Colours of Love – Blue… following

Trevor Burt

One of the things that strikes visitors to Australia is the vastness of our big blue sky. The distant and open horizons, the clear unpolluted air, this immense cloudless dome that covers us yet doesn’t close us in, these are experiences that elude the majority of people on earth who happen to live in the earthy and mostly murky northern hemisphere.

The vast blue sky. Attractive and daunting at the same time. The early Romans understood the world to be round, but Christians at that time, drawing on the story of creation in Genesis in the Old Testament and applying it somewhat literally, understood this vast blue sky to be a dome, separating the waters above from the waters below. The dome above was the realm of God, heaven. “Look towards heaven”, said the Lord to Abram in the Genesis story, “look towards heaven and count the stars….”

It is not just the vast sky symbolising heaven that captures the colour blue. Water, that life giving, life sustaining element essential to all known living things in the universe, water that is found in our immense deep oceans, and in our occasional expanses and lengths of lakes and rivers, is also blue.

Blue is our colour of love this week. It is not just the colour of the heavens and the oceans. We have barely begun to mine the meaning of the colour blue. Think of the many moods and many associations connected with the colour blue: blue eyed, blue blooded; blue mood; blue moon; blue rinse; blue air; blue movies; the boys in blue; blue baby; baby blue, the wild blue yonder; true blue. This embracing colour can invoke a surprisingly all-encompassing array of moods and situations from depression to anger, madness to aristocracy and authority, risqué to puritanic, and more.

But it is not these things we necessarily think of when we are surrounded by blue. We tend to think of “out there”. In the same way that indigo, a kind of dark blue, the colour of the deep ocean and the darkened sky, lulls us into reflection, the inner life, so blue, the sky and oceans lit up by the bright life-giving warming sun, invites us out there, out of our selves and into the visible vastness beyond.

But where do we go? Who will lead the way?

“Brothers and sisters,” wrote Paul to the small Christian group gathered at Philippi, “Join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.”

Imitate Paul. Hmmmmm.

We began our journey this Lent with violet, the first colour of love. We heard how Jesus urged Peter to turn his life around, begin a new life, begin again, return to a wholesome rich and full life. We then journeyed into indigo, the colour of reflection, and we were encouraged to reflect on our lives, to see what barriers there are to us changing, to see where God is leading us, to see what we need to do to return to full life.

And now we come to the colour blue, urging us to get up off the mat and walk and keep on walking. We are ready to follow.

We can follow Paul and imitate him, to a point. He is the most prolific letter writer in the New Testament, and we know something of his character and his amazingly influential life. But at best he is second to Jesus himself. Paul’s hearers didn’t have the Gospels as we have them today. They were yet to be written. So Paul was the emerging Christian community’s best approximation to the person Jesus.

But we have the Gospels, the stories of Jesus’ life. Now we know what kind of life motivated and underpinned Paul’s actions and attitudes, or do we?

It turns out to be not quite that simple. The New Testament speaks with two main voices – that of Jesus, and that of the community that followed. Jesus’ words and actions were adapted and extended by the emerging communities to speak to their changing and particular circumstances. In the same way, we tend to tell the story of an event in different ways, depending who the hearers are and what their circumstances are.

But we can peel back the layers of community adaptation to meet the man Jesus, and what we discover is very exciting and inspiring and challenging. We discover a man full of wisdom, who was willing to challenge unjust laws and divisive attitudes, who was not prepared to run from danger, as the Pharisees wanted Jesus to run when his life was threatened by King Herod (as we heard in today’s Gospel reading).

But it is hard to follow a man whom we know substantially through stories, and modified stories at that. And it is harder to follow someone so great as Jesus, or even Paul. Their profound lives seem so out of reach, we have too much to change to get even close.

So who else can we follow? History books are full of Christian and other religious heroes and heroines, people who have earned the status of Saint because of the example of their lives. The Anglican Church celebrates one or more of these saints in the Church calendar every day. Julian of Norwich, perhaps the greatest female mystic writer, inspires us to a life of contemplation and prayer leading to a life of humility and love. St Columba the great missionary urges us by his example, to bring the Good News of new life in Jesus to people in the wider community. John Wollaston the hard working WA Archdeacon inspires us to press on in the face of hardship. Ghandi demonstrated with his example and life how the poorest of the poor should be our central concern, and our sustained non-violent pressure can change a whole nation. And so we can continue.

But it is far more effective, far more inspiring for us to follow someone in person. We can look around us and observe those who live according to the example of Jesus and Paul and the saints. No one person will fit the bill. One person shows deep compassion for the needy. Another demonstrates a life of prayer. Some shares easily with others of the activity of God in their lives. Others share their learning and insight into the nature of God. One or two exude an aura of love and acceptance. [Example of Bp Jeff Driver.] Spend a moment thinking about people you know who show these Christ-like traits.

While we cannot hope in the short term to attain all these Christ-like characteristics, we can begin by imitating some of them, following some people on our Christ-centred journey.

The colour blue invites us, inspires us to follow. As Christians we believe that the God we worship was revealed definitively in Jesus. Paul, the Saints, and Godly people around us live according to the example of Jesus. Let us break out of our complacency. Let us free ourselves of the shackles of fear and caution that hold us back. Let us launch into the great blue yonder, following Jesus and Christ-like people, whatever it takes, wherever it leads.

Who will you begin following today?
 

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  Revised webmaster Wednesday, 16 June 2004