“Why are we here?”
John 1 vs 1-18
I was in a bookshop a couple of weeks ago looking for some particular books for family Christmas shopping but as often happens came across a book that caught my attention, that I had not even heard about. It was by Barry Jones, a book recently published called “What is to be Done” (no question mark) subtitled “Political involvement and saving the planet”. I started reading it and then bought it.
Many of us will remember Barry Jones from his days on the quiz “Pick-a-Box” back in the ‘60’s and his prodigious knowledge sometimes challenging Bob Dyer if he was called wrong on an answer, and more often that not the program had to acknowledge that he was right and their researchers were wrong.
Jones was a school teacher and later went into State politics before Federal politics from 1977-98 where he served in the Hawke ministry. Quite a bit of the early part of the book is about recounting the many ways he was ahead of his time and of how he was marginalised as a nerd – so far ahead that sadly few politicians took him seriously.
A lot of this was due to his relationship with Bob Hawke: “I became a minister, but significantly, was never promoted to cabinet. I greatly admired Hawke’s skills in analysing a problem, mastering the detail, working out a solution, and then explaining it and selling it. However this admiration was not reciprocated. Indeed, he found me profoundly irritating.”
Such things as foreseeing the demise of Australia’s manufacturing industry calling it a “post-industrial’ future economy at a time when Hawke was trying to get business and the unions to come together.
Few could see as far ahead as Barry Jones on many things. And today at the age of 88 he is still writing cogent, brilliant, challenging books and remains the only person to be elected as a member of 4 of the 5 learned academies in Australia.
He writes of the digital revolution – of how the incredible expansion in the availability of knowledge that we have now has not led to a growth in wise decision–making, reasoned argument, curiosity, solution to world problems but to the growth of populism, tribalism, extreme polarisation of political views, distrust of science, facts and expertise and distrust of democracy as a way to be governed.
Retrospectively this is all sadly discouraging, but I found myself thinking it is not surprising when we carry around smart phones that contain more information than the giant computers that sent humans to the moon in 1969, that we find it hard to cope with all this information and craving certainty, the dynamic has been to revert to feelings, prejudices, and the opinions of like-minded others and social media to allay our insecurities and boost our fragile egos whatever the issue may be.
The question remains though – now we find ourselves in this world which is so fraught - “What is to be Done?” Question mark this time.
This is where I think our readings this morning yield a timeless commentary on the world and the human condition – and what we are looking for. For what we are looking for goes deeper than answers to medical problems (how to defeat the coronavirus), deeper than economic problems (how to open up the economy, stimulate the economy, create jobs), even deeper than moral problems (how to address climate change, how to be responsible world citizens in our response).
The answer our readings pick up on is the existential spiritual question of “Why are we here?” If we get that one right it would seem that the answers to the other questions would flow on.
For the Jews as we read in Genesis the world was created by God who spoke the words that created the world, the universe and everything in it. This also became part of the Christian heritage , along with the place of divine Wisdom that preceded creation and who brought about the creation. God was then revealed in creation and God hoped to be recognised in the wonder and beauty of the created order. Creation is an act of revelation, a reflection of God’s love shared with the Word.
The American poet Mary Oliver wrote a subtle poem however about what may happen – a lack of recognition. The poem’s called : “I wake close to morning” where she compares waking in the morning to Queen Sheba’s visit to King Solomon in the most glorious kingdom on earth:
“I wake close to morning”
Why do people keep asking to see
God’s identity papers
When the darkness opening into morning
is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
Think of Sheba approaching
the kingdom of Solomon.
Do you think she had to ask,
“Is this the place?”
In the spiritual history our faith shares with the Jews, God sent the deliverance from slavery in Egypt, the covenantal Law, and the prophets. They taught about faithfulness, social justice and the promise of peace, the hope and expectation of a Messiah.
In Jesus’ time this anticipation was very strong and in the writing of John’s gospel somewhere around 70 years after Jesus’ death we read the words, words probably of the beloved disciple, the one we are told who leans on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper and asks him who is to betray him. If it is not the beloved disciple then it thought that the gospel reflects the community of that disciple, those who knew Jesus deeply and for years had gained further spiritual illumination by prayer and the presence of the Holy Spirit with them.
They came to see that the Word of God at the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures who had preceded creation was incarnated in the human Jesus of Nazareth, so John’s gospel begins “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”. This Jesus was God incarnate – born as a human baby, fully human and fully divine and as they lived together and followed him and knew him in the Spirit their lives were changed. They realised that the life they had seen in him was the life, the intimacy of God living in them, this loving God who had been present before Creation who had now been revealed in a human being and that they were to experience this communion, not by escaping from the human condition, but by living it, like Jesus, in obedient love.
Darkness and suffering still exists but the light shines in the darkness. The Catholic theologian Michael Fallon comments “Genesis speaks of primeval darkness which the light dispels but does not annihilate. It also describes how this darkness enters into the minds and hearts of human beings who give way to pride and disobedience. It is this which causes suffering, frustration, violence and a loss of the divine life for which we are created and sustained in existence by God. The author of Genesis makes no attempt to speculate on the origin of this darkness. Neither does John.” (p. 44)
All these revelations of God’s meaning for our lives may be found in the extraordinarily beautiful words of the Prologue – revelations of divine love which give us a framework to address that question “Why are we here?” which Covid19 has so strangely put to us.
Augustine of Hippo writing about John’s gospel some 400 years after Christ’s death shows how timeless some of our modern pre-occupations are:
“Return to the heart! (He says) Why are you running away from yourselves? Why are you getting lost, outside yourselves, entering on deserted ways? You are wandering aimlessly. Come back! To where? To the Lord! It can be done without delay! Return immediately to your heart! Exiled from your own self you wander outside.
You fail to know yourself, you who want to know the source of your existence. Come back! Return to the heart….
See what you can learn about God, for the image of God is there. In your inmost being dwells Christ.
In your inmost being you are being renewed after God’s image.”
So why are we here? We are here to grow into the intimate heart of God – the very heart of God that Jesus showed and opened the way to. God does not give up on us and in our bewildering world the answer is still – remarkably simple.