Reflection for Aster’s Baptism – Rev’d Barb Messner

I’ve chosen three snippets from the gospels to reflect on, the welcome and importance that Jesus gave to children, baptism as Jesus experienced it, and Jesus in the wilderness, the gospel story for this first Sunday in Lent.

At baptisms of children, I always reflect on one of the gospel versions of Jesus welcoming children, because for me that welcome is the key to why we baptise children, even though they are too young to make that choice for themselves.

Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

In that culture, respectable women and children were limited to the domestic sphere, not included in public contexts, hence the disciples’ attempt to turn them away.

Jesus always acted differently to that cultural norm, even when he was a child, having the boldness to debate with the teachers in the temple. There’s a constant pattern in his ministry of lifting up the marginalized, including women and children. In this welcoming story, Jesus is not only including children, but placing them at the centre, by saying the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. So when Aster is baptized, it’s not so that she can belong to God’s family or God’s kingdom – it’s celebrating the fact that she already belongs. God is saying to her as he did to Jesus at his baptism: “You are my child, my Beloved; in you I am well pleased.”

Being here today to celebrate Aster’s baptism reminds us that God’s love and inclusion of us is our birthright. However, we sometimes forget what our birthright in God is, and see ourselves as separate, steering our own boat, not even aware of the current that carries us. Children are instinctively close to God, whereas adults need to relearn the simplicity and humility that enables us to see past our egos to our dependence on God.

That is the lesson that Jesus is trying to teach his disciples, whose attempt to turn the children away was very much an ego exercise of the power to exclude.

Let me read you the last verse of that story in the Jerusalem Bible version, because I think it makes clearer the significant wisdom Jesus is teaching to adults: “I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it.”

It implies a warning against the lack of welcome and inclusion which the disciples displayed. Unfortunately our churches have often needed this warning, not only in how we have treated children, but also in how we treat other marginalised groups, which Jesus also refers to as “the little ones”.

I don’t think any sort of exclusion, even temporary, is a good look for Christians. So I don’t agree with any old rules that say no baptisms or weddings in Lent. In my opinion, if people want access to a ritual that connects them to God at any time, that’s great. When I was an Assistant Curate, the rector used to say “the font is closed in Lent” – I’m not sure why – perhaps because Lent is a penitential season and baptism is a celebration, but surely you can have both together. I think it’s quite appropriate to hold baptism and the wilderness together. That’s the way it was for Jesus: he was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon him, and he experienced the wonderful affirmation of God saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Wow, what a high moment of exhilarating encounter with God and with his own identity and relationship to God! Then Mark’s gospel says: “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Wow, what a confronting challenge, to face hunger, thirst, wild animals, and temptation! Yet the point is that both the immersion in God, and the experience of harsh testing and self searching are necessary to prepare him for his ministry.

Of course, we hope there are no wilderness experiences awaiting Aster just yet, although perhaps part of growing up is learning to deal with the ups and downs of life, which often go hand in hand. For children, moving house, or going to school or kindy for the first time can be a time of challenge, with excitement and tears mixed.

However, it’s clear that if children have had strong experiences of love and affirmation in their families, as Jesus had with God in his baptism, they cope better with harsh realities when they appear, as they always will in some form or another. So let’s make the most of our spiritual rites of passage, like baptism and confirmation, which combine a sense of celebration and specialness with an awareness of the struggle of life.

Both joy and challenge are needed to promote our learning and growth. It is in the combination of ups and downs that we form our identity, and as we get older, transcend that identity through unitive experiences of God.

This leads me to sneak in a reference to Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life, which is the subject of our Lenten study beginning this week. Rohr would say that the ups and downs of life are often linked, and that the way down is the way up. He also says that in the first half of life we are forming our identity, and I think the naming in baptism represents that. Our sense of identity needs to be a strong container for our lives, and that formation is assisted if parenting and teaching provide both abundant love and affirmation and clear boundaries. If you want to hear more of Richard Rohr, come on Wednesday at 6.30pm in the Parish Hall at Crafers.

Save us in the time of trial and deliver us from evil

Sermon by Andy Wurm, Lent 1, 10^th March 2019

Today, on the first Sunday in Lent, the gospel story gives us Lent in a nutshell: it’s about wrestling with temptations. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, representative of the years in a lifetime, thus facing the temptations faced by every person in their lifetime. It wasn’t so much his choice though, for we are told the Holy Spirit shoved Jesus into the desert. Often it is only through being forced to go without our usual supports and securities, that we discover new sources of strength, retrospectively realising it was necessary for our growth.

Prior to being driven into the desert, Jesus was baptised. He emerged from that experience with an unshakeable sense of God’s love, which enabled him to overcome the temptations.

No-one was with Jesus in the desert to record what really occurred there, so what we have in the gospel account are teachings of the early Christian community about how to respond to the temptations we face during our life. (Interwoven with the gospel writer’s view of Jesus.) Behind the teaching of the early Christian community, lies the spiritual wisdom about engaging with temptation received from their ancestors, crafted into the story of the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was how they remembered God’s love for them. The Promised Land represented union with God, which is fullness of life. The story of the journey to the Promised Land is the spiritual map of how to get there. It’s the journey to freedom with God, and liberation from all that spiritually enslaves us. If we are to make it to the Promised Land, we must overcome temptations along the way, and the way to do that is not of our own making, but is given to us by God and so requires faith.

When the people of Israel put their faith in God, they moved closer to the Promised Land. When they lost faith in God, they were prevented from moving closer. Many didn’t make it to the Promised Land, including Moses, who only saw it from a distance. In the New Testament, Jesus is presented as the new Moses, but where Moses failed, Jesus succeeds. Jesus, then, is the one we must follow if we are to make it to the Promised Land.

Recently emerging from the waters of baptism, Jesus mirrors the ancient Hebrews, who emerged from crossing the Red Sea to freedom from slavery. Following the account of Jesus’ baptism, the gospel-writer inserts a long list of unpronounceable names. They are Jesus’ (male) ancestors, mentioned to imply that Jesus was immersed in the history of his people (and all humanity). Not all of those listed were as pure as Mother Teresa, though, so not only does Jesus show us the way through temptation, but he is with us in all its mess and our dysfunctional coping with it.

The first temptation Jesus faces is to turn stones into bread. Being a long way from the Crafers Hotel, Jesus is hungry and so is tempted by the suggestion to turn stones into bread, yet he responds by reminding the devil that deep satisfaction comes from more than filling the stomach.

Jesus is not denying the value of visiting the Crafers Hotel, (or feeding the hungry), but emphasising the deeper need for God. St Augustine says we are made for God and only deeply satisfied when we rest in God. That’s not easy though.

A few centuries after Jesus, men and women flocked to the Egyptian desert, adopting a monastic lifestyle. They were deeply aware of the temptation to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives with other things, just as we do with material possessions, busyness and addictions.

These desert fathers and mothers hoped to give themselves fully to God, but even out in the desert, also far removed from Crafers Hotel, and with no access to the internet, found themselves unable to abandon the anxieties and temptations of their former lives. Free of external distractions, they found themselves bombarded with endless mental activity.

They were often tense with each other, obsessed about the trivia of their work and compulsive about their few material possessions.

They fantasied a lot about sex, but even more about food. (Laurence Freeman The Goal of Life) They were, however, able to transcend all that by regular practice of contemplation (now known as mindfulness). Like the newly baptised Jesus, emerging from the pool of imperfect humanity, they found peace and satisfaction by transcending their preoccupations. By simply allowing their obsessions and endless mental activity to just be, rather than fighting them, or seeking to fulfil them, they let the resulting emptiness fill them. That emptiness was God.

The second temptation Jesus was presented with was to use his power to win over others. The devil can offer Jesus the ‘kingdoms of the world’ (the power structures of the world), because they are his. They operate through force, so to worship the devil (which the devil invites Jesus to do) is to use power to control others. There are many ways in which we can do that, from using words to using guns. Whether we kill people to get our way, or belittle them with words, we are still worshipping the devil, because that is his way.

More successful than either of those (which give the game away too easily), the most devious way to control others is through subtle manipulation. Just small steps. Just get them to go along with one small step, and then another and another. It’s only afterwards that anyone can see the change that’s occurred. Using power to dominate others is to serve the devil, even if we are trying to overcome evil.

As the evil Emperor in Star Wars says to Luke, who he’s encouraging to give in to his anger and hatred and strike the Emperor down, the more you do that, the more you become my servant.

That is why Jesus offered no resistance to those who crucified him, and thus revealed his utter difference to power which dominates. God’s power is not power to dominate, but the power of mutual relation. We avoid falling for the temptation to dominate (in which we also surrender ourselves to domination) by committing ourselves to relate mutually with others.

The third temptation Jesus faces is to test God. We all doubt God, but giving in to that doubt is another matter. The ancient Hebrews emerged from the Red Sea to freedom from slavery, but shortly after they began to wander through the desert they started to doubt God. They doubted God would provide the food they needed, and wished they were back Egypt, where, although slaves, they were guaranteed food. (Freedom isn’t always easy.)

Jesus’ ultimate temptation to test God was his temptation to avoid death. He could run away from it, but then would not be able to reveal to the true nature of the world’s violence. He had to therefore trust that God would deliver him, even from death. How far do we trust God? The devil tempts Jesus to do something stupid to test God, even quoting from a psalm, that God will guard you ‘lest you dash your foot against a stone’.

Jesus shows us that instead, we must live our lives simply and honestly, not expecting God to meet our demands by presuming God will do what we want, nor denying our responsibility by leaving to God what is ours to do. The more we give up using God for our purposes and the more we listen to God’s desire for us, the more we shall find ourselves able to trust God.

Losing familiar securities and supports is not always a bad thing.

Sermon by Andy Wurm for Ash Wednesday, March 6^th 2019

Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. If Easter represents ‘new life’, then Lent is when we prepare for new life. Traditionally the story of Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness is the story we use to describe what we do in Lent. We are told that ‘In the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him’ (Mk 1:13).

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, in the traditional version ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’. In the contemporary version, it’s ‘save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil’. Using Mark’s story of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, we can see that the ‘temptation’ we ask to be saved from includes giving in to the ‘wild beasts’. Whenever we face such temptation, we are in a time of trial. Our soul is on trial, in the sense of being challenged in its vulnerability.

Following the way of Jesus then, during Lent we are invited to spend time with wild beasts. Not just any or all wild beasts though: just the ones which threaten us, which vary from person to person. Our ‘wild beasts’ are the chaos inside of ourselves that we generally refuse to face: our paranoia, our anger, our jealousies, our distance from others, our fantasies, our grandiosity, our addictions, our unresolved hurts, our inability to pray, our doubts, our moral failures.

The wilderness is a place with few resources for survival. There is little food available. In Luke’s story of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, Jesus eats nothing for the whole 40 days. Here, food stands for what is consumed to shield from chaos. Alcohol and food are popularly used to distance oneself from inner chaos, even if only because the pleasure they provide distracts us from our chaos. To go without food while in the wilderness then, is to stop engaging in whatever distracts or shields us from our chaos. We might choose then, to give up alcohol for Lent, or perhaps go without morning and afternoon tea. The point is to choose to face our inner chaos instead of avoiding it. The aim is acceptance. If we can face our chaos and accept it, there is hope for transformation, because the real power for transformation is love, and love requires acceptance. In the gospels, among Jesus’ friends, transformation follows friendship. Knowing they are accepted, as they are, they open their hearts to change.

Acceptance can take many forms. It could mean stopping being anxious about being anxious, for example. Anxiety is one of those things that the more you try and stop, the stronger it grows. Accepting it allows it to die out. But that only happens if we first let it be, by accepting it, and that’s not easy. It means enduring discomfort, for awhile.

I know of a woman who practiced mindfulness with her loneliness. She would sit and focus for a period of time each day on her loneliness, not trying to avoid it or distract herself from it, or stop it, just accept it for what it was. In time it began to have less influence upon her. She wasn’t a lonely person. She engaged with lots of people each day in her work and as a mother too, so there was no shortage of people around her, but loneliness isn’t necessarily about how many people you have around you. It’s about the aspects of your life that you alone must deal with, either because no-one else can live it for you, or because no-one quite understands something about you.

Facing our inner beasts humbles us. We face our fears, feel vulnerable and out of control, and so feel small. A good image of that is that we are dealing with not the grand house that is our life, but its ashes. Hence, we have ashes placed upon our foreheads, for Ash Wednesday, as we begin Lent. We don’t place them there ourselves, because the ashes symbolise things we cannot control.

In the 9^th century, a Chinese scribe, wrote down a story which he said even then, was an old story. It’s a story that has hundreds of versions found in many cultures around the world. It’s the story of the ‘Ash Girl’, which we know in its English translation as ‘Cinderella’. It’s the story of a girl who eventually comes to fruition (represented by marrying the prince) only after spending lonely time in the ashes: humbled, dirty, tending to duty and the unglamorous, waiting.

The prince in Cinderella are angels in the story of Jesus in the wilderness. If you sit in ashes, face your wild beasts, eventually the prince, or the angels will come and minister to you.

Generally speaking, we don’t love the ‘wild beasts’ of our lives. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t run from them. They are our enemies, but only so long as we do run from them. If we face them, and Jesus shows us we can, then they become gifts, which lead us to grow stronger and more capable of love.

Of Falling Upward and Mountains of Transfiguration

sermon by Rev’d Barbara Messner

I’ve been slogging away most of the week preparing the material for the Lenten study on Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life. I needed that work at this time, because in the midst of it, I took our dog for an ultrasound to discover that she has liver cancer, and her time with us is limited.

That wasn’t the only distressing thing that happened this week either. Falling upward was the only way I could approach the mountaintop of transfiguration today. I felt more as though I was down at the bottom listening to Jesus say he would suffer, be rejected and killed, and on the third day be raised.

Like the disciples, I wasn’t sure what he meant, I didn’t want to think about the first part, and I didn’t really understand about being raised. Are dogs included?

I think Rohr would say that the whole of creation is included, and that suffering, death and resurrection are part of the pattern of the universe, part of the great sacred dance.

In chapter 6 he writes: “Most of nature seems to totally accept major loss, gross inefficiency, mass extinctions and short life spans as the price of life at all. Feeling that sadness, and even its full absurdity, ironically pulls us into the general dance, the unified field, an ironic and deep gratitude for what is given…”

Perhaps Jesus walked up the mountain in that space, feeling the sadness and absurdity of the suffering that awaited him, but drawn upwards into the general dance, the unified field, that would transfigure him on the mountaintop, and give him strength for what lay ahead, the culmination of his incarnation.

Rohr says that our experience of the tragic sense of life helps us strip away our false selves, and find our True selves, which are in union with God. Perhaps that was why Jesus took his key leaders with him up the mountain, in the hope that they would carry the memory of transfiguration into the grief and fear that awaited them, and so maintain hope of resurrection.

The theme of Falling Upward makes sense of Jesus’ other hard sayings before they climb the mountain: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?” Falling Upward is full of challenges for us to accept those paradoxes, and to understand that what the world sees as loss, failure, suffering and falling often shake us out of our complacent ego life with its false sources of happiness, and prepare us for renewal.

Rohr would say that if we cling to the security and identity of our first half of life, we miss the spiritual journey into the new life of the second half.

The disciples were given a great impetus to transition towards new life in the experience of the unitive vision on the mountain top, which revealed the transfigured identity of Jesus as God’s Son and Chosen, and his connection to the great religious figures of what Rohr calls deep time.

Yet Luke makes the point that the disciples were weighed down with sleep, and although they stayed awake, it seems they couldn’t really take in what they had seen until after the resurrection re-awakened their awareness.

In fact, Peter made a typical first half of life response with his plan to build three dwellings there to try to capture the experience in tangible form and hang on to it. Instead mystery overshadows them in the form of the cloud reminiscent of Exodus. With their Scripture knowledge, you’d think this would be a sign of wonder and hope, but instead they were terrified, and like the women after the resurrection in Mark’s gospel, they told no-one of what they had seen. In fact, on the other side of the mountain a confronting failure is evident in the faith of the other disciples – they have failed to heal the boy with the demon, and Jesus bursts out in exasperation: “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” There’s been some falling here, and it isn’t yet upward.

Indeed, even those who climbed the mountain and witnessed the radiance of Jesus could be described in Paul’s exasperated words in 2 Corinthians 3: 14, 15, when he says that those reading about Moses have a veil drawn over their minds, and only when one turns to the Lord is the veil removed. He has the right to say that, because he has experienced that veiling and unveiling himself in his first commitment as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and his subsequent conversion on the road to Damascus. Ironically, as his spiritual eyes were opened, his physical eyes were blinded for a time, perhaps his form of falling upward. He had to rely on one of those he had persecuted to help him return to wholeness in his new life.

So Paul sees a powerful metaphor in the story of Moses that we read today, with the taking off of the veil to be in union with God, and the putting on of the veil because people couldn’t endure the radiance of the unitive vision. Rohr sees a powerful metaphor in the breaking of the first set of tablets of the law and the remaking of them, the stories that precede our passage from Exodus today. Rohr says in his introduction to the book, p. xxviii: “People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels.

I have often thought that this is the symbolic meaning of Moses breaking the first tablets of the law, only to go back up the mountain and have them redone (Exodus 32:19–34, 35) by Yahweh. The second set of tablets emerges after a face-to-face encounter with God, which changes everything. Our first understanding of law must fail us and disappoint us.

Only after breaking the first tablets of the law is Moses a real leader and prophet. Only afterwards does he see God’s glory (Exodus 33:18f), and only afterwards does his face “shine” (Exodus 34:29f). It might just be the difference between the two halves of life!

The Dalai Lama said much the same thing: “Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.””

It’s important to reflect on our mountain top experiences of God, because they remind us that the radiant vision is possible. However, sometimes the real wisdom of death and resurrection, blessing in the midst of suffering, the losing and saving of our lives can only be expressed down on the plain amidst the mess and failure of life. It’s there that a Dad speaks up in raw honesty and in Mark’s version, expresses to Jesus his doubt and his anger as well as his faith, and it’s there that Jesus lifts up the child afflicted by a demon when we can’t. Sometimes I think that’s why Luke transposed Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount to the plain. That wisdom teaching is not the vision of transcendence which can’t be put into words, but the gritty and paradoxical wisdom for dealing with the rough stuff, and seeing it transformed.

Baptism is embracing the freedom which comes from being loved unconditionally

Sermon by Andy Wurm, Feast of the Transfiguration, 3^rd March 2019

In his book, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, T S Eliot included a poem titled The Naming of Cats, in which he says that cats have three names. The first is its proper name, that is, the name it would be known as at the local vet. The second is the name the cat is called by its owners. That would be its nickname, something affectionate and less proper than its first name. And then there’s its third name, which is its secret name – a name that only the cat and God know. When you see a cat sitting in the sun, looking relaxed and happy, we are told, it is most likely contemplating its secret name.

I think that, like cats, we too have three names. There’s our official name – the one the bank knows and is on your special documents. Then there’s your nickname, which your family and friends call you. And then there is your secret name, known only to God and yourself, or perhaps only to God. Your secret name is your true identity.

We might feel we have no need to be given any special identity from God, because we already know who we are, but it’s worth considering where our identity came from, for the source of our identity, is what determines how we live. For example, if I simply act out the role my culture gives me as a man, then in a way, my life will be run by my culture. If I let my achievements define who I am, then my identity will be the sum result of my achievements, less my failures. I could end up with my past running my life, in the sense that my whole value a person hangs on what I did in the past. It also means when I approach the time that I can no longer do as much as I once did, then I’ll begin to lose my identity. There are other ways in which we acquire a sense of who we are or why we matter. All of them are given to us. Even the ways we think come from ourselves, are given to us. Notice, for example, that all hippies looked like they went to the same shop.

The trouble with all these ways of understanding ourselves is that they make us dependent upon others, or upon the culture we belong to. That means we are not free, but bound to them, run by them.

The story of Jesus’ transfiguration reminds us there is another way of understanding ourselves, a way that frees us from being run by others or by our culture. The story is basically God sharing his secret name for Jesus with Jesus’ closest disciples. There are two versions of Jesus’ secret name actually, but the one we hear this time is ‘my Chosen’. In Matthew’s version of this story it’s ‘my Beloved’. That’s God-talk for Precious, meaning deeply loved and delighted in. Why did God let Jesus’ disciples in on his secret name? And why we do we get to know it? Because it’s also ours! That’s the secret name cats contemplate while sitting in the sun, and it is the same name God gives us too – for God is the same towards us as God is to Jesus (and as God is to cats for that matter). God’s attitude is fixed and unchangeable, which means there is nothing we could do to make God love us more – or less.

Today at Crafers, I am baptising two boys. Behind all the jargon and ritual of the baptism service lies the notion that for both of them, their deepest identity is that they are loved by God. That means God delights in them, as we do of anyone we love deeply. That core belief is something those boys can grow to understand as they get older, and a source of security and strength they can return to throughout their lives, for every day they will face doubts and challenges to be other than their true selves, as we all do.

Those doubts and challenges come as temptations to believe our worth depends on us being better than others, or depends upon what others think of us, or depends upon whether we achieve anything ‘worthwhile’. Elijah is a great example of that, hence, he appears alongside Jesus as a contrast and example of what not to be like. Elijah was a prophet, who lived long before Jesus’ time. He discovered his true identity in a way similar to St Paul, for they both went about crushing their opponents in the name of God, only to discover that God wanted no part of that. Both of them went from being legends (in their own minds and in the minds of their mates) to realizing they were failures. As God required no crushing of enemies, they were led to discover an alternative means of feeling worthwhile and that they mattered in the world. Through realizing they were loved by God, despite all they had done, they came to see themselves as persons in whom God delighted. In fact, I reckon they would be happy with a definition of God as the One Who Delights in Us.

If God delights in us, then rather than worrying too much about whether we’re doing the right thing by God, instead we can relax and be our natural selves. That doesn’t always come easy for us, especially as we’ve all endured a lifetime of messages that we ought to be something else. So a good way to help ourselves relax more is to be more relaxed about others, letting go of concerns for what we think they should be and how they should live, and trying to appreciate our differences, rather than being too bothered by them. In other words, reminding ourselves that God delights in others will help us appreciate God’s delight in us and hopefully will result in us delighting in ourselves. That doesn’t mean becoming obsessed with ourselves, in fact, more like the opposite, because, free of concern over whether we matter or not, we become less obsessed with ourselves.

To finish off, I’d like to spend a few moments considering the questions that are put to candidates being baptized, in light of the proposal that baptism involves receiving our true identity from God. The candidates are asked four questions, which are as follows: Do you turn to Christ?; Do you repent of your sins; Do you reject selfish living and all that is false and unjust?; and Do you renounce Satan and all evil?

To turn to Christ is to affirm Jesus as offering us the way to flourish as human beings. To repent of your sins is to respond to God’s love for you by living graciously, in generosity and respect towards others. To reject selfish living and all that is false and unjust, is to reject trying to earn or protect your worth, to reject any sense of worth given to you with conditions attached, and to reject any division which ascribes to some people worth and to others worthlessness.

The last question involves renouncing Satan. I first need to say a few words about Satan, because mention of his name can be disturbing. Satan is not a person. There is no individual called Satan. Satan is a role, a bit like the character named the Dread Pirate Roberts in the film The Princess Bride. The Dread Pirate Roberts is feared across the world’s oceans, and yet there is no such person. There once was, but he got tired of pirating so handed on the title to his first mate. When the ship reached harbor, it took on a new crew and as none of the new crew had actually seen Roberts, when the first mate claimed to be him, the crew believed him. That went on for years, with various people playing the role of the Dread Pirate Roberts. Similarly, Satan is a role – it refers to whoever or whatever stands against God. When it comes to how we construct and maintain our identity, Satan works in a particular way. Renouncing Satan and all evil therefore, involves rejecting all means whereby we set ourselves apart from others, who we then reject in order to feel good about ourselves.

In short, these are all ways in which we choose to live in the freedom of God’s love, rather than letting our lives be run by others. We will not be perfect at it, but that’s okay, because we don’t have to be, which is the whole point of baptism.

Sermon by Rev’D Barb Messner, 24/2/19

In the recent survey about the Soup Supper Lenten Studies, it seemed that a book study might be agreeable, and the choice suggested by a couple of people was Falling Upward by Richard Rohr.

I’ve agreed to lead that study, because I find Richard Rohr a powerful influence on my theology, spirituality, and self-understanding.

This sermon introduces the study by considering our readings through the lens of some of the themes of Falling Upward.

My wise boss and CPE supervisor Les Underwood gave me Rohr’s book as a farewell present when I could no longer sustain my aged care chaplaincy at Regency Park on top of parish work here last year.

The book was what I needed, as it encourages meaning making in the second half of life, and I was very aware of my own ageing and of my depleted ability to keep pushing “onward and upward”.

Falling upward seemed like a promising paradox. I felt I was falling, losing some part of my identity, and it was encouraging to think that there might be a positive trajectory in my spiritual life.

That is the message of the Beatitudes that precede our gospel today in Luke chapter 6 – that what the world sees as loss, fall or failure may in fact open us to a new sense of connection to God’s love and the mutual love of others, which is a blessing.

By contrast, what the world sees as fortunate in riches plenty, laughter and acclaim can lead to spiritual poverty, a disconnection from God and others.

Rohr says heaven and hell are here and now, depending on how connected or disconnected we are to God.

Even while suffering we can rejoice, and “our reward is great in heaven”, as Luke says, if we experience God’s love and grace. On the dark side, we are in the abyss, wailing and gnashing teeth, when we are alienated from God, ourselves and others, yet by worldly terms we might be fortunate, beautiful, rich, or famous.

Unfortunately, we have seen too many of this world’s idols drawn into that hell of spiritual disconnection, by distortions in the values of our society, and the pressure of public idolatry.

On the other hand, if the kingdom of heaven is both here and now and not yet, then Paul’s apparent opposites can coexist in our lives, as well as promising a later transformation.

If the passage from 1 Corinthians 15 is seen through a both/and lens rather than an either/or lens, then we are both “perishable” and “imperishable”, both “in dishonour” and “in glory”, both “in weakness” and “in power”, both “physical” and “spiritual”, both “a living being” and “a life-giving spirit”, both “bearing the image of the man of dust” and “the image of the man of heaven”.

Surely that’s what incarnation is about? Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, not either human or divine. Through him we are heirs to the same holistic state, both in this life and beyond. Through him we also experience the transformation that is a guiding pattern of the universe, from death to resurrection, in this life and beyond, falling upward.

In our discussion of Luke’s Beatitudes at Bridgewater last week, we noticed the balance of blessing and woes, 4 of each, and all involving a deliberate paradox, another balance of positive and negative. We decided that perhaps we all experience both hidden blessings that appear out of apparent disaster, and apparent good fortune that can lead to estrangement from ourselves, others and God. Like the list of apparent opposites In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the greater wisdom lies in “both/and” thinking, rather than the one dimensional perception of either one or the other. This is what Rohr calls “non-dual” thinking.

That theme is particularly applicable to the gospel today, and to most of the wisdom teaching of Jesus in Luke chapter 6. Today we heard all those apparent paradoxes that we are asked to attempt: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Are these four impossible things to do before breakfast? Perhaps these selfless actions that cancel out negativity are only possible for those with second half of life wisdom, for people who have experienced their own falling and failing and can forgive others theirs.

This mature, unitive thinking doesn’t say defensively: “It’s them or me,” but instead sees “both them and me”, with God holding us together. Jesus balances the negatives with the positives, teaching an accepting mutuality of relationship: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” “Either/or” thinking is always a process of judging: we try to shore up our sense of identity by defining ourselves in opposition to others. “Either you are right or I am right. We can’t both be right.”

By contrast, the mature spiritual person can embrace ambiguity, diversity, paradox and polarities, and respect those with opposing opinions, without trying to prove them wrong. “Both/and” thinking enables us not to judge or condemn, but to forgive and give, knowing that “there but for the grace of God go I.”

Awareness of the grace of God is necessary to the wideness of this gift of generosity. We see it in the lovely reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers. They resented him, they thought about killing him, they sold him into slavery, but there is no vengefulness in his actions towards them.

Certainly, he tests whether they have changed, in the scenario of the hidden cup in Benjamin’s luggage, and he is delighted when all the brothers return to support Benjamin, and Judah demonstrates his selflessness by offering to become a slave in Benjamin’s place to spare their father grief.

In today’s reading we see the welcome embrace and forgiveness offered by a man who senses the grace of God in everything, misfortune and good fortune. “Come closer to me,” Joseph says, and he urges them to forgive themselves: “And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

At the end of the passage, “he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.” On the other side of a fall which his own pride helped produce, Joseph’s unconditional love for his once treacherous brothers leads to reconciliation and relationship. Joseph certainly fell upward, and so eventually did they, acting selflessly and finding a haven in famine and the love of a now-powerful and protective brother, who forgives the hurts of the past.

By contrast, the psalmist wants a bit both ways, and I’m not sure that’s what non-dual thinking is about. We are advised not to vie with the wicked, or be vexed at their prosperity, but the psalmist still rejoices in the hope that God will “get them in the end”. Maybe God doesn’t “get” anybody, because God is surely the model for Jesus’ wisdom teaching in the gospel today, not to judge or to condemn but to forgive and to give. That’s what grace means. Let me conclude with a paragraph from Rohr’s writing on this theme, to give you a taste of what is to come in the studies: “Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus’ love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become totally conditional after death? Is it the same Jesus? Or does Jesus change his policy after his resurrection?

The belief in heaven and hell is meant to maintain freedom on all sides, with God being the most free of all, to forgive and include, to heal and to bless even God’s seeming “enemies.” How could Jesus ask us to bless, forgive, and heal our enemies, … unless God is doing it first and always?

Jesus told us to love our enemies because he saw his Father doing it all the time, and all spirituality is merely the “imitation of God” (Ephesians 5:1).”

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Sermon by Andy Wurm, Epiphany 7, 24^th February 2019

If anyone thinks Christianity has nothing to offer, they should be directed to the most radical words of Jesus: Love your enemies. In a world with so much violence and so many resources tied up with it, there is perhaps nothing more worthwhile aspiring to than being able to love your enemies. It addresses the big picture of nations getting on with nations, but also our daily lives, in which even someone who is meant to be a friend, can hurt you with a few words. Enemies don’t have to be people who are locked into opposition with you, for the purposes which Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel (Luke 6:27-38), they include anyone who acts against you. So he starts with those who hate you, includes those who publicly humiliate you, and those who take from you and extends to those who pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do. Loving my enemy addresses the effects of having an abusive grade one teacher which may be still lingering and continuing to drive some dysfunctional pattern in my life, but also came into play yesterday when a driver sped past me on the inside lane and I felt tempted to increase pressure on the accelerator so that she would end up jammed behind a parked car instead of being able to slide in front of me, thus forcing me back one space from the place in traffic which according to the rules of driving justice, belonged to me. As I refrained from doing so, and she did slip in front of me taking ‘my’ place, she extended her arm out the window, giving me the thumbs-up sign, and immediately something inside of me acknowledged that

loving your enemy was better than having a car crash.

We can all think of circumstances in which it is possible to love your enemy, and we can all think of circumstances in which it seems impossible. Yet Jesus is not a teacher of ideals, but only what is actually possible. That means loving our enemies is not something we do by simply trying hard, but rather is something we can do because of what God has done. In other words, God makes it possible. And we maintain the connection between what God has done and what we can do through repeating to ourselves the Lord’s Prayer, and of particular relevance here is the line Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We can love our enemies only because we forgive their sin, and we can forgive their sin only because God forgives ours.

Last Sunday we heard St Paul talking about the centrality of the resurrection to our faith. It is so important that Paul says if Christ was not raised from death, then we Christians are to be pitied more than anyone else. By that he doesn’t mean we are to be pitied because our faith is based on something which might turn out to be wrong, namely, that we’ll go to heaven after we die. That’s not really what Jesus’ resurrection means for him. The resurrection, for St Paul, means that we are forgiven our sins and that forgiveness makes us free. In a nutshell it works like this: Jesus was betrayed by his best friends, but when he came back from death, instead of being angry with them or taking out revenge on them, he forgave them. He didn’t say ‘what the hell did you do that for?’, or at the very least say they owed him one. Instead, he continued to love them. In that way, he broke the cycle of violence and revealed to them that this was what God is like: no violence, no punishment. How would you respond if someone acted like that towards you? Imagine yourself in that position: you betray a good friend, resulting in his death, then he comes alive again and comes to see you, but is totally free of anger and vengeance. No doubt you would feel highly grateful, but also a tad embarrassed. Sorry about that would seem rather inadequate. So the rising from the death that you helped inflict upon your friend and his or her coming back to you in friendship that is so deep that they go out of their way to make sure you’re aware of it, is experienced as perhaps a wonderful gift, but more like a broken heart. That’s why in the Book of Common Prayer Evensong, one of the verses used to warm up the audience at the beginning of the service is from Psalm 51:17 – the sacrifice God likes is a broken heart, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. It’s not instructing us to grovel to God. It’s saying when we discover that the pattern which drives our lives is so destructive, but God doesn’t hold that against us, we’re going to feel that as a deflation, an undoing. It’s a humbling, in the recognition that we have all these plans that we think are so important, and we feel so right about how we see the world, but have actually got it all wrong. But the great thing is that it doesn’t matter. In other words, God doesn’t hold that against us, so we are free of being bound by it. That’s forgiveness of sin.

As God’s ongoing unconditional love helps us to accept that it’s okay that our schemes to run the world are so silly and even destructive, and that we’re so stuck in them and driven by them, then we begin to relax, and instead of being driven by fear of missing out and things not going our way, instead we begin to be open to other ways of living and so our desire begins to change. We want to live differently and we want to relate to others in a different way. This is what forgiveness of sins is about. It’s not God sorting out a moral problem – dealing with our naughtiness. It’s God freeing us from our small world so that we can be more alive.

Understanding forgiveness of sin is the key to loving your enemy, because you see that your enemy is your enemy for precisely the same reasons that you experience forgiveness. In other words, they are just as caught up, just as driven by fear of missing out, fear of things not going their way as you are, so they’re trying to run the world just as you are, and that’s why they push in front of you at the supermarket, cut you off in traffic and belittle you in grade one. Unless you can get that and allow yourself to be undone, unless you allow your little kingdom to be dismantled at least a bit, then forgiving others and loving your enemies will be nothing other than hard work, and probably impossible.

Loving our enemies, forgiving those who sin against us, is possible because God forgives our sins. And they go hand in hand, because the same mechanism is at work in forgiving others, as is at work in our being forgiven by God. That means Jesus isn’t saying unless you’re nice to others by forgiving them, God won’t be nice to you and forgive you. No, what Jesus means is that unless you let go of a certain way of relating to others, you won’t be able to receive the setting free and enlarging of your world that God’s forgiveness can be for you.

A few considerations to keep in mind regarding loving our enemies. The first is that it is about being free and not weighed down by the actions of others. The most obvious example is when we harbor grudges we carry a prison with us. So this is not something God forces us to do. It is a gift, but won’t always feel as if it is. The less we accept our own sin being forgiven, the harder it is to forgive others.

Another thing is that God never wants us to be doormats. There is nothing good in allowing ourselves to be hurt by others. Mahatma Gandhi, that great lover of peace and non-violence, said it is better to be violent than to be a door-mat. To love your enemy requires spiritual maturity, but that can be found in a three year old. Also, to love your enemy or forgive one who sins against you, is not to act as if what they did to you didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. It’s just that you’re choosing to respond in a certain way, which will cost you something. 

Last of all, sometimes forgiving another can take a long time, but don’t give up trying, because the One who forgives our sins is always trying to help us experience the same freedom he has.

Sermon by Andy Wurm, Epiphany 6, 17^th February 2019

I was trying to remember a quote from a medieval theologian which said something along the lines of the happiness Christians will enjoy in heaven will be made even greater upon hearing the suffering of unbeliever’s burning in hell. In searching for that I came upon a website which has an entire section devoted to collecting similar quotes on the people being punished in hell and I discovered that what I remembered from that medieval theologian was fairly tame compared to some! There was also that more contemporary challenge: Turn or burn, but my favourite was the question:

How will you spend eternity – smoking or non-smoking?

Leaving aside the issue of whether the idea of hell is a useful one, I suggest that belief in hell as a place of punishment assumes God’s nature is like the worst of human nature, so that rather than rescuing us from the worst of ourselves, God is in the same boat as us. The reason I’m bringing this up is that today our gospel reading includes what are called the Beatitudes (or blessings). There are four blessings and four woes. Now if we assume God is a punishing God, then we’ll read these along the lines of them being four rewards and four punishments. Taking them that way assumes there are implied commands there about what we should and should not do. For example, blessed are you who are poor, but woe to you who are rich, means you should be poor, not rich. I’m sure there are people who take them this way, because I have met religious people who seem to take the woe to those who laugh as a command to never laugh at anything.

Jesus is not condemning people here, rather, he is pointing out how people condemn themselves. And it’s not a matter of reward and punishment, because he points out that some of the recipients-of-woe actually are rewarded. ‘You have received your consolation’ he says. The point is whether or not that reward really counts for anything, and surprise surprise, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s not so much that it doesn’t count for anything, but that it’s not a good idea, because it’s not in your best interests, not to mention the consequences that go beyond yourself.

I’ll explain that a bit more. Say you have a corporate box at the footy and a game is coming up on a day when the usual friends you invite along are unavailable. Well, Jesus would say you should invite a load of people who live on the street. The experience of being in a small enclosed space with a group of people who may not have entered a shower recently would cause a degree of suffering, however, your graciousness in doing so would not make you righteous in the eyes of God. But what you would be doing for yourself is unravelling yourself from false righteousness.

One of the greatest sources of false righteousness is being acknowledged by others, whether it be for nice things we do for them, or whatever. In Jesus’ day, people achieved righteousness (i.e. approval, a sense of being a good or worthwhile person) by, for example, inviting someone over for a meal. The guest would then be in debt to the host and the host acquires credit for their good deed, taking their righteousness up another notch.

The trouble is this is a huge game in which everyone is constantly striving for more credit.

We end up driven by this, exhausting ourselves and damaging others along the way. There is also collateral damage for those who are unable to win approval from others, for example people who live on the streets. They will never be seen as shining examples of citizenship. Anyway, the point is that people who are driven by the need for others’ approval (probably all of us to some degree) do receive their reward. In other words, sometimes they/we do strike it lucky, winning approval from others, such as when I was awarded the Governor’s medal for saving that child from a burning house, (although that may have occurred in a dream) or just when I made it into the social pages of SA Life magazine (possibly also in a dream). So on those occasions I was rewarded, but like a rat which keeps pressing the bar in his cage to get a reward, so my reward reinforces my drive for approval. So yes, I am rewarded, but my reward has made me more driven by a desire for approval, so my life becomes more competitive and my sense of being a worthwhile person becomes more fragile.

In his Beatitudes, Jesus is explaining to his disciples the way things are, that is, what you get when you live a particular way.

Being poor gives you access to God’s kingdom – not in the future, but now. God’s kingdom being a way of living in which you and others flourish. Being poor may include financial poverty, but it’s really about something much deeper than that. It’s about not binding yourself to things which give you value. That may be having lots of money, but it also might be using your position in the world to give you status, rather than a role. So, for example, a boss who sees their position as requiring people to grovel to them, rather than their position being one of helping others to play their part in the organization. Or you could be rich in an intellectual sense, using your expertise to intimidate others who are then too afraid to offer their opinion. Alternately, you could be intellectually ‘poor’ in the sense of humbly admitting you don’t know everything and therefore being willing to hear others’ opinions. Similarly, you could be what Jesus refers to as ‘full now’ – that is, so full of yourself that there’s no room for others in the room. You may receive the reward of feeling self-satisfied and being the greatest person present, but you miss out on what others can offer.

‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh’, says Jesus, whereas those laughing now, will mourn and weep later. In line with the rest of Jesus’ teachings, I think this could refer to being satisfied at other’s expense, or while others go without. The reward might be current satisfaction, but the long-term consequences won’t be so great. China is on a wonderful economic boom at present, but what’s going to happen when all their poorly paid workers decide they don’t like that anymore? Similarly, if we mistreat others, that will come back against us eventually.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you… on account of the Son of Man (the Human One) – remember Jesus isn’t telling us that being hated is worth striving for, but that it’s what may happen to us if we live in accord with Jesus’ Way.

Hate is a bit strong actually. It’s just the way Jesus emphasised his point, but what he means is that if you follow his Way, which means you trust God as your source of life, that is, your source of worth, if you believe you are unconditionally loved by God, and therefore so also is everyone else, then you are likely to be excluded at times by people who resent that, because it goes against the ‘world’, which values people differently.

You may have heard the story of the bloke who tried to outsmart the wise sage who lived in his village. Holding his hands behind his back he asked the sage whether the bird in his hand was alive or dead, the sage replied that it was up to him.

That’s similar to what Jesus is saying in his beatitudes: it’s up to us whether we are alive or dead – in a spiritual sense that is. There are usually rewards to be gained from whatever we choose, but are they heavenly rewards, in the sense of the deep things which make us truly alive, connected to God, the earth and each other, or are they rewards which bind us more strongly to pursue things which only satisfy temporarily?

So, to go back to where I began, the question Jesus continually holds before us is not How will you spend eternity – smoking or non-smoking?, but how will you spend the present – striving or non-striving? Exhausting yourself striving to be worth something, or relaxing in God’s love?

Jesus Saves Us from Sin

Sermon by Andy Wurm, Epiphany 5, February 10^th 2019

A friend of mine used to have a fridge-magnet which depicted a school-teacher nun looking down on a little child telling him he was personally responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. That is both terrible, funny and true.

It’s terrible because telling a small child that will probably result in them feeling guilty for bringing about Jesus’ death. I guess in years gone past, that was part of the reason for telling children and adults that. Guilt drove people to church, so it was an effective way of filling pews: nurture a sense of guilt over sin, and give it an extra boost by telling people they would go to hell if they didn’t confess their sins and keep believing in Jesus. There is truth in the statement that even a child is responsible for Jesus’ death, but unless the child can fully grasp what that means, and especially, that it is actually a life-giving truth, then it remains nothing more than a spiritual burden, oppressing the child and keeping them at a distance from God. That is true for adults as well. What we have here is a situation which Jesus described as making people ‘twice as fit for hell’ than they were before. In other words, pushing people away from God, who, remember, is always offering us life, not condemnation.

The funny side of the fridge magnet is how wrong the church is when its teachings become burdens for people, rather than paths to liberation, healing and growth. People lament the demise of the church, but considering some of the things we’ve encouraged people to believe, it’s amazing the church is still going. We can either laugh or cry about that.

Now we come to the truth of the fridge-magnet. Yes, the child is responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, but only in the way each of us is too. In what way is that so? This morning we heard St Paul referring to the good news he proclaimed, which is that Christ died for our sins. One of the most common ways that’s understood goes like this: we are naughty, in that we’re constantly sinning. We break God’s laws, hurt other people, ruin the earth and so on. For this we should be punished. After all, God is just and so must punish the wicked. That means we all deserve to die, except maybe Mother Teresa who was very nice to the poor and Dr Doolittle, who was nice to animals. But God is loving, so in God’s great love for us, instead of punishing us, God sent his Son to earth to take our punishment. God sent Jesus to die on the cross in our place. Hence, Jesus died for our sins.

If you read the Bible, having already accepted that’s what it’s going to tell you, then you will find lots there to support that view. And there’s certainly a logic to it. It makes sense that we should have to pay for our sins in some way.

So this belief forms us into people who are grateful for what God has done for us. We are grateful for God’s love towards us, and therefore also grateful for God’s ongoing forgiveness of our sins. After all, we’re reminded each Sunday that God continues to forgive our sins, if we confess and repent of our ways.

I said before that it makes sense that we should have to pay for our sins in some way. But does it? Why does it make sense? It makes sense because we have been taught that. We have been raised to believe it, as has every other human being on earth, in every culture.

So what if this is just a human thing? What if this is just something we believe, because we’ve been taught to and everyone accepts it as true? What if it is so integral to our formation as human beings and

the way our societies are run, that we automatically assume it applies to God as well?

If this is just a human thing, then it means we are wrong to think that way about God. Let’s just leave God out of this sin and punishment thing for a moment. If we look at the gospels we find that there are plenty of stories about people wanting to punish others for sin. ‘The woman caught in adultery’ is a classic example. The fact that we give the story that name shows us that we tend to be more interested in blaming wrong-doers, than in noticing how much we enjoy blaming wrong-doers. Last week in church, we heard a story in which nice, respectable religious people wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. And what happened at the end of his life? It was human beings who killed Jesus. Why? Because he sinned. They punished him for his sin, which involved challenging their oppressive power. There were all sorts of ways of dressing that up, such as from a legal perspective, Jesus broke the Sabbath laws, from a Roman perspective, Jesus broke the peace, from a social perspective, Jesus went against the customs of his society and so on. In other words, from various perspectives, Jesus was a sinner.

The important thing is to see the mechanism of violence at work here. Jesus died for sin, but what is sin? Socially, sin is what is destructive to society. For the ancient Jews, that included things such as murder, and stealing your neighbour’s ass, but also eating shellfish and mixing different fibres in clothing. That may seem ridiculous to us, but we have our own version 0f major and minor sins. The major ones are obvious, but the smaller ones are just as important. For example, bumping into someone in the street and not apologizing may not be considered a sin, but most people would consider it bad behavior and a negative mark against a person’s character. Trashy magazines make jokes about people, especially women, committing ‘crimes against fashion’ – such as combining items of clothing that don’t go together or are out of date, according to the ‘fashion experts’. Technically they’re talking about fashion sin. Something similar can be found in every aspect of life. Every group of people, every human collective, holds expectations about what is ‘right’, what people should do, what they should think, what they should value. To go against that is to sin. Even bikie gangs have a strong sense of who is righteous and who is a sinner, except that it’s more likely to be the more naughty you are, the greater your righteousness in the eyes of the gang. But they still have that same system of defining what’s acceptable and what’s not, and therefore who’s in and who’s out. That same mechanism was at work in bringing about the crucifixion of Jesus: those who sin must be punished.

Because we’re always in danger of breaking rules (whichever rules apply in the circles we move in), we’re always under threat of punishment, so the best counter to that is to point the finger at other rule-breakers. The more we do that, the less chance we have of being punished for our wrong-doing and the better we feel about ourselves because we are not like those rule-breakers. This means we’re always clambering to not be identified as rule-breakers, and so we love to scape-goat others. In other words, drawing attention to their sin. That’s why it feels so good to criticize Donald Trump, or the young generation, or the previous one, or the government, or the church, or people of a particular race, or racists. Did you read of the condemnation actor Liam Neeson received after confessing some past racism? The more we condemn him for saying that, the better we feel about our own racism.

The world punishes people for sin, hence it was human beings who punished Jesus for sin. Not for real sin though, but for what his people decided was sin. The real sin is our driving others out and punishing them. God didn’t punish Jesus for our sin. Jesus died to show us that and free us from it.