Sermons

Identity and Vocation

Identity and Vocation

Identity and vocation are both central to the meaning of our lives. They are answers to the question: “Who are you?” We search for answers to that question as our self-awareness and maturity develop. I imagine Jesus had a similar search, leading him at the age of 30 to the moment of full commitment which we saw in his baptism. If we look at the gospels of Matthew and Luke from Jesus’ birth to his baptism, there’s a lot about the identity and vocation of Jesus: the wise men identified him as King of the Jews in Matthew’s gospel, and in Luke’s gospel he was circumcised after the eighth day in accord with his Jewish identity, and named with “the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb”. At his presentation in the temple, Simeon and Anna show their prophetic awareness of his vocation. Then Jesus at the age of 12 stayed behind talking with the teachers in the temple and spoke of his awareness that he must be in his Father’s house. At his baptism, the voice from heaven named him as Beloved and Son, and in last week’s gospel John the Baptist described Jesus’ vocation as the Lamb of God, and the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Today the start of his ministry is described, the tangible outworking of his vocation, and Matthew links it to Isaiah’s prophecy about a great light dawning for people living in darkness and the shadow of death. No pressure, Jesus, named by an angel with a word that means Saviour, and called to fulfil such significant prophecies! Judging by the Scripture passage he chooses for one of his early sermons, Jesus may well have based his own self-awareness and sense of calling upon the passages in Isaiah that we call the Suffering Servant Songs. Spong explores this insight in his book This Hebrew Lord, one of his less controversial books.

Our identity is seen in how we tell our stories, how we name and describe ourselves, and the insights others have about us. “Naming” is a key function of self-awareness and empathy with others, which go hand in hand. If we don’t bring feelings and issues to awareness by naming them, we may find ourselves sabotaged by psychological states we don’t understand. We also risk bringing distortions into our interactions with others. Vocation is often sensed as a strong urge to pursue a particular life direction, a calling that comes both from within and beyond us. Gregg Levoy, in a book called Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, says: “Saying yes to the calls tends to place you on a path that half of yourself thinks doesn’t makes a bit of sense, but the other half knows your life won’t make sense without. This latter part, continually pushing out from within us with a centrifugal force, keeps driving us toward authenticity, against the tyranny of fear and inertia and occasionally reason, against terrific odds, and against the knocking in our hearts that signals the hour.” I imagine Andrew, Peter, James and John had a similar experience in our gospel today. As they left their nets and boats behind, I’m sure they felt drawn towards authenticity, the authenticity they saw in Jesus and wanted for themselves. Surely though, a part of them looked back at the familiar and economically sensible life they were leaving, and wondered if this sudden impulse made sense. People explore naming and calling in Clinical Pastoral Education groups in which I supervise. Participants are encouraged to tell their story, to name their feelings and issues, and to encourage those they meet in pastoral encounters to do so too. Participants are also asked to reflect on what they discern about their calling, and to share any affirmations or insights. “Naming” involves acknowledging our awareness of the characteristics, gifts and shadows that are ours; following a “calling” means accepting responsibility to become who we can be, and to do what we can do.

This is what Jesus experienced in the archetypal spiritual experiences that began his ministry. The words that God says to him as he emerges from the waters of baptism are both a naming and a calling: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus might have asked himself: “What does it mean to be a child of God? If I am to respond to God’s love and affirmation, what direction do I take to fulfil that potential, and to share that gift of God’s positive regard?” The testing in the wilderness is part of the reflection and prayer needed for Jesus to discern the shape and shadows of his identity and vocation. The temptations were to give in to egotistical substitutes for the role of suffering servant, and such a surrender to self-interest would have distorted his nature and purpose. Yet God’s naming of Jesus in the baptism precedes this testing, and is a remarkable unconditional statement of love and acceptance, before Jesus has any achievement to show to win God’s favour, before he has faced and rejected temptation, or begun his ministry, or shown his courage in speaking out, or endured suffering and death. If only we could all fully believe that we are beloved children and that God is pleased with us, what empowerment might we receive to live into our best selves and so serve God’s kingdom? What strength might we draw on to face our own shadows and temptations?

All too often we diminish our potential by being overcome by a sense of inadequacy or unworthiness. If we ask ourselves the classic question, “What would Jesus do?” we often set before ourselves an impossible ideal. It’s important not to idealize Jesus out of his full humanity and into superman status. Jesus’ ministry began with a retreat, both a spiritual retreat in the wilderness, and a tactical retreat into Galilee. Matthew says Jesus heard that John had been arrested and he “withdrew” into Galilee. Sometimes I castigate myself for lacking the nerve to stand my ground in the face of conflict. I find the fallibility of the disciples and the humanity of Jesus encouraging in that dilemma. Jesus made choices whether for safety or for silence: he withdrew, into Galilee, or into Tyre and Sidon, up a mountain, away from a hostile crowd, across the lake. He asked people to keep the secret of his identity as Messiah and his vocation as healer. Yet even so his fame spread, and what his wilderness time taught him was that fame was dangerous, and so was the desire to seek power for its own sake. Jesus questioned the desire for power in his disciples, especially James and John. Success was stressful for his disciples as well, with times when they didn’t have time to eat, and demands for feeding or healing that they felt they couldn’t meet. His apparent failure and death were even more of a challenge for those he had called to share his ministry: most of his disciples deserted him and fled. Are we equally afraid of where our Christian calling might lead us and what choices we might have to make?

How did the disciples experience the naming and calling that resulted in their following Jesus? For Simon there was a new name which challenged him to become the rock that Jesus named him to be. Eugene Peterson calls him “Rocky” which picks up the insight that the strengths we name in ourselves or have identified for us by others often have their shadow side. Peter was definitely “rocky” at times, denying Jesus when it came to the crunch, tending to leap in both literally and figuratively, and then, in fear, sink like a stone. Yet even after Peter’s failures of nerve, or foot in mouth episodes, Jesus continued to affirm him as the leader he later became. Jesus offers us that unconditional affirmation as well, but also the chance to name our shadows. Through Jesus, we are the Beloved children of God, forgiven and affirmed. Jesus doesn’t ask Peter “Why did you deny me?”; he asks him “Do you love me?” It’s in answering that question that we continue to discover who we are.

Sermons

Advent Sunday A 22-11-16

Advent Sunday A 22-11-16 – Bridgewater Isa 2.1-5

Faithful God, whose promises stand unshaken through all generations: renew us in hope, that we may be awake and alert. From the collect for Advent 1A

How many of us feel confident that all is right with the world? Everything’s in good hands? world peace just round the corner? hunger, injustice and inequality all but under control? and we have wise, decent leadership at every level of our societies? Are we confident? If not, what might make us feel confident?

The call of Advent is that we actively look forward to these good things – peace, shared resources, justice, equality, wise and decent leadership. The call of Advent is that we truly hope for them; that God’s people truly hope that we will see God’s Kingdom come – a reign of justice, peace, joy and love.

The first Sunday in Advent is called the Sunday of the promise. It’s also often celebrated as the Sunday of hope. That’s what we remembered in the prayer of the day: Faithful God, whose promises stand unshaken through all generations: renew us in hope, that we may be awake and alert.

The focus of this hope in today’s passage from Isaiah is hope for peace. It’s the great Advent hope – that we look for one who will come to us bringing peace on Earth, and good will among all people.

As we’ve just been thinking about the state of the world today, we’ve owned that this universal peace and good will is not our present experience. But it’s especially important in times of difficulty that we can keep ourselves alive to the promise of God’s kingdom. When things have looked grim, confidence that the future belongs to God has always given hope in the present. And we know hope changes the way we behave; but it changes more than we know. Hope has seen oppressed people overcome terrible evils over the centuries. And every generation needs hope that the powers of the world do not ultimately determine the future.

Is this choosing a pipe dream – a willful self-deception? It may be. But even then, does that actually make it wrong? Let’s look at the possibilities – today through the word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. (Isa 2)

At the time Isaiah was given this vision, Jerusalem was facing terrible danger. Israel and Damascus had tried to force Judah to join them in opposing the all-powerful Assyrian Empire. It was a foolish move. When the Assyrians finally laid siege to Jerusalem, the king turned to the prophet Isaiah for advice and assurance.

Isaiah offered this vision of promise. No matter where the power seemed to lie right now, the day was coming when God’s reign would be established for all the Earth to see. And he showed it graphically in a vision of all the nations streaming to Jerusalem to learn the ways of God – to learn to walk in God’s ways.

Isaiah saw the wisdom of God coming from Mt Zion – from the Temple. The temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem was far more than a matter of local geography. It represented God’s presence in the midst of God’s people. So his vision of Zion as the focus of pilgrimage by all peoples was not a political claim; it was a spiritual claim: God’s presence is the true center to which all nations will eventually flow.

When I think that this vision was given to the Judean king while the army of the mighty Assyrian empire surrounded Jerusalem, I’m tempted to think it was at best unrealistic. Yet when I read both the Biblical and the Assyrian accounts of this siege and they both agree that this huge army failed to capture Jerusalem – and they’d besieged and captured so many cities – I have to think again.

Isaiah didn’t tell his king that they would survive the siege. He was given a far greater vision. All the nations shall stream to [God’s presence]. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” [The Lord] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Learning God’s ways; walking in God’s paths, the nations would accept God’s way of determining what is just and right, and as a practical outworking, war would end. Feeding people would replace killing them.

Again, imagine the people of besieged Jerusalem hearing Isaiah proclaim this vision. I’m not sure what the Hebrew is for looney, but I’m sure it would have been muttered pretty freely about the city – until it was clear they’d been spared.

Isaiah was a prophet who could hope; in one of Jerusalem’s darkest hours, he could proclaim a vision of all nations – all peoples – drawn to good, decent living; world peace based on justice. Jerusalem desperately needed this person of hope.

It’s about 2,740 years since Isaiah gave this vision to a terrified, besieged city. And frankly the same obsessions with wealth, power and control still dog our lives today. But every new generation of idealists and peaceniks seizes on Isaiah’s image of swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks and asks very serious questions of those who would settle matters by the use of force – those who would spend money on armaments while poor people starve.

And though these idealists might be rubbished for living in fairyland – lost in wilful self-deception – they remind me of someone else who apparently lost track of pragmatic, political realities; someone who risked everything rather than live by the sword. We celebrated him as our King last Sunday, enthroned on the Cross. And we wait for his coming now – coming as a King born in a stable; coming as a King who will usher in a reign of peace on Earth and good will among all the Earth.

Faithful God, whose promises stand unshaken through all generations: renew us in hope, that we may be awake and alert. Amen

Sermons

Christ the King

Christ the King Sunday C 20 Nov 2016 A & C

Jrm 23.1f, Song Zech (Lk 1.68f), Col 1.11f, Lk 23.33f

I wonder what you’d think about a king who goes about among his people disguised as an ordinary person. That’s just what King Abdullah II of Jordan does. Every now and then in the Jordanian newspapers, a new article will pop-up to say that today, their carefully disguised king joined the queue at a taxation office or a hospital, or he spent the day driving a taxi.

While he’s standing in the queue, he talks with people about how they’re being treated; what sort of service they’re getting. And people do confide in taxi drivers; if there’s something wrong in their life, they’ll often tell a taxi driver about it. I know; I’ve been one.

This is King Abdullah’s way of finding out for himself what sort of experience his people have of his government; what life is like for the ordinary people in his kingdom. So the people who work behind hospital desks and tax office front-counters must always wonder if the next face they see behind the beard of a shabby old man might actually be that of their King. Maybe they behave now as if everyone is their king—just in case. Wouldn’t that improve things!

King Abdullah does this because he cares for his people. He wants to find out what he needs to do so he can to make life better for them. I like a king who does that, and today is all about the King who’s done that for all of us. God came as one of us to experience what life is like for us – to know how we are treated, and to make things better for us. None of us is beneath this King’s notice!

Today, we’re told about some of the ways God makes things better. In our reading from Jeremiah, we’re told that bad shepherds will be dealt with, and God will take their place. Bad shepherds wreck lives; they betray trust and fracture the community of God’s people. They publicly disgrace the name of God. Jeremiah said this would change.

Jrm 23.5 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

So the expectations were huge – and people waited and hoped.

In our canticle this morning, Zechariah’s Song, we sang with an old man who’d waited all his life for this prophecy to be fulfilled. Zechariah had been promised that his son, John, would finally get God’s people ready for the coming of that righteous king. Lk 1.17 Finally, Zechariah held that child in his arms: John the Baptist, harbinger of the Messiah. And Zechariah sang,

Lk 1:76-77… you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.

This is a glorious getting ready. You expect so much; hope so deeply; all that cripples us will change. What a wonderful King this will be. But nothing prepares us for the most glorious moment of that King’s revealing: the one we see today, when we meet our King, dying on the Cross.

He didn’t just come disguised as a vulnerable person like King Abdullah does; he actually became one. And he didn’t just come for a quick, harmless experience of people’s inconvenience before being whisked off in a motorcade back to the palace like King Abdullah does. He suffered all that oppressed people do; he died the way the most ill-treated victims of tyranny do; by government-sanctioned murder. This time, it was the Romans who were the false shepherds.

So how does God make things better. We heard Jeremiah describe it as God replacing bad shepherds with a good one. But even if you replace a bad shepherd, they leave behind a terrible legacy: pain and suffering, confusion and hopelessness, betrayal and bitterness – no clear sense of right and wrong any more. Jesus takes this terrible legacy to the Cross so it can die with him once and for all, and in its place he offers healing forgiveness.

Before Jesus dies, leaders, soldiers, even one of the condemned hanging beside him—each taunt him with the same demand: Save yourself! But he’s not in it for himself. He’s not a false shepherd; not a false King. If there’s a cost to be borne, he will bear it, because ultimately, he’s the only one who really can. He doesn’t save himself; he’s determined to save us all. And as Zechariah sang it, he does it through forgiveness. He bears the cost himself – the spread of the disease stops with him.

Listen to Jesus, as much a victim of evil as anyone can be; listen, as he asks God to forgive his persecutors. Father, forgive them; for they don’t know what they’re doing! Suddenly, the legacy of pain and suffering, confusion and hopelessness, betrayal and bitterness, of no clear sense of right and wrong – suddenly that legacy, and even the power of death itself – all of it is defused. That King – not seated on a throne, but hanging before us on a senseless, violent instrument of tyranny – that King is both the good shepherd who has come to us, and the embodiment of the new reign.

The other criminal still asks him for a future hope: Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.

What we witness here is the complete conversion of a human soul from criminal to saint. He names what he has been, renounces it and turns to Jesus. He calls on Jesus’ name and asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom.

But Jesus replies that the Kingdom is here now: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Jesus receives him immediately – takes him at his word and receives him. Today you will be with me in paradise; restored to everything you might have hoped to be.

This is astonishing. The people Jesus keeps company with here show that none of us should ever imagine ourselves beyond the reach of Jesus’ love, and no-one should ever imagine themselves beneath the notice of our King. And most astonishing of all, this is all here now – today – within each one of us. Amen

Sermons

Pentecost

Pentecost + 25C 6-11-2016 A & C

Discipling each other / Baptism of Olivia Jane Tula

We spend lots of time in sermons trying to get inside the scriptures – and trying to get the scriptures inside us. And doing that is very important to our growth – our maturing – as Christians. But does learning Bible stories bring us closer to God? Does learning about the societies and histories that gave us the scriptures bring us closer to God – help us to grow spiritually? Yes and no.

Yes; I hear stories from people like the Gideons about people who are transformed utterly by their first reading of the Bible. But on the other hand, where access to Bibles is something we take for granted, we don’t seem to be so open to such radical change. Some of us get amazingly knowledgeable about the Bible and its history, but we don’t really mature spiritually. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to make us more like Jesus. Our learning alone doesn’t disciple us properly. There’s something more that needs to happen.

I want to talk about one way that something more has happened for me. Most of you will know that I was on retreat the week before last. And on retreat, I experienced a different approach to scripture; a very important next step in reading Scripture. So let me tell you about my retreat.

First of all, it was a silent retreat. On the evening of our arrival – the Monday, we got to talk with each other over dinner. But once we began to say Compline together – the night prayer – we stopped all conversation for the rest of the week. The only words we’d speak from then on would be the responses during daily worship services, and at our interviews with our spiritual director each morning. Phone and computer use were discouraged too. So we weren’t waiting to speak; we were listening. But what for, and who was speaking?

Each night, we went to bed with a question we were given at Compline. On the first night, the question was what baggage we brought with us on the retreat. It was a shorthand question inviting us to make a note of what pre-occupations; what worries; what unfinished business; what sadness; what anger; what unfulfilment might take over our listening and invade our silence.

It was a good question, and I presented my spiritual director with a wheel-barrow-load next morning. She wasn’t fazed at all. She asked me how I prayed – how I normally laid all these things before God? That was certainly something to ponder on when, for once, I had a day before me when I couldn’t do anything about any of my baggage. I could have felt pretty locked down.

But morning prayer brought the next question – which undid the lock. The gospel for the day was the (Mk 10.46-52) story of blind Bartimaeus – the beggar who cried out to Jesus from the roadside; “Have mercy on me!”. When Jesus called him, Bartimaeus came eagerly to stand before him. Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

That was the next question we were given. And it turned a number of tables.

For once, all that baggage I’d brought with me was cast in a new light. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was as helpless with all that stuff as Bartimaeus was with his blindness. But that was alright. Suddenly, Jesus was right in front of me saying, “What do you want me to do for you?” The tables were turned. I wasn’t bringing my worries to my prayer time; I wasn’t asking questions of the Scriptures like I normally do. The Scriptures were asking me a question. “What do you want me to do for you?” I could drop all that baggage I’d brought, and for once in my hectic year, listen to Christ’s voice speaking to me; words of invitation; invitation to choose to be grown as his disciple.

My ponderings led me to really want to change in one particular way. I can have a tendency to pessimism or mistrust – about people; about world events; about how things are going in the Church – the list could go on. It’s a deep-seated, old habit of thought and feeling. Theologically, it’s a tendency to be wilfully blind to the wonderful things God is up to. So Bartimaeus’ story with its question “What do you want me to do for you?” stayed firmly with me.

Until Wed morning prayer, and the (Jn 5.1-9) story of the sick man who’d come to the pool of Beth-zatha every day for thirty-eight years. That’s a long time to be sick! And Jesus asked him that very peculiar question; “Do you want to be made well?” Surely he wanted to be made well! Yet if your identity gets tied up with being a certain type of person, maybe you don’t. So it seemed that my prayer for change had to become a daily decision. My habits of negativity had been many years in the making. It wasn’t going to be a simple matter of change. Jesus had spoken again from scripture asking me for a decision.

Thursday’s story (Mk 5.24-34) of the woman healed of a bleeding which had afflicted her for 12 years and cost her everything she had confronted me with the extreme risk she took to reach out to Jesus for transformation. And the question that day was, “What would you be willing to risk?”

Friday’s question brought it all together; Paul (Rm8.9-17) asked, “Does the Spirit call you to new life?” My Christian pilgrimage is about laying down my old life so that I may be raised to new life. (cf Olivia’s baptism today)

Spending days in silence with these questions is a confronting thing. Each day, my spiritual director made sure I was not straying from the focus I needed to keep. But my question today is how to give entire congregations the opportunity for this kind of invitation to grow; be healed; risk; find new life?

Sermons

Who Can Be Saved?

Pentecost + 24 C

Aldgate 30-10-2016 Luke 19.1-10 Zacchaeus

Remember the camel entering the eye of the needle and the question, who can be saved? That’s the question today’s Gospel tackles. Can a chief tax collector – ἀρχιτελώνης – architelōnēs – a collaborator in the Roman occupation – be saved? What’s a contemporary equivalent? A drug dealer; a people-trafficker? A pimp? A slaver? Can such a person be saved? Because if they can, who could possibly be outside God’s love?

We know the story of Zacchaeus so well, we have to approach it all the more carefully so we don’t miss what it might be saying to us.

It’s in Luke’s Gospel, so there’s the usual money and food in it. And that’s aimed at all of us.

It also has a story context that we have to attend to. It’s set on the road to Jerusalem, and so the road to Jesus’ crucifixion. And that’s how seriously we must take it: it’s about ultimate things; life and death. There’s just been Jesus’ third prediction of his passion and death to ram this home, in case we’ve forgotten.

Let’s remember the more immediate context – most of which we’ve read recently.

a/ the parables of the widow and the unjust judge

b/ and the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple

and c/ the stories of Jesus receiving the little children

d/ the rich ruler who couldn’t sell up, give to the poor and follow Jesus

e/ and blind Bartimaeus on the road into Jericho

So there’s stuff about little people being mistreated by big people (widow/children), self-righteous people judging outsiders (Pharisee/Tax C), wealth and power preventing people from coming to God (Ruler), and someone asking Jesus to let them see (Bartimaeus).

All that comes together in the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is seen as part of an oppressive system that makes little people hurt so that big people can be big. He’s a chief tax collector; not just a regular one like the man that Pharisee sneered at in the Temple. Zacchaeus was a sort of regional tax commissioner who would have farmed out the actual collection of taxes to subordinates. He would have been a very wealthy man, and possibly the most hated man in the region as well.

Just as ministers have always loved to preach the simplicity of social justice at leaders who have the actual job of making it happen, Pharisees loved to treat tax collectors as whipping-posts. There just couldn’t be any good in them.

So Zacchaeus – architelōnēs – his title is meant to remind us of the other archon – the ruler – that we read about just last week. So wealth and power are in view. The Ruler couldn’t give it up. Will Zacchaeus do any better?

But Luke’s got other comparisons at work: Bartimaeus’s name – some of Timaeus – is based on the Hebrew root טָמֵא – tamæ – which means unclean. Zacchaeus’s name comes from the Hebrew root זַכָּי – zakkai – which means pure, innocent or clean. What’s Luke trying to do to us? …

Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. But it won’t be easy for him. Zacchaeus is short and there’s a big crowd. I feel like him; trying to look over all the crowds of saints who stand in the history of the Church. But back to Zak.

By now, the crowd will be electric with the news that blind Bart got his sight back – Jesus’ newest disciple will be following him into town.

Luke plays on this one who couldn’t see but now who can, and gives us a contrasting Zacchaeus; the one who could see, but now he can’t because of a thick crowd of taller people blocking his view.

So what does Zak do? He climbs a tree. By what road does he climb that tree? Yes, the road into Jericho. But what road is it for Jesus? And what stands at the end of it for him?

It’s almost a parody. Except it’s more serious than that. Zac was looking for Jesus – maybe out of curiosity. But he finds that Jesus has been looking for him – and for a different motive. All along, Jesus was looking for Zacchaeus out of love. I find that so beautifully moving; the reviled, hated outsider, blamed by everyone for his exile because of the life he has chosen – he could be a drug dealer; a people-smuggler – and Jesus has been looking for him. Nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus! Rm 8.39

Zak; come on down. I have to stay at your place! And everyone’s horrified. The knives are out. Jesus’ credibility is at stake with a blunder like this. Except that Zacchaeus reveals a depth of joyful generosity and passion for justice that would shame that ruler of last week’s reading. Salvation has come.

One final observation. I don’t know whether it changes anything for you, but the Catholic commentator, Luke Timothy Johnson notes that Zacchaeus’s giving half his possessions and repaying any fraud are in a continuous tense in the Greek. He has been giving half his money away and if he discovers his tax collectors have defrauded anyone, he has been paying back four times as much all along. And Jesus knew his pure heart – all along. Thanks be to God! Amen

Sermons

Is the Earth praying to us at the moment?

Is the Earth praying to us at the moment?

Pentecost + 21 21/10/07 (Lk 18:1-8; Jer 31:27-34, Ps 119:97-104)

Jesus told a parable about a very persistent widow, and Luke tells us it illustrates our need to keep praying and not to lose heart. What was there in this widow’s life that might have caused her to lose heart? Plenty. First, she’d lost her husband. That meant, in a traditional society, she had no real place in society—being neither daughter nor wife. She had no money, and if she couldn’t remarry, no future. The parable tells us that she’d been abused in some way. And to add insult to injury, her access to justice was blocked by a judge who didn’t fear God, and who couldn’t care less about his public image. The widow had no money to bribe him with, no advocate to plead her cause for her, and that shameful judge didn’t look like he’d ever listen to her.

Yet she persisted. Again and again, she confronted the judge’s shamelessness with the shame of her social position. Her shame was a powerful bargaining chip because she knew it was caused by an injustice, and so justice was owing to her. She would complain until the judge went blue in the face. She acted on an inner conviction of justice. Can we guess where she got that inner conviction and empowerment from?

My guess would be that as a Jewish woman, she participated in the corporate prayer life of her community. There, she’d have heard in the Scriptures of God’s commitment to justice—of God’s particular care for her as a widow. (Ex 22.22-24, Dt 10.17-18) She acted on her trust in the God whom she’d heard in readings from the Torah—passages that were about her; she acted on her certainty in the God she came to know in those readings. It’s as if, when she had the unjust judge in front of her, she addressed God over the judge’s shoulder so she could keep on demanding her justice. It was the turn of the judge to learn God’s ways.

But I believe there’s another way that she had this conviction, and we heard Jeremiah describe it today in chapter 31.

33 this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.

Jesus called his followers to persistent prayer: and that’s what I want us to think about this morning. What that means in terms of this morning’s parable is that we struggle on with it in spite of our doubts and setbacks, believe that it’s right to do so, because it is written in our hearts that we belong to God.

Prayer is a marvellous, liberating gift from God. It’s a place in our lives where God meets us, embraces us, talks with us, and takes us seriously no matter what our circumstances. God is astonishingly broad-minded, and that’s the lovely thing we discover in the conversation of prayer.

When I say that prayer is a gift, I mean by that a spiritual gift which comes to us because of the Holy Spirit living in us. At baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. In terms of the conversation of prayer, we become permanently invited eavesdroppers; eavesdroppers listening in on a dialogue between our mother, the Spirit, our Father and our Brother.

That dialogue—that intimate conversation—is one which could go on whether we were there or not. But from our baptism on, we should grow in understanding that this dialogue is meant to include us; that we need it—this conversation is the true source of our life. St Paul describes that conversation in a part of his letter to the church in Rome:

“… the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

So the Holy Spirit speaks to God from deep within us. And God searches our depths, and there, finds the mind of the Spirit. Through the Scriptures, through the Church, through friends, through creation, God speaks to us. Yet how do we hear God speaking with us?

It’s a lifelong skill, learning to hear God’s voice. But by giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit at our baptism, God ensures that there is within us, from our very birth, the faculty to hear God speak—like any little child, the faculty to learn the language, and to join in the conversation.

God the Holy Spirit dwells within us. She is the mother and teacher of our hearts. Because of her dwelling within us, our hearts gradually learn the life-giving nature of conversation with the divine. There is something within us—it is written on our hearts, says Jeremiah—something within us that feels empty and alone until we know we’re engaged in this conversation. We don’t feel fully ourselves until we can express what is the very deepest part of who we are—until we can participate fully in the most wonderful and profound relationship there is. That’s called being in love. St Augustine prayed it this way; Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being: you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

And Jesus? Jesus stands before us alive in the gospel, and beckons us by his love for us and by his own example to join in that conversation—more easily as he is one of us too. Choosing to join in this conversation just once can change us utterly. Once invited, God persists. And if I’m talking about persistence in prayer today, there’s the source of the persistence; God.

Let me illustrate this briefly.

I spent several years absorbed by Buddhism. Unfortunately for the integrity of my Buddhism—which was atheistic—I’d learnt to pray beforehand as a Christian.

So, and to my intense irritation, I—a Buddhist—would often catch myself in conversation with a God whom I’d rejected. This was particularly the case on the golf course, where it seems that walking around muttering incantations seems to pass for normal behaviour. So I tried to give up golf. But the conversation continued anyway. … Prayer has a persistence of its own. People’s lives are dramatically changed by its persistence; witness an ex-Buddhist Anglican Priest.

So prayer persists. But then what? What comes of eavesdropping on our divine parents? This morning’s gospel sheds an interesting light on this aspect of prayer. It shapes the way you live, and it shapes the way you see yourself.

Remember that widow—most onlookers would probably have viewed her as deluded, stubborn and hopeless—and we might be tempted to see her that way too. But frankly, I see her example as inspiring. She subverted everyone else’s illusion of her powerlessness through her own illusion—if you like—one of her own dignity and worth in the sight of God.

That’s something that hangs around in the life of every prayerful person—a persistent illusion that’s finally more real than anything else.

My prayer is that we may all be as graciously deluded.

Amen

Sermons

Pray always and don’t lose heart

Pray always and don’t lose heart

 

Jrm 31 Ps 119 2Tm3 Lk 18

A major theme in today’s scriptures is prayer in the face of disappointment – persistence in prayer even when all seems lost. So we’ve heard the parable of a persistent widow who wears away at the indifference of an unjust judge: also the parable of a hated tax collector who dares pray in public. And in the letter to Timothy, the heart of the message from the veteran missionary to the younger colleague is endurance and constancy in the face of setbacks.

We can all connect with the disappointment or crisis aspect of this theme. We all know what setbacks are like: health crises, financial crises, family crises, work crises, study crises, natural disasters, wars – we’ll all have been through one or more of these. So yes, we can connect with the stress bit – we all know what that’s like. But do we connect as easily with the prayer bit?

The times of stress are shown in today’s parables as the times when it’s clear that the only thing we’ve got left is prayer. And the scriptures encourage us to go for it. Yet I sometimes hear people telling me something like this: If I don’t bother praying when things are going well, I’m sure as heck not going to start praying now that things are in a mess. I’ve got my principles.

I can understand people saying this, but it’s not quite right, is it. It’s treating God like a friend who’s our equal; as though there’s no integrity to our relationship with God unless we know we have something to offer God – like we are with dinner invitations, where we’d never show up empty handed.

But that’s not how it is. We’re not God’s equals; we’re not expected to keep the balance-sheet equal between what God gives us and what we give God. We can’t. Otherwise that proud Pharisee in the second parable would’ve had God’s ear, and the painfully humble tax collector would’ve gone unheard.

When we hear these readings as comfortable middle-class Australians, it’s amazing what our instincts for self-reliance can filter out of them. Did we hear the point of the parable of the widow and the unjust judge – the reason we should pray always and not lose heart? It’s because our prayer is not offered to a reluctant, petty official. It’s because our prayer is offered to God, and God will grant justice. And God puts that prayer in our hearts in the first place.

That’s what lies at the heart of the second parable; the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who were both at prayer in the Temple one day. Pharisees were respected and respectable people. “They held to a liberal interpretation of Scripture, and the aim of Pharisaic law was to make observance of Torah available to all. Tax collectors, on the other hand, were seen as collaborators with the hated Romans. Far from being seen as humble or simple, they were seen to be (and sometimes were) venal, unscrupulous, and dishonest.”

Marjorie Procter-Smith. (2010). Homiletical Perspective. In Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C (Vol. 4, pp. 213–215).

So this parable’s meant to shock its hearers. Imagine their disbelief: a Pharisee who won’t see or name his own dependence on God: and a hated tax collector who won’t see or name anything but his utter dependence on God. One of them has found God’s Law written on his heart, just like Jeremiah said it would be; the one you wouldn’t expect. And the other hasn’t got it yet.

So this parable tells us that our faith is not something we achieve or earn or do. It’s something God intends to place on our hearts, and our part is to let God do that. We’ve heard Jeremiah tell us that God writes his Law on our hearts. That’s not a statute book; it’s a promise of eternal love; eternal belonging – a little like those hearts carved into the bark of trees – except God has written eternal life onto the mortal life of our hearts.

That’s what happens for Christians at our baptism. The Spirit of God makes a home in our hearts, and from there, speaks out all our needs, articulates all our cries for justice and love with sighs too deep for words. Rom 8.26-27 And God searches our hearts and hears those prayers. The question is if we can hear them to – if we can hear the Spirit praying on our behalf.

We began with the theme of prayer in the face of setbacks. And we realised that although we’re familiar with the experience of setbacks, we’re not always that familiar with prayer. And that’s because we mistakenly think of it as something we have to do. And we don’t have time for it, or we don’t have a habit of doing it. We need to forget this ‘doing prayer’ idea. We need to change our thinking to prayer being something we hear, and something we join in with – like singing along with a much-loved song.

I confess that in my busyness – a vocation that demands that my attention dart constantly from one train of thought to the next – I don’t stop often enough to listen to the prayer that’s going on all the time in my heart. I don’t stop to hear it – to join in with the prayers coming from my heart. The more difficult things get – the more setbacks I face – the busier I’m likely to become, and, I’m afraid, less tuned in to those prayers – often out of practice. I doubt that I’m alone in this.

The wonderful Lutheran writer, Paul Santmire Before Nature, Augsburg/Fortress 2014 pp 24-26 describes practising prayer as being like learning to ride a bicycle. Practice won’t necessarily make perfect, but practice makes possible. Once we’ve learnt, our focussed attention can rest and our spirit is free to experience reality on another level. He suggests three short prayers. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit; come and reign. When I pray this, and I can do it without thinking, all the time, I begin to hear what’s happening in my heart. Pray always and don’t lose heart. Amen

Sermons

St Francis’ Sunday

St Francis’ Sunday 2-10-2016

Amos 6.1a,4-7, Ps 139.13-18, ! Tim 6.6-10,17-19, Lk 10.1-9, 16

Back in the ‘80s in Melbourne, Vicky and I were involved in a discipleship school. It was a full-time, live-in programme where young adults gave a year of their lives to being formed as disciples of Jesus. Life was pretty frugal at DS. No-one was able to give time to earning money; no-one had much of it. The disciples paid what they could – supplemented by whatever their family, friends or supporters might give them. And the parish subsidised the school by paying the rent on the building as well as fuel and water costs.

If life was frugal, it was also very intense. If you’ve ever been on a church youth camp, you’ll remember coming home both exhausted by the intensity of close community life, and filled with the exultation of deep worship. You’ll also remember red-rimmed eyes from the endless, deep conversations that lasted late into the night. Now imagine doing that for a whole year.

DS involved regular Bible classes and daily worship together. Everyone did lots of work alongside local poor and under-privileged people; everyone taught RE at local schools; everyone was on the team with whatever project or outreach the parish undertook. But the most challenging part was living together under one roof as an intentional Christian community. It’s in close, family community that the great challenges of living justly, truthfully, humbly and compassionately are right in your face every day. DS was tough and wonderful for everyone involved, and it shaped a number of unique Christians.

I think it’s the closest my life has come to living the sort of life St Francis saw Jesus live, and which Francis therefore chose for himself, and later on, for his order of Friars. It’s a life of intense community, a life of costly commitment and obedience, and a life of extraordinary privilege – set free to care for the poor and the sick; to bring the lost back into the presence of Jesus.

It’s also a very controversial life: it was back in Francis’ day; it was back in the 1980’s, and I’m pretty sure it would be controversial now too. Listen to some of the Rule of St Francis for his Friars, and once you’ve heard it, let me know your one or two-word reaction to it.

Chapter VI

The Friars should appropriate neither house, nor place, nor anything for themselves; and they should go confidently after alms, serving God in poverty and humility, as pilgrims and strangers in this world. Nor should they feel ashamed, for God made himself poor in this world for us. This is that peak of the highest poverty which has made you, my dearest Friars, heirs and kings of the kingdom of heaven, poor in things but rich in virtues. Let this be your portion. It leads into the land of the living and, adhering totally to it, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, wish never to have anything else in this world, beloved Friars. And wherever you meet one another, … act like members of a common family. And … securely make your needs known to one another…

Reactions…?

On the surface, the St Francis we meet this morning seems to have a very different emphasis from the one we meet this afternoon at the blessing of the animals. But the kind, gentle, compassionate Francis we meet this afternoon is the very same Francis who, this morning, is so strong on poverty, humility and proclamation.

His liberty from worry about material things set him free to join consciously in the community of all life that depends for everything on the providence of God. Reflect for a moment on any way last week’s power outage affected your relationships with other people. Did it draw you closer to others? How?

Francis, in his poverty, found himself a citizen of creation. His choice for poverty was simply living as his Lord Jesus instructed him. The Lord’s specific instructions are those he heard in the gospel we heard just now.

3 Go on your way. … 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” … 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid.

There are instructions Francis heard quite literally as Jesus’ call to him to live a life of pilgrimage as a pauper and a preacher; to live a life of humility that is both a choice, and a result of being always truly dependent on providence. Again, this was counter-cultural in Jesus’ time, in Francis’ time, and in ours. It may seem harsh; it may seem unnecessary. But today’s scriptures suggest that at the very least, it’s worth serious consideration.

Amos tells the comfortable and the wealthy of the Land that they’re living in a fools’ paradise. They’re so disconnected from what’s going on in the world that the obvious, coming disaster will claim them first. And it did.

The letter to Timothy urges us to be content with a life where our basic needs are met – to be generous with anything extra we might have, and by doing this, to take hold of the life that really is life. What wonderfully powerful words!

St Francis’ day challenges us to discover connections with each other and the living creation around us; to take hold of the life that really is life. He understood the Bible to be saying that the way to do this is to imitate the example of Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Phil 2.6-8 In that light, what might DS look like for us? Amen

Sermons

Storm Sunday

Storm Sunday Year C 18-9-2016 Psalm 29 Lk 8 22-25

Storms and our faith: storms and our godly dealing with the Earth community.

We’ve spent a few moments meditating on the way we react to the experience of storms. We’ve been reminded of where our attitudes come from; reminded of feelings that storms can provoke in us. And they can do that even though we may know the science–the way lightning and thunder are produced–where all that rain comes from; why it sometimes transforms itself into devastating hail. And the pictures we’ve all seen of tremendous dust storms remind us how we’ve changed the nature of storms: combine land-clearing, over-grazing, ploughing and drought and a blustery windy day becomes something more like an apocalypse.

We are emotionally engaged with storms too – they bring us to places of fear, depression, exultation or remorse. And those are emotions often associated with our spirituality. So can we ask if we’re spiritually connected with God through the experience of these different kinds of storms, or does our scientific knowledge put that connection to bed for us?

Today, we’ve heard two different accounts of storms and faith. Psalm 29 and the Gospel. Maybe we should look back at the Psalm text for a few moments. The psalmist tells the Heavens and the Earth to hear God’s voice in storms. We are to hear God’s voice in the noise, the power and the destructive force of storms, and to join the rest of creation in feeling fear, awe, wild joy and hope in the greatness of God who promises us strength and the blessing of peace.

Perhaps we have difficulties with appropriating something so ancient and alien to our perspective. Maybe it can help if we realise that many scholars believe this Psalm was itself a re-writing or a refutation of an even more ancient hymn to Baal – the Canaanite storm god.

So the original was likely to have been a prayer or song which – with the help of some money or gift – would appease the anger of this god of storms. The Psalmist has taken on this protection-racket and set out to free people from slavery to such a capricious god. The psalmist reveals the true God who is sovereign; God whose choices don’t depend on people’s willingness to pay; God who’s not confined by our preconceptions of what is strong or immovable – neither the cedars of Lebanon nor even her mountains; God who will bring about the promise, and bless all families of Earth with strength and peace.

Today’s familiar Gospel passage where Jesus wakes up and stills the storm is in a sense a parable where the Psalm’s challenge and its promise are enacted. For each of us, the storm is different. Our storm may come as a sudden, frightening pain in the night; or the day our doctor tells us our life can’t be the way we planned it any more. For lots of us, our storm comes suddenly when the job we thought we had is no more.

For some children and adults, the storm strikes us when someone we thought cared for us – someone we thought would stick by us – suddenly doesn’t any more; they hurt us or they go away. Or maybe someone we imagined was going to live all our life with us suddenly dies.

But why call these things storms? What’s this storm in the Gospel got to do with our lives? How does this relate storms to our faith – is it foreign to us?

Yes and no. We still ask the perennial human questions when any storm brings disaster; How could a God of love let this happen to helpless, innocent people? Does the Psalm or the Gospel address this question in any way for us? Or are we asking the wrong question?

I must confess, looking at news bulletins and social media comment on the heavy rains of last week, I’m finding some other compelling questions which need to be asked together with this perennial God one. How could the council give people building permits for Waterfall Gully Road? Or further back with those dust storms many of us have known; How could we have kept on using such inappropriate farming practices until so recently? Or mud-slides; Don’t people know by now what happens to hillsides in heavy rain if you’ve cut down all the trees? Or unprecedented super-hurricanes; When will the world wake up to the way our emissions are warming the oceans?

We’re into our third week now of exploring an ecological spirituality – how our spiritual life (our relationship with the divine) is both shaped by our relationship with nature, and shapes our treatment of nature. This has profound implications for us in our spiritual responsibility to the Earth community.

We don’t shoulder this alone. We have in our boat the one who can command the wind and the sea; and we know only God can do that. But that same person in our boat is so exhausted that he escapes crowds and then sleeps through a storm that terrifies experienced sailors. And that’s a human being.

Maybe that’s the miracle in this story; God and you and I are all in the same boat. If we’re in trouble, God’s here too. God is in the boat, because that exhausted teacher is asleep in the boat with us; because Jesus chooses to be with us; to be one of us. We tend to think of this as the story of Jesus calming the storm. But maybe we could think of it as the story of the way God shares our storms with us; how God chooses to be in the same boat with us. If we can see this, our life’s storms become very different. Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes God lets the storm rage, and calms the child. Amen.