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After Friday, We all are thinking new thoughts. We are all looking at ourselves and our country in a new way. So may we see what it is that we can learn even from a tragedy such as we have experienced. So it may it be, I mean, so where do you start? [00:00:30] Where do you begin to unravel the events of Christchurch, 15th of March 2019? At first I thought, changing the reflection today left out the very group whose festival is right now, the rainbow community with its variety of sexual orientations and gender identities. And then I thought again, because what happened in Christchurch is just another facet of the difficulty [00:01:00] we all have as human beings relating to and embracing those who are other. To us, it's significant. I think, that three particular closures I heard of requested by police in the past two or three days affect groups that suffer the same circumstance. In some way. They are different from the majority or the perceived norm. Obviously, mosques were requested to suspend their services. [00:01:30] The Muslim community, though not inconsiderable in numbers, is a minority in this country, and on Saturday, so too, was the Jewish synagogue asked not to meet another religious minority, and also the pride parade and the fair out in the park were cancelled. So the Muslim, the Jewish and the Rainbow communities are all minorities within Western society, and that difference that minority [00:02:00] status makes the rest of that society edgy. And it's tragically obvious that it makes a group of white supremacists and this weekend one man in particular, so edgy that they see the need to resort to deadly force. And it's a sad irony that we might feel more comfortable worshipping here today than at the mosque or the synagogue, because the perpetrator on Friday was as much as we might [00:02:30] hate to say it, one of us, even though our prime minister has been at pains to point out that this is not New Zealand, in fact, we all have our shadow side. We all have fears and anxieties that we have pushed back and down and away. We have to do that to survive some of the circumstances of our lives, and these fears lie deep [00:03:00] down and keep us from being as open and free as we might be. We do not perhaps pick up a machine gun. In fact, I devoutly hope not. But whenever someone is around who is different from us, it tests our inner fortitude to be open, welcoming and friendly in the same way that we are open and welcoming and friendly to those who are like ourselves. [00:03:30] And that applies in all groups. Heterosexuals might be surprised to know that around them, in some situations, gays feel awkward and uneasy. We know now for sure that walking around New Zealand society for Muslims will not be as easy if it was easy before. And I think particularly of a Somalian woman that was on the TV. One news special last night, dressed in a a yellow, um robe are too scared to go out of her own [00:04:00] house, and it was pretty obvious she didn't have much English. So how is that woman in the future going to feel, um, how is she going to be able to reintegrate into our society? And unfortunately, the Jewish community is frequently reminded that the gentiles around them are not always friendly. I spent a year in the US in the late 19 seventies. It was a revelation how ordinary Americans could be. [00:04:30] Up until then, I had only known Americans as a group that were foreign to me. I was there during the Iranian hostage crisis, and it was very revealing to find myself in a creative dramatics class with American students, as well as some Iranian engineering students who were unable to go home for the December break because the president, Jimmy Carter, had frozen their family's assets. You could have cut the air with a knife when the Iranian students identified themselves [00:05:00] on the first day. I also discovered on that trip that there are several Americas within the USA East. Coasters I met in Philadelphia didn't understand the Kansas people I knew in the Midwest and the Midwest didn't particularly care whether the East Coast or the West Coast approved of them. I can see now that's part of the deep divisions that we can see in that country. What we do is take all [00:05:30] that fearful anxiety we have tucked away and project it onto those whom we do not know or understand or have not yet met. We feel an uneasiness around them that's like the uneasiness we feel about our own fears and anxieties tucked away in our shadow side. So we put the two together and the other wears it for us. It's so much more comfortable if someone else can be to blame. [00:06:00] And we noticed this in war time because it's so extreme. Hitler became the repository of all the evil we could imagine. He certainly perpetrated evil acts. But often, however, the person we credit with malign motives is just different. A different colour. Different sex, gender, race, culture, religion or theology, orientation or identity. And the less we know personally about someone, the easier [00:06:30] it is to pile upon them all we want to get rid of in ourselves. So when Jacinda tells us this is not New Zealand, the unfortunate truth is that it is really We are not a pure white or pure green nation completely different from everyone else. We are fallible, too. We can mistake someone different for someone frightening or bad. And while [00:07:00] this perpetrator deserves the punishment set down in the law, let's not make him the scapegoat for the discomfort that we feel when the faces around us are increasingly different from ours, or when the varieties of gender identity within the rainbow community proliferate beyond heterosexual understanding. We all need to manage our anxieties, become aware of that which we are projecting onto others, which is really our own stuff. [00:07:30] There's a never ending path of transformation and maturation, which we all need to be walking. It's a path that the gunman in Christchurch had obviously not taken. We heard in the story of David and Jonathan earlier how two men, because of their love for each other, helped each other despite having been cast on opposite sides of a tribal conflict. [00:08:00] They both risked their lives Jonathan in warning David in this event, and David in later life when he befriends and helps Jonathan's maimed son, keeping the oath that he swears in the passage you heard read. They love each other as they loved themselves, something Jesus and all the major religions urge us to do to love first ourselves and then to [00:08:30] similarly love our neighbour. And we know from the story of the Good Samaritan that our neighbour is not only someone of our own race. They could even be our long term enemy. In the gospel reading today, Jesus showed on the Sabbath and the synagogue that he is one who defies current understandings. He extends care for the human person beyond the current rules. He upsets [00:09:00] the establishment by going beyond what is expected or allowed for. So may we do the same as we move around our world, always putting people before what is expected or before what has been traditionally demanded. May we learn from David Gushy? The contemporary reading was part of a speech that he made, um at a gay conference. He now regrets the two decades he spent in denial [00:09:30] and rejection of the gay community within the church. And now he and another scholar, Matthew Vine, have given us different ways to interpret the very scriptures that have been claimed to exclude gays from Christianity. And you'll find reference to both of those men and the other reflection that was written for today. Briefly, What's happened in the Bible is that from mediaeval times, contemporary fears and prejudices have been read back into Scripture, [00:10:00] altering the original meaning of passengers and missing the fact that the behaviours that are condemned aren't specifically homosexual behaviours, but simply bad ways to conduct relationships of any type. All of us need help in the personal self-control and self management that helps us to be good relationship partners, irrespective of our orientation or our gender identity. For our psychological and emotional health, all relationships need [00:10:30] to be loving, nonviolent, mutual faithful and as long lasting as we can manage. Love your neighbour as you love yourself, the golden rule common to Christianity and Islam and Judaism as well as in other major world religions. We all know we need to do this, but because of that shadow side [00:11:00] that we all have, it takes effort and persistence and patience and courage. So let us exercise that persistent and patience and courage and so welcome with open arms, those who differ from us. Today we welcome the rainbow community with joy and delight, appreciating their creativity and stamina, their courage and risk taking their persistence in the face of [00:11:30] prejudice. And today, especially, we include in that welcome the Muslim community, many migrants to this country where you leave to be away from war zones and discrimination and yet now afraid in this country for a new reason. Sisters and brothers let us love one another for love is of God.
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