Owing to a change to our schedule, we no longer gather on Remembrance Sunday, so our November service this year was able to address a more general theme. The sharp-eyed and avid reader of our blog may have been intrigued by the theme trailed some time in advance — ‘Autumn as Liminal Time’ — only to find that closer to the event a different theme was announced : ‘The Illusion of Anthropocentrism.’
Turns out our service leader was toying with us, as elements of both these themes surfaced as we sat together.
The reader may assume the candle lighting, the sharing of concerns, the period of interior reflection, and the formality of prayer in the form of spoken prayer forms. As one might expect these days, there were prayers for Israel Palestine. And of course there were hymns — which turned out to have been carefully selected to refer to the main theme as finally announced :
“Source of all being! Throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!”
“The freer step, the fuller breath, the wide horizon’s grander view;
The sense of life that knows no death, the Life that maketh all things new.”
“The green grassy blade, the grasshopper's sound,
The creatures of shade that live in the ground,
The dark soil, the moist soil, where plants spring to birth —
We look down at wonder below in the earth.”
“We all must say to them what we all know for sure —
that there’s a goodness in the world which ever shall endure.”
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The gathering was introduced using a declaration phrased after Stephen Lingwood in his book Seeking Paradise — a Unitarian mission for our times (p108). In Ringwood we are finding this book very useful for keeping ourselves on a course that we can more easily talk about than the usual, stuttering and very woolly, Unitarian messages.
“We don’t have the full truth of faith but discern it imperfectly in everyday life.
The saving faith that we seek is this-worldly and it includes the this-worldly realities of healing, awakening, flourishing, reconciliation, liberation, and justice.
The language we use to speak about these realities is the language of paradise — where the love of God is known in reconciliation between humans and the earth.”
There were two readings, both from the compilation we know as the Bible. The first was from the book of Mark, chapter 10 verses 32-45. The second was from the book Job, chapter 38, verses 2-41. I can’t remember ever having heard the book of Job used in a church service, of any denomination, so it was quite a surprise to hear it here. Job is notoriously difficult to make sense of, even for experienced church folk. Fascinating, therefore, to hear how our president for the day had got a handle on it.
“I have been reading a book by Michael J. Sandel,” she said, “titled The Tyranny of Merit. In it Sandel gives, at length, a hypothesis by various Jewish rabbis regarding the book of Job. I have heavily drawn on that work by those rabbis, by way of Michael J. Sandel.”
As even our most engaged blog reader will likely not be familiar with the book of Job, here is a sample of the reading that was given :
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
25 Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a way for the thunderbolt,
26 to bring rain on a land where no one lives,
on the desert, which is empty of human life,
27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground put forth grass?
39 Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
40 when they crouch in their dens,
or lie in wait in their covert?
41 Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God,
and wander about for lack of food?
As for the reading from Mark, it was about James and John asking Jesus to assure them of their places at his right hand, when he was secured in his kingdom. This was against the backdrop of Jesus and his followers heading for Jerusalem and Jesus starting to warn them about what was likely to happen to him when they got there.
In reflecting on these two passages, the president suggested that in the first reading the story of Jesus was reaching its autumn season, the liminality of that ‘between’ season, with horizons drawing in, the expansiveness of summer long passed, and anxiety about survival through dark times ahead being a general theme. People were beginning to be defensive, even fearful, and feeling control slipping away from them. She reminded us that under those ‘autumn circumstances’ we humans — in fact, all animals — put survival first, and that means focusing on ourselves first and foremost. James and John want to be assured of the fullness, their glory, to come — in the next world, if not in this one.
She imagined the incident as, “They said, ‘You have the power, Jesus — look after us in the next life and keep us with you — we were the first ones you chose in this life — let us be the first ones you choose in the next life. We want to survive in a way we recognise, we want to remain in control. In these liminal times give us something to hang onto.’ The others grumble, but not to challenge what is being asked for. They probably grumble because they hadn’t thought of asking, and these two have got there first. And what does Jesus say? Jesus says no. That’s not how it works. He says, All of this? This isn’t about you. It’s so not about you. Get over yourselves.”
And then our president for the day turned to the Job reading. Job is given extremely painful and grievous suffering, despite being a virtuous man, because the poor chap is a pawn in a wager between God and Satan, though he doesn’t know it. So much is clear to anyone who reads the book of Job. What is not clear to most of us is why, or what we are to take from the lesson. But our president reported that the rabbis who have managed to find some sense in it say the following.
The rabbis suggest that Job’s worldly suffering is made worse because both he and his friends assume that suffering is evoked by sin, and that success is evoked by virtue. Assuming that suffering signifies sin, Job's friends cruelly make his pain worse by claiming that Job must be to blame for the death of his sons and daughters, somehow. This perplexes Job as he believes himself to be wholly innocent (and the reader of Job is shown this to be true).
Job cries out to God, who takes many pages to reply. When God does reply, God speaks from the whirlwind and asks Job how much Job really knows about the way the universe is established and run.
Our president said, “God gives Job a glimpse of the extent of God’s action. And in our reading today, we heard only a fraction of what is said. Giving Job this glimpse, God declares that not all rain is for the sake of watering the crops of the upright, nor is every drought for the sake of punishing the wicked. After all, it rains in places where no one lives — in the wilderness, which is empty of human life. God proclaims from the whirlwind that not everything that happens is a reward or a punishment for human behaviour. So God implies that creation is not only for the sake of human beings. The cosmos is bigger, and God's ways are more mysterious, than an anthropocentric picture suggests. In doing so, God teaches Job a lesson in humility. Faith in God means accepting the grandeur and mystery of creation, not expecting God to dispense rewards and punishments centred on humanity.”
In putting this all together, the president said : “We need to get over ourselves. This is not just an Autumn thing, but we can especially notice it in Autumn. It’s not all about us.
– When we notice we are subliminally in our fearful survival mode, we can reject it and get over ourselves. This isn't about us.
– Any time we feel our hearts closing in and shutting out, we can reject it and get over ourselves. This isn't about us.
– We can discover and express our faith by opening our hearts again to the grandeur and mystery of creation.
To live in the love-ethic, to live in openness towards others and all creation, we need to have the trust and confidence to open our hearts up again. Even as the days shorten and the dark bears down more on us, we too can have the simple faith of a flower that opens its petals each day to the sun.”
May it be so.
