hot & cross

The next sign that the world derives so much of its celebration from the faith and yet hasn't got a clue about it has appeared in the shops. Hot Cross Buns.

Mind you Easter eggs have been there for two weeks.

Having just got over Christmas, Lent has not even begun and already we are being offered hot-cross buns, a food proper to Holy Week. (around the end of March). The spices symbolise the preparation of the body of the dead Jesus.

You can of course buy modern HC buns without any spice, specially for the bland. What's the point? They should be called what they are. Rolls!

You can even buy chocolate HCB. This seems to me almost profane.

Woolies have for many years called them Red Cross buns, at least the ones I saw this afternoon were called Hot Cross Buns.

No tides will be turned back now. What a world we live in!

Simple gifts

By its very nature my job means I spout a lot of words into the atmosphere. It can be vaguely disconcerting because you are never quite sure if people are hearing what you are saying (or for that matter if what you sayign is worth being heard!).
Yesterday morning for example things seemed to be going quite well then I noticed that M (who notoriously absents herself from mental engagement with sermon and/or worship) had sort of connected...but about 5 minutes in became quite animated. She was obviously watching what was going on behind me!
Then H was looking in the same direction.
I felt a degree of anger well up within and wanted to turn round and see what could possibly be more fascinating than me! I resisted the temptation and the desire to publicly chide them.
The stupid candle, which hadn't been changed because for the third month in a row the rostered sacristan hadn't done her job, had gone up in a blaze of glory. Obviously far more more interesting than the proclamation of the Gospel!
It is easy to be judgmental. I have absented myself from too many homilies in the past to be judgmental about those who couldn't give a stuff about what I am saying.
Any way. God, who is rich in mercy, allowed me to have two simple gifts the next time round.
There were a number of young kids in the later service...it's always difficult to compete. But they were good and indeed..delightful.
It was great when asking a rhetorical question "After all we people of faith know that Jesus is alive, don't we?" To have a little 3 year old voice say "Yes!" without looking up from her drawing and without any casuistry, total conviction!
Then after the service, checking that the oldies were OK, I asked K who's having a rought trot at the moment (and who's had a helluva life...but she would never see it that way) how it was going.
And she beamed, in way that I had worried she had forgotten how and said "OOOh you know Easter, Don't be alarmed!"
She was quoting back some of Mark's account of the resurrection about which I preached on Easter day (here). It is worth it if one person listens!

Bar the shouting

Strangely, Australians like to shout "Christos Anesti", because Australia has the largest Greek city population outside Athens (in Melbourne)....so we are particularly happy when Greek and Western Easter fall at the same time as they do this year.
When we were young we were confused a little by our Polish antecedents,the highly decorated eggs known as Pisanki were always a great feature of our Easter mornings, and the special breads such as Baranek, often shaped like a sheep were blessed on Saturday.By far the most memorable treat was the Babka cake and the Sernoik (?) cheesecake which we only ever had at Easter. We don't do any of this now.
Any way. Just to let you know that everything is ready to go.
The churches are set up. The Church of Holy John is back in use after the fire....and looks good.
Two new Christians tomorrow when Elysia and Josie are baptised. Had a great chat to one of the dads today, about how he might be a good parent. Very humbling for me.
And another chat with the other dad yesterday. He too is a good dad.

Terror nullius

No this is not about Mr Hicks (well not completely) it is as usual about the mountain of stuff that always seesm to o'erwhelm me close to big festivals.
Any way set my mind to thinking about this recurring terror. Yes, that is sometimes what it feels like. I remember one Holy Saturday afternoon where I just felt that it was not going to be possible to get everything ready to begin the Easter Celebration that evening, and indeed I felt in a state of collapse.
Since then I have realised that such terror is largely imaginary, and there is now a sense of when you get to sitting in the darkness on Maundy Thursday evening that it's all down hill from here.
That is one way of dealing with terror...and also realising that what we often name as "terror" is nothing of the sort. Panic, maybe. Faithlessness, perhaps. But mainly one just needs to get a life!
Did set me thinking about terror though.
There is the terror of people driving. I will have to drive the road there and back four times if I want to spend time with my family as well as be a priest. Others will be doing the same thing.
On that stretech there are black and red markers. Too many. Blacks mark the fatalities, and reds the injuries. They increase from month to month. One fear I have is that in a decade or so there will be no stretch of that oft-travelled rad where you cannot see one of these reminders.
Terror, too, because of the fragility of children. One girl a couple of years older than my youngest murdered in the last months, two kids the same age victims of men driving up and trying to grab them. What a terror this must be for them, and for their families.
The terror too of the wretched Tsunami. We don't suffer here, (even though we imagine we might...I live 300 metres above sea level) but the most delicate economies, like the Solomons have no fall back position.
Amidst all this, there is always (for me) a real terror about Good Friday. I often listen to Liszt's Stabat Mater and Passion Meditations. The music is terrifying...you can hear the nails.
For some elsewhere that terror is still a reality.

And there is a real sense of dawn on Easter Day when the terror of death broken open is a reality.This is I think a real terror, but a positive one. It scares us to death to think that things might not be as we think they are.

In your face or in your eye

Sin and David Hicks!
If we need any more proof that the Hicks business is essentially about promoting a political agenda then the next phase in the process should convince us. Having pleaded guilty he is now required to state exactly what he is pleading guilty to!!!
Now doesn't that seem cart before the horse-ish. Surely if he was charged and invited to make a plea then the prosecutors should have at least felt that they there were clear what they were charging him with. Why then does the subject of the charge have to tell them what he did in detail?
It would seem that the answer to that must be that Hicks is the victim of a kite-flying exercise (which he was never going to win) and having once admitted that the kite does indeed fly, has to now tell the powers-that-be just why that might be so.
For what it's worth, I (and I suspect most other people) think that Hicks is indeed guilty of something relatively minor. It is easy to demonise him and paint him as second-only to Osama Bin Laden himself, but he is clearly not that.
He is not guilty so much of being 'idealistic', as being a fool who got caught up in some Boy's Own Adventure which turned out to be a whole lot more serious than he realised. By then it was too late.
He has become the pawn of powerful men's ambitions. The shallowness of these ambitions is exposed day by day. Oh dear dear!
But human beings are flawed....(here come a segue..."A what?" I hear you ask, seehere) Yesterday I had quite a strange conversation with one of my good lay people. She was complaining about Easter last year.
Apparently she took exception to the fact that it "was too much about sin". Now my radar always explodes in these sort of circumstances...usually a person thinking something is "too much about sin" is experiencing a conviction of the Holy Spirit about something in their own life. Maybe I rely too much on my own experience.
I could not believe that our lovely Easter service with an opportunity to recommit oneself to the Christian way, and the declaration of God's forgiveness accompanied with the splashing of water....maybe I love splashing water too much....was actually perceived as something negative.
This parishioner seemed to be inviting me to strip the Easter period of its "negative overtones". A man was crucified for heavensakes!!!


I know on one level what she was saying, but do we become so wishy washy that we don't want to explore anything of depth any more.
Segue 2...one two three....I don't want to suggest Hicks is an angel...I do want him to deal with his law-breaking, but he is being made a scapegoat for much more than that.
I do not want to suggest that he is Christ like. But the Crucified Man was a scapegoat too.
There will be sin this Easter. It will be forgiven. As it is every year, every day, every time we come ... we need to be a bit more robust, honest and open.