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Let not your hearts be troubled

Today’s gospel reading takes us into the upper room on the final night of Jesus’ life. He is sharing a communal meal with dear friends, his disciples, but death, not camaraderie, is in the air. Jesus has declared his willingness to hand himself over to his enemies and thereby to sign his own death warrant.

Can we, for just a moment, put ourselves in the place of the disciples? They must be filled with a dreadful sense of foreboding. They have staked everything on Jesus. They have left their jobs and families to follow him. They have taken these drastic steps because he presents as the answer to their prayers: the one who can give their lives direction and meaning, and who can rid Israel of her enemies, and yes, bring in the kingdom.

Alas, all these dreams seem now to be vanishing and, worst of all, Jesus is telling them that he is leaving them. This question obsesses them: How can we go on with our lives without him? How can we live in his absence?

There are actually three audiences of the scene presented in today’s gospel story. We have just met the first audience: the twelve disciples. The second audience is the congregation for whom this gospel was written by John some 60 years after that last fateful meeting in the upper room.

John’s congregation, which was located somewhere in Asia Minor, perhaps in Ephesus, was composed mainly of Jews who were also followers of Jesus. At the time of writing they are being persecuted by other Jews for declaring Jesus to be the long awaited Messiah. They have been driven from the Synagogue and they are in a state of disarray: fearful for their future and, like the first disciples, wondering if they have made the right choice in following Jesus.

John who must have been the leader, or at least a leader, of this congregation knows many of them are having second thoughts, and wondering if the price is too great. John writes the gospel in response to their situation. He offers his interpretation of the Jesus story and he does, in such a way, as to address the needs of his congregation. The passage read today has a powerful message for John’s own congregation.

There is a third audience for today’s selection from Jesus’ last sermon to his followers: it is we participants in this morning’s worship. We come with our particular concerns, our anxieties, our pains, how hopes and plans. We probably wax and wane in the extent to which we trust Jesus with our life.

We, like John’s congregation, are listening in on what Jesus has to say to his disciples in the hope that it will speak to our situation both individually and as a faith community.

So let us hear what Jesus is saying. Jesus can see that his disciples are virtually imploding before his eyes: they are being overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety, brought low by despair. His heart must have been filled with compassion at the sight of how they have responded to news of his coming death. He must have been greatly stressed by what lay ahead of him. Nevertheless, he focuses on their needs. And as he seeks to reassure them that all is not lost, in fact a victory is ahead, he knows that he needs them to see this through because they are indispensable to his plans for the kingdom. This is what He says to them:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. That was a big ask: How do you trust a man who has just destroyed your dreams and who has told you he will not be around?

Well, he tells them that they should trust him because he is going to prepare a place for them in his father’s house. He tells them that in this house there are many rooms, and when he has prepared a place he will come again and gather them to himself so that where he is they can be also. We are all familiar with the passage we have heard it used repeatedly at funerals in an effort to provide comfort for the grievers: to reassure them that their loved one is now with God in heaven.

Wait a minute: is this what Jesus is really saying to them? Is Jesus trying to comfort men aged in their twenties and thirties by promising that when they die they will go to heaven? Why would Jesus be trying to reassure men this young about what will happen at their death, especially when what is worrying them is how they will go on living on earth once Jesus himself is dead?

It is legitimate to use this passage to bring comfort in the context of grieving. But almost certainly Jesus was not trying to lessen the disciples’ anxiety by saying they would go to heaven when they died. The passage has another meaning. In fact much of John’s gospel has multiple meanings.

Here is one example of a passage with multiple meanings. For example, when we hear the expression ‘my father’s house’ we take it to mean heaven, but many reputable scholars say this is not the way Jesus is using the expression here. Here is a piece of information that will help you grasp what is really going on when Jesus offers his words of comfort. Throughout John’s gospel a location is consistently used as a symbol for a relationship. In this instance when Jesus says in my father’s house he is not saying in heaven but in my relation to my Father.

Now we are in a position to understand what he means when he says: In my Father’s house there are many rooms – this actually means in this special relation I have with God there is room for each one of you. Yes, you can all share in this relation with the one you know you can trust: God the father. You can share in this if you believe in me. And you can believe in me because I am one with the Father.

With these words of reassurance Jesus is endeavouring to end their anxiety over his departure. And Jesus is appealing to them to take him at his word.

Well do they take him at his word? They do not. Phillip, presumably speaking for the disciples collectively, says to Jesus: "Prove yourself to us by showing us the Father! In other words perform a Cecil B De Mille kind of miracle and make God visible to us right now! Jesus does not go in for such tricks. His job is to convince them that because they know Him, they know the Father already. He makes this moving appeal to them: "Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know me? How can you ask this of me? Any one who has seen me has seen the Father because he and I are one. That message again!

Did this further appeal convince the disciples? Probably not! Did their anxiety about his leaving them cease because he had reassured them he would return? Well, certainly not immediately. Their release from this anxiety would only have kicked in after that first Easter. It was then that they commenced living lives sustained by a strong sense of Jesus’ spiritual presence. It was only then that they no longer needed to say: ‘Show us the Father!" They now knew they had found the Father in Jesus!

What about the second audience: the little community of Christians for whom John wrote? The community that was in some state of disarray because they had been thrown out of the synagogue and were being persecuted. Remember that members of this community were in a similar position to us in that they had not known Jesus in the flesh. By telling Jesus’ story the way he does John is imploring the members of his congregation to believe that Jesus is the way to God, and that although he is not physically present that he is spiritually present.

Were the disciples reassured by John’s writing that Jesus was an abiding presence in their lives?. We have no record of how they responded to John’s account. Typical of Christians generally, they probably trusted some of the time that Jesus was with them encouraging them, reassuring them, and leading them.

Then there were probably times when they felt bereft and far from sure they had made the right choice by throwing their lot in with Jesus.

And that brings us to the third audience: us! Are we reassured by what John reports? Do we trust that in Jesus we find God? Are we, through Jesus, experiencing a rich fellowship with God? If this experience of God presence is occurring do we handle the problems that come our way with serenity or do they repeatedly knock us sideways? May be we are like the first disciples who were so often overcome with doubt even disbelief.

In a recent book, Charles Taylor, a well known Catholic philosopher makes this insightful comment. He says: 500 years ago, that is about the time of the Protestant Reformation, it was almost impossible not to believe in God. By contrast, today belief in God is just one of many options, and if we make this choice we may well find we are viewed by many as silly for making it.

If, however, we do believe, just some of the time, or even all of the time, because we are human beings we will never be totally free of the kind of anxiety the disciples displayed when Jesus told them he was leaving them, or the anxiety the members of John’s community must have been displaying in the face of persecution by fellow Jews. Even Jesus experienced great anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane the night of his betrayal.

But, if we do believe, at least some of the time, we are in God’s hands then I do hope that, at those times, we are less prone to being knocked sideways by both the larger and smaller threatening issues that come up in everyone’s life at some time or another.

But let us say that you are being repeatedly knocked sideways and overcome with anxiety. Will Jesus give up on you? Never! He understands your frailties, he knows mine. Jesus himself knows he was filled with anxiety and fear as he contemplated the terrors that lay ahead of him on that first Easter. Jesus will never abandon us.

Do you recall that Jesus’ hours of emotional and mental torment in the Garden of Gethsemane were made so much worse because the disciples failed to be there for him? If Jesus needed his closest friends, his disciples, in his hours of need, surely each of us needs the support of members of our faith community to help us deal with anxieties and fears that have the power to overwhelm us.

So, I pray, that the strength of our collective faith and the love we have for one another will always be a source of comfort and strength to those of us dealing with difficult and anxiety provoking issues. We cannot be these things for one another relying only on our human resources. They are ultimately gifts from God.

So I pray that Jesus, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, will be an abiding presence in our community and that we may always abide in him AMEN.

Are We There Yet[i]

Has this happened to you? You have set out in the car for your annual holidays.  You have a drive of some three hours ahead of you. The children have been told that.  You are just fifteen minutes into a trip when from the back seat comes this question: ‘Are we there yet?” The children cannot wait to get to their holiday destination whether it is the beach, the farm, or gradmas and grandpas place.  Even though you tell them time and time again that it is going to be a long journey, the question keeps coming: “Are we there yet?” 

The children are so focused on their destination that they miss out on what the trip has to offer: the scenery, singing songs and playing games such as I spy.  In today’s reading we hear the disciples ask Jesus the equivalent of this question, are we their yet?  The disciples equivalent was “Is this the time you’re going to restore the kingdom?” Is it now? Is it now Jesus? This question must have been uppermost in the disciples’ minds when they met the resurrected Jesus.  You see, it is the only question the Book Of Acts reports being put to Jesus by the disciples between the time of his resurrection and his ascension.

Jesus must have been somewhat taken back by their question.  Only a short time earlier they were totally downcast because they thought they had lost him forever. However, when he presents himself alive it seems the conversation is more about them than an expression of joy over his return.  Asking Jesus the question “Is this the time you’re going to restore the kingdom?” is another way of saying: “Jesus, are you now going to give us what we want?” 

We must, however, not be too tough on the disciples for pressing Jesus on this matter. They and most of their fellow countrymen lived lives of great uncertainty. Whilst, on the one hand, the great land owners, the rulers and the religious leaders typically lived luxurious and decadent lives many of the ordinary citizens did not know where there would be a meal the next day, and often went hungry.  Understandably they wanted all this to end.

Worst of all they were held captive in their own country by the Romans. The ordinary Jewish people were praying to God to give them a Messiah who would drive the invader from the land and end their oppression by their own elites.

The disciples, had followed Jesus in the belief that he would be such a Messiah.  Their hopes were dashed when he was put to death. Now their hopes have been resurrected because Jesus’ resurrection demonstrates to them his power to bring their dreams to fruition.  So it seems they cannot wait to put this question: will you now restore the kingdom?  End our suffering Jesus and, reward us for our loyalty to you.

Do you recall that John and James coming to Jesus and asking that when he came to reign one of them could sit on his left and the other on his right.  This was not what Jesus envisaged at all, and he told them so.  His image of God’s Kingdom was not of some oppressive empire in which a minority held the power and enjoyed the spoils.   He was not in the business of replacing one political elite with another which the disciples were expecting and hoping the new elite would include them.  He rebukes the disciples and tells them their task is get on with the job he has given them to do: to be his witnesses.

As the Catholic writer Albert Nolan stresses  Jesus was endeavouring to bring about a social revolution rather than a political one. He indicated right at the start of his ministry what he was about. He stood up in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth and announced:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To let the oppressed go free.

Talking about the blind and the captive, or for that matter the lame, and the downtrodden was his way of talking about the poor and the oppressed. And, the poor and the oppressed were the main subjects of Jesus’ concern. Jesus promised to bring them liberty. This is what he was offering when he spoke of restoring sight to the blind, making the lame walk, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. He was seeking to set free the poor, the captive and the oppressed. 

The reign Jesus was instituting did not come down from above, as the Jews expected, but arose from below: yes, from the poor, the so-called sinners, the outcasts, the lost, from the villages of Galilee.

The form Jesus saw the kingdom taking reflected his personal experience of God. Jesus had not experienced God as some kind of benevolent despot but as his loving Father: as his Abba. Consequently, Jesus’ notion of how God conducted affairs in his kingdom was like the way the Father of the Prodigal Son behaved.  In the parable the Father forgives his son unconditionally.  He does not want to hear about his son’s debauched life and wasteful squandering of his inheritance but only to celebrate the return of the loved one who was lost.  As parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts we can surely relate to such an attitude and understand the love and compassion driving it.

Jesus was already bringing this kind of kingdom into being whilst he was on earth.  The kingdom was manifested in its infancy when he created a family of followers who journeyed the length and breadth of the country with him. Followers with whom he shared a common purse and daily broke bread, and whom he regarded as friends not servants. 

 Jesus was bringing God’s kingdom into being when he invited the poor and oppressed to break bread with his kingdom family and to share in their fellowship as equals. In such ways the coming of the kingdom brought joy and liberation to those who were captive and joyless. 

 These practices of Jesus demonstrated his belief that all humans were equal in dignity and worth.  In the Jewish society of Jesus’ time it was commonly assumed that when the kingdom came the members of the religious elite such as the Pharisees and the chief priests would be the first through the door. Jesus contradicted this belief when he announced that tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom ahead of the religious leaders. Can we grasp just how outrageous such an announcement this was?  But remember, Jesus did say: “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk 14:11; 18:14; Mt 23:12). He treated the blind, the lame, the deaf, the outcasts and beggars with as much respect as was given to those of high rank and status.

The kingdom Jesus was bringing into being was like a family of brothers and sisters with God as the loving parent.  Jesus, however, did not envisage the family of God’s kingdom as an exclusive group whose members expressed their love only toward other members.  This would be self centered selfish behaviour. Members of the kingdom are to love all human beings and treat them all as brothers and sisters, but the kingdom is distinguished as the family whose members love one another.  Do you recall that in the first years of the young church’s life in Jerusalem Christians engaged in communal living and onlookers said: “See how these followers of Jesus love one another”

 For two thousand years Christians have been praying to God:Your Kingdom come. This account should help us see that God’s reign on earth is not, from Jesus perspective, exclusively a future event.  In a very real sense the kingdom did come as Jesus and his disciples shared a communal life and embraced the poor and the oppressed within it.

And it is also true that at the present time God’s kingdom family is the leaven or yeast already at work in the world.  Mark you God’s family does not always equate with the church. There have been many times in human history when the church has been anything but a manifestation of the kingdom.  And that is probably also often the case today.

It is also true that Jesus keeps coming.  He comes again and again to help us manifest the qualities of the kingdom in our daily lives.  Maybe, like the children in the opening story who are so taken up with reaching their destination that they miss out on the joys the trip itself has to offer, many contemporary Christians are so taken up with the kingdom of the future that they fail to enjoy the fruits of the kingdom already present.

 On last Sunday night’s compass program Geraldine Doogue interviewed the Pullitzer prize winning Australian novelist, Geraldine Brookes.  Brookes like Doogue was raised a Catholic but she  converted to Judaism.  Doogue asked her why she made the switch.  Brookes said that the Catholicism she knew seemed to be totally preoccupied with questions of the next life whereas Judaism is primarily concerned with how we live this life.  

By relating this story I am not suggesting that we should surrender our hope that the new life we find in Christ is of such a nature that death cannot destroy it.  But we can be too otherworldly in our practice of Christianity.

So are we there yet? That was the question with which we commenced.  The answer is that in one sense we are but in another sense no. The kingdom came with Christ’s first coming and it continues to come as he comes to those individuals and communities who open their hearts to him and give their lives to walking the path he trod. God is Love says the writer of the Epistle of John and where compassionate love prevail the kingdom is manifested, but where it is replaced by self centredness, possessiveness and indifference to human need the kingdom is absent. We still hope for a fuller manifestation, for a better world. In that sense we are still on the journey.

Next Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the equipping of the disciples through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom. It is a reminder that God works through us. He calls on us as he called on his disciples to get on the work of being his witnesses. He equips us to be the leaven, yes the yeast at work in the world.  He comes insofar as we manifest the fruits of the spirit in our lives: loving obedience and compassion. May God’s Kingdom come and may we manifest the fruits of the spirit in our lives. AMEN   

Let us not sell the Holy Spirit short     (Acts 2: 1-21, John 20:19-23)

 When in 2007 the members of the Thursday Bible Study discussed the story of Pentecost someone posed this question:  ‘Was Pentecost the first time that the Holy Spirit became available to people because it sounds as though this was the case?  The answer was no, it was not the first time, and I will come back to that.  But it is a good question because it is true the account does read as though it was a first time event and the way it is often celebrated today reinforces this perception.

As well as the Acts account of Pentecost we also heard John’s Pentecost story this morning.  In John’s account Jesus breathes on the disciples and says ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.  They are commissioned to go into the world with the gospel.  And it is the Holy Spirit that will enable them to do this work. The commission is given on the evening of Jesus’ resurrection.  So that suggests that the power of the spirit is released by Jesus’ conquering of death.

But were the disciples really receiving the Spirit for the first time?  Well not if you take Matthew’s account into consideration.  According to Matthew, it is some months prior to his death that Jesus sends the twelve disciples out to the towns and villages of Israel.  They are commanded to exorcise demons, heal the sick, and proclaim that the kingdom is near.  Prior to their going Jesus tells the disciples that if they are persecuted and brought to trial they need not worry for the words they speak will be given to them by the Spirit of the Father speaking through them.  So yes, the Spirit of God was enabling the work of the disciples prior to Pentecost whether we are looking at the Acts version of the story, or John’s version.

 And Pentecost certainly was not the first time that the Spirit was credited with acting in the New Testament.  Joseph is told that it is by the Holy Spirit that Mary has conceived.  Similarly, an angel appeared to Zechariah the father of John the Baptist and told the father that from his birth John will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and the power of the spirit will enable him to bring many people of Israel back to the Lord their God. 

 The reality is that the Spirit is the first and most intimate way God is experienced by human beings: by the Hebrews yes, but also by peoples of many faiths. The second account of the creation in Genesis talks of the work of the Spirit: the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  Similarly, in the opening verses of Genesis we are presented with the image of the Divine Wind sweeping the waters and ‘speaking’ the world into being (Gen 1:3).  So yes, these are acts of the Divine Spirit although we are talking of breath and wind.

 Why do human use the words breath or wind to refer to God? Humans learnt very early in their time on this planet that things happened to them which had causes that were invisible, uncontrollable and powerful. Wind is something that is invisible, and it is often uncontrollable.  Yet it makes its presence felt in a most dramatic way. 

Humans saw the parallel and used breath and wind as metaphors for this great invisible force that could be beneficial or destructive in their lives: the force the Hebrews eventually came to call Yahweh or Elohim. 

So, yes, the wind for the Hebrews was a manifestation of the divine.  The Psalmist says of the Lord: “You ride on the wings of the wind.  You make the winds your messengers” (Ps. 104:3-4).  The presence of God was announced by a violent windstorm.  The wind can do much good under God’s behest. 

 In the ancient world the winter west wind brought rains indispensable to agriculture in Palestine. This was God caring for them. It was God’s wind.  But the wind can bring suffering at God’s behest: It was the east winds that brought  the Locust plague to Egypt (Ex 10:13). The wind blew a path through the sea for the Hebrew people to escape the Egyptians.

 The disciples of Jesus were amazed when he could still the storm. It was proof that Jesus was from God because humans lacked the power to do such things. “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? (Matt 8:27).

 The next point I want to stress is this. Neither Hebrews nor Christians have a monopoly on the notion of wind being the messenger from God; the driving force of God. Many religions speak of the Divine wind or breath. The Greeks call it pneuma, the Polynesians mana.  When Captain Cook arrived on the Hawaian Islands, the Islanders initially thought he arrived on the breath of God. When they realized he had not been borne to them by God’s breath they killed him.  Subsequently, they called white people by a name meaning without breath, wind, or spirit. (70).  

 We in the Christian tradition are wedded to viewing God in human form. We frequently address God as Father, and Jesus as the Son of God.  We think of God this way rather than as a mighty divine wind, as the Breath of the world, as the life giving oxygen; the pervasive Spirit within everything and everybody.   However, as the theologian Val Webb emphasizes, what we most encounter in the Bible is not a God who looks like us, but a God who is un-embodied sound.  It was this God who created the universe and all life. When Moses spoke to God, God answered him in thunder.  It was un-embodied sound that sought Elijah out in a cave and told him to stand outside because the Lord would pass by.  And in the reading we heard today from the first book of Kings what form did Elijah see?  No old man with a long beard.  Actually Elijah saw no form.  But he felt and he heard God. “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord”. 

 In today’s reading from Acts the Divine Spirit is likened to the rush of a mighty wind.  It filled the entire house where they were sitting.

This way of thinking about God is probably less of an impediment to those who cannot come to terms with the traditional anthropomorphic images of God Christians present, and many of the members of the younger generations of Australians say that this is so for them.  Thinking about God as a spirit that moves in our space and enters us may also facilitate us building bridges between ourselves and people of other faiths. Yet, for most of the last 2000 years the notion of God as Spirit has played the minor role in the presentation and practice of the Christian faith. The emphasis has been very much on the other two personas of the Trinity: the Father and the Son, notwithstanding the fact that in the N.T. the life of Jesus is presented as wholly directed by the Holy Spirit (e.g. Jn 3:34; Acts,10:38).

 Why in most of the subsequent history of the church has the work of the spirit received relatively little attention?  It is related to a change in the organizational structure of the church.  From about the second century onwards the church moved from being communal body to a hierarchical institution.  Those in high office in the church, notably the bishops, says Webb, domesticated the Holy Spirit.  Only they could declare when the Holy Spirit was at work.  If those not holding office claimed to be accessing the Spirit, say through engaging in prayer, they were treated with suspicion and they were often declared heretics, and punished accordingly.  Joan of Arc was a case in point. She was burnt at the stake for refusing to deny her voices when she was no longer useful either to the French Monarch or the church hierarchy.

 The second way the Spirit was domesticated was by the church giving it a relatively minor role.  The Spirit became a go between -- a messenger between God and Jesus -- and between the Deity and the church hierarchy. We can readily see that working with a notion of God as one who enters who he chooses  is not going to sit well with those exercising organizational power.  No, the power holders are going to exercise tighter control of the lay persons if they present God as a remote being and they, the clerics, as the only legitimate interpreters of God’s will. And this is what they did for much of church history, and many continue to do so.

 Now over the last few decades a renewed interest in spirituality has been occurring both inside and outside the church. Many mainline churches are offering courses in Spirituality.  For instance, Rev Joan Wright Howie, who is well known to this congregation is a Spiritual Director and serves as the Advisor to the Centre for Theology and Ministry of the UCA on spiritual formation.

 Changes occurring in the church are to some extent at least being encouraged by changes outside. David Tacey, an international commentator on spirituality and a practicing Catholic, says that from where he stands it looks like Australia is going through a spirituality revolution. He says this revolution is occurring mainly outside the mainline churches, especially among younger people who come from non- church backgrounds, and who feel quite alien in a church setting and unable to accept much of the church’s doctrines. Many also come from a church background but they cannot find what they are looking for in any of the mainline churches. 

 If the emphasis on God as spirit is so biblically sound, and if we want to find common meeting ground with those who cannot accept much of our traditional doctrine and liturgical practices how should we proceed?  Well, our task says Webb, is to reshape the way we think and talk about the Divine Wind/ breath or spirit so that it can as in the past blow where it will, and reside wherever it chooses, not just where a church hierarchy says it should reside.  Or, if you prefer, our task is to recognize that the divine spirit does in fact blow where it wills and resides where it chooses, even in the ones we may regard as the most unlikely persons for it to reside in.

But it is not only a change in thinking that is called for, but also in our spiritual practice.  Let us accept that the spirit is the first and most intimate way God is experienced. So we open ourselves to the enabling presence of the spirit.  This is something to talk about on another occasion.   But when we explore the matter further we will see it entails taking seriously the message of the first Pentecost.  The spirit came upon the pilgrims so that they could bear witness to the gospel. That was the significance of those present speaking in all the languages of the Mediterranean world. As Val Webb stresses what is lost when there is an excessive emphasis on the sensational aspects of the celebration of Pentecost is this fact: “The spirit was poured out on all present as a commissioning for the ordinary everyday task of telling the Divine good news (Acts 2:4). 

And what gospel is it the Spirit seeks to enter us to witness to? It is the gospel Jesus proclaimed when he stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and said:The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To let the oppressed go free.

The experience of Pentecost has often got short shift. Too often there has been an over emphasis on a God who looks like us and mainly dwells in a distant realm.  Let us not sell Pentecost short, let us not ignore the presence of the rushing wind, or of the disembodied voice. Yes, God’s breath moves in our space, inhabits our being, enabling us to be servants of peace, healers of the sick, and bringers of release to the oppressed and the captive.  AMEN

[1] I have found Val Webb’s Like Catching Water in a Net an invaluable resource for these sermon notes.

Taking a fresh look at the Doctrine of the Trinity[i]

The doctrine of the Trinity has been regarded for hundreds of years as the central dogma of the Christian church. Since the middle ages the Sunday after Pentecost has been widely observed as a separate feast in honour of the Trinity.  However, in the church in which I grew up and probably in the church in which the majority of you grew up the Trinity was not honoured in this way.  Now that we are part of the Uniting Church it is hard to go on ignoring Trinity Sunday.  This is in part because we now follow the lectionary in our Sunday worship. But it is also because our church in its Basis of Union includes the creeds that are expressions of the doctrine of the Trinity: the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. And our church urges its ministers and congregations to use these creeds for instruction in the faith and in worship.  So today we take a fresh look at the doctrine of the Trinity and use the creeds to do so.

Given that the doctrine of the Trinity is regarded as so important it may come as a surprise to learn that the word Trinity does not appear in the scriptures. It is true that there are places where there is reference to The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit in the same sentence or two.  We heard one of these today in the reading from Matthew. But there is no examination in Matthew or any where else in the Bible about the complex character of the relation between Jesus and God the father that proved to be the subject of controversy and ugly conflict for half a millennium after Jesus’ death.  For example, we are not told in the scriptures if Jesus has the same standing as God the Father or whether he is a lesser divine being. Yet 300 years after Jesus’ death the bishops of the church were still fighting over this matter.

Nor had the bishops of the church sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction what it meant to say Jesus was both human and divine, and whether it was a valid statement. When the claim was finally accepted by a majority of bishops that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine the bishops who signed off on this statement could not explain what it meant.  Nor after 500 years of wrangling could they explain how you could simultaneously say there is One God but also 3 separate persons in the Godhead.

And do you know after millions upon millions of words have been written abut the doctrine of the Trinity there is still no satisfactory explanation.  Yet in the Basis of Union of the Uniting Church we are encouraged to pronounce the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creeds.  These creeds articulate key aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity.  

The language in which the creeds are written, that of third to fifth centuries is one of the problems with using them to promulgate what is seen to be the key doctrine of the Christian faith. For example, do you understand what is being said in the last few words of this quotation from the more Trinitarian of the two creeds, the Nicene creed.   We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, [now comes the tricky bit] eternally begotten of the Father, … begotten not made, of one Being with the Father. Can you tell your grandson or granddaughter what this means.  This language draws on Greek philosophical thought of the time, and reflects the fact that the controversy was greatly influenced by Greek as opposed to Hebrew ideas about the nature of reality, of the sacred and of the profane. Does it make any sense to you? Does it facilitate your relation with God, or your Christian journey?

The battle that raged in the church for half a millennium was mainly about the relation of Jesus the Son to God the Father.  The argument became very heated and nasty.  One side would gain the support of the Roman emperor of the time and have their opponents driven into exile, sometimes have them eliminated.  Then the other side would gain the ear of that emperor’s successor and they would have their opponents driven into exile.

In the long run those who said Jesus was very God of very God that He was  God’s equal as a Divine being rather than a lesser divine  won the day. They were also the faction that said Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.  So that got into the creedal statement as well but without anyone understanding how those two statements could be true.  Just in passing I would mention that the claim that Jesus was fully divine and fully human created a problem for Mary and a controversy ensued.  Of which part was she the mother: the divine part or the human part?

Once the Nicene Creed had the acceptance of both the Western and Eastern branches of the church and had been sanctioned by the Roman Emperor in 450 AD it provided a great instrument for declaring the opponents of the winners as heretics and punishing them accordingly.

I do not know how widespread the use of the Nicene Creed is in the Uniting Church at the present time.  If you do visit a Uniting Church where the Nicene Creed is incorporated in the service you will probably see some worshippers standing mute.  They cannot repeat the creed with a good conscience. Many of my closest friends find themselves in this position.  You may well believe Jesus is divine and not be able to join in the recitation of the creed.

What about Jesus, did he see himself as the second person of the Trinity?  We have no historical records of the kind needed to give unequivocal answers to this question. It is widely agreed by reputable scholars that the first three gospels do get us closest to the Jesus of history: the man who trudged the hills of Galilee.  This Jesus does not appear to have gone around claiming he was the second person of the trinity.   Did Jesus see himself as the Son of God? I cannot answer that question definitely.  If he did it does not necessarily mean he saw himself as co-equal with God.  Nor do the records permit us to give a definitive answer to the question did Jesus see himself as the Messiah?

The first three gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke, do show us a Jesus who seems often to be searching for an answer to the question who am I.  It shows us a Jesus who seeks to be obedient to God rather than presenting himself as God’s equal.  He says not my will but thine be done O Father.  This is a different figure to the one portrayed in the Trinitiarian material which describes Jesus as God’s equal and as very God of very God.

We can say this about Jesus with some certainty.  He was a Jewish holy man. This means, says Marcus Borg, a leading N.T. scholar that Jesus was one of those figures in human history who had an experiential awareness of the reality of God.  Now by saying that I am not precluding that Jesus we meet in the gospels was divine.  I am drawing attention to his spirituality.

Borg prefers to call Jesus a spirit person rather than a holy man, firstly because such a person can be a woman and secondly because Borg uses the word spirit to avoid the connotation of holy as referring to a moral quality such as righteous or pious. In the account he offers Borg draws on the research of Geza Vermes a leading Jewish scholar who has shown that Jesus exemplified the main qualities of Jewish holy men of his age.

Borg says a spirit person is one who has a vivid and frequent subjective experience of another level of reality other than the material world of ordinary experience.  Because of their experience a spirit knows something they did not know before.  And what they know is the sacred.  They usually do not speak of the sacred in abstract terms but name the sacred. So, for instance, Jesus speaks of Abba Father, so denoting a personal relationship with the sacred.  Jesus is, indeed, being intensely familiar with God because abba means literally papa.  So he is saying God my papa.  That does not sound though as if Jesus is saying God and I are equal.

Spirit persons are people who mediate the sacred or the spirit in various ways. They may mediate the power of God through healings or exorcisms.  They become conduits for the power of God in the world and for the wisdom of God in the world.  Jesus, the spirit person, came offering a subversive wisdom which he was confident was the wisdom of God.  He communicated this wisdom in his sayings such as those in the Sermon on the Mount and in a metaphorical way in his parables.

The experience of spirit persons strongly suggests that there is a spiritual as well as a material reality.  It seems Jesus generated a spiritual presence, an aura similar to that surrounding the Buddha and St. Francis of Assissi, for example. Modern scholars accept there is a historical core to the healing and exorcism stories, says Marcus Borg. His contemporaries perceived Jesus as a healer and exorcist whose work was the outcome of the Spirit working through him.

In summary, then what Jesus does show us, particularly as his story is told in the first three gospels is a man who lived a life centred on God rather than life as the second person of the Trinity, a man who experienced God’s presence in the world and in his life directly, who was empowered by the holy spirit and who showed us that Christianity is not primarily about believing in God or Jesus but about having a relationship with God.

 So how does this account of Jesus the spirit person bear on the doctrine of the Trinity and on our journey?  Val Webb a contemporary theologian says God is much more remote in the Trinitarian dogma that we find him in the life of the Jesus who experienced the presence of the spirit in his life.

So where do we go from here?  First let us not forget that all the words we use to describe God are metaphors.  None of us can fully know God.  Webb says that she finds it satisfying to focus on the universal image of Divine Spirit, one shared by many faiths, rather than on the Trinitarian presentation of God.  She says it was the Creating Spirit that “inspired the man Jesus and his followers”.

This is the spirit that is beyond the world, with the world, and within the world. The spirit that is above us, alongside us, and beyond us.  She sees our task is to reshape our language and metaphors so that the Divine Spirit can blow where it will once again, rather than only where the church Fathers deign it to blow, taking up residence in everything.  “the unseen power that sustains all living things, pulsates thru the universe.  And pulsates through each one of us.  This suggests a more inclusive rather than the traditional exclusive approach which articulates that Jesus is the only Son of God and that it is only through Him that anyone can access God.

So God is with us not just out there in some distant realm occasionally pulling strings in our world.  Yes there is something of the divine in every human.  And this came home to me last week at Anne Berryman’s bedside the day before she died. As I said at the funeral, my attention went to her breathing, I was mesmerized by it. This probably was because she seemed to me to be breathing twice as fast as two days earlier.  It was all I could hear in the room. God created man by taking the dust and breathing life into it. So, there is something divine in every human. That is how it was with Ann.  She had God within her.  With God’s breath she received her life.

May we recognize the breath of God within each one of us, the life giving force empowering us to be truly sons and daughters of the God whose spirit takes up residence everywhere and in everybody Amen.

What is it to be: sand or rock?[i]

The practice by Jesus of Table fellowship in Galilee had wider ramifications, however, than ensuring acceptance and forgiveness for the particular individuals who sat at table with Jesus. The territory of Galilee had questionable standing in the eyes of the Jerusalem religious establishment.  This was because of the presence of Roman and Greek influences.  So the righteous of Jerusalem were saying are these Galileans being so influenced by pagan ideas that they are religiously unfit for us to associate with? For his part, by engaging in table fellowship in Galilee Jesus was challenging this point of view and, in effect, was announcing to the religious elite and everyone else that the land where the food was grown was acceptable to God, and the food grown on that land was also acceptable.  He was also saying that those sharing in the table fellowship were pure and forgiven.  The Galileans understood this not only intellectually but emotionally.  In this way Jesus was breaking down the barriers that had been erected by the religious elite between the so called righteous and sinners.

The binding of Isaac: God behaving badly?[i]

Jesus mission turning the world upside down

Turning the World Upside Down (2) Jesus: Agent of Change[i]

Jesus embarked on a life as an agent of change in Jewish society.

He did so because he believed the quality of life of his fellow country men and women was deplorably low.  For most Jews each day brought little joy and much pain and hardship.  The occupation by the Romans did not help.  But not all the responsibility for the miserable existence of so many people could be laid at the feet of the invaders.  

Israel was a country in which a privileged minority of Hebrews exploited and oppressed the majority. A recent article in the magazine, Time, was headed with this caption: The two Americas: one set of people do all the work and another reap all the rewards.  That is how it was in Israel in Jesus’ day.   Principal among those reaping the rewards were the Herods, the landowners, and the religious elite.  Every day the issue for most was how can I get through this day physically?  Will there be enough food for my family?  Will my sick goat recover?

As a member of the peasant class Jesus knew first hand just how tough, unfair, and generally unrewarding life was for most people.   He knew that many of the current religious practices, such as the sacrificing by the temple priests each year of thousands of animals, was not life enhancing.  Jesus’ sacking of the temple was a manifestation of his intense dissatisfaction with the way temple life was organised.

 Jesus knew that many of his fellow country men and women were social and religious rejects because of the operation of a purity code that divided people into holy and unholy: that is the clean and unclean. The unclean included prostitutes, tax collectors, beggars, and cripples. Such people were untouchables.  These people did not have access to the synagogue or priests.

Jesus viewed the purity code as a man made system. He did not see the so called unclean as God’s rejects but as wounded, confused, fearful, and often broken people in need of healing.  He also saw that the healing of such individuals was not going to happen unless the system that divided the people into the clean and the unclean was dismantled.

There are signs of a purity code operating in some of today’s churches. Practicing homosexuals are marginalized and some are rejected.  One can also make a good argument that in some sections of the contemporary church women are the victims of a purity code based on gender.

Although Jesus wanted to turn many existing practices upside down he was not an anarchist.  He knew there had to be an authority structure.  Jesus did, however, want the structure and culture of Israelite society to be more in keeping with character of the loving God he had come to know on his own spiritual journey.

So how did Jesus go about instigating change?  Not by calling for an increase in participation in religious rituals, or for the offering of more blood sacrifices at the temple.  Nor did he seek change by urging the lay person to attend the synagogue more frequently. A priest may urge lay people to increase their participation in official religious rituals.  Priests are formal office holders who benefit from the existing system so seek to maintain it.

I know theologians speak of Jesus as prophet, priest and king. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes him as our great high priest.  He is taking a theological liberty.  I do not think Jesus would thank him for doing so. Jesus was not a priest.  He was never ordained. He was a layman and he died a layman.  And he certainly did not give his life to supporting the cultural or religious status quo as office holders of a religious institution are inclined to do.

 Nor was Jesus a conventional king. He was a leader who sought to serve not be served.   Jesus was a prophet. Prophets speak out: they criticize the leaders of their own society and often their religious institutions.  They speak out when it is widely perceived as prudent to remain silent (Nolan). They occupy a marginal position socially and institutionally in their society. Think for a moment of Jeremiah, Micah, and Amos: all laymen; all men on the margins who were fiercely critical of their society.

Jesus was not an establishment person but a man on the margins. And he too was highly critical of the leadership of the Israelite people and of many aspects of his society’s culture.

Jesus did more than criticize. Through his healing, the practice of hospitality and his teaching, he sought to enrich the lives of the people, individually and collectively.  He offered a new vision: a vision of a society in which the kingdom came.  It was a vision of a kingdom whose character more closely resembled a family than a monarchy.  Laying the foundation for a kingdom family was one goal he set out to achieve when he gathered his disciples.  In Jesus’ ‘kingdom family’ those with authority were to serve others not to oppress or exploit them. All relationships were to be egalitarian rather than authoritarian in nature.

The kingdom- family did not come to full fruition during Jesus’ life time.  However, its presence could be detected in the things that were happening because of Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus likened the situation to that of the yeast already at work in the world (Matthew 13:33).  The kingdom still has not come to full fruition but can we detect its presence in our community, in any Australian churches?  The signs of the presence of the kingdom in Jesus’ day occurred outside the religious institutions and often among people who did not frequent temple or synagogue. Yes, in some instances among people who were regarded as unclean.  We should look for signs of the kingdom occurring in unexpected places in our community and society.

The last time I was here I talked about Jesus attempting to turn things upside down through his teaching.  I illustrated this by talking about several of the key sayings collected in the Sermon on the Plain.  Jesus also sought to radicalize his society by telling parables.  He used parables to change people’s perceptions of each other and the often cruel or thoughtless way they treated each other.

Parables always surprise and usually shock.  A parable is a story that undermines the status quo and reveals its contradictions.  Any of Jesus’ parables could be used to illustrate this truth. Let us take one of the greatest to do so: the parable of the Good Samaritan. To comprehend just how shocking it would have sounded to his hearers we need to know something about the view Jewish people had of Samaritans.  Jews saw Samaritans as religious heretics who had put themselves offside with God by marrying pagans. A righteous Jew had as little as possible to do with Samaritans for fear of displeasing God.

The parable of the Good Samaritan subverts the belief of the Israelites in their religious and moral superiority to the Samaritans. We all know the story. There is a Jewish man wounded by robbers and left on the side of the road to die.  A Jewish priest and a Levite come across him but make no effort to save him. Along comes the despised heretic – a Samaritan – who puts his own life at risk by stopping to rescue the wounded man. In the parable it is the heretic -- the Samaritan – not the righteous men whose action is in tune with what God wants.  The Samaritan shows compassion for an enemy when that enemy is in need of assistance. 

As I said parables shock and they challenge the validity of the conventional wisdom.  In the Samaritan story it is the person thought to be lost to God who turns out to be the good guy.  He obeys God’s directive to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  In striking contrast the ones who it was generally believed would be among those first through the door when the kingdom came – that is a Priest and a Levite – turn out to be the bad guys in Jesus’ parable. 

The story highlights for us the fact that morality is at the heart of religion for Jesus.  Now I am not equating religion or spirituality with morality.  But I am stressing that for Jesus the two were inseparable.  

In the parable the Priests and Levites are the bad guys not because of any failure to meet the ritual obligations of their religion but because they are behaving unethically: they are indifferent to the suffering of another.  They failed to behave compassionately.

To appreciate the impact this story must have had on Jesus’ hearers, the writer Albert Nolan suggests we retell it as the story of a contemporary Christian soldier.  Let us say, for the purpose of illustration, that the soldier of our parable has been injured by terrorists in a roadside attack in Iraq.  A Christian chaplain and a Christian social worker drive down the road where he lays wounded but neither stop their vehicles to help the man for fear of coming under terrorist attack themselves.   However, a fundamentalist Muslim does stop and rescues the Christian soldier, notwithstanding that the soldier is one of those who are invading his country.  Hard to believe? Why?  The parables of Jesus are significant for us today if, and only if, they shock us out of our preconceived judgments.

The parable of the Good Samaritan highlights that what mattered to Jesus was people and their needs. What matters most to Jesus are not what you or I believe but how we treat one another.  Jesus sought to create a different sort of human being. He sought to get people to give up their egotism and selfishness. He preached a spirituality of empathy and compassion. God would only be with people if they practiced compassionate love.   

Cantwell Smith a Christian minister and a world authority on the world’s major religions says we must live in a compassionate way or we will not encounter within us the Divine presence. That is what a life time study of Christianity, Judaism and the other great religions of the world has taught him.  Karen Armstrong who is also a widely recognized authority on the world’s religions says that practical compassion was the litmus test of the rightness of a spiritual experience, of a doctrinal statement, and of a devotional practice for the prophets of Israel, for Jesus and for Paul.   If our understanding of God makes us a kinder person and moves us to express our sympathy in concrete acts of loving kindness it is good theology. If, however, our understanding of God encourages us to be unkind, cruel or self-righteous then it is bad theology.

I am stressing this message because during the course of the history of the church Christians came to equate faith with belief.  It is still happening and in my view it is not helping.  We use the expression believer as a synonym for Christian. We say: “Yes Mary is a believer, she is a Christian. Don’t know about her brother though, don’t know what he believes”.  Faith so understood becomes giving intellectual assent to the truthfulness of certain creedal propositions.  If you cannot give your assent to such propositions then there are those people who will say you are not really a Christian, or not a very good one.  

The equating of faith with giving assent to a string of creedal propositions is surprising.   Neither Jesus nor Paul saw things this way.  For Paul religion and love were inseparable.  You could have faith that moved mountains but it was worthless without love.  The gospels, particularly the first three, do not show us a Jesus going around teaching doctrines such as the doctrine of original sin or of the Trinity.  It shows us a Jesus who lives a life of practical concern for everybody: righteous and unrighteous alike and who calls on those who follow him to do likewise. This is what Jesus said:

“You have heard it said that you must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your father in heaven; for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good and his rain falls not only on the just man but also the unjust” (Matthew 5:43-45).  

So let us practice empathizing with those who misuse us as well as those who love us. Today everyone on this planet is our neighbour.  Let us take practical steps to alleviate the pain of our neighbours and to enrich their lives and we will be faithfully following Jesus. The spirit of compassion resides at the heart of Jesus’ spirituality.  Emulate Jesus in this way and we are more likely to ‘dethrone our egos’ and put other people at the centre of our lives (Armstrong).  If this occurs our inherent selfishness is diminished and the way opened for us to encounter within the presence of God.  Yes, compassion can bring us directly into the presence of God.  So let emulate Jesus in seeking to be agents of change through engaging compassionate action. 

AMEN

Celebrating the Prodigals Father

Why on Father Day have we included the parable of the prodigal son in the service of worship? Did that thought occur to you as John read the lesson?  After all is it not the story of a son from hell one who would have been the death of any father: the ultimate reprobate who squanders a large part of the family’s fortune leading a debauched and wasteful lifestyle. That is true, but the real hero of the story is not the son but the dad. The dad never gives up on the son, he never reaches the point where he says enough is enough

I ‘m through with him, on the contrary he is  always longing for the son’s return.  When the son does head for home the father so eager for his return, sees him coming when he is a long way from home and rushes out to welcome him.

The father does not remonstrate with the son over the squandering of his inheritance. He forgives the son unconditionally and immediately organizes a party to celebrate his return.

This father loves his son unconditionally.  Where did Jesus get the inspiration for this wonderful story. The story that shocked his hearers because it showed a father doing the very opposite of what they expected a father to do in the light of their experience. They expected the father to give the son a real tongue lashing for losing part of the family’s assets and to say that he could not be taken back because it would not be fair to his brother. Perhaps Jesus’ father Joseph behaved in a compassionate and forgiving way towards his children. It’s possible that his father influenced Jesus’ outlook. We do know that the dad in the story is a proxy for God and that Jesus is really telling us about how God treats all humans who lose their way. That he still loves them unconditionally and he is ready to forgive them if they choose to accept God’s loving forgiveness.

The inspiration for the parable has ultimately to be Jesus’ personal experience of God.  We are used to calling God father, because Jesus constantly referred to God as his father. In doing this Jesus was breaking with the custom of his time. Most Jews did not see God as father.  Jesus spent a great deal of time in conversation with God and it was through this interaction with God that he came to know him as a loving parent who was ready to forgive his children.

Jesus’ notion of how God conducted affairs in his kingdom was like the way the father of the prodigal son behaved. Jesus’ life was spent imitating the God he knew as Abba father.  In living this way he provides us with a model for how we are to relate to members of our own household as well as to members of our community.

Of course the story of the father of the prodigal son does not provide us with a detailed blueprint of how to relate to our own children, but it alerts us to the fact that there should be no limits to our willingness to love and to forgive.  This does not mean that every whim of the child is to be indulged, but it does mean that we should never reach the point where we say enough is enough, I am through with you. You are no longer my child.  We should give thanks today for all the fathers who have raised their children in a loving and generous way.

In the parable the father celebrated the return of the son, notwithstanding his faults and his failings. He called on his household to join him in the celebration. 

 He knew the son would enrich the life of the family especially if his brother could be persuaded to accept the prodigal back and treat him in a loving and generous way.  Jesus spent his ministry working to create a community based on the model of a loving family, where members were like brothers and sisters who cared for one another and shared with one another in the way the father shared generously and cared without limits for his son.

In the light of my 2.5 years experience here St Stephens is a congregation where members are seeking to share the love of Christ with one another in ways that are generously caring and most supportive.  A community’s life of this nature is always a work in progress: there is always still much to do, however, we can legitimately celebrate today on the occasion of the fourth EXPO our efforts to manifest the generous caring and forgiving love of God to both those in the immediate family and to many beyond.

The vibrant and caring life of this community is possible because so many people are willing to share their gifts with others, and EXPO is an occasion in which we ask people to share their gifts and talents. The fruits of some of these gifts are on display in the cooking, gardening, handicrafts, artwork and writing sections of our EXPO competition.

This morning through the generosity of several people who are willing to share their knowledge we are being provided with opportunity to enrich our lives by trying something new.  I hope we will all seize the day and accept the challenge.  Elaine will tell you about the various groups that you can join.

 Today also celebrating the gifts we’ve been given by God and the opportunity to use these gifts to bring fulfillment joy to ourselves and to others.  Using gifts creatively and soon participate in groups whose leaders are generously using their gifts for our benefit: to show us ways of enhancing our lives.  The only appropriate thing to do with a gift from God is to pass it on.  We thank those who are doing this for us today. 

Journeying to the desert with Jesus[i]

The gospels present Jesus principally as a man of action: he stills storms and feeds great crowds with a handful of bread. He heals cripples, drives money changers from the Temple, argues with the scribes and Pharisees, and extends hospitality to both sinners and to the so-called righteous.  Yes, Jesus was a doer: a man bent on making the kingdom of God a reality in his time: a man giving his life to making relationships more inclusive, equal and compassionate. 

However, the busyness, and the stress and fatigue the busyness produced were not all of his making. 

Everywhere he went great numbers of people crowded him, pushing and shoving to get close to hear his words of wisdom or receive healing.  It all took so much out of him he had no option but to withdraw from activities and relationships: to seek a quiet place to rest.  We heard of one such instance in the first of today’s two gospel readings. Jesus was visiting Capernaum.  When people learnt where he was staying Mark says ‘the whole town gathered at the door of the house’.  All of the town's sick and demon possessed persons were brought to him for healing.  Exhausted by his endeavours Jesus gets up before dawn and sneaks off to find a quiet place to listen to God.  He does not even tell the disciples where he is going. But the eagerness of people to gain from Jesus as much as they could was insatiable.  So the disciples go looking for Jesus and break his silence with the news that   "everyone is looking for you!"

In an endeavour to escape the crowd Jesus leaves Capernaum.  However, he moves on to do more of the same.  He feels compelled to continue his work so he travels through Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons.  At the same time his need persists to regularly draw aside from the busyness and the people.   

If you read the gospels carefully, you will discern that complementing Jesus’ life of action there is this other side to his life: going off alone for reflection and prayer.  This other side is just as important, as his life of action, and in fact, makes possible, his heavy schedule of social and religious activity. Busyness balanced by solitude and silence.  

Jesus sometimes went up a mountain in search of solitude.  Jesus also goes off frequently to the desert. The desert in the gospel context does not mean a hot and sandy place without vegetation. It means a deserted or lonely place, a quiet place.  So Jesus went to the desert to be alone. 

Do you want to follow Jesus?  Do I want to follow Jesus?  If we do we have to follow him to the desert says Albert Nolan the South African Jesus scholar. How do we do that?  We go to the desert with Jesus, we ‘enter into the spirit of Jesus’ Way when we create space in our lives for silence and solitude.  Now this is a big ask of Australians because being busy is more or less everyone’s lot in this society.  Even retirees report they are busier than ever.  Many of us feel guilty if we are not busy at something.  We want people to think we are hard at it, even if we slacking off a bit.

So why all the busyness?  Many are busy in paid work to keep body and soul together, to pay off a crippling mortgage.  But not all busyness is about putting food on the table and a roof over our heads.  It can be about giving each of us a sense of worth.   Have we equated working hard and keeping busy with having a good sense of self worth, and of worth in the eyes of our fellows? Do we believe God wants us to work till we drop?  Is keeping busy a way of distracting ourselves from thinking about the bigger questions: what is my life all about? Can I render it more meaningful?

So why do we opt for busyness? In the 1970s I made a study of the quality of life of people of retirement age living in a rural community.  One question I put to the two hundred or so people we interviewed went something like this: What makes for a good old age?  The most common response was ‘keeping busy so that you do not have time to think’ Not time to think about what? Well your aches and pains, not time to think of your impending death, not time to think of the husband or wife who has died before you, not time to think about what you had missed out on doing in life that it was now too late to remedy.  Not even time to think about the meaning of your life: what had my life amounted to?

As far as I can recall no one said anything about giving up on the busyness in order to spend time thinking about the big questions. Although there were a couple of widows who said they were glad of the opportunity that not having to care for husbands provided  to read some of the great novels that wrestle with issues of meaning.   

But generally speaking the answer seemed to be that keeping busy was a means of distracting oneself from awareness of the self, and the realities of life, including the relatively short amount of time remaining to someone in their seventies or older.

There is a place for distractions.  Sometimes they are a great way of handling emotional or physical pain, of gaining some relief from an all too tedious routine.  But should life be one extended distraction? Certainly, the leisure industry communicates the message that retirement should be one extended distraction.

The reality is that sooner or later we are going to die and then it will be too late to take stock, to become more fully conscious of the realities beyond the immediate distractions.  We need time alone to find ourselves and to search for God.   You may be thinking: ‘Aren’t you forgetting Ken that meaning and fulfillment is found in relationships, not in being on your own?  After all is it not true that giving and receiving love is the key to a good life?’

It is true that humans are social animals who come to a sense of who they are and what life is about through other human beings. It is also true that we find much of our fulfillment and happiness through others.  Jesus showed just how truly human he was by sharing much of his life with followers and friends. It is also true that relationships were not only an integral part of his daily routine they were also at the heart of Jesus’ spirituality.   It is also true that your spiritually and mine, is, to a crucial extent, about how we relate to other people – to our kin, fellow members of our congregation, our neighbours, and those we find it hard to get along with, to like, and yes, those who classify themselves as our enemies. 

But as well as relationships and activities entailing other people we need time alone.  Not only Jesus’ life but the experience of millions of other people who have lived fulfilled lives shows that we must make a place in our lives for solitude. In his book entitled Solitude the psychiatrist Anthony Storr says that it is a mistake to search for happiness and fulfillment exclusively in relationships. The value of love and friendship as a source of fulfillment can be exaggerated.  A sense that life is really worth living can be produced from pursuing one or more of a wide range of interests that could be called impersonal in the sense they do not require the participation of others. Indeed many can only be properly pursued and found intrinsically rewarding if pursued in solitude and often in silence.  

There is a seemingly endless list of impersonal interests that meet these conditions and which produce a sense of worth.  They included the endeavours widely recognized as creative such as painting, composing music, writing books.  But there are many more that are highly rewarding for so called ordinary people. Watch the Collectors program on the ABC for evidence of what I am talking about.  But it is not only about collecting, it can be a passion for many things: yes for gardening, sailing, golfing, sewing, cooking, interior decorating, bird watching, pigeon breeding and so on. 

We humans are endowed by Nature to take an interest and give our lives meaning through an interest we pursue by ourselves as well as through activities involving other people.  Anthony Storr says “Two opposing drives operate through out life: the drive for companionship, love, and everything else which brings us close to our fellow men [and women]; and the drive toward being independent, separate and autonomous”  But whether or not we pursue seriously activities that are essentially isolated endeavours the fact remains that we all need time alone.  Most of the world’s truly wise men and women have drawn strength inside and a personal sense of wellbeing from long periods of being alone (Storr).

As well as achieving a silence that comes from escaping from the relentless sounds, words and visual images flooding in from the world outside we need to achieve an inner silence.  This is the more difficult thing to achieve: this is to switch off the inner stream of thoughts, mental images, and feelings. You know the kind of thing I am talking about when I say there is this inner restlessness of thoughts and feelings.  It can be there pre-occupying us in the day time and it can waken us at night.

In the middle of the night you find, try as you may, you cannot get out of your head the memory of an encounter, a conversation with someone that you wish had not gone the way it did, or had not occurred at all.  You replay what you said you wish you had not said, what was said back to you, you rehearse what you will say if a similar situation occurs in the future.  But try as you may you cannot turn the tapes off: these tapes not only have a word component they have a powerful emotional component.  There are feelings of regret, perhaps anger, and frustration.  There is anxiety about the ramifications of what was said for a relationship that is very important to you, or for your job, or position in the church. 

The difficulty in controlling thoughts and feelings often results in us doing and saying things we do not want to say or do.  We can all relate to what I am saying?  Is there anything we can do about this?   Doing something about it is essential to a personal sense of well being.  Some sages say that without achieving an inner silence on a regular basis then authentic spirituality is not possible.

Now for those of us who have been raised and nurtured in a religious tradition that has emphasized action this may not be easy to accept.  Disengaging to spend time in solitude and silence has not been absent from Christian religious practice, but in the history of the church it has been a marginal rather than a mainstream activity.  The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said: “nothing is more God like than silence”.  I think the truth of that insight has largely passed western Christianity by, much to our loss.  So, perhaps we should abandon the notion that the only way to live a worthwhile life is by being busy.

Relationships were one of the hubs of Jesus’ spirituality but an equally significant hub was the impersonal activities of solitude and silence.

Techniques of meditation that are presently practiced to a limited extent in mainstream Christiantiy and to a greater extent in Eastern religions provide a way of listening in silence.  Meditation is not an activity like thinking about God. Rather it is a way of calming the mind and heart which results from emptying the mind.

There is no time on this occasion to review some of the techniques that are used to do this.  However, during last Sunday’s service those of us who participated in a session led by Marg Peck were exposed to some meditative techniques.  I and others left the session feeling calm and at peace with the world.  Meditation provides us with a way of putting in place an essential foundation stone for an effective spiritual life.

We do not know how Jesus prayed and meditated when he went off to a desert or other place of silence and solitude. What we do know is that his behaviour points to an inner life in which he was able to sufficiently restore his sense of calm and peacefulness to return to the exceedingly demanding ministry he was engaged in.  Our first steps towards developing a more effective spirituality and experiencing a greater sense of calm and purpose in life are taken when we follow Jesus into the desert to listen in silence.  AMEN

Which is it to be entitlement or gratefulness

Few things made Jesus as angry as a display of ingratitude. The parable of the unforgiving servant bears this out. The parable is set in a Gentile royal court. The king decides to check on his servants’ accounts.  He discovers that one of them owes him a debt that in today’s currency amounted to about 10 million dollars.  Because the servant cannot meet the debt the king orders that the man, his wife and his children, and all his possessions be sold to recover as much of the money owed as possible. In a desperate attempt to avoid this terrible outcome the servant falls at the feet of his king and begs him to give him time to pay the debt. ‘Oh great and most generous Lord, I beg you not to do this to me and my family.  If you could be so merciful and kind as to give me an extension of time I can promise you I will repay the debt in full’.

The reality is that the servant has no hope of making good on his promise. The debt is just too great.  Nor could he expect his pleading to move the king but to his surprise and that of all the courtiers the king does the unthinkable: he forgives the debt. The servant leaves the king’s presence unencumbered by debt. However, on the way out of the palace he comes across a fellow servant who owes him money. He demands repayment of the debt. The man from whom he is demanding money resorts to the same approach the first servant used when confronted by the King.  He begs for time to pay.  It was a reasonable plea because the debt was a modest one. It could have been repaid in a short period of time.  But the servant who has been given so much – blessed beyond all measure by his king’s mercy -- ignores his debtor’s pleas and has him thrown into jail.

The first servant’s treatment of the hapless second servant in the story demonstrates that he lacked all sense of appreciation and gratitude for the great gift he had received from his monarch.  He had been on the receiving end of an act of pure grace, all the more striking because it was totally unexpected.  If the servant had been truly grateful for what the king had done for him he would have forgiven the debt of the man who owed him only a few dollars.   But he does not see himself as gifted by the king’s action.  He does, however, see himself as entitled legally to recover the modest amount owed to him by a fellow servant.   He is not a grateful man only a man with a strong sense of personal entitlement.

Ours is a society in which many people do not express gratitude for the gifts life is delivering them.  Like the first servant they see themselves as entitled to all that comes their way.  I am generalizing but people do not seem to acknowledge the extent to which they are gifted by other human beings and by God.   People will only experience a sense of gratitude if they are aware that almost everything that happens to them, everything they receive, all the people who participate in their lives are gifts.

So why don’t people feel gifted? The dearth of a sense of gratitude in our society is in large measure the fruit of its individualistic character. Ours is a society in which the individual is freed of as many obligations as possible to others, and to the society itself, and to the organizations within it, to maximize his or her opportunities for personal growth, autonomy, and happiness.  Ours is a society in which words such as duty, obligation, indebtedness, have a bad press and expressions such as personal fulfillment, treating yourself, looking after number one, doing your own thing, have a good press.  

Consequently, the extent to which members of our society are the recipients of a gifted life is greatly underestimated. We are inclined to see ourselves as self-made men and women.  We cannot afford to acknowledge that we are indebted to others because it means we owe others.  So, we typically play down the extent to which our personal achievements and our happiness are due to a large extent to the efforts of other people.

To return to Jesus: how did he see things? Jesus was outraged by people’s lack of gratitude because he was so aware that everything he had and his fellows had were gifts from God. He knew God as the one who fed the birds, and looks after every human being: the unjust as well as the just. (Matt. 6:26-30).   In the parable we heard read today the King is a proxy for God. The message is clear: Just as the king has bestowed a wonderful gift on his servant by forgiving his debt so God has bestowed on all of us gifts of immeasurable worth: our lives, the resources to live these lives, the people to share our lives with, and God’s own forgiving love.  When we have received so much how can we be so ungrateful as to not treat generously and mercifully those around us?

Because he was so aware of being personally gifted by God Jesus had a grateful heart. A grateful heart comes from appreciating that everything in life is a gift. Nothing is taken for granted: not the food eaten, the labour of others from which we benefit, the love of a parent, or a spouse, that is so life enhancing. Nothing is taken for granted.  Jesus knew his very existence was a gift.  Our very existence is a gift, so why all the complaints about us not having as much as others.

I did not create myself, nor did you. There is no way we could have merited our existence.  So instead of seeing other people’s contributions to our lives as something we are entitled to receive, let us see them as gifts. Everyone who comes into my life is a gift, even if I have trouble seeing that they may well be a blessing in disguise.

So how do we become less driven by a sense of entitlement and our

lives more a manifestation of gratefulness for being gifted in so many ways?   One step we can take towards making this transition is to put less emphasis on minimizing our commitments to others in order to maximize our personal freedom. Rather we should work at enhancing the well being of the various people that inhabit our lives and of the groups we belong to -- family, community organizations of one kind or another, and the church.  This means making serious and demanding commitments and sticking to them rather than Claytons’ commitments: that is commitments that are provisional, optional. ‘Yes I will come along provided nothing more appealing to do turns up in the meantime’.  Where people collectively undertake to make binding commitments the group activities become more fulfilling and each participant knows he is being benefited by the gift of the time and resources of other members who similarly commit.  

Albert Nolan offers a useful answer to the question: how do our lives become less driven by a sense of entitlement and more lives that manifest a sense of gratitude for being gifted in so many ways? He says that the action that is most likely to achieve this personal transformation is the daily practice of prayers of thanksgiving.  It is not enough to offer up the occasional prayer of thanksgiving such as at those times when something particularly good happens to us.  We need continuous prayers of thanksgiving. If we seek to develop a grateful heart we need to be thanking God day and night, whenever we get the chance. 

That is his first point. The second is this: the prayers need to go to the specifics of life. So give thanks for your health, your hearing, your eyesight, specific experiences that life has brought you. We should offer prayers for particular friends, relatives, neighbours, acquaintances.  We should offer prayers for particular individuals who we have hurt, or let down in some way.  We should give thanks for the experiences and the events that have formed us during the course of our lives.

We humans are big on making lists of things that we want, or think we need; lists of all the things we don’t have. We also make lists of all our complaints about a variety of things:  how badly life is treating us, how we have been slighted by cousin Bill and sister Jane, and so on.  Because we are so concerned with what we don’t have or with what has gone wrong we are big on prayers of intercession and not nearly as big on prayers of thanksgiving.  Does not that fact reflect that we are more taken up with a sense of entitlement than with a sense of gratefulness?  If we really felt grateful would we not spend more time thanking God for all the gifts we have received than we do on bringing our wants lists and our complaints lists to God?

Now there is an important place for intercessory prayer but let me put that into perspective with this comment made by the mystic Meister Eckhart. He said: “If the only prayer I ever say is Thank You … that is enough”.

Our prayers of thanksgiving should be unselfish prayers. To ensure they are we should give thanks not only for everything that is good in our life but in the lives of others.  This means we do something often not easy to do which is to give thanks for the good fortunes of others who possess gifts we do not possess and which we would love to possess.  We give thanks for those who have scaled mountains we too would have loved to have scaled, but failed to do so. This means we give thanks for those who are preferred over us, say for a job, or a leadership position in a particular organisation.  It is much easier to feel jealous than to thank God that the other person is being affirmed or loved, or both.

 Our willingness to make such prayers, no matter how difficult, is a test of genuine gratefulness.  If we cannot pray prayers of this character are we not giving in to jealousy and envy?  But if we can regularly offer such prayers it will change our lives.  Give thanks repeatedly for the life or achievements of a person who has hurt us, or has gained something we had our heart set on and we may find it changes our attitude: jealousy falls away, and we focus less on our sense of entitlement.  It may even change our personality. The more we see life and the lives of others as gifts from God the less we are taken up with complaints, and the more happy and contented we become with life.

So which is it to be: a life driven by a sense of entitlement or a life that expresses in word and action a deep sense of gratefulness for the fact that everything we have, every moment of every day, every person in our lives is a gift we do not merit.   AMEN  

Which is it to be?  A No or a Yes to Jesus’ invitation.

It is Day 2 of the last week of Jesus’ life. And we find him in a familiar situation -- doing battle with his old foes – some leaders of the Jewish religious establishment.   On day one of the last week Jesus processed into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey.  By doing this he laid his claim to kingship for kings ride donkeys in such circumstances.  On that same day Jesus drove the money changers from the temple. Now on day 2 he is back in the temple and this time he teaching the crowd that follows him wherever he goes. Jesus was already a marked man before he appeared in Jerusalem for this last time. The things he has done in a few short hours since coming to Jerusalem have angered the religious authorities and heightened their resolve to get rid of him.

It is not surprising because throughout much of his public ministry he had been bad mouthing all sectors of the religious establishment. And before the day’s drama is played out, according to Matthew, he will be calling them hypocrites, serpents, and vipers for neither entering the kingdom of heaven themselves, nor allowing those who would enter to go in.  

IN today’s reading we hear elders and high priests confront Jesus with this question: “By whose authority do you do the things you are doing in this holy place?” “Who actually gave you the authority to teach and heal within the temple precincts?”  Although Matthew does not say so, they surely would have demanded to know by whose authority he interfered with the legitimate business of the money changers.  Jesus knows that if he declares he acts on God’s authority the leaders will have him arrested for blasphemy.  The crowd witnessing the drama are wondering: “How will Jesus reply, what will he say?”

Jesus seeks to find a way out of his dangerous situation by offering his opponents a deal.  He says to them. “You first answer my question and then I will answer yours. My question is this: Is the baptism of John of God or of men?” The leaders sense a trap. They talk among themselves searching for an effective response.  Let us, for a few moments, listen in on their conversation. “If we say John’s baptism is of God Jesus will have us – he will say,” “Well then why didn’t you repent of your sins and submit to his baptism?” “What could we say in our defense?”   But if we say John’s baptism is only a human act the crowd will become angry because they believe John is God’s prophet.  Who knows what they will do to us?”

So, the leaders decide collectively that the best thing to do is plead ignorance. They say to Jesus: ‘We don’t know if John’s baptism is of men or of God.’  In this way they let Jesus off the hook, or more accurately he has escaped their hook. Jesus says: “Neither will I tell you by whose authority I am doing these things”.

Why does each move in this chess game matter so much that both religious leaders and Jesus try to outwit each other?  Well it is happening in front of the crowd and neither side wants to lose face.  There is a battle in progress between Jesus and the religious leaders for the hearts and minds of the general populace.  On this occasion Jesus has a victory: the crowd is on his side.  Yet, in a few days he will lose their support. When Pilate puts this question to the crowd: “What shall I do with Jesus?” The crowd cries back: “Crucify him!”  But on Tuesday morning of the last fateful week Jesus has outwitted his opponents in the presence of the crowd. He makes the representatives of the Kingdom of Satan -- for that is who they are in Jesus’ eyes -- look confused, rather foolish and beaten.   As on the previous day when he processed into Jerusalem Jesus has the crowd on his side.

Jesus now invites the leaders to listen to a parable and offer

judgment concerning the action of two sons.  In the parable the father

says to one son: “I want you to go to the vineyard and work”.  The son

refuses.  However, he later repents and goes and works in the vineyard. The father also directs the second son to go and work in the vineyard. This son readily agrees to go but fails to do so.  Jesus says to the elders and the chief priests: “Which son did what his father wanted?”  “The first son” they declare. Jesus tells them they have given the right answer. But without pausing he goes on to make an offensive declaration to the leaders: a declaration that must have taken them by surprise and shocked them. He tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God ahead of them.

But what has this declaration of the preferential treatment by God of tax collectors and prostitutes got to do with the story of the father and the two sons?   A great deal because in the parable the first son serves as a proxy for tax collectors and prostitutes. Without knowing that they were doing so, when the religious leaders declared it was the first son who had done the will of his father, they were declaring that the prostitutes and tax collectors were right with God.   When Jesus revealed that the first son was a stand in for these sinners the religious authorities would have been scandalized.  Such sinners were, to the mind of the religious leaders beyond redemption; beyond God’s care.  How could Jesus bracket they the elders and high priests with these incorrigible sinners by saying that, like them, they were like them were in need of God’s mercy?  How dare he say they would go into the kingdom before them, the elders and chief priests? 

Because the tax collectors and prostitutes had failed to keep the jewish laws they had, in effect, initially said no to God.  But John’s call for repentance had touched their hearts. They believed he was from God.  He caused them to see what a great gulf existed between the character of God and their lives.  They repented and received God’s forgiveness.  So, although on the surface the tax collectors and the prostitutes did not much look like God’s people because they believed in the message John brought they were going to enter the kingdom of God. 

What was to be the fate of the religious authorities?  The parable suggests that were unlikely to gain entry.   In the parable they are represented by the second son. The second son failed to obey his father.  He said he would go to the vineyard and work, but he never did so.  In telling this son’s story Jesus, is in effect, condemning the religious leaders for failing to make good on their initial promises.  They were meticulous observers of the Torah, and of the many rules that comprised the purity code.  They were convinced that their behaviour made them right with God.  But they failed to believe John was from God.  And they failed to do so because they failed to comprehend that a yawning gulf existed between the state of their heart and God’s heart.  This gulf was evidenced by their haughty and arrogant behaviour and by the judgmental attitude they displayed towards sinners: the very people God looks on mercifully.  They failed to see that they were as much in need of his mercy as those they despised as sinners.  In rejecting the baptism of John they were, in effect, rejecting God.

What today’s gospel reading shows is that the attempt of the religious authorities to trap Jesus results in them condemning themselves.  On the second day of the last week of Jesus’ life the crowd is still with him.  Alas, the crowd will soon change sides.  On the fifth day when Pilate asks them what to do with Jesus the same crowd answers: crucify him. 

Matthew’s gospel works in two time zones.  The first time zone is the time of Jesus’ ministry.  The second is the closing decades of the first century when Matthew wrote his gospel. He wrote it for his congregation.  And in it he offers an interpretation of the Jesus story that is slanted to bringing home certain messages to his congregation.   It was a time when Christians in many communities were being persecuted by local synagogue leaders for what was conceived of as the blasphemy of declaring that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah: God’s son.  It is highly likely that Matthew’s congregation was being subjected to such persecution. 

This is evidenced in part by the fact that Matthew’s gospel which is regarded as the most Jewish of all four gospels, is nevertheless the most highly critical of Jesus’ Jewish opponents.  Reputable scholars believe that the stinging attack Jesus made of high priests, elders, Pharisees and scribes of his own time, is meant by Matthew to also be seen as an attack on the Jewish leaders of his community who were persecuting the local Christians.

The message Matthew is offering, as it were in code, to his congregation some time in the 80’s or 90’s is this:  these Jewish leaders who are persecuting you and who claim to be God’s representative are, in fact, totally offside with God.  To Matthew’s mind they are the religious heirs of the opponents of Jesus who brought about his death.  Matthew is saying to his congregation take heart because you can be confident that God will ultimately be victorious.

If something like this is said to us we may give a polite nod of agreement to the person offering the reassurance but in our heart we are likely to be highly skeptical that God will save the situation for us.   We have experienced in the course of our life too many instances where it seems God has not delivered the goods: notwithstanding the prayers the child with cancer dies; the tyrants prevail.

Why was Matthew so confident that God would save the situation.  His confidence stemmed from his conviction that the struggle his congregation was caught up in was but one manifestation of a cosmic struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil.  The most crucial actors in the struggle were hidden: they were God and Satan.  Matthew believed that whilst at the time of their persecution the world was under the control of Satan God would ultimately vanquish Satan and establish his reign on earth.  Matthew’s belief was implacable.  The keystone of his life and faith and that of the congregation was this conviction that all human history was moving to this end.  Their task was to be loyal to God, and trust that he would deliver them.  They knew that they may die at the hands of their persecutors but when Jesus returned in judgment they would be resurrected participants in the kingdom whereas their enemies – who were agents of satan would be banished for eternity.  Most of us make our life’s journey with this conviction about the establishment of God’s reign on earth missing from our belief system. Maybe that is why so many of us are far from confident that God will intervene in some way to prevent tragedy, redress injustices, cure the cancer etc.

Notwithstanding his words of reassurance Matthew also issues a cautionary word to his congregation. He warns them to be constantly on guard against becoming like Jesus’ opponents who by their attitude and action alienated themselves from God. The local Jewish leaders were saying yes with their lips but their deeds amounted to a no to God’s directive to work in the vineyard: you see they failed to treat their fellows mercifully, forgivingly and lovingly.  They in fact obstructed their entry to the kingdom.

Matthew offers this message to his congregation and it may also be a message to us.  He urges his congregation to emulate the tax collectors and prostitutes in the parable: to repent of their sins, seek God’s forgiveness, and, by living lovingly and generously, bear witness to God’s presence in the world.  Matthew is always big on deeds.  Yes, we should think about the relevance of Matthew’s message to his congregation to each of us.

Matthew’s final message to his congregation is a further message of reassurance and, it too, is a message that you may find relevant to you.  The story of the father and the first son shows it is never too late to switch from giving no’s to giving yes’s to God’s invitation.  When Jesus invited the elders and high priests to listen to the parable he was extending an invitation to them to turn their no into a yes.  He was inviting them to see the yawning gulf between the character of their lives and the heart of God, to repent and accept God’s forgiveness.  They refused the invitation.  But that invitation still stands. It does not matter how often we say no to God, God will never close the door.  God will tolerate any number of “no”s on the way to a final yes!  We can always change a no into yes by giving ourselves over to the cause of the kingdom.    AMEN

Losing touch with our true selves

A mother stuns a Canberra Court room into silence when she screams at her son’s killer ‘Rot in hell, you bitch, you Devil!’  

Her outburst not only grabs the attention of the judge, the barristers and officers of the court, it also shocks her family and friends because it is so out of character. They know her as a decent, gracious and caring person.   On this occasion, however, these fine qualities vanish; she totally loses it.  The killer she yells the abuse at was the live in lover of her dead son: Joe.  The killing was pre-meditated and gruesome. It took Joe three days to die.

The son’s death destroyed the mother.  Maria Cinque was her name.  Maria said the death stripped her once rich and fulfilling life of all meaning. She was a practicing Catholic but her faith offered her little, if any, comfort. The one thing she hoped would bring some peace of mind and restoration of happiness was a guilty verdict to the charge of murder, and the infliction of as harsh a penalty as the law would allow. Her son’s killer, Anu Singh was her name, must pay for what she had done, was Maria Cinque’s constant mantra. Yet, Maria made it plain that the harshest punishment imposed for murder in this country would not be enough.

You can imagine the distress, the insupportable sense of injustice, Maria and her family experienced when Anu Singh was not found guilty of murder but of the lesser charge of manslaughter; and how incensed they were when she received a sentence of only 10 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of just four years.  For the Cinque family this outcome was unacceptable, unconscionable. 

Maria complained bitterly, ‘We trusted the courts … and she gets manslaughter. .. We are so angry with justice  -- you’ve got no idea.  If it was me I’d hang her right outside the court. But you can’t do that’  

The Cinques blamed the judge. It was a trial without jury so the Judge brought down the verdict.  Mrs. Cinque made a scene on the front steps of the court. She said she hoped someone would kill one of the judge’s children so that he would understand their pain.

Why have I told you this true story? In part, because it presents a moving account of unexpected and insupportable suffering that shredded the cohesive fabric of the lives of several people. I tell it in the hope it will increase our empathy for people in such tragic circumstances: for people who lose their way and come adrift from their true selves.  Can we see that we might respond in the way that Maria Cinque did if we lost a child in such a manner. Can we see that we too might alienate those around us by recurring expressions of bitterness and hatred and by making public outbursts? 

Why tell it today? Because I see a parallel between Maria Cinque’s experience and subsequent pain and what happened to a first century Christian community for whom Matthew wrote his gospel.  The terrible woes we heard in today’s gospel reading were a response of a writer on behalf of his congregation as well as himself to feeling badly let down, abandoned, and punished by some of their own people. 

The gospel reading comes from Jesus’ mouth and he addresses it to his disciples and the crowd of listeners.  But, does it sound like Jesus to you?  How do you square Jesus calling his opponents hypocrites, snakes and vipers with the substance of the Sermon on the Mount?  The message of the Sermon is that our love is to extend to our enemy, and here Jesus seemingly condemns his enemies in the most vitriolic  and vengeful language.

For centuries, the Woes have been read as Jesus’ condemnation of his Jewish opponents. There are today Jewish scholars who condemn Jesus for reputedly making such denunciations.  They say in doing so Jesus is going against his own teaching.  It is also true that there are still Christians who use the woes to justify anti-Semitic feelings and actions.

This is a great pity because it is most unlikely Jesus said these things.  What is more likely is that Matthew put the words onto Jesus’ lips for his own purposes. Jesus probably criticized particular Pharisees but not in such a comprehensive and unloving way. The picture presented of the Scribes and Pharisees is not historically accurate: it is a caricature. There may have been individual Pharisees who behaved rather badly but the majority of Pharisees were conscientiously maintaining a valid religious life.  They were zealous observers of the law, especially of ritual purity and tithing food according to O.T. law.  Yet the gospel writers, including Matthew, condemn them.   

We cannot know with certainty what motivated Matthew to denounce the Pharisees.  However, here are two related things that probably helped produce his excessive denunciation.   First, Matthew believed the Pharisees were Godless. The Greek word translated in today’s reading as hypocrite does mean Godless. Matthew believed that a struggle had gone on for thousands of years between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God.  He believed the Pharisees were agents of Satan, whereas the life of his congregation was a manifestation of God’s kingdom, albeit a partial and imperfect manifestation.  He believed that God’s kingdom would ultimately triumph, and that would occur when Christ came again.  However, until then Satan had the upper hand, and he had been demonstrating his power, in part, through the agency of the Pharisees. 

Second, Matthew’s anger with the Pharisees was inextricably bound up with the recent history of his own congregation.  They had been members of the Jewish community and attenders at the Synagogue.  However, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Pharisees came to dominate Jewish religious life and they often forced fellow Jews who had declared Jesus was the Messiah from the local synagogue. The best guess of many reputable scholars is that such had been the fate of the people that now formed Matthew’s congregation. In short, they found themselves ostracized, shunned and perhaps persecuted by former friends and neighbours.

When such events occur feelings rule.  We saw that in Mrs Cinque’s story.   Maria Cinque, who was Italian by birth, felt betrayed by the legal system of her adopted country.  She also felt betrayed by a woman she had made welcome in her home and who was on the verge of becoming a member of her family through marriage to her son Joe.  So, she wanted the judge who represented the legal system and her son’s killer to pay dearly.

For his part, Matthew felt betrayed by former Jewish colleagues. His treatment and his congregation’s treatment provided for Matthew proof that the Pharisees were Satan’s agents and justified his ferocious attack. As I said earlier, it is a great pity he put it on the lips of Jesus.

Notwithstanding their strong belief that God controlled the future, Matthew and his congregation must have been badly shaken by their recent experience.  They must have thought their social world was disintegrating.  That was certainly how Maria Cinque thought and felt living in 21^st century Australia.  Both Maria and Matthew knew who was to blame for the disintegration of their world and they wanted those who had hurt them to pay. Matthew wanted the Pharisees to go to hell.  As Maria saw it, her son had been stolen from her by a woman who had masqueraded as her sons devoted partner but who turned out to be a cold-blooded killer. Anu Singh’s action was a manifestation of unmitigated evil and Maria wanted her hung.

Even though both Matthew and Maria Cinque yearned for revenge we should not judge them harshly.  Their vengeful thoughts and feelings were out of character. They were the outcome of great pain made unbearable by the fact that those they trusted betrayed them.

When things go badly wrong for people, when extreme pressure is applied, they lose touch with their better selves: with their core values.  This not only happens to Joe ordinary; it happens to kind, generous, gracious people.  Helen Garner offers this insight into the experience of human beings in her book on the killing of Joe Cinque.  This, she shows, happened to Maria Cinque.  She lost touch with her best self and she knew it. It happened to Matthew.   Matthew was estranged, at least temporarily, from the core values he had gained from Jesus.

We do not know what happened to the embittered Matthew or the little community for whom Matthew wrote.  History leaves us no account of their fate.   One would hope that, with the course of time, their suffering and their hatred of their persecutors lessened.

Something similar to the tragedy that overtook Maria Cinque, and the first century congregation of followers of Jesus, can happen to us on our life journey.  Something comes out of left field that knocks us off balance, and strips our life of much of its meaning.  We too can become embittered and disillusioned, particularly when we perceive our pain as the outcome of an act of betrayal by a friend, a family member, a fellow Christian, or by the ‘system’.

Maria Cinque embarrassed and alienated many former close friends and relatives by her actions, her constant talk of revenge, by her seemingly eternal preoccupation with her tragedy. Yet, there were those who did not condemn, did not walk away.  They provided some relief from her seemingly unbearable pain, and, from time to time, they provided some joy and hope, even if it was only of a momentary kind.

If such circumstances overtake us, we, like Maria, need the empathy and support of a person who cares.  We need someone who will listen, seek to understand our pain. Not condemn us, nor remonstrate with us for saying or doing wrong things, nor tell us to get over it and move on.

How do we move on when suffering, loss, and rejection overwhelm us?  We need people who will sense that it is counter productive and alienating to tell us we should not be so judgmental, so unforgiving. We need people who will support us, even though we are holding on to our pain and resentment for what they think is far too long; support us when we seem incapable of feeling how we know we should feel as followers of Jesus and, instead, are filled with thoughts and feelings of hatred, rancor, and payback.

We need someone who will support us when we have come adrift from our true self, support us when just about everyone around us has given up on us. My prayer is that in such times that there are people who can be there for us.

I have a further prayer and it is this: when times are so bad for someone we know that she becomes, or he becomes, estranged from their true self we will be their for them; providing support even if all others in their immediate circle have given up on them, and they have given up on themselves.  What does being a follower of Jesus Christ mean if it does not mean being their in such ways?  

Prayer

Open our hearts to your transforming spirit O Lord.  Stop us from giving up on those in our circle whose bitterness and thoughts of revenge consume them.  Stop us from remonstrating with them, cajoling, and condemning them. Enable us to be accepting and supportive, even if most people in their circle have forsaken them.

If hatred and thoughts of revenge consume us, we pray that there will be those who stick by us.  Do not abandon us, O Christ, even if our anger and hatred drive away those who we hoped would be there for us.  Christ, you alone can save us.   AMEN   

Accountable and Prepared

Today’s gospel story features ten bridesmaids: five wise and five foolish.  It is a puzzling story.  For instance, bridesmaids out shopping for oil and expecting to find a shop open in the middle of the night?  A bridegroom, who takes forever to show up for his wedding?  The story sounds contrived and it is. It is not a Jesus original but probably a remake of a story Jesus told: remade to suit the purposes of the writer of the gospel.  

However, it is true that bridegrooms often did arrive late for their wedding in first century Palestine. Why did they?  It was probably a matter of money.  Until the bridegroom reached agreement with the bride’s parents on the terms of the marriage contract the wedding could not commence. The negotiations over money and property could take a few hours, but they could also take days. The custom in first century Palestine was for the bride to join the groom in the home he had prepared for their life together.  It was usually adjacent to his father’s home.

 As bridal attendants at the groom’s house the bridesmaids are expected to greet him when he arrives for the wedding feast.  Custom dictated that the bridesmaids had to be at the ready whenever the bridegroom arrived. They would join in the merriment occurring whilst everyone waited for the consummation of the marriage.  When proof of the consummation was produced everyone present would join in the wedding feast.    

The bridesmaids anticipated a late arrival by the groom and equipped themselves with lamps in case he did not show up until after nightfall.  They fall asleep.  They are awakened by a messenger who cries out anxiously, ‘Get ready, the groom is about to arrive!’ The girls’ lamps have been burning in anticipation of this summons.  Alas, half of them have used all their oil so they will not be able to greet the groom. They beg the five wise girls to give them some of their oil, but they refuse. The five foolish girls go off in the middle of the night to buy some oil.

While they absent themselves, the bridegroom actually arrives. He welcomes those who are ready for the feast.  He then shuts the door and refuses entry to the foolish girls who show up after him. 

So what is this parable about?  To answer that we need to settle this question first: to whom, is it addressed?  Matthew has it coming from the mouth of Jesus but, alas, the parable originally told by Jesus is lost.  What we have is a Jesus parable that Matthew has modified to address the needs of his church community.  

Members of this community are puzzled as to why Jesus has not returned to earth as promised.  The parable does not answer this question but makes clear how followers should behave until Jesus arrives.  The last verse of today’s reading says, ‘Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour’. In this case, read keep awake as be prepared.  It is a parable about being prepared.

As the parable tells it, the bridesmaids are to be prepared for the wedding feast.  Now, of course, the message is not really about taking steps to ensure you participate in a wedding feast.  The wedding feast is a metaphor for what happens when Jesus’ return to earth.  The bridegroom, who may return at anytime, is Jesus.

The parable is about being prepared for what for first century Christians was the event of overriding importance on their calendar: the establishment of the reign of God on earth. This was to be a reign for all time: for eternity.  Jesus will serve as judge.  The door to the kingdom will be open to some of those brought before Jesus the judge. But, for many, the door will be firmly shut.

The members of Matthew’s community are anxious to be among those who share in the joys of the kingdom.  Their problem is that they do not know when the event will take place. They do not know what date, or time of the day, to circle on their calendar.

Matthew’s congregation had probably been together for some years prior to Matthew writing his gospel. Presumably, when members were at the beginning of their life of faith, they carried lit lamps.  They were excited about the enterprise of furthering the kingdom in the way the bridesmaids were excited at the prospect of the wedding. They were showing up for Sabbath worship, singing ‘Lord, Lord’, contributing financially in a generous way, and treating people mercifully.  But, as the weeks, months, and years passed and the bridegroom still had not come many members of the congregation failed to sustain the life of faithful discipleship. 

Matthew is using the parable to try to coax these people back to a full commitment to Jesus and God’s kingdom. Those that need coaxing are represented in the parable by the five bridesmaids whose failure to bring sufficient oil results in their lights going out just as the groom is arriving.  The message is clear: Jesus will exclude them from the kingdom. 

By now some of you present this morning may be saying well what is the relevance of this parable to me?  Is it anymore than a historical curiosity? After all a couple of thousand years have passed since members of Matthew’s congregation grounded their entire lives on the hope of Jesus’ return, and he still has not appeared, at least in the way they believed he would. Why should he come now, notwithstanding we pray each Sunday ‘Your kingdom come’.

Yes, many churchgoers and many reputable Biblical scholars are sceptical, even dismissive, of the notion of Jesus physically returning to earth to establish the Kingdom of God in our midst.  Even if we are sceptical about events happening the way set out in the gospel it may still be the case that the parable has relevance for us. Its relevance is the matter I want to consider this morning.

I personally find the parable relevant for two reasons. First, it reminds me that I am answerable to God for how I lead my life.  It is true that God bestows on me freedom to shape my life.  However, as a follower of Jesus this freedom does not bestow on me a licence to do what I please – to lead a completely self-centred, self-serving existence.  This freedom does not give me permission to use up other people to achieve my goals.   Rather the freedom God gives me constitutes an opportunity to live in a way that a loving compassionate caring God would want me to live. I am to pay proper regard to the needs, wishes and wellbeing of others.

Now I know that the notion that we are accountable, or answerable to some one beyond ourselves, is not a popular notion in contemporary society.  Many people hold to the view, often with something akin to a form of religious fervour that they are entitled to prioritize in their living their personal growth, their achievement of success on the world’s terms. 

It seems, that many people believe that they are ultimately only accountable to themselves for what they do with this wonderful gift of life and certainly not to any other human being, or to any higher power!  ‘I am a free agent, I am not going to defer to anyone, least of all some invisible God’, many declare.    

As a Christian this position is, for me, untenable.  I believe we are accountable to God for the way we live our lives, for how we use our time, our material resources, and for how we treat other people. That is the first important message the parable has for me. 

The second important message the parable teaches me is this. I need to be ready to be accountable now, yes today, not some time in the future. The foolish bridesmaids were unprepared when it mattered.  Perhaps, more accurately, they distracted themselves with the things that ultimately do not matter.

We can behave in a similar way:  keep putting off reordering the priorities in our life –– ‘A bit busy at present to give much time to worrying about other people’.  Yet, the parable reminds us that we do not know when we are going to run out of time to get our life in order.

The other important thing to bear in mind is that each day we delay change our life becomes more entrenched in our present way of thinking and behaving.  Perhaps we are, at present, living by a set of values that preclude following Jesus. The longer this process of procrastination goes on the harder it is to change direction. We can find in the end that we have left it too late to change our way of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Jesus understood so well that life is short and our hold on it is fragile.  He counsels us repeatedly to stop living as though there is always tomorrow and to start today living our life according to his message. Remember what he said to the rich man who had a bumper crop and said he would pull down his barns and build bigger ones. ‘You fool, this night your life will be required of you!’

If we are to stop living our life as though there is always tomorrow we will have to release our tight grip on the things the world offers. Of course, we have to live in the world and we do have to take care of ourselves, and of our families.  However, it is a question of trying to maintain the right priorities.  What, however, are the right priorities in the lives of those readying themselves for the kingdom?  One distinguished scholar says this: For Matthew ‘living the life of the kingdom, (means) living the quality of life described in the Sermon on the Mount’ (E. Boring).

The Sermon on the Mount says we are to be peacemakers, bringers of mercy, pure in heart, humble, to hunger after righteousness, and to accept persecution on behalf of Jesus.   It is hard, however, to display these qualities and live by these values over the long term. That was the problem for some in Matthew’s congregation.  Some did live by them in the long term but many did not.

Those represented in the story by the bridesmaids who ran out of oil did not manage to display these qualities or live by these values in the long term. They may have managed to be peacemakers for a day, or a week, or a few months, but proved unable to sustain the work when hostilities keep breaking out year after year. They gave up on their relatives, friends, neighbours among whom dispute was always recurring.

The members of the congregation represented in the parable by the bridesmaids whose oil ran out may have been merciful in the early stage of their discipleship, but doing it for a lifetime proved too much. According to the parable, Jesus shuts them out of the kingdom.

This brings us to the delicate, the threatening matter of judgment.  Preachers often choose to ignore it, but it would be something of a cop out to do so when it is centre stage in this parable.  So what can one say about it that is hopefully helpful?

I think it is true that if we do choose to use our freedom to lead a completely self-serving existence the danger is not that Jesus will slam the door in our face but that by our action we will put ourselves beyond a relationship with Jesus.  Remember what happened when the rich young ruler came to Jesus seeking to be his follower. Jesus, in effect, said, ‘Yes you can become a follower but first you need to get rid of what would be an impossible obstacle for you to sharing my way of living.  It is your riches’.  The young ruler could not bring himself to divest himself of his money so he went away sorrowful: he, not Jesus, shut the door on the kingdom.

Notwithstanding what I have just said, I do believe the parable has a very positive message for us.  It is reminding us that if we seriously commit to living out the kind of life Jesus lived then the matter of being judged and found wanting is already behind us.  Yes, we are accountable but the outcome is in our hands just as it was in the hands of the members of Matthew’s first century congregation.

Yes, it is in our hands, but living our lives according to the principles set out in the Sermon on the Mount is not an easy undertaking. Merely acknowledging Jesus is Lord is not enough. Merely coming along to Sunday worship is not enough. The words of Jesus must be lived out.

The good news is that we are not called to live them out alone or unaided. As participants in a faith community we have one another for support and company.  We should heed the advice Paul gave to members of the church in Thessalonika. They were grieving over the death of loved ones and highly anxious about their future. Paul says to them: ‘Encourage one another’. Yes, we are to encourage one another as we seek to live the life Jesus calls us to live, and especially encourage any one of our faith family who is struggling with some matter that is overwhelming him or her.

A second thing Paul said to the Thessalonians bears on our situation: we do not have to face life’s issues as people without hope.  Christ offers us hope; and he offers to be by our side on this journey, pointing the way, inspiring us to keep venturing, calling on us to take risks in his name, and, at the same time, providing us with the spiritual food to sustain us on the journey. 

These words from the Sermon on the Mount are spiritual food: they are a source of inspiration, comfort and hope.  Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy; blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God; blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. AMEN   

Risk takers for the Kingdom

A wealthy man is about to set off on a journey. He takes the opportunity his absence provides to test the capacity of three of his servants in handling money.  He detects significant differences in the capacity of each of them.  Consequently, he gives different sums to each servant. But, even the servant receiving just one talent is made wealthy.   One talent was roughly the equivalent of $500,000. The man given five talents was, in effect, given two and a half million dollars.

The master’s trust of the first two servants proved to be well founded. The master repays them for their efforts with even greater responsibilities.  The third servant fails to do anything to increase the money given to him.  Fear of his master causes him to bury his talent in the ground.  He envisages returning the money intact on the day of reckoning.  He does not expect his master to reward him, but he hopes to escape punishment.

However, the master looks at it differently. He criticizes the servant for failing to earn interest on the capital.  Because the servant has failed to put the money to use the master takes it from him and gives it to the servant who was the most enterprising of the three.

Today’s parable is popular with some churchgoers because they interpret it as endorsing Christians amassing wealth.  They applaud the action of the two servants who doubled the money their master gave to them, and condemn the third servant for his lack of enterprise. “Who would want him for a business partner, you would soon find yourself broke and forced to appoint receivers”.

When stewardship campaigns were in their heyday many promoters used this parable to encourage, and sometimes pressure, people to give generously to the church. They put out the message that the appropriate way to express one’s gratitude to God for what he had done for you was to make a sacrificial financial contribution to the church.  Some promoters went so far as to suggest that doing so was the essence of stewardship.

This is but one of many ways this parable has been interpreted. But, it has always been controversial to view the parable as advocating engaging in money making enterprises.  Eusebius, a fourth century bishop, could not accept that Jesus did praise the first two servants and condemned the third.  Eusebius offers an alternative version of the parable: one taken from the Gospel of the Nazoreans.  A gospel now lost.  Eusebius believed this version was truer to the character and teaching of Jesus than the version that appears in Matthew’s gospel.

In the Nazorean version, the status of the servants is reversed. The servant who receives the five talents and the servant who receives two talents are not rewarded but condemned. The five talent servant for wasting the money on prostitutes. We can readily understand him being condemned. The two talent servant doubles his money but he is condemned not praised for doing so. Why is he condemned?  Probably because the prevailing view among the peasantry, who comprised the bulk of the population of Palestine, was that an individual could only increase his wealth by extorting it from others. The pie itself could not be enlarged, and what existed was already distributed. Consequently, a larger piece for one person automatically meant a smaller piece for another.  St Jerome said: “Every rich man is a thief or an heir of a thief”. Accordingly, in keeping with this view, in the Nazorean version of the parable, the master, rebukes the second servant the one who multiplied the talents given to him.  

However, the servant who buries his talent is, in this version of the parable not the villain of the story, but the hero. He is praised by his master.  From a peasant’s point of view, burying the talent was the honourable thing to do: it was a safe way to care for someone else’s money.  According to Jewish law  if a loss occurred the person burying the money had no legal responsibility. 

So which version is the closest to Jesus’ original version? Eusebius believed the lost Nazorean version.  As I said, he could not imagine the first two servants being commended by Jesus for they could only have become wealthy by robbing other persons of what was rightfully theirs.  This version is also consistent with the critical things Jesus said so often about wealth and the wealthy. 

Nevertheless, most contemporary scholars do not regard the Nazorean version of the parable as the closer to Jesus teaching and values.  They regard Matthew’s version as the more authentic one.  You may be surprised.  You may well feel more comfortable with the Nazorean version.   Matthew’s version of the parable often shocks the reader because it quarrels with their sense of what is right. 

So why is Matthew’s version seen by scholars as the authentic version, given that it appears to contradict the main tenor of Jesus’ teaching on money and wealth?  They view it as the authentic version, in part, because it does have surprising twists, because it does shock.

When it comes to parables, the genuine Jesus parable always surprises, and usually shocks.  His parables contradict what his contemporaries believed was the natural order of things: the God given way for them to feel and act.  For similar reasons they sometimes still shock today.  For instance, reflect for a moment on how many people in the contemporary church express disapproval of the father’s loving reconciliation with the wayward son in the parable of the prodigal. They judge it as morally reprehensible: unfair to the elder son who stayed home and worked the farm whilst the younger son wasted part of the family capital on prostitutes and drink.

That is one memorable example of Jesus shocking us.  And, he shocks us because he is consciously trying to change the way we think and behave.  He is about disturbing the status quo.

The parables we are considering in this season of the year are all called parables of the kingdom.  Why is that? Because they are heralding the coming of a new and radically different order. This parable, like the parable of the ten bridesmaids we focused on last week, communicates information about how followers are to spend their time between now and the end of history when God’s reign is established in its final form on earth: that is when the kingdom comes.

So what is today’s parable telling us about how we should prepare?  Is this parable God’s endorsement of us preparing by engaging in free enterprise capitalism?  Is the message, God wants you to devote your life to making as much money as possible?

In trying to sort out what Jesus is attempting to achieve with a particular parable we should always keep in mind that he does not necessarily approve or condemn what he is reporting about the lives of people around him.  Jesus uses crises in people’s lives not to provide us with a model to imitate, but to provide us with some insight as to how he wants us to prepare for the kingdom: how he wants us to treat others now and in the future.

In the present instance he is not saying go and imitate the first two servants by making a lot of money.  He is using the example of how they went about making money to say this to us: in preparing for the coming of the kingdom commit yourselves to the tasks God gives you, whatever they are, in the way these two servants committed themselves to the task of making money. Do not go about it in a half-hearted way, but a passionate way.  Like the first two servants in your endeavours, be enterprising and risk-taking

But, why are they so enterprising and ready to take risks?  The obvious answer is because they loved money. However, if they are making it for someone else would they be so passionate?  They are probably passionate because they understand that they have been gifted the money.  It is theirs to use.

The leading scholars in this field say the big surprise of this parable is that the Master is giving the money to his servants: that he gives them the money rather than loan or entrust it to them is stated in verse 28. After the master dresses down the third servant for sitting on his talent, the master gives this instruction, ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten talents’. 

I know this is not the usual interpretation put on this story.  Preachers usually report that the master has entrusted the money to his servants and that it is not theirs to keep. Similarly, they say, God has entrusted us with various talents – abilities and material resources -- but these are not ours.  We are stewards of the things that belong to God they stress.  

If the master’s intention was for the money to be returned to him with interest one would expect the servants to be left with a detailed set of instructions as to how these results were to be achieved.  But there are no instructions.  There are no such instructions because the money is no longer the masters but the servants. No instructions because by gifting them the money he frees them to be creative.  He does so because he is interested in seeing what they can do when their actions are passionately motivated.

The first two servants appreciated that their master was doing this, and given his generosity, they felt free to take risks and be enterprising in their use of the money.  

In this parable Jesus is saying to his followers, ‘Be committed, enterprising and risk-taking in preparing for the kingdom because God has bestowed on you immeasurable gifts’.  The notion of the kingdom encapsulates God’s gifts to us: a new life lived according to values that are the opposite of those that dominate our world. 

Do we view the kingdom as the gift of a God whose generosity knows no bounds?  That is the recurring New Testament message.   You may be thinking, “Well I don’t have a view on the matter because I am far from clear just what the kingdom is”.  That is a fair response. This is not the time to explore its various meanings.  But, we can say something about the qualities of life in the kingdom, and how they manifest the gifts of God because Matthew says much about these qualities.

 The Sermon on the Mount talks about how people will relate to one another in the kingdom and what qualities will characterize their behaviour. Among the more important are love, justice, mercy, and forgiveness.

When we say God has ever so generously gifted us the kingdom we are saying in a short hand way that God has expressed his boundless generosity by giving us his love, mercy, forgiveness and treating us justly.  These actions stand as God’s most precious gifts to us humans.

What do we do with such gifts?  We are not meant to horde them in the way the third servant did.  We are not to sit on them, keep them for ourselves.  Accepting them incurs the responsibility of using them. 

To whom are the gifts to be passed on: Fellow members of our faith community, neighbours, and relatives?  Yes, but not only these people. We are also being called on to share the gifts with those outside our circle: this is what takes initiative and is a risky thing to do.  We are to venture into the territory peopled by strangers, opponents, the indifferent, the antagonistic. This is risky. One can be misunderstood, criticized, humiliated, and rejected.  Fear of these things happening may discourage us, inclines us to play it safe and just stick to sharing the gifts of God with those who do accept us, understand us.  But, is that enough?  Love demands risks and it will always bring disappointments.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, the promise is that sharing the gifts of God will bring joy and fulfillment as well as pain and heartache, it will grow our hope, and, our sense of being enveloped in the tender life sustaining love of a merciful and forgiving creator.

Well done, good and faithful servant is the message!  You have been faithful in managing small accounts, so I will put you in charge of large accounts. Come in and share my happiness (Matt. 25:21,23).  

Judged by our acts of mercy

Todays’ gospel reading is one of the defining passages of the Christian faith. In it, Matthew offers us the only detailed account of the Last Judgment found in the New Testament.  The last judgment depicts who gains entry to the kingdom and who misses out, and offers the reasons for their fate.

On his return to earth Jesus declares himself king, ascends his judgment throne, and all the nations of the world are brought before him. Jesus the King separates the sheep from the goats, putting the goats on his left and the sheep on his right.

For centuries, this reading has confronted hearers with a terrifying image.  It still worries many people. Some say, “I do not want to be a goat. How can I be sure I am a sheep and not a goat? This is not a surprising response – particularly if you believe that the Bible is literally the words of God.

Perhaps a more typical response is to respond to this message of divine punishment with feelings of dismay or even repulsion.  There are many who say something like this: “I do not believe God judges us the way described. God cannot be so cruel as to assign anyone to excruciating physical punishment for eternity. I cannot reconcile such a God with the God Jesus shows us: kind, compassionate and forgiving”.

I have on occasions, said something of this nature myself.  However, I do not think we should dismiss this passage without seeking to see if it has a message for us.  If we do dismiss it, we may well throw the baby out with the bathwater and we may well do Matthew, Jesus, and the scriptures an injustice.

In deciding how to respond to this confronting message of judgment, it helps to know something of the world-view that drives it; the world-view that leads to the writer reporting that those the Judge defines as goats will be banished to the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.

The foundation of this world-view is the conviction that through most of human history there has been an ongoing conflict between two kingdoms: that of God and that of Satan.  

Matthew believes that since humans first rebelled against God the kingdom of Satan has dominated human affairs.  The freedom God gives human beings has alas, become part of the problem. Humans make the wrong choices, ones that facilitate the kingdom of evil controlling human activities and relationships.

That said Matthew does not believe the situation is hopeless. Far from it.  Because God is God, He can end Satan’s domination of human affairs when he chooses. The kingdom, which is present in embryonic form in the person of Jesus, cannot come to full fruition until God destroys Satan and his servants.  Satan, and all those who support him, must be destroyed in order that humans will cease to be controlled by the force of evil and serve as its instruments. Matthew believes this will happen soon.

(*From Matthew’s perspective, there is no room for laxity or compromise or for concession when dealing with Satanic forces: for goodness to prevail then evil must be vanquished is a central tenet of Matthew’s gospel *).  

Bearing these beliefs of Matthew’s in mind we can now look at the particularly troublesome passage in the reading: the one that states that the goats will be banished to the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’.  The first thing to say is that the punishment was not prepared for human beings. It was never meant for them. But, unmerciful human beings have put themselves on the side of the Kingdom of Satan. Now that this kingdom is to be overthrown they will share the fate of those who have been agents of this kingdom.

You may still find this interpretation unacceptable because the idea of any punishment is offensive. God is a god of love, you say, so how can he do this?  Well the message of the great judgment scene is not that God inflicts the punishment on us but that we inflict it on ourselves if we make the choices that put us on the same side as the force of evil in the struggle between the two kingdoms.  The outcome is in our hands, in what we do or choose not to do now, in the present.

We also should not be dismissive of the idea that there is a force for evil as well as a force for good in the world.  We do not have to personify the force, but given the extraordinary capacity of human beings to be cruel to one another individually, but especially collectively, the notion of a force of evil offers us a useful tool for thinking about human affairs.  

But even if you do not believe in a force for evil operating in the world that does not preclude you accepting that you are accountable for what you do with your life; that each of will be held to account for  how we treat others; that we are accountable to someone beyond ourselves, someone we Christians call God.  The message that we are accountable to God runs like a golden thread through both the Old and the New Testaments.     

The biggest surprise of today’s reading is that our fate hangs not on what we say but what we do, or fail to do.   In Matthew’s account our fate does not hinge on whether or not we confess Jesus as Lord. There is nothing here about forgiveness, nor of Paul’s notion of our being made right with God -  justified - by the faithfulness of Christ.

In fact, the message of Matthew can be interpreted as running contrary to what is commonly taken to be the main thrust of Paul’s message because Matthew affirms that our fate depends on works, not works in general, but works of mercy. Whether or not we care for needy people is the decisive matter:  Do we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, provide hospitality to the homeless, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned?  

In the great judgment scene the people who carry out these works stand on Jesus’ right, whereas those who fail to engage in these merciful acts are place on his left: they comprise the goats.

That our fate depends not on saying Lord, Lord to Jesus, but on performing works of mercy for the needy was a surprise for the first hearers of Matthew’s gospel and it constitutes a surprise for many of today’s Christians.  

Let me not leave you in any doubt as to what Matthew is affirming. He is not saying that we gain extra credit for engaging in acts of mercy: it is that doing these things, or failing to do them, decides our fate.  Our future hinges on these actions or inactions, alone.

The acts of mercy are not a supplement to professing Jesus as Saviour. Their performance is indispensable to being right with God. Moreover, performing the six specified acts is all we do have to do to gain entry to the kingdom, says Matthew, nothing more is required.

Yes, Matthew prioritizes ethics in his account of salvation.  However, Jesus is not left out of the story.  The main thrust of the story is this: when people respond to the needy, or fail to respond to them, they are in fact responding to, or failing to respond to Christ.

This fact surprises both groups of people in the narrative: the sheep and the goats. Neither the sheep nor the goats realise Christ is present when they come face to face with the needy.  The sheep cared for the needy, though they did not see that Jesus was present.  They offered care to those who were hurting without considering what the status of the needy was, or whether they could pay them back in some way.

What does Jesus say to those who love and care in this way? ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me’

Then the carers answer: “Lord when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, when did we see you thirsty and gave you drink and so on?  It is clear from their response that the carers, that is the sheep, do not realise that in caring for the needy they have cared for Christ.  Christ the king answers their question: ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’

But to those on his left Jesus gives damming news: ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, nor drink, nor shelter, nor clothes, nor did you visit me in prison.  

The goats – that is the dammed - reply, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of you?  And Jesus says to them: ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

To whom is this message that one is saved by performing works of mercy addressed?  Is it only to believers? No, it is to all human beings. Does it mean that those who do not follow Jesus, or do not call on his name, can enter the kingdom?  Yes, they can, if they extend love and mercy to the needy they inherit the gift of life. The carers of the needy will be included in the kingdom even if they are non-believers.

In short, believing in Jesus is not a pre-requisite for entering the kingdom.  The pre-requisite is practicing the acts of mercy. So, can you be a signed up follower of Jesus, someone who declares that he is Saviour and Lord, and miss out on the life God offers? Yes you can, is the message of Matthew’s gospel. The same criteria for sharing the banquet of life apply to those who profess belief, as those who do not. For their part, those who know Christ and call him Lord have to go beyond this acclamation and recognize and serve him in the poor and needy. On the other hand, those who do not know the Lord, or know of him but do not accept his Lordship but who treat their fellow human beings with decency and mercy, will find themselves welcomed into the banquet of life (Boring, 1994).

So, we are back with the message that we find so confronting.  The message is a tough one because, as I said earlier, Matthew sees the kingdom of God engaged in a fight to the death with the force of evil.  God must vanquish the force of evil or the reign of God on earth will at best be a partial one.

Matthew stresses that not one of us can sit on the fence in this struggle between the two kingdoms.  Each person must take sides. You side with God’s cause if you live by the direction to engage in works of love and mercy for the needy.  If you fail to do so, by your inaction you align yourself with the counter kingdom. Then you will automatically suffer the same fate as the members of this kingdom. So, as I intimated earlier, the message is not that God chooses to punish human beings.  It is that by their inaction they consign themselves to the same fate as Satan and his minions. 

Now we may not accept the apocalyptic depiction of rewards and punishments Matthew presents us with in his gospel. However, the truth that emerges from this reading is this: mercy leads to life and its opposite results in exclusion from the banquet God offers us.

The final thing I want to say is this: the great judgment scene extends our understanding of what it means to say God is with us.  On the one hand, we have Jesus the exalted Lord, coming in glory attended by the whole court of heaven. He is about to exercise all power in heaven and on earth.  On the other hand, we hear Jesus, the king of glory, identifying with the disadvantaged of the world – the least of my brothers and my sisters.  He comes not to be served by them, but to serve (20:28). 

By this self-identification of himself as the servant, Jesus bridges the gulf between God out there and the least among the humans of this world (Boring, 1994). Yes, the Christ, whom the scriptures reports, comes in glory is, in fact, already present as the one who is met when we reach out to the poor and needy of the world.  AMEN

Advent   the season for Penitence as well as joy      [i]

O God that you would tear open the heavens and come down! You are no use to us stuck up there.  We need you down here with us.  Things are going so badly for us. We cannot make it on our own. We have tried and it does not work.  How do we make it through the nights, days, months, years, of darkness and despair?  How do we deal with the anguish of loss, of longing for our land, how do we go on bearing the unbearable?

 This great appeal is a cry of desperation uttered by the Hebrew people who are in a state of complete despair.  Nothing is going right for them.  They have been down-trodden by one great power after another. They are crying out to God to save them from their oppressors.

We know God you can fix things for us, if you but choose to do so. You used your servant Moses to lead his flock through divided waters and to give them rest elsewhere (Is. 63:11-14). Please God, do the same for we, your people, now.  The pleading turns to anger. Why are you hiding yourself up there God? You can make it all right if you choose, but you don’t!  

Can you relate personally to the pain of the Hebrew people? God was not there when you needed him. You are retrenched unexpectedly. Your child is becoming increasingly rebellious and often beyond your control. Perhaps your partner dies early and tragically.

Or perhaps you find yourself worn down emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically, by having too much to do, by being taken for granted by those around you; by being treated as a servant whose job it is to achieve the goals of others rather than being regarded as a person with needs and aspirations of your own.

Perhaps life has become a drag rather than a joy for a variety of reasons.  You find yourself saying, what is the point!  Why has my life been so mucked up, God? Are you listening God? Why did you let this happen to me, not someone else.  Are you there God, are you listening?

One possibility is that God is listening but you and I are unable to hear him because we are just too busy, living life at a frenetic pace. Yes, and I hesitate to say it, living as though there is no God.  This approach has worked, its seems, while things were going well for us, but when things go wrong and we cannot fix them we reach out for God and we cannot find him.

It is not that He is hiding it is that we have walked away from Him. No relation works unless both sides participate, and that goes for a relation with God just as much as for a relation with another human being.  Consequently, when God does not seem to be there for you or for me, perhaps our first question should be the same as the Hebrews put to themselves and to God. They addressed this question to God: Are you hiding God because we have been rebellious?   Or, we might put this question to God: Can I not find you God because I have been living as though you do not matter, not even exist?

This Sunday morning we are only four sleeps from Christmas day.  As I deliver this sermon you may well be thinking why are we dwelling on these rather depressing matters in this season of joyfulness and unqualified thankfulness to God for his blessings, and especially the gift of the Christ child?

Well, it is the season for joyfulness and thanksgiving, but that is only one half of what Christmas is meant to be about.  Christmas is also the season for lamentation, despair, and penitence. Yes, you heard correctly.  But why is it the season for these negative emotions? In large measure, because the boy king who came to rule, did not end up ruling, at least not in the way expected.  He was to spearhead the establishment of God’s eternal reign on earth: the force of evil was to be vanquished forever, man’s inhumanity to his fellows was to become a thing of the past, and peace was to prevail instead of animosity. That was the hope, no, more than that it, was the God bestowed certainty.  The favoured -- the faithful followers -- were to be rewarded by participating in the peaceful and joyful reign of God here on this planet for eternity.

 But, the hope was not realized in that first century or in the second century, and not in any of the intervening centuries. Indeed, for many people today, it seems a forlorn hope.  Yes, we sing carols as though it has all come to fruition: We sing, hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn king, peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.  Such carols, however, do not speak of the world as we know it. Look around you, the suffering is immense, the damage humans still do to one another is horrifying beyond comprehension.  It is not that humans are more selfish than in the past it is just that the technology at our disposal enables us to inflict more pain than in earlier times, and God is certainly not intervening to prevent it occurring.

We have just come through the season following Pentecost. During this season, Sunday after Sunday we have been reminded that it is our responsibility as Christians to do the work of the kingdom. Yet, despite the best efforts of Christians all over the globe, despite the work of the spirit the world is not redeemed.

I am not offering a fresh insight here.  This reading of the situation has been common among Christians for close to two thousand years. 

Consequently, for centuries, Christians observed Advent by fasting and penance: it was for them a mini-Lent.  It is still observed this way by churches of the Orthodox faith. 

Each year, as we engage in our month long festivities that feature food and drink in abundance, those in the orthodox tradition deny themselves these things.  They are endeavoring to remove any impediment their lives constitute to God fully establishing his reign on earth.

By being penitent, Christians acknowledge that their rebelliousness is standing in the way of God reigning on earth.  Is human rebelliousness the only reason the kingdom has not come in the way promised in the scriptures?  We cannot know, but we do know that things in our world and in our lives are not as God means them to be, and that you and I participate, to at least some degree, in humanity’s rebelliousness in the face of God.

As Graeme pointed out when he preached on the first Sunday of Advent, maybe, like the Hebrews, we hide from God rather than God hide from us.  In the book of Isaiah God offers this decisive reply to the Hebrew people’s claim that He was hiding from them:      

“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not seek me, but to a nation that did not seek me, I said: Here I am, Here I am. 

So, Advent is the season of despair, challenge, and self examination as well as of joy and thanksgiving. It is the season to face up to the fact that the kingdom is not a reality in the way the New Testament writers expected it to be, nor in the way it is depicted in many of the carols we take such pleasure in singing.

Are we part of the problem, rather than the solution?  Do we profess faith in God even with great vigour, but in our daily thinking and behaviour carry on as if there is no God?  If we do then that could be why when something comes out of left field that turns our life upside down, and generates overwhelming feelings of desperation we cry out,  ‘Where are you God, why did you let this happen to me, why are you not here for me?’

Faith is a relationship not a belief in a set of doctrines, and a relationship only survives and grows, if we put in. If we work at it, think about it, and pray about it. But, if we don’t care for it, the relationship will not be there when we find ourselves desperate for the other person in the relationship.

In advent, season after season, God stands arms outstretched saying to a people who are preoccupied with their own distractions, with the things that are ephemeral and ultimately count for nought: Here I am, Here I am.

We may think we seek God but, in fact, do so in ways that are contrary to God’s own nature, to his laws.  If we genuinely seek God it will be on his terms.  Mark, in his gospel, makes it so plain that coming to God demands a contrite heart: repentance, a seeking of forgiveness. Do we want to accept his invitation? Do we repent of our rebellious ways and seek forgiveness or do we harden our hearts and just do our own thing?  In our time, the kingdom can only come if we do soften our hearts.  In our time, the only way in which the Messiah can travel and bring salvation is if humans repent. If hearts remain hardened Jesus’ words will be misunderstood and rejected.

But, if we do repent, then our hearts become the new highway in the wilderness of this world for Christ to come offering salvation.  Let us be truly penitent and accept at advent God’s invitation to walk in his ways, and if we do this, we help the kingdom come. Soften our hearts and we can sing with conviction and much joy: peace on earth and good will to all men and women.

The child born to be a new kind of king

Today’s gospel reading is a play told in three scenes. In the first scene we travel to Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David, to witness the birth of another king, Jesus.  It is a scene filled with surprises. The first surprise is that this king is not born to a royal couple but to the humblest of parents: Joseph a Carpenter, and Mary his betrothed or newly married wife.

In the previous chapter of Luke’s gospel we are offered another surprise about Jesus’ parentage. It is this: Joseph the peasant carpenter is a direct descendent of Israel’s greatest King, David.   Every Jewish reader of Luke’s narrative would have understood the implications of this information: a child whose father was a descendent of King David could prove to be a very special child indeed.  Why?  Because the Hebrew Scriptures declare that the Messiah, the one sent by God to save his people, would be a descendent of King David.  Is this child the Messiah? That question would have formed in the minds of the Jewish readers of Luke’s text.

The first scene closes with the announcement that the child’s birth had to occur in a shelter shed for animals because the innkeeper could not provide a room for the child’s pregnant mother. Why are we told this?  Partly, to reinforce the message that Jesus had humble beginnings; but also to foreshadow the eventual rejection of Jesus and his gospel message by a majority of people.  No room in the Inn for the baby Jesus eventually becomes no room in people’s hearts for Jesus the man, or for his gospel message.  

The following extract from the first chapter of Isaiah, written some eight centuries before Christ’s birth, is viewed by many Christians as signaling Jesus’ ultimate rejection by his own people (Is. 1:3) In this extract we  hear the Prophet reporting what God has said to him. 

The Ox knows its own,

and the donkey its masters crib;

but Israel does not know,

My people do not understand.

Well the people of Israel did not understand or accept the claim that Jesus was the Messiah.

There is a further way that Luke stresses the significance of the birth, and it is by telling us it occurs during the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus.  The Roman Emperor was the most powerful person in the then known world, and, politically and socially, the empire was the world.  So, what is Luke saying by mentioning the emperor? He is telling his readers that the significance of the birth of this child reaches far beyond the boundaries of his own family, or of the Israelite people. The significance of this child’s birth reaches to all corners of the Roman Empire, and beyond. This baby will ring in God’s changes for all peoples of the world.

We come now to the second scene (vs8-14) in this drama. Some shepherds are centre stage. It is night- time, and they are caring for their flocks. The unexpected appearance of an angel of the Lord wrapped in glory breaches the stillness of the night.

The angel’s appearance terrifies the shepherds, as it would terrify us, if we witnessed it.  The shepherds were not in the habit of seeing angels when caring for their flocks. The angel says to them: Don’t be afraid because I come bearing news that will make you joyful. Your Saviour is born today in David’s city (Bethlehem). This Saviour is the long awaited Messiah, he is the Lord.  

Calling Jesus the Saviour would have struck a chord with Luke’s first readers because they knew that the Emperor Caesar Augustus bore the title Saviour. The emperor was called Saviour in recognition of the fact that he had instituted a reign that was as good as any person could have hoped for at that time.  His subjects looked forward to a peaceful and secure future. But, the Emperor’s successors destroyed their hopes and dreams by proving to be brutal rulers.

Consequently, when the angel announces that Jesus is Saviour he is telling us that Jesus is a true Saviour. Unlike the emperors of Rome, he will deliver on his promise to institute a harmonious and peaceful reign: it will be God reigning on earth.   

Jesus is also described by the angel as Christ, the Lord. This is the only occasion in the New Testament that he is so described.  However, the word Lord occurs four times in the course of a few verses.  In the other three instances, the title Lord refers to God. So, when Jesus is called Lord we are, in effect, being told that we have a meeting of the human and the divine in the person of the baby born in the manger.

(*The description of Jesus as Saviour, Messiah and as Lord articulates Israel’s hope that there would come an anointed figure to inaugurate God's great plan for the world  *).

Just as the shepherds are trying to digest this information they experience yet another heart stopping surprise: a heavenly choir appears, as it were, from nowhere, and bursts into a doxology: Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours’.

The heavenly host returns to heaven and the shepherds decide to go to Bethlehem and see for themselves what has happened.  The angel tells them how to distinguish the royal child from other children. He will be wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a feeding trough for animals.   An animal feeding trough would have seemed to the shepherds a quite inappropriate place for the Messiah to be born. But of course, this is only the beginning of a story of God's totally unexpected and puzzling ways of bringing about his rule on earth.

Contrary to the widespread expectations of the Jewish people, God does not use force to institute his kingdom. He institutes it by sending a deliverer, Jesus, who uses submissiveness and humility to accomplish God’s purpose.

What is in keeping with the manger birth is the fact that God announces the event to people of low social standing.  Although the reference to shepherds evokes, for us, a positive pastoral image, shepherding was a “despised occupation” at the time. Shepherds were despised as dishonest people who grazed their sheep on other people’s land.

If God’s action had been consonant with the values and practices of the culture of the time then shepherds would have been among the last rather than the first people to be thought of as witnesses of this glorious event: the coming of the man born to be a new kind of king.

The shepherds participation in the drama serve to show that the Messiah is one sent to the “lowly and the outcast”, for it is to some of the more lowly and marginal that the birth is announced. Yes, to those of no account rather than to members of Herod’s household, or Caesar’s household, or to members of the chief priest’s family.

As Cheryl Lawrie said in a piece she wrote on the Nativity, it was not members of the respectable religious establishment but the dirty smelly and mangy shepherds, the people living on the very edge of their world, whom God chose to be the first witnesses of the miracle of the birth of Christ.  This, she says, is completely unbelievable and that is the point of the shepherds being included in the story.

God’s miracle in Bethlehem is in human terms incomprehensible, completely out of whack with the way the people of the time organized their life and of the values that regulated much of that life. And God’s miracle in Bethlehem is out of whack with the dominant values and cultural practices of our time too.

We come now to scene 3 (15-20). In the third scene the shepherds go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what God’s agent has told them is taking place.  Everything that happens, in scene three, confirms what the angel told the shepherds.

The shepherds find, as promised, Mary, Joseph and the child in Bethlehem, and in a winter shelter for animals.  The fulfillment, in this way, of the angel’s predictions brings us further proof that we readers are witnessing God’s intervention in human affairs.

The shepherds tell Mary and Joseph of the angelic appearance they have been privy to.  We hear Mary’s response to the good news that her son is the Saviour, Messiah and Lord, and the scene closes with the shepherds singing praises to God as they return to mind their flocks.  The lives of the shepherds could never be the same again; nor could the life of Mary or of Joseph.

 So, a story that begins with a reference to the most powerful figure in the world, Caesar Augustus, concludes with the visit of people of no social account -- the shepherds -- to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

Today you and I have visited Bethlehem, the place where Christians affirm God came to all people through the birth of a child. The three-scene play takes us into a world far removed from the ordinary world we know: into a world of mystery – of happenings of the kind none of us have experienced: one in which angels become visible and a heavenly choir sings.  The story does have something of the character of a fairy tale.  Nevertheless, many of the people who hear the story today will take it to be a literal account of what happened two thousand years ago.

Other hearers, unable to regard the story as a factual account of what happened, may find it helpful to view the story metaphorically and imaginatively.  Take this approach and you may feel the wonder of God’s grace.  The angels have announced good news. It is the birth of a new kind of king. It is good news of God’s plan for a new world order.  In this world there is a place for the humble, the shepherds, and there is hope for the powerless and the oppressed.  

It is true that since this gospel narrative was set down to be read close to two thousand years ago, things have not worked out in the way described. Jesus’ ministry, his death and resurrection did not usher in a world of unmitigated joy. There is still so much darkness in the world.

Many people today say that the hope of those first Christians of a new order was a false hope.  Perhaps the jury is still out on that. Certainly, there are many Christians who believe that Jesus will return some day and establish God’ s kingdom on earth.  If you are not one of these, you may, nevertheless, still be holding on to the dream that one day all people will live in a fairer, more just, peaceful and caring world than we experience at the present time.  And, one can hope, against hope if you like, that one day human societies will be transformed to become places of peace, mutual acceptance, and joyful living rather than contexts of perpetual strife and oppression of the weak by the strong.

In the meantime, if we are serious about our beliefs and truly cherish our hopes I suggest we should endeavour to make peace happen in our lives, and particularly in our relationships.  We should try to increase the quality of life of those around us by being more generous and less judgmental, more understanding and less ready to take offence, yes, less selfish.

We should endeavour to create a more peaceful and harmonious world by behaving in a caring, humane, and less authoritarian way. If we are of serious intent when we sing of our joy and thankfulness over the birth of the child, we will commit ourselves to trying to achieve such changes.  That can be our contribution to the kingdom coming.  Yes, each of us can make our distinctive journey to Bethlehem, the birthplace of the one whose coming has already changed the world forever, whatever the future holds.  AMEN 

The Dawning of a New Day? A Problem with Epiphany    [i]

Sages from the east follow the light of a star to the home of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.  There they find the boy born to be King of the Jews. They express their adoration by emptying their treasure chests for him.

Why do we celebrate the visitation of the Magi on Epiphany Sunday?  In part because these men humbly, faithfully, and so persistently sought the one born ‘king of the Jews’; in part, because they behaved so generously, offering their most precious belongings as gifts of adoration to the Christ child. When they found him they knelt down and emptied their treasure chests (vs 11).  But, this event is principally celebrated because of the presumed ethnic identity of the wise men; because the wise men were from the east they were believed to be gentiles rather than Jews.  They were gentiles who were faithfully following the star set in place by the God of the Jews.  God chooses to use the wise men to offer a great truth about himself. He is the God for all peoples: and so the birth of the Christ child is good news not only for Jews but also for Gentiles. 

This is the truth about himself that God reveals through his sending of the Magi to find the boy born to be king of the Jews.  From the church’s perspective, this event is an epiphany because it heralds the dawning of a new day in God’s plan of salvation: his salvation is for the people of all the nations of the world.  Yes, the season of Epiphany celebrates God changing the human order in a way that will be a blessing to many people, particularly those who are not especially blessed under the present order.

The light of the star that guides the Magi to the home of Joseph and Mary is the light that drives out the darkness in which all human kind is shrouded, which holds us all captive.  This is the epiphany message. 

The early church did not come easily to this interpretation of the coming of the Magi.  Many Jewish Christians argued that one must first become a Jew before coming to Christ. They reasoned that God chose the Hebrew people from among all the peoples of the world to be his special people.  Paul challenged this view and won a protracted dispute with conservative Christian Jews led by Jesus’ brother, James.  Paul said: ‘[T]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are on in Christ Jesus’. And he also said, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.  This is a seemingly inclusive message.  Jews can no longer claim they have the edge on other nations in the matter of relationship to God.   However, there is a catch to the message.  God seeks relations with all peoples, but they can only come to Him through Jesus Christ.  Does that proviso worry you?

The church views the season of Epiphany as one in which she should engage in missionary activity: communicate to those of non-Jewish background that whatever their race or creed God offers them salvation.  We are to communicate the good news to all that the light of God has come in a unique way in Jesus Christ: that he and he alone is the light that drives out the darkness. 

So, on the one hand, we are saying the gospel is inclusive, it is for all, but, on the other hand, we are in fact offering an exclusive message: we are saying you can only come to God in our way; you have to accept that Jesus is the unique and indispensable doorway to God. If you ignore Jesus you cannot be in communion with God.

Are you happy with that absolute claim?   This is the official message we put out.  Does the claim that Jesus is the only way to God bother you? Does it ring true to your experience of life in Australian society: to your experience of people of different faiths to yourself?  If it does bother you, it may be because we live in a society that puts forward as core values tolerance and inclusion as equals people of all religions, or no religion.

You may be uncomfortable with the traditional exclusive message of Christianity because you know personally people of other faiths: Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus for instance, and they do not strike you as lost souls. You may find they live lives that indicate they are more mindful that this is God’s world than many practicing Christians. You may have found that they are as caring and compassionate toward people in distress as the average churchgoer, perhaps even more so.

You may number some of them as friends.  Knowing people first hand makes it very difficult to cling to old negative stereotypes. Rather it encourages a person to see such people as more like themselves than different and inferior.

Should we stick with our exclusive message that Jesus is the only way to God?  It seems to me that it clashes severely with our humanitarian values, our sense of what is right and fair; it is tantamount to declaring those who do not conform doctrinally are inferior human beings.  I counsel against prioritizing church doctrine over the acceptance of people, irrespective of their theological convictions or lack of them. Are we not sinning, in the sense of damaging others, if we insist that they must conform to our ways and hold our beliefs:  by saying, in effect, you are lost to God unless you join us?  I find it helpful to keep at the front of my mind this dictum: we are what we do not what we say. ‘Not all those who say Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom but those who do the will of my father.’  

Here is something further I suggest we should ponder.  Are the exclusive claims Christianity makes for itself compatible with the character of Jesus: with how he included in his circle of friends and followers the sinners whom the religious elite excluded from the synagogue and shunned when their paths crossed?  Are these claims compatible with his message of compassion and his observation that love for one’s enemies is in effect love for God?  Are they compatible with the message Matthew’s gospel articulates that ones standing with God hinges on our performance of works of mercy not on doctrinal correctness?  

There are some hopeful signs that we have started to move away from the absolutist position we have traditionally taken regarding the necessity to believe Jesus died for your sins if you are going to be acceptable to God.  For example, representatives of major Christian denominations including our own, regularly engage in conversations with Jewish leaders and theologians, as well as with leaders of other religions concerning similarities and differences in matters of faith and religious practice.  Holding such conversations can amount to a tacit acknowledgement that those with whom we are conversing are in touch with God.

A particularly promising sign that Christians are becoming more tolerant was the announcement by the previous pope that the Roman Catholic Church had refuted its centuries old claim that the Jews were outside the kingdom because they had rejected Jesus as Messiah. The pope asked the Jewish people to forgive the church’s sins against them and announced that they were part of the Covenant.

Promising though these signs are, we still have so far to go.  The institutional life of the church displays a considerable degree of cultural lag.  On the one hand, a growing number of the people occupying the pews perceive people of other faiths as brothers and sisters rather than lost souls, but on the other hand, the official doctrinal statements of the major denominations, including the Uniting Church offers an exclusive message.  That exclusive message comes through in much of the scriptures used in worship, in many of the hymns we sing, and the creeds we recite.   Our liturgy says, in effect, the light we celebrate coming at the Feast of the Epiphany is the only true light.

John 3 is one of many scriptural authorities that the church has traditionally seen articulating this message.   ‘For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.  He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God’.  That seems plain enough.[ii]

Let me speak plainly.  Today, an increasing number of Jesus’ disciples can no longer sign off on the claims that Jesus is the only or even the most superior way to God. 

At this time of the year, we re-articulate the promises made in conjunction with the birth of Jesus.  In celebrating this event, we tend to ignore the fact that these promises remain unfulfilled, particularly in the form the New Testament presents them.  God’s kingdom has not been established on earth, at least not in the way the early Christians, and probably Jesus himself, expected it to be established.  At the present time, darkness is so prevalent that it seems at times to overwhelm the light.  What has been happening in the Gaza strip is but one of many examples of the continuing prevalence of darkness on this planet.

That point made, I still believe we should celebrate the coming of Jesus.  He does offer us a great manifestation of the truth that life is not meaningless, it is harsh, often cruel, but it is not without meaning.  More importantly, he shows us that the life based on the golden rule:  the compassionate and forgiving life, is the best life.  The life that is fulfilling is the life that shows that we accept our fellow human beings as our equals, as our brothers and sisters, irrespective of their religious affiliation or lack of one, their beliefs, race, and gender.

Now Jesus is not the only one who has learnt these great truths from his own experience of human affairs, nor the only one to communicate such a message.  In a recent interview Karen Armstrong, one of the leading authorities on the world’s great religions, says that with every book she writes she becomes more and more convinced of the centrality of compassion. She says I have found that compassion is the key to most of our religious and social perplexities.  In the interview, she retells the story of Rabbi Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus.  One day he was approached by a group of pagans, who promised to convert to Judaism if the Rabbi could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and recited a version of the golden rule. He said, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour do.  That is the Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn it’.

In Rabbi Hillel’s account of Jewish teaching, there is no mention of, the Ten Commandments, the Promised Land, or the Chosen People – items of faith that we might consider central to the traditions of Israel.  All this, he says, is ‘commentary’. The essential is compassion: to look into the interior self, find out what gives you distress and refuse to inflict this upon other people. Armstrong says that if we did this, hour by hour, minute by minute, we would be constantly living beyond the prism of our egos. This would bring us transformation and vision. Another Jewish Rabbi said that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is. That is what Jesus did.  He put himself at the opposite pole of his ego, and, by so doing, he put himself in the place where God is.

Jesus is not the only one who can bring us into a relation with God, or show us how we should live our lives. However, he has done these things extremely well. Because of the accident of birth, the fact that we happen to have been born in a ‘Christian’ society, he is the one through whom most of us have come to know the truths we have been reflecting on this morning.  Moreover, through our endeavours to model our lives on his, we perhaps have experienced a sense of rising above the mundane and the ephemeral, of being in touch with that which is eternal, with a God who cares about us and shares our sorrows and failures, as well as our joys and successes.

People of other faiths may have different mediators who facilitate them having similar experiences, but it is Jesus who offers us these things and that is what I suggest we celebrate in the season of Epiphany.  The message of Epiphany should be that God’s loving embrace is available to all, whatever their age, colour, gender, or religious affiliation.  Jesus’ life shows us the truth of this claim; and, it is his light that is most likely to drive out the darkness for us.  AMEN 

So you have had an epiphany have you?

So you have had an epiphany have you?  Do you know of someone else who has had one?  You probably have heard of a celebrity having an epiphany. It’s really cool for celebrities to have an epiphany and to broadcast the fact.  But, not only celebrities are having epiphanies.  Ordinary people like you and I are talking about their epiphanies.

So what do people mean when they say they have had an epiphany?  Is it the same thing as what the theologians and liturgists mean when they talk of an epiphany?  It is in some ways but there are usually important differences.  The epiphanies we celebrate in Christian worship are occurrences in which the invisible God makes himself visible to one or more people whom he has chosen to facilitate his plan of salvation.

The message comes in a spectacular and other-worldly way.  For instance, God knocks Saul to the ground with a blinding light. Saul literally hears Jesus saying: Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?   When Jesus is being baptized by John all those present hear God’s voice proclaiming from the heavens: ‘This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’.

By contrast, when one of our contemporaries speaks of their epiphany they are unlikely to report that their epiphany came from God.  There is next to no chance they will report that they witnessed some supernatural event similar in character to that Saul or Jesus experienced.

What does a modern day woman or man mean when they say they have had an epiphany?   They are likely to mean that they have experienced an unexpected insight.  For some it means they have a new understanding of what they should do with their life. Their epiphany is most likely to be about them and their future: their life dream. This is in contrast to the epiphanies the church celebrates because these are about God’s plans for a whole nation, all nations. 

Isaiah’s epiphany is a case in point. We heard some of it described in today’s Old Testament reading.  Isaiah was telling the Hebrews about it in an effort to coax those living in Babylon back to Palestine.  He says to them in effect you will share in God’s greatness and great plans for all humankind if you do this thing: if you come back and join God in rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple the Lord’s light will shine upon you and your special standing will be seen by all the people who presently live in darkness.  They will come to the light of Zion bringing their gold and incense to the altar of the Lord.  So, do not tarry in Babylon, and if you are already back do not  paralyze yourselves dreaming of the comfortable life you left behind in Babylon, live God’s dream here in Jerusalem.

That was Isaiah’s great epiphany message not about his future in particular but about the future of the Hebrews and about the future of all the nations of the world. 

It is true a modern individual may attribute their epiphany to God but more often than not they attribute it to some human event they have witnessed or in which they have participated.  They may attribute it to something another human has written, or to their own thought processes rather than to supernatural forces.

Yet, an epiphany often has a powerful, even overwhelming emotional dimension to it. An epiphany experience can take you out of yourself and transport you to a place you have never been before. It can induce a rapturous experience.   Barrie Kosky, festival, opera and drama director tells of how his enjoyment of music and his career choice as a director of the live arts, was triggered by an experience he had when he was just fifteen years of age. His father took him to hear Leonard Bernstein conduct Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.  Mahler’s symphony has an exhilarating and uplifting vocal component.  Witnessing Bernstein conducting the work and hearing the sublime music produced a state of ecstasy that took Kosky out of himself.  From that day forward music occupied this special transformative role in his life and eventually in his work as an artistic director. 

It is helpful in talking about personal epiphanies to separate the insight from any changes in one’s life that may follow from it.  The new understanding or insight may lead to a significant change in outlook and behaviour as it did for Barrie Koksy.

As the result of an epiphany experience a person may do as Kosky did and say now I understand what I should do with my life and commence making their dream come true.  An epiphany experience can cause you to see you should set things right with a person with whom relationships have become strained or perhaps broken down.  But, how often do we act on our insights, our epiphanies? 

Biblical epiphanies are some times described as the light that drives out the darkness, or the dawning of a new day.  An epiphany that leads to improvement in one’s mental or physical health, in one taking a more positive attitude to the serious problems that come along can be the light that drives out the darkness, or at least does so for some of the time. This may occur even if you do not attribute your epiphany to God.

Some of you will recall meeting Rae’s friend Ena Danielson.  Ena died a while ago from ovarian cancer.  We had daily contact with her during the last 18 months or so of her life.  Rae had even more frequent contact. For as long as we had known Ena she had always been a person who had her act ‘together’.  However, we and her other friends, were impressed by the equanimity she displayed from the moment she learnt her illness was going to take her life until the last time we saw her which was two days before she died                                                                                                                                                    

Ena busied herself helping us all come to terms with her impending death. Ena had her epiphany years earlier – it was the insight she picked up through reading that life was improved, your sense of well being and your relationships improved, if you focused on the positives in life: you saw the good rather than the flaws in others, were optimistic and avoided being judgmental.  She changed her life in a positive way and improved that of those around her by doing so.

One technique Ena used was every night before she went to sleep to think of ten things for which she could be grateful that had happened that day. She said, “I cannot stop at 10, the list just keeps growing.  She kept the technique up during the last months of her life. 

Ena worked as a spiritual director at the Villa Maria Nursing Home.  She was a practicing Christian but she rarely introduced God into her conversations and certainly not into her advice giving.  We, who were close to Ena, sought her advice and she loved imparting her invaluable wisdom to us.  Ena’s approach released her from much of the emotional and mental pain that can be associated with cancer, freed her to a great extent to enjoy her life, notwithstanding her fatal illness and the often debilitating chemotherapy she received.

People with a severe physical handicap can achieve a partial emotional and mental release from the captivity their handicap imposes on them through an epiphany type realization.  The neurosurgeon, Charlie Teo, tells of such an outcome occurring for a patient of his who was quadriplegic.  The woman had a brain tumour that was going to kill her and she asked Charlie to remove it.  He wondered why she wanted this operation given that her quality of life was so poor. Many in her position welcome the release death brings.  She could do nothing for herself, she could not feed herself, do her hair.

Charlie had the temerity to ask her why she wanted the operation.  She was a little taken back by the question. This is what she said to him.  “I have a sixteen year old daughter and I have much wisdom I want to impart to her in the next few years. I have that to offer her notwithstanding my state and I want to do that”.

This woman had come to the realization that her life had meaning, it had purpose, it was not a living death.  She had released her self sufficiently from the terrible mental and emotional captivity brought by her quadriplegia to implement this plan of action.  The woman’s story was an epiphany for Charlie as well.  It changed the way he viewed people with problems that he assumed would devoid their life of all purpose.  He came to realize how much the attitude and perspective of the person mattered.  What is a nightmare for one person may be an  epiphany for another.

As I said, epiphanies are understood in the tradition of the church as the light that drives out the darkness, and this woman, like Ena, was at least partially released from her darkness by her epiphany and her action in imparting wisdom to her daughter.

The eventual release of some people from the captivity of alcohol occurs following the insight they gain from attending an AA meeting.  They come to the realization that they are alcoholics, they cannot handle their problem on their own – they need the assistance of a force greater than themselves, that is God.  They also need the ongoing support of other alcoholics.  For the project to succeed they must give similar support to other alcoholics in their times of crisis. The actor Anthony Hopkins tells of how he gained release from his captivity to alcohol through taking these insights on board and implementing the plan of action.  He knows that in order to manage his addiction he will have to continue to do so for the rest of his days.  

I have recounted a number of stories of people experiencing personal epiphanies that led to significant changes in life. Although the epiphanies reported today are often highly individualistic and self focused we should take them seriously.  Those that experience them do so. We should listen to their stories even though they leave God out of the narrative.  Anyhow is it not presumptuous of us to impute the epiphany experiences to God?  How can we or anyone else know for sure that God is driving them, especially when the person experiencing the epiphany does not attribute it to God.   We should celebrate their insights when that seems appropriate, and if the plans and dreams they give rise to are likely to have a positive impact on the person’s life we should help them realize them.

The stories I have told showed that the release or partial release from captivity required the person to take action: to change attitude, to change behaviour; and, not leave it all to God or others.  We should facilitate them gaining a release from any form of captivity they are experiencing that is significantly reducing the quality of their life or oppressing them. Did not Jesus seek to release his contemporaries from their captivity?

I find it helpful to regard epiphanies as experiences that may give you another chance. Another chance to put a relationship that has soured right, to find something positive even inspiring in your line of work even though in some ways you experience it as imprisoning, mind numbing and demoralizing.

An epiphany may help you and me make something worthwhile from a dreadful situation induced by an affliction that has no cure, an addiction that it is near impossible to conquer. 

Perhaps we should regard epiphanies as offering us new understandings that if acted upon may result in us living a more enjoyable life, a more fulfilling life and perhaps a life that is more beneficial to other people.

If you are a believer, or open to being a believer, your epiphany may enhance your understanding of God’s nature and the way God relates to human beings.  That said I am not inclined to speculate about God’s place in particular epiphanies and the influence he may have on the outcomes of those epiphanies.  I remember how wrong some of the great Biblical figures seem to get things, at least some of the time.  For instance, the prediction Isaiah confidently made about the city of Zion serving as a light to the nations of the world did not come to fruition.

If someone is kind enough to share their epiphany experience with us and ask us to comment, let us try and help them understand what it may mean for them and perhaps for others in their lives.  Let us help them take as positive and optimistic view of things as possible.  If we do we are highly likely to gain more than we give from the experience.  And, let us be open to accepting this kind of input from others concerning our epiphanies.  Let us do these things with humility, optimism, trust and good will. 

In the final analysis others will judge us, and our Christianity, by our willingness to put aside our personal schedules and preoccupations to focus on the needs and concerns of others.

AMEN

Jesus' First Sermon

Nineteen words, just nineteen. That is all the words in Jesus’ first sermon.  But what a message they convey. They offer us Mark’s gospel in summary form. This is what Jesus says;

 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”.

What is Jesus talking about when he says the time is fulfilled?  What does this mean? What have his hearers been expecting to happen?  When you heard the expression the time is fulfilled and the mention of God’s kingdom you probably thought he is saying that the time is fulfilled for the arrival of the long waited Messiah. We have heard that message so often.  You may also think Jesus is about to announce that he is the Messiah.  But no, Jesus is not referring to himself at all. He is focusing on something God is about to do that is of great significance.  He is telling his hearers that the time is upon them for God to establish his rule on earth.  The time has arrived when God will respond to their pleading that He shift his operational base from heaven to earth.

Jesus is responding to their belief that God alone can put things right by being here among us as our monarch.  Jesus is addressing Jewish people who believe things have come to such a sorry pass for them that there is no worthwhile future without God intervening in a far more dramatic and far reaching way than ever before. 

Now that is a big expectation because the Jewish people believed God had always shaped their history and that he ultimately controls the history of all human kind.   Nothing happens in this world that matters unless God wills it to happen. 

Jesus is addressing people who could readily cite many examples of God intervening in the story of their forefathers, and not always in the way they would have wanted him to.

For instance, the Hebrews believed God tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden. It was for failing to keep all God’s rules.  They believed God subsequently created a great flood to wipe out all the human race for sinning.  He spared only Noah and his family.  When I was a child I wondered why God spared Noah.  After all, Noah subsequently invented wine and became drunk. God must have known this was going to happen so why did he spare Noah?   At the time, the only conclusion I could come to was that God was not a Methodist.

In the centuries that followed the flood the Hebrew people claimed God did many mighty things for them because he loved them more than he loved any other people.  He inflicted a series of plagues on the Egyptian people to coerce their Pharaoh into freeing the Hebrews from slavery.  To guarantee their escape, God drowned the pursuing Egyptian army in the Sea of Reeds.  God ensured his chosen people successfully settled the promised land by killing off their enemies.  There are many who envy God’s power to destroy. One child said this, ‘I wish I could be like God and just wipe out my projects when they go wrong’.

God freed his people from their Babylonian captivity by organizing the war so that Cyrus the Emperor of Persia defeated the Babylonians.  Then God somehow got Cyrus to allow the Hebrew captives to return to the Promised Land.  We are not told just how God did this but Isaiah the prophet is unshakeable in his belief that no monarch could resist God’s power and ultimately every ruler does God’s will.

As a rule, God speaks through an intermediary rather than directly to the Hebrew people.  God chooses the prophet Isaiah to convey the good news of his deliverance of His people from their Babylonian captivity. Listen to Isaiah transmitting God’s message.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because the Lord has anointed me,

He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed

To bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

And release to the prisoners;

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour (IS 61: 1-2a)

But in the centuries that followed their return from Babylon the Hebrews expectations of what God should do grew dramatically.  During those year they were conquered and their promised land devastated several times over.  They now knew that asking God to destroy their current oppressor, whoever he was, was not going to fix their problems.  All that would  happen is that another conqueror would  come along and devastate their lands and probably destroy Jerusalem. 

Many Hebrews developed a profound pessimism about human affairs. Sin seemed everywhere. For many all hope was gone.  But others clung to the view that God was still the answer. However, they said that evil was so widespread and humans so rebellious that God must intervene in a cataclysmic way and begin the whole creative process over again.

To achieve this God must first free all human beings from a more serious and widespread captivity than they had known under either the Egyptians or the Babylonians. This captivity was human subjugation to the demonic world, led by the prince of demons, Satan. Satan had taken over the hearts and minds of men and women and that is why they had rebelled against God.  God could fix things up but He must destroy the demonic power and Satan. Until he does that then Satan will remain the defacto ruler of earth.

So in the centuries leading up to the time of Jesus  the belief developed among an influential circle of Jews that God must do much greater things than he has accomplished for them by organizing their release from Egypt or Babylon.  They believed that God must bring about the transition to a new world order.

These thinkers were future oriented and it is to the final future so to speak that they are talking about.  They believe their prophecies are from God. God uses an angel to communicate the revelation. Their revelation of the future is present in extraordinary imagery. There are upheavals and calamities on a cosmic scale.  There will be cataclysmic events: earthquakes, stars falling from heaven, the moon turning into blood. There is a judgment of the dead: of post earthly rewards for some and punishment for others.

Why have I spent time presenting this account of what can only seem to 21 st century hearers as a way out even crazy world view?  Because Jesus saw the world and the future from a similar perspective.  He too is convinced the world is in a parlous state. Sin is everywhere.  God’s rule was being thwarted by the rejection of God’s kingship by rebellious humanity.  He believed Satan controlled the hearts and minds of men and women.  He believed God could only truly rule, men could only be free to love God and love their neighbour as themselves if God destroys Satan. That is why he went around exorcising demons.

The people to whom Jesus is delivering his first sermon are familiar with the point of view I have been laying out before you. They would have been taken hope from this message of a transformed world and the expulsion of Satan from the world. They would have been hoping that God would shift his operations from heaven to earth.  What else could save them from the Roman oppression?

 When Jesus said the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is drawing near, his hearers knew what he was saying: what you have been praying for, hoping for, God intervening to put things right once and for all. They would have welcomed the message.

The next point I want to stress is that the time that is fulilled is God’s time. It is not Jesus’ time. Nor is the good news Jesus’ good news. It is God’s good news, and it is news about what God is doing.  It is only after Easter that Jesus becomes the object of faith. Jesus does not refer to himself in Mark or in Matthew or Luke as the focus of the belief of others. It is the Kingdom of God not of Jesus that he proclaims: he is offering good news about God’s doing. He is announcing your God, Yahweh, reigns. Yes it is good news about God.

That said, we also have to acknowledge that the definitive establishment of God’s rule has not happened, at least not in the way that Jesus and Paul expected it to be established. The world is still very much in a state of rebellion against God’s laws and hopes for human kind.   The kingdom still has not come to proper fruition.  Does that mean Jesus was offering a futile prediction? Does it mean that the hopes of many of his hearers were also futile?  No, it does not.  The message of the sermon has a dual character.  Things have not turned out as the first Christians expected and as Jesus himself probably expected. But it is also true that in a very real sense the kingdom did come with Jesus.

Brendan Byrne emphasizes that whilst Jesus accepts and works with the conventional understanding of the kingdom of God of his day, much of his teaching, particularly the parables, is aimed at challenging the view that it can only happen sometime in the future when God sets up his rule on earth.  Jesus offers us a vision of a God who is already reaching out to us: offering us a relationship with him now at the present time. So the kingdom has in a very real sense been established whilst it remains to be fulfilled.  The good news is that whilst our social and politically environment still needs reconstructing the transformed relationship with God and with one another that the coming of the kingdom makes possible for each person is already here. 

Because of Jesus, the kingdom is present in a world that is still rebellious. We can say this with confidence: a foothold has been established by Jesus’ life and teaching. Jesus’ healings and the implementation by many people of his message to love one’s enemy are instances of God’s rule gaining a foothold in human affairs.

What are you and I to do about the good news? The good news is about the arrival of a new dawn, and a new dawn demands a response.   Jesus tells us what we are to do at the close of his sermon. We are summoned to “Repent and believe the good news”.  Repenting means more than saying: ‘I am sorry for my failures, my shortcomings. To repent means to turn one’s life around. We are called to turn to the new reality that is dawning, and not return to the past: we are to give our lives to the powers of good and turn our backs on the powers of evil: that is what repenting means.

Second, we are called upon to believe. That also entails more than we usually take believing to mean. To fully believe means to commit your life to the truth that God has revealed to you, and to commit with your total self: not just your intellect but your heart, your body as well as your mind.

Every time a human being’s life is transformed in this way, the kingdom does come. The kingdom is a palpable reality in today’s still rebellious world. It is not a hidden aspect of the world, nor is it a hidden reality of the individual’s heart.  Insofar as individual women and men respond to God’s good news by living lives of loving commitment to God and manifesting that love in their relationships with each other, the rule of God does prevail, and it is seen to prevail.

Nineteen words, just nineteen. That is all the words in Jesus’ first sermon.  But, what a powerful and pertinent message they convey.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”.  AMEN

Acting with authority in the synagogue

We are in the first days of Jesus’ ministry.  He decides to move the base of his missionary activities from his home town of Nazareth to the fishing town of Capernaum on Lake Galilee.  Being a faithful Jew, on his first Saturday in town he attends the synagogue.  He takes the opportunity to interpret the scriptures set down for the day.  As a Jewish male he is, in theory, entitled to do so. However, in practice preaching and teaching had become the exclusive province of scribes and rabbis.  As a visitor, Jesus should only preach if the synagogue leader invited him to do so. Jesus does not wait to be asked: he seizes the initiative and takes the floor.  Presumably, he believes he has something to offer the congregation that is of more value than the fare offered by the regular teachers and preachers.

And the response to his preaching shows he does have something special to offer. Those present are amazed at the way he teaches.  Unlike the teachers and preachers they are used to he offers a clear and definitive message delivered with conviction, passion, and authority.    

His presentation certainly impacts on a man, who Marks says, is possessed by a demon.  He interrupts Jesus’ presentation by screaming out two questions: ‘Why are you interfering with us Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?  He follows up with a declaration of who Jesus is.   I know who you are, you are God’s Holy messenger.

Jesus does not answer his questions or comment on his claim that Jesus is God’s Holy messenger. Instead, he performs an exorcism: he commands the demon to be silent and to leave the man. The unclean spirit throws the man into convulsions, lets out a loud scream, and comes out of him.  The man becomes calm, behaves normally. All present are amazed!

Why has Mark told us the story?  It is not incidental that only Mark among the gospel writers chooses an encounter with the demonic power to open Jesus’ ministry.  He does this because he believes a struggle to the death is occurring between the kingdom of evil with Satan as its principal, and the force of good, that is the kingdom of God.  For Mark, the unclean spirit that Jesus exorcises signifies every manifestation of evil – including sickness, sin and death – and the whole kingdom of evil.

Mark’s story of the exorcism at the commencement of Jesus’ ministry demonstrates that through Jesus God is successfully overcoming the force of evil: that the rule of God is already present in the exorcising and healing work of Jesus. The force of evil still occupies a good deal of territory but the victory of God’s rule is already under way. 

But why has Mark set the story of the exorcism in the synagogue?  You will probably say because that is where it happened.  However, it is highly unlikely that it did happen there. A man who was mentally ill, a man viewed as under the power of a demon was most unlikely to be present in a synagogue service. This is why!  In Hebrew thought everything and everyone was either clean or unclean, and whatever was unclean had to be put right before it could come into God’s presence.  Because of his mental state this man would have been categorized as unclean and so would normally be excluded from worship. He may have slipped in.  What is more likely is that Mark has decided to blend two stories and set them in the synagogue. Mark makes a habit of putting in the one scene two incidents in Jesus’ life that probably occurred in different places at different times.  He does this when he believes the two stories illustrate the same truth.  Mark adopts this approach in this instance because he wants to couple the exorcism with the story of the response of the congregation to Jesus’ preaching. 

Listen to Mark’s account of the response of those present to Jesus’ act of exorcism.  All present were amazed! They kept asking one another. “What is this, a new teaching and with authority! He even commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”  The people respond to the act of exorcism by acclaiming a new teaching, rather than acclaiming the successful exorcism as such. 

The inseparability of the exorcism and Jesus’ teaching is borne out by the fact that in dealing with the demon possessed man Jesus operates entirely by his word.  There are no props, ceremonies or rituals, or magic.  He rebukes the demon and he commands the demon. It is the word of authority that produces the seemingly miraculous outcome. 

Authority is the key word in today’s gospel reading. Mark declares that Jesus speaks with authority but the scribes do not!  This was a pretty big claim.  The scribes were the Oxford Dons, the Harvard professors of religion of their day! They were well versed in the scriptures.  They passed their knowledge onto their students.  However, it is true that they were backward looking.  They relied on tradition.  Their students were required to learn by heart through constant repetition what long dead authorities had once said. When it came to drawing a message from the scriptures that was relevant to the lives of their hearers, the scribes floundered.  They seemed incapable of offering a clear and hopeful message. It as if they were frozen in the past.

Mark does not tell us what Jesus said when he preached in the synagogue.  If we were able to ask Mark why he had not included the substance of Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue in the text he probably would have said because in my account of Jesus’ first sermon I have told you all you need to know. This is what Jesus says in that nineteen word sermon. It was the subject of my reflection last week:

 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”. We learn more of the substance of Jesus’ teaching the further we read on in Mark’s gospel.  However, Mark tells us less about Jesus’ teaching than Matthew and Luke, but if we use all three we get a  good understanding of Jesus’ message.

Jesus offers a future oriented message: a message of how God is going to transform the world, deliver the peace, harmony, joy and love that his hearers have been longing for. Jesus talks of how relationships will be under the rule of God and how people should respond if they want to be part of God’s future. God is ringing in the changes: God will liberate men and women by destroying the force of evil and entering into a transforming relationship with those who seek such a relationship.

What those present in the synagogue on Jesus’ first Sabbath in Capernaum witnessed when Jesus restored the demonic to health corroborates Jesus’ confident and hope filled message. God not only says he is going to put things right, Jesus’ action shows he can put things right.

My final major point is this; what we have witnessed in the synagogue in Capernaum is two kinds of exorcism.  We witnessed the liberation of the disturbed man from whatever was holding him in his power; some of you will say a demonic spirit, some of you will say a neurological disturbance of some kind, a chemical imbalance, a traumatic experience that has caused him to lose touch with reality and plunged him into a recurring experience of nightmarish images. However each of us define the man’s problem, it remains the case that we have been privy to the liberation of this man from a terrifying torment of some kind.

The second exorcism we have witnessed, is an exorcism of a tradition that holds people in bondage (Byrne). Jesus authoritative teaching may exorcise inadequate, harmful conceptions of God, and inadequate conceptions of how we should behave toward one another. There are inadequate conceptions of God and what he wants humans to be and do circulating in every era.