Sermon for Mothering Sunday 15-3-2015 Ex 2.1-10 Lk 2.33-38

…The relations of the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally—almost, in a sense, rightly, their claims override for her all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife.
from Mere Christianity 1952. C S Lewis

On Mothering Sunday, it’s fun to look at these reflections by C S Lewis. They’re very much a product of his time and culture, ’though some people around now might still agree with him. It’s good to look at his very British reflections today, because the readings for Mothering Sunday take a very different slant on things. The Bible passages we’ve heard today show that the Hebrew people cherished precisely that protectiveness and fierce loyalty that made C S Lewis so uncomfortable. They cherished it about their mothers, think back to Moses’ Mum, Jochebed’s canny protection of her baby. * And in Psalm 34 today, we’ve seen how the Hebrew people cherished that fierce, protective loyalty in God.

When you put polite western Christianity side-by-side with ancient tribalist Judaism, what you highlight is that our understanding of God is very much shaped by our culture and by our personal experience. There’s been a dominant element in later Church culture that’s either romanticised and over-sweetened the feminine aspect to our faith (focusing on the purity of Our Lady, and a good version of womanhood that’s defined only by innocence or motherhood)—or we’ve just plain denied the feminine in our faith altogether.

But the grass-roots people have always fought back. Every time I go into Orthodox or Catholic churches, the votive altars tell the real story. The one in front of the sculpture of Jesus has a few candles politely flickering on it, but the candle-tray in front of the lady in blue is a veritable bushfire. The people—women and men—want that loyal, indulgent protectress to bend the old boy’s ear: a more direct approach would probably not work.

The message of today’s scriptures is perfectly clear. God is like a tigress for us; fiercely protective, unashamedly loving, and, despite dear C S Lewis, in very much the feminine way that made him so uncomfortable.

The picture of God we get from our readings this morning is of a God who entrusts very serious matters to women. Moses’ father isn’t mentioned in the story of his infancy; we just have the three women. The Pharaoh has decreed that all Hebrew baby boys should be drowned in the Nile. For the pure love of a child, Jochebed, his mother, Miriam his sister, and the daughter of the Pharaoh conspire together to save Moses from that fate.

The theological significance of their action—the sign that God is an active participant in this rescue—is flagged in the Hebrew word that we wrongly translate as a basket. The word in Hebrew is tevah תֵּבָה.

The only other place in the Bible where the word tevah appears is in the flood story, and there we translate it as the ark. By using this word, the author is telling us that these three women are doing the same thing that Noah’s family did; they are working directly under God’s orders—they are midwives of God’s plan for the world’s future—and so absolutely pivotal figures in salvation history. I find that spine-tingling.

God entrusts very serious matters to women. It’s not that men and maleness are shut out of this—that’s not the intention of this meditation. It’s just that at least on one day, we should consider the significance of the feminine principle in our God, in our community, and in our Church. Mothering Sunday is an invitation to see God and the Church beyond our usual, limited, culturally-defined horizons.

Today, we share the story of three women who subvert an unjust law; they observe its letter but they deny its spirit in order to care for a child. This is an insight that’s become ingrained in faithful Jewish people. In the Gospel we see the confidence of the old man Simeon. He entrusts Mary with the meaning of all his years of waiting for the Holy One of Israel. He knows she’ll follow through. God gave her this child; she’d stay with him no matter what. And Simeon’s trust is immediately confirmed by the prophet Anna.

Today’s stories present God as being like the woman who cares for a family when the father’s not around; like the caregiver who picks up what other carers have neglected. God is in solidarity with the committed carer.

Anyone who cares for the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the refugee, the unlovable—is being like God. In a tangible way for those down-trodden ones, such a carer embodies the presence of the true God. So is it strange to think of God calling the Church to be a mother, and offer nurture rather than wield authority? Mothering Sunday is our opportunity to get to know God’s purpose for us better, and to develop as a community which, in God’s plan, would have us serve the world as an ark. Amen

Mothering Sunday Cake and Posy Blessing
Compassionate God, giver of life, love and joy,
on this Mothering Sunday,
we ask that you bless this cake and these posies,
that they may be to us
symbols of our communion with you and with each other.
As they were once scattered over our land
as blossoms and blooms,
grasses, vines, nut-trees, spice-bushes and sugar cane
and yet are now they are one,
so let us in our diversity
be your one redeemed people and your delight,
knit together by your love,
as you once knit us together in our mothers’ wombs.
All this we pray in Jesus precious name, Amen.

* Num 26:59 The name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; and she bore to Amram: Aaron, Moses, and their sister Miriam.

Epiphany + 6 2015 Mk 1.40-45—Jesus Cleanses a Leper

And along comes a leper! Just about every verse begins with kai (and) in this early stage of Mark’s gospel. Events in Jesus’ life seem to cascade in on him at this very early stage in his ministry. Not just little things, though. And along comes a leper!

What do we know about the illnesses the New Testament calls leprosy? The word lepein that it comes from means scale or peel off; it describes a variety of disfiguring diseases, not just leprosy.

The law of Moses said anyone with a disease like this must cry out ‘unclean!’ wherever they went so that no-one would come near them and get contaminated. Jews believed that anyone touching a leper may as well have touched a corpse. To do so would shut you out of social and religious life for at least a week. But someone who actually had this sort of disease was numbered among the living dead; an untouchable.

This man who came to Jesus was an outcast of the most severe order. Rabbinic writings after Jesus’ time show that scholars believed leprosy was as hard to cure as it would be to raise someone from the dead. So leprosy was really a life sentence: this man was perpetually unclean. It meant a life forever apart from everyone else. On top of that, many people saw leprosy as divine punishment for some serious sin the sufferer must have committed. So he couldn’t expect to be treated with compassion either—You’ve only got yourself to blame! He lived out in the wilderness in many ways. That’s where he came from, and he came to Jesus.

He must have been desperate to approach anyone. The loneliness and desolation must have been gnawing at him from the inside like the disease gnawed at his body to make him so reckless.

And he says to Jesus; if you choose, you can make me clean. It’s as if he is talking to God—only God can heal at will. But strangely, he doesn’t ask to be healed. He asks to be made clean—to be restored to society.

Of course, that meant healing, but the most important thing for this man was being clean: the chance to be with people again! It meant so much to him—he wanted it so urgently—that when he was healed, he couldn’t wait until he’d seen the priest before he talked with people. What use is a priest anyway. They can only declare people clean. Jesus could make them clean. Suddenly he was whole! He had to tell everyone this.

But let’s go back to the way Jesus treated him. It says he was moved with pity. If you have modern Bibles, you’ll see a little footnote mark next to the word pity. The footnote will read, Other ancient authorities read anger’.

Several commentators opt for the more difficult reading of anger. One of them said; you can understand a scribe who’s making a copy of the gospel changing anger to pity. But what scribe would change it the other way? Bruce Metzger says it may even have first been mistranslated into Greek from Aramaic (Jesus’ language. In Aramaic’s modern version, Syriac, ethraham means he had pity and ethra`em means he was enraged). What do you think about this story if the word is anger?

There are certainly angry sounding words later on in the story, After sternly warning him, Jesus sent him away at once.^v.43

What could have got into Jesus? … There are many things to discuss about this passage if we are to get to the bottom of it, but in the end, we have to ask what is gospel—what is Good News—about it? For me, the good news is how this story says who Jesus is.

The Gospel of Mark has a thing called a messianic secret in it. Read the gospel, and count how many times Jesus heals someone and then tells them to keep quiet about it; not to tell anyone he’s the Messiah. Mark didn’t want us to focus on Jesus as a miracle worker. For Mark, no-one could never appreciate what it means that Jesus is the Messiah without knowing him as the crucified one. And Mark proclaims Jesus as just that in this story.

The leper comes to Jesus out of the wilderness—out of exile, if you like. He’s untouchable; cut off from going where he wants to go, unable to touch anyone, and a danger to anyone who might touch him. Jesus rejects this man’s isolation. He does it by publicly touching the untouchable. And the man is set free, immediately. Suddenly made whole, he bounds off to bathe in his restored contact with people. Verse 45 says that he goes off proclaiming freely and spreading the word.

He does what Jesus wanted to keep doing. But verse 45 goes on to say Jesus can’t do that any more. Now he’s the one who can’t go openly into a town—who has to stay out in the wilderness. This is the Jesus we know from the cross. That leper in the wilderness had been on a cross, but by touching him and restoring him, Jesus changed places with him. This is the meaning of the cross. It’s a source of joy and freedom to the outcast and broken, because Jesus wills our wholeness, and gives of himself to make it happen.

This is the Gospel. Jesus the Messiah becomes one of us and sets us free to be ourselves—whole and connected. And the new freedom—the new life is a taste of the resurrection life he calls us to share with him. We must continue to preach this, and bring people to him from every wilderness.

Lent 3b 8-3-15
(Ex 20 1-17 Ps 19 1 Cor 1 18-25 Jn 2 13-22)

‘Cut a deal’—mutual trust

Lord our God, by your Holy Spirit, write your commandments upon our hearts, and grant us the wisdom and power of the cross, so that, cleansed from greed and selfishness, we may become a living temple of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is a beautiful, rich collect prayer; a precious string of pearls which gathers the themes of today’s readings and also threads through other Biblical themes in a remarkable way. It opens with the invocation Lord our God. It’s a simple but amazing statement that our life with God is one of mutual belonging and trust; and this gives meaning to everything else.

By your Holy Spirit, write your commandments upon our hearts. Linking Holy Spirit and our hearts recalls Rom 8^26-27 where we learn how the Spirit lives within us, praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words, and that God, who knows the heart’s secrets, understands these prayers. ^{(J B Phillips tr.)} It’s a beautiful picture of how our mutual belonging with God finds expression—it’s an utter gift of God.

Here we ask the Holy Spirit to inscribe God’s commandments on our hearts; very different from how God’s commandments were first given. As we read, they were first given through Moses to the people of Israel—a written covenant of mutual care. In Ex 31¹⁸ we’re told they were written with the finger of God on tablets of stone and given to Moses.

But in our collect prayer this morning, we prayed that God the Holy Spirit might inscribe them not on tablets of stone, but directly onto our hearts. This evokes the new covenant in Jer 31, where the Law of God would be inscribed onto the very hearts of the people of Israel.

Can the finger of God touch our hearts? We’ve just prayed in confidence that this should happen. What will this do for us? Will it grant us the wisdom and power of the cross The collect prayer links the touch of God’s finger on our hearts with blessings of wisdom and power. Here, it echoes the Psalmist’s love-song to God’s Law. Psalm 19 celebrates the way God’s commandments revive our souls, how they give us wisdom and joy, clear our vision, and purify us, leaving us with the sweetest taste in our mouths—so much more than much fine gold can do for us.

Is that an odd move for you? The Psalmist is simply contrasting the gift of the Law with the other standard measure of value, fine gold, which comes off a poor second. Law and gold—relationships and power–represent the two sets of values competing within us. Do we begin to hear the distant, muffled chink of coins falling from the money-changers’ tables here?

Paul also picks up this wisdom and power theme in his comparison of the wisdom of the Cross with the other wisdoms it confronts: the empirical proofs of signs, and the idolising of rhetorical prowess and learning. Here, he speaks directly into our time. Our culture gags anyone who doesn’t use what we might call a scientific methodology, and by doing that, we write off and destroy whole civilizations and races. Paul knows that neither signs nor learning speak with anything like the power of God’s love; a love we encounter uniquely in the Cross of Christ.

I knew a young man who valued philosophical wisdom far more highly than any religious belief. He angrily rejected the notion that people might be in any way answerable to God, or owe anything to Jesus.

He set upon any Christian he encountered with a furious zeal, in his own mind shredding the delusional logic of their faith, and attacking the God who seemed to cruelly demand so much perfection from such frail vessels. One day, he picked the wrong victim. This one, far from joining the argument, began to weep at this misrepresentation of the God who gives everything. That day, the young man began the journey from dead-end wisdom to the true freedom, wisdom and power of the Cross.

Grant us the wisdom and power of the cross, so that, cleansed from greed and selfishness, we may become a living temple of your love. Cleanse. The collect prayer now links us to the Gospel, where Jesus cleanses the Temple of commerce. Here is the same Law and gold tension we heard in the Psalm. Now the distant cascade of falling coins is drowned by the thumps of falling tables, the lowing, bleating and clattering hooves of startled beasts, and the anguished roars of Jesus, the sellers of the birds and animals and the outraged money changers.

Cleansing greed and selfishness is a roaring battle which Jesus fights for and with us. It’s an inner battle. And today, we see a dramatic picture of it in his cleansing of the Temple.

We know this, because when the officials ask him what sign he can show them to justify his outrageous behaviour—yes, they do require empirical proof—he tries to teach them that the cleansing was the sign. It was a sign of the inner cleansing we all need so that our bodies might become living temples of God’s love—worthy temples of the Holy Spirit we have asked to inscribe God’s Law on our hearts. And because we are his body, we ask God to do this for us in his name; in Jesus’ name. Amen

Lent 2b A & C 1-3-2015 Mk 8.31-38: ^34bIf you want to become my follower, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me

Deny yourself: what might that mean? Maybe it means deny yourself something you can normally have? In the season of Lent, people often deny themselves luxuries—usually food and drinks, like chocolate, meat, sweet drinks and alcohol—except on Sundays, of course. Other people deny themselves things they enjoy doing. Concerts, films: I’ve known some give up computer and smart-phone games; even Facebook!

Often giving these things up isn’t the hard part. But the way people treat you when you can’t eat the same things they do can be pretty hard to cope with; especially if they’ve invited you to dinner! No, denying yourself isn’t the hard bit. The hard part is dealing with the people around you who think you’re being anti-social or just silly. What would your friends say if you told them you were taking 6½ weeks off Facebook for Lent? Exactly!

But why deny yourself something you can normally have anyway? You might want to give the money you’d have spent on these things to someone who’s not as fortunate as you. If our parish Lenten offering to ABM projects was 400 households worth of money normally spent on chocolate, alcohol and meat over 6½ weeks, it would add up to quite a bit, wouldn’t it. Or if we could give our time. Imagine 6½ weeks’ worth of the time we might all have spent staring at screens—all that time donated to volunteering. That could make a big difference somewhere, couldn’t it.

But we need to ask the question, Was this what Jesus actually meant when he said Deny yourself? Did he mean give up chocolate or screen games? Or did he call us to do something deeper than that.

Did he mean perhaps deny myself—deny who I think I am, so that he can give me a new self? Would he really want to do that? What’s wrong with our old selves? We’re not perfect, of course. But God loves us the way we are, so what’s wrong with keeping our old selves? Why change?

Yes, God loves us as we are. But are we necessarily the way God wants us to be? Isn’t there any room for improvement? Our Lenten studies on Romans already tell us there most certainly is room for improvement—particularly in our attitudes to other people. … The chapter after this morning’s reading from Romans has a very special sentence in it: ^{Rom 5.8} God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That means everyone. We Church-goers aren’t any different from anyone else. And it only takes a glance at the news headlines to confirm that there’s massive room for improvement right across the human race.

If you want to become my follower, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Deny myself. What exactly about myself does Jesus want me to deny? I got one unexpected answer to this question last week; deny myself the benefits of institutionalised racism. Where did that come from?

Betty Argent and I spent Tues and Wed at Tauondi College, Port Adelaide for a Cultural Respect Training Programme run by Anglicare. I imagined we’d be learning about Aboriginal customs and how to avoid accidentally offending people. But it wasn’t like that at all. Pretty early on, we were discussing racism; trying to define it and how to deal with it. Some of us wanted to define it as a product of ignorance: you fear what you’re not familiar with. Easily fixed, we thought. Mix. Once you meet people of another race, your ignorance dissolves, and so do your negative feelings.

Not so; we were challenged about that head on. Negative racial attitudes don’t come from ignorance. They’re learned—and they’re shared. We also learned that people get disadvantaged on account of their race when white people get advantaged or privileged on account of our race. Our privilege —our advantage—takes up space and resources that should be shared equally among all people. We learned about this through stories.

One of the leaders of the programme—an Aboriginal man—told us the story of the first time he flew to Darwin for his work. He got out to the airport taxi rank and joined the queue. When he got to the front of the queue, and the next taxi arrived, it was given to the white man behind him. Then the same thing happened again. And when the third taxi came, the next white man in the queue tried to insist that the Aboriginal man take it. But the response was, No you take it mate; he’s only goin’ to the bottle-o.

Two taxi drivers, two passengers and whoever was controlling the taxi rank all agreed that white people should go first; that the taxis were firstly the right of white people. White privilege is invisible to us, and yet we carry it everywhere we go.
from Peggy McIntosh’s White privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. (ie without being harassed by suspicious police)

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” colour that more or less match my skin.
… on and on until no. 50 http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

Jesus said, If you want to become my follower, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. It seems to me that the self Jesus wants me to deny is one I never even knew existed until last week; the self that unthinkingly lives with all these privileges which push people outside my whiteness behind me in the taxi queue of life—as if I’m some sort of higher being!?

My job this Lent is to follow Jesus who denied himself his own glory—unimaginable heights—to come down to you and me, and raise all of us—whatever our race—raise all of us up from the dust of which he made us.

Lent I 22.2.2015 Gen 9.8-17, Mk 1.9-15 Jesus’s ministry begins

Two readings to wonder about today.

The first reading talks about the time just after the great flood, when Mister and Mrs Noah and their family and all the animals and birds came out of the Ark. They are all given a very special promise by God, called a covenant, and it was a promise of blessing to all the animals as well as the humans.

Every rainbow we see reminds us of that covenant, and that God cares about all living creatures. We are God’s people, so I wonder what that means for the way we look after animals now.

In the Gospel, Jesus is baptised by John in the Jordan River, and straight after that, the Spirit drives him out into the wilderness and he lives out there for forty days. He’s tempted by Satan, he’s living with the wild beasts; and the angels look after him.

There are those wild beasts again.

I wonder if that means anything for us as Christians.

Four things happen right after Jesus passes through the waters of baptism; ¹ he sees the heavens torn apart, ² he sees the Spirit descending onto him; ³ he hears God the Father call him ‘my Son, the Beloved’ and declare he’s ‘well pleased’ with him.—So surely he must be ready for his public ministry now; powerful, blessed and deeply connected with God. But no, there’s something else. Suddenly, immediately, ⁴ the Spirit throws him out into the wilderness for forty days where he’s tempted by the enemy—the accuser—and he’s with the wild beasts, and the angels minister to him.

Is this baffling? It’s important for us to notice two things here. The ministry of Jesus is to come not out of his divine power, but out of his human weakness. And we humans are not the whole of God’s plan: part of it, yes; but only part. Once he’s baptised, Jesus goes first to be with creatures other than us: wild beasts; angels. We are not the whole story

Jesus comes out of the water and he’s thrown into the wilderness for forty days; being with beasts. This connects him with the flood story. It also connects him with the central story of God’s ancient people; the Exodus. God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt bringing them to safety through the waters of the Red Sea. They got across safely, but also found themselves in the wilderness; in their case for forty years.

And at the end of the Exodus story, Joshua (same name as Jesus) led God’s people across the Jordan river into the Promised Land, and suddenly they had to fight battle after battle if they were to keep hold of the land at all. For God’s people, coming up from the water is a new beginning.

But not always an easy beginning. It lands us in a new adventure that God’s been planning for us. We make our landfall only to feel like we’re starting from scratch. Kindy—school—work—marriage—parenthood … Suddenly, we’re reminded of how helpless we are—utterly reliant; like newborns. Jesus knows this feeling. And that’s good news. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s experience of the wilderness is one of nurture and care; angels minister to him. Temptation is not the centre of Mark’s version; it’s being in a real world and receiving care when you need it. Jesus is one of us; not aloof—not all-powerful; not invulnerable; quite the opposite.

We learn from him that our pilgrimage is a journey into learning to rely on God; learning to discover God’s care for us—and for the beasts and angels—to learn it from experience; not by rote. We learn from today’s gospel that like his baptism, ours was always going to be a signal of testing to come, but that none of us approaches that time of testing alone. Jesus had beasts for companions and angels to meet his needs. Who do we have? Who’s committed to sharing our years of pilgrimage with us; God’s ministering angels in our wilderness times?

Now a word about those wild beasts out in that wilderness. God loves them just as we know God loves us. What we learned from the flood story this morning, and what we can learn from the book of Genesis (1,8 etc), in the Psalms (50, 105, 128), and in the prophet Isaiah (11), is that God has a special care for the wild beasts. According to scripture, the wild beasts Jesus was spending time with were creatures that God had declared to be good, creatures that God also made a covenant with, creatures who, as the Psalms tell us, praise God by their very existence.

I believe that now, as we grow increasingly aware of our impact on the other families of Earth, a part of every Christian’s pilgrimage will need to include an awareness of our responsibility for what happens to God’s other creatures. We must be ministering angels of God to those wild creatures, just as we’ve always been protectors of any human beings who, for whatever reason, can’t speak in their own defence.

We have to make sure that our children and grandchildren grow up knowing how to choose to be ministering angels of God to silenced people and wild creatures. But we have to make sure those people and creatures survive now, so our children might have them to care for.

And we have to make sure that children can grow up in a way that gives them space and time to experience wilderness—not distracted, but simply in a wilderness—where they can have the opportunity to learn how they rely, at the most basic level, on their God; the God who calls them into existence, the God who loves them, the God who calls them on their pilgrimage with all God’s people as ministers to all God’s beloved.

And finally, should the world change and our own children come to number among those who are silenced by poverty, disaster or tyranny, we have to ensure that these Bible stories are told everywhere—that the Gospel reaches all families of the Earth—that God’s words might go forth. For if they do, they will not return empty. God will call other carers to follow the example of Jesus—to minister not out of their strength, but simply from who they are.

Amen.