A time of renewal
Lent 1, 9 March, 2003
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Some years ago I seem to remember listening to a recording of Mrs Margaret Thatcher, as she was then, Baroness Thatcher now, saying that there is no such thing as society, only the individual.
The other Saturday, waiting to cross Russell Street, I watched a car drive quite deliberately through a red light; and later in the afternoon, saw a young man walk diagonally from the Orica building to Parliament station entrance.
Lady Thatcher seems to have been prophetically right. There is only the individual, the autonomous individual, as I have heard it said
Perhaps, in a city of 3.3 million people, when there is so much pressure on us all, when the simple business of getting around such a vast area on choked roads is more and more difficult, perhaps there can only be the individual trying to make his or her way against the odds.
So one cuts a corner in business or at work, runs a red light, does a right turn illegally, because I am all that exists, and who cares about the rest. It is very depressing when one is confronted with it almost every day; the people who do not buy a ticket on the tram or train, for instance, hoping to get away with it.
And certainly, community is hard to find in the big city, perhaps impossible. But the ultimate end of such selfish individualism can only be a nastier city, indeed chaos.
We can be thankful that most people do try to make the city work, by accepting the rules of life, so that the autonomous individuals can ignore those same rules.
Our First Reading (Genesis 9:8-15) today is about God's response to chaos or sin – selfishness or pride. Long ago there were major floods in that area, and each religion tried to explain them.
The Old Testament writer saw the Flood as very much God's condemnation of sin. But such is God's love, that even in his anger at the people's sin, he chooses Noah his family, and a representative selection of living beings, to survive in the ark.
"See, I establish my covenant with you, and your descendants after you also with every living creature to be found with you, birds, cattle and every wild beast with you; everything that came out of the ark, everything that lives on the earth. I establish my Covenant with you: no thing of flesh shall be swept away again by the waters of the flood. There shall be no flood to destroy the earth again".
God, as it were, makes a new start, with a covenant, binding himself and Noah in a common loyalty. Water is a very early symbol of chaos in the book of Genesis, and Noah was rescued from the flood which almost took the Creation back to chaos.
Of course, as we are well aware, human self-centredness and pride continued; but so also did God's forgiving, forbearing love – this is the great underlying theme of the Old Testament.
As he promised, God never again used a natural disaster as a judgement for human sin – his love triumphed over his anger. So that, in his time, God sent his Son, born as one of us, to grow up in the world of his time, to experience the good things and the bad things of life in Israel in those days.
Jesus, Son of God, came to bring about renewal from within, by seeking the conversion of the people, "The time has come, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News."(St Mark 1: 12-15).
What Jesus sought was, and just as much seeks today, is a conscious coming to oneself, a knowing of oneself as more than an autonomous individual, as part of the human community. And an acknowledgement of the darker side of one's human nature, all too often tempted to sin – by oneself, or in community of some kind.
Rather than hold over the people, over us, the threat of a great cataclysm, Jesus offered, and offers, love: forgiving, forbearing love; and when we look at ourselves, isn't God's love forbearing?
Because, counter to the spirit of the autonomous individual so rampant in our day, those who are Jesus' people are to follow the way, not just the spirit, but the way of love, to find the strength to forgive and to forbear in the love of Jesus on the Cross.
"Christ himself, innocent though he was, had died once for sins, died for the guilty, to lead us to God. In the body he was put to death, in the spirit he was raised to life.." (1 Peter 3:18-22).
For Noah, the rainbow was to be the symbol, the sign of God's dependability and loving forbearance. For us it is the Cross.
During this Lent, let us be people of conversion – by our spiritual discipline, but also by our discipline in living by the rules which make it possible for this city to work.
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