship: Year B' compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild p20). 

As much as we need to fix the things that are wrong, we need to find and celebrate sources of joy.

“In the wider Western church, today they will be celebrating Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, a story extolling a new sense of joy and power.  Not so much, in this church.  ‘But the thing about stories is that they are not just stories.  Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people.  And we get and develop our view of other people through stories. It matters what stories we tell.’ (Rutger Bregman, in his book “Humankind — a hopeful history")  The Bible is a work of literature which is concerned with stories of a people trying to live together.  Though we may not personally share the worldview of the various authors of the Bible, surely a collection of books that has inspired for 2000 years or more has something to teach us?”

The reading from Richard Rohr had looked at dominative power, that is to say political power, and how hard it is for people in positions of power to stay honest and humble, no matter how honest they thought they were, as they secured their position.  Rohr’s view is that the more you focus on your positional power, your power to make change through external threat of some kind, the less you look inside yourself to see where real, kind, generous, gentle power lies, and how to access it interiorly.

And so the president said: “I find it a source of hope and joy that, from the beginning, the Bible teaches a different kind of power.  We may not imagine an interventionist God.  We may not imagine God at all.  We may prefer to think of good emerging in the world, rather than God breaking into the world.  Nonetheless, we do recognise the difficulties in living with other people, with getting appropriate political structures, in promoting the health of all.  The God of the Bible undercuts the sort of power that is coercive, the power that relies upon external threat.”

She went on to explain that the story we had heard from the book of Mark, and most other stories from the Bible, such as the story of Hannah, who unexpectedly becomes able to bear a child (the prophet Samuel), and the protection God offers to the Israelites as they escape the Egyptians by way of the reed sea of the Nile delta, are all stories about people on the edge, about people at the bottom being supported and elevated, most often at the cost of those already in power.  If it is read like this, the Bible is definitively and distinctively anti-establishment.  The Bible challenges those in power, and promises their overthrow in favour of a more inclusive agenda that also includes those from the margins.  In fact, the theme is that the more inclusive agenda can only be introduced by people driven to the margins by those in power, because marginalisation is the only way to experience the faults in the status quo.

She finished by saying: “So although my source of joy is not actually in this character Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it may lie in the subversive message repeated in the stories attached to his name, reflecting the Bible culture  — it may lie in the words attributed to Jesus, words that "the last will be first and the first will be last, and that every mother's son is sent to ensure the life of the many."

This might be a dark spell in politics and behaviours both for society, and for the survival of humankind itself.  But there are things we can do to collaborate with good, to enable good to emerge in the world.

We can feed the right wolf !

We can read the right literature, and read it in the right way.

We can tell ourselves stories that inspire us to live better and to think differently of others.”