Lent 2 a
^{A & C
12-3-2017
John 4.1-21, Gen 12 1-4, Ps 121, Rm4 1-17}

Nicodemus visits Jesus in the night

We’ve heard stories of two people today who risk everything on the basis of am impossible challenge. There’s Abraham, who leaves everything to obey God, and Nicodemus, who visits Jesus in the night. He’s our subject today.

Like others in Jerusalem, Nicodemus had seen the signs Jesus has performed. He may well have been there when Jesus cleared the Temple of the people selling birds and animals for sacrifice, and the money changers. Fascinated by this man, he arranges to meet Jesus. But he’s not game to be publicly associated with Jesus. Jesus cleansing the Temple might have been called a terrorist act these days – or the act of some fanatic from a religious fringe group. So Nicodemus visits Jesus, but secretly, in the night.

Nicodemus is just like many people here – educated, committed and faithful, and with a respected position in the community – a reputation that’s taken years to earn. Who here would visit a revolutionary new spiritual teacher like this in broad daylight? Would you meet with Jesus at Essence or Ruby’s on Wednesday morning for coffee? Might be noticed! What would they say?

So yes, Nicodemus visits Jesus in the night. John’s Gospel makes a lot of the symbolism of light and darkness. Think of the last few verses from today’s gospel: ‘¹⁹And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

Maybe Jesus meant Nicodemus chose to come out from the darkness – came to the light of Jesus; so he was somebody who does what is true.

If so, he was right. But poor Nicodemus got more than he bargained for. No sooner had he paid his respects to Jesus than he was utterly confounded by a saying about being born from above – born anew – born again. He took it literally – and who wouldn’t without a lifetime of teaching on Christian baptism. Jesus takes him off into another realm of understanding about being born not of his mother, but of the Spirit. You’d think that with such obscure sounding teaching, Jesus would never see Nicodemus again.

And maybe he doesn’t; but we do – twice. The first time, Nicodemus risks his reputation when he challenges his fellow Pharisees; they want to haul Jesus before a kangaroo court^{(ch 7)}. The next time, he joins Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus’s body. By doing so abandons his ritual purity ^{(ch 19)}. So he won’t be able to participate in the Passover the next day. That’s like a priest on Holy Saturday deciding to give up the chance to celebrate Easter the next day.

Nicodemus also gives up as any pretence to secrecy. He is by now so deeply a disciple of Jesus that even after Jesus’s execution – which made other disciples run away and hide in fear and doubt – he has become so profoundly a disciple of Jesus that he risks any social standing he has to pay his last respects. The Spirit has done just what Jesus said; she breathed where she chose, and Nicodemus was born anew; born again; born from above.

But that takes us several weeks down the track, doesn’t it. What about now? As we journey down that track? Does Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus in the night have something to say to us, who are like him in so many ways? I think it must.

It’s sometimes really tricky for us to have our faith identity and our social identity open to view at the same time. They don’t necessarily match.

At our soup supper, we discussed where we get our identity from: our family, faith community, nationality, career, things we do with friends, our language, where we live, things that we’re passionate about, things we love about people and things we hope people love about us. It’s quite a mixture, isn’t it. And we protect these things; we don’t want them laughed at or called into question. An attack on the things that make us who we are is really threatening.

Sometimes our faith identity and personal identity can contradict each other. We’re finding in our Soup Suppers how our national identity and the plight of fellow Christians who are Aboriginal are deeply at odds. Our studies are giving us the chance to hear the stories of faithful Aboriginal Christians; to read the same scriptures as these brothers and sisters through the same set of glasses. And that experience brings us all into the presence of Jesus together.

And that’s the point. Jesus came for us all – for the whole world. We heard him say it this morning: ¹⁶ ‘…God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷ ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

No-one is left out of God’s love; God sent Jesus in order that the world might be saved. Was it that insight which made Nicodemus choose to risk his identity – career, friendships and social standing – to rethink his own people’s whole reason for being? This son of Abraham made the same choice as his ancestor. He left everything to follow God wherever the breath of the Spirit might lead. The purpose was the same: that all families of the Earth – the whole world – might receive God’s blessing. May we be courageous enough disciples to follow these very clear examples! It’s about God’s Grace; God’s Love. Everyone needs it and we are the chosen vessels. Amen

Nicodemus and the Importance of Questions

When I went to an EFM group here with John Stephenson, and then on to a Bachelor of Theology, one of my most liberating discoveries was that I was free to question who God is, what Scripture means, who I am, and what makes life worthwhile.

There might not be simple answers, or the answers might change as I change, but the questions open doors to transformation for me.

Our Clinical Pastoral Education centre director, Les Underwood, always says to our groups that asking the right questions is more important than finding the right answers.

Richard Rohr, in a foreword to John Dear’s book The Questions of Jesus, writes: “I am told, for example, that Jesus only directly answers 3 of the 183 questions that he himself is asked in the four Gospels! (I will let you find them!) This is totally surprising to people who have grown up assuming that the very job description of religion is to give people answers and to resolve peoples’ dilemmas.

Apparently this is not Jesus’ understanding of the function of religion because he operates very differently.”

Rohr goes on to say: “Instead, Jesus asks questions, good questions, unnerving questions, re-aligning questions, transforming questions.  He leads us into liminal, and therefore transformative space, much more than taking us into any moral high ground of immediate certitude or ego superiority. He subverts up front the cultural or theological assumptions that we are eventually going to have to face anyway.  He leaves us betwixt and between, where God and grace can get at us, and where we are not at all in control.” Later Rohr says: “Easy answers instead of hard questions allow us to try to change others instead of allowing God to change us.  At least, I know that is true in my life.”
The dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus is a powerful example of the importance of questions to and from Jesus. I want to illustrate that by reading a portion of a letter I imagined Nicodemus writing to other faith leaders:

“I address this letter to several of those I consider most open-minded in matters of religion. Like me, you have probably been examining the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, trying to decide if he is misleading the people. As I listened to him, I began to ask myself whether he is challenging us, as the prophets did, to see that there is something missing or distorted in our present understanding and practice of who we are as people of God. Do we need to change our perspective? Until I had heard Jesus speak, I had been quite content to follow in what I believed to be the ways of the law and the teaching of the prophets. Jesus made me more aware of the great principles in our Scriptures that are the essence of the law and the prophetic writings. In Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, we are instructed to love God and to love our neighbour. That love is the basis of everything. The prophets have frequently reminded our people of that. In Jesus, perhaps that love of God and neighbour is fully expressed.”

The more I thought about Jesus, the more I felt disturbed by awkward questions.

As a Pharisee, have I got my priorities wrong? If I practice the letter of the law but use that legalism as a substitute for love of God and neighbour, do I focus on a superficial conformity, and lose the Spirit that is meant to give it life?

New life in the Spirit is what Jesus spoke to me about in challenging terms when I went to see him the other night in secret, trying to get some answers.

He said, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet do not understand these things?” At the time, I felt quite angry that he could dare to challenge me so. I have spent my life studying the law, yet he said that he and his followers have a different kind of knowledge. He said to me: “We speak of what we know and testifies to what we have seen, and yet you do not receive our testimony.”

He claims to have knowledge from his experience that was more immediate and compelling than anything I had found in my studies. He looks at things through different eyes, and he believes he sees the kingdom of God from the inside. He says it’s like being reborn. I tried to resist that idea, making fun of the thought of going back in the mother’s womb and being born again. Yet I could see in him something I wanted to experience for myself. I ask myself: Can I experience this new life in the Spirit? Is there a spiritual reality that could make my life more meaningful and connected to God’s purposes?

If I come to accept Jesus’ teaching fully, it would change everything. One minute I believe that this change is life giving and I want to embrace it. The next minute, it all becomes overwhelming because it affects my understanding of God so deeply and it asks me to make a commitment that could be dangerous. I see in Jesus’ face the knowledge that being true to his convictions might cost him his life and that his followers might be equally at risk. I’m not sure I would be ready to be counted as his follower when other religious leaders decide they want to be rid of the challenge he represents. Sometimes I wish I had never heard of Jesus. However, I can’t help but ask myself: Do I merely want my religious practices to be comfortable and familiar, or do I really want to discover new life and enter the kingdom of God?

I wonder about what new life in the Spirit might mean to me, I hope that as I write I will gain the courage and confidence to support Jesus publicly.

I am coming to believe that Jesus does not undermine old truths, but reinterprets them in ways that can change lives. His teaching is consistent with the tradition, particularly that of the prophets, but he makes tradition meaningful and alive in ways that bring us fresh possibilities.

Micah says that being right with God is to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. When I talk with Jesus, I feel as if I see the power of loving kindness and justice. When I allow myself to walk humbly with Jesus, I realize that he is the living answer to my questions about what it means to be born from above, born of the spirit and able to see the kingdom of God. He said that “what is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit”. Flesh and Spirit are not in opposition, as some of the Greek philosophers believe. Our Jewish understanding is that flesh and spirit are a united whole, but flesh without Spirit is dead. That’s why we think of the Spirit as breath or wind. You can’t see it, but a body without breath is dead, and our world without wind to bring the rain would be a desert.

We believe that our God is Lord of the seen and the unseen, yet too often we focus only on what is seen, which we can predict and control. The unseen is mystery and risk. Like the wind, it comes and goes unpredictably. To be born of the Spirit is to be responsive to what is unseen, to be moved by this energy from God which cannot be limited or controlled.

That is what I sense in Jesus, this strong link to the energy of God which creates and shapes the world in ways we cannot control. Yet our religion often seems to want to control people and to limit our relationship to God to the example of the past, the traditions of worship and Scripture interpretation. Yet God is not contained and defined by our boxes. The big question for me is this: Am I ready to follow Jesus beyond my comfort zone? I wonder what questions arise for you as you examine the teaching of Jesus and this letter.

Lent 1 A 5-3-2017

^{Gen 2 15-17 & 3 1-7, Ps 32, Rom 5 12-21, Mt 4 1-11}

Today we’ve heard two very familiar stories from the scriptures – a pigeon pair – about people tempted to abandon their loyalty to God. The story from Genesis often gets described as the story of “The Fall” – or the story of “Original Sin”. It’s about the first humans being tempted to ignore God’s warning about forbidden knowledge, and then what happens when they give in to that temptation. So it’s about humanity’s loss of innocence; about our expulsion from paradise – becoming strangers to God, and about the origin of death. We might call it the story of becoming strangers.

A Canadian Theologian, William Danaher wrote that in this Genesis story, human flourishing is compromised. It’s a tragedy. Trust is eroded, loyalty is abandoned – people who were faithful people, faithful friends, suddenly become strangers, not only to God, but to each other and even to their own selves as well. When we act on a choice like this, somehow we stop being the people we knew we were only moments earlier.

It’s a terrible spot to get into. Betrayal always leads to destructive silence; a secret loneliness that alone we have no strength to overcome. As the Psalmist says, whilst I held my tongue; my bones wasted away … your hand was heavy on me day and night. Yet we’ve heard today that there is a way back from it. Paul stressed it again and again today. No matter what lie has been told; no matter what a stranger we’ve become to those we love and who love us, and even to our true selves, the free gift of Jesus’s integrity and grace offers us the way back.

The joy of this experience is beyond normal language to tell, but as ever, the Psalmist knows the words; whoever puts their trust in the Lord, mercy embraces them on every side.

The Gospel story of Jesus’ temptation in the Judean wilderness is the pigeon pair to the story from Genesis – a mirror in which much is reversed. Where there was the lush Garden of Eden, now there’s a harsh, dangerous desert. There, two people with all they needed; now Jesus alone and at the brink of survival. And the temptation to ignore God’s words is more sophisticated; now it’s presented as a temptation to hear God’s words falsely; to imagine they’re only about personal gain. The packaging is more sophisticated, but the basic temptation is the same; forget your loyalty; forget your integrity; forget your honesty and go for self-sufficiency, invulnerability and power and glory.

If we go down this path, can we see how it will lead us away from our own humanity? Everything precious to us is shared with our loved ones; it’s received with grateful joy, or suffered in the embrace of compassion. Outside of relationship, none of it has meaning. Knowing this, it’s clear how gross and destructive each of the temptations in the wilderness actually is. Each demands the abandonment of trust, of loyalty, the abandonment of being in relationship – in short, the abandonment of being truly human. And in the wilderness, Jesus withstands them all. We might call this the story of sticking with your friendships.

But for now the wilderness is the image we need to stick with. The desert is lonely and dangerous. Yet it is an essential place for us.

It’s the place we end up when we’ve succumbed to temptations which all derive from the temptations we’ve heard today – and they all lead to isolation. The emotions out in that wilderness are likely to move from bitter sadness through angry self-justification to overpowering self-pity – then back again. We’re tempted to give into those feelings – blame others for what we’ve done; choose to cut ties and go it alone – imagine how sorry they’ll be. It’s a place where we have to choose between becoming a monster, or going back and owning up to the idiot we’ve been.

The Spirit led Jesus into that wilderness – and he went.

This is not the only time Jesus went into the place of our weakness; our vulnerability. It’s the story of his life – his birth and his death. And we need to keep most firmly in view what those choices of his were for. If the Genesis story is one about becoming strangers, his story is about seeking us in the wilderness. As soon as he’s been baptised and commissioned, he marches straight out to us in our wildernesses – our desert; opening our eyes, un-stopping our ears, calling us back a sense of who and where we are. The desert isn’t something we can avoid or ignore. It’s part of every human life. We discover it in Lent as a space God allows – creates – to receive us. Our meeting place with God 

In the ABM Lenten desert reflections, Celia Kemp writes; …there is no space that God opens up in our lives that God doesn’t fill. The challenge is to leave the busy surfaces of our lives and enter the desert at our heart in the wild hope that a way may be prepared for us to see God. Amen.

Transfiguration A ^26-2-17

^17.1-9 ‘A friend transfigured’

He was still in an intensive care bed; his condition was still critical. For over a month, they’d been trying to get him back on his feet. We’d been on the phone with the family trying to keep them up with what was happening for him – he was such a long way from home. There were times he’d said he was worried – lonely. I saw him often. But how could you help him enough?

But on one particular day, I got there and something had changed. All the busyness around him was still going on, but about him, there was a stillness; a peace. In his eyes, staring upwards, there was something like a great depth or maybe it was a vast distance – a kind of timelessness. We talked normally, joked. But he looked different. There was an ancient dignity, oblivious to the busy intrusion of intensive-care medicine. He was looking at something I couldn’t see – he could see further than I could.

What could he see? Since he died, we’ve been piecing together our conversations with him and each of us has added a dot to a picture which has been growing daily in clarity; a pattern has come into view.

It’s a picture of someone accepting that his death was coming. A pastor in Papunya spoke with him daily on the phone. They didn’t name it to each other, but the day after he died, the pastor wrote, ‘Looking back, I think he sensed he was dying.’ Gently, he set about putting relationships in order. In his last week here, he was on the phone with his family for most of each day; absolutely there with them as far as he could be – adjudicating disputes, giving counsel, telling people how we belong to each other.

And when Shekayla came back for school, in the last two days he was here, when they were together, her Dad’s priority was to focus her on her school life, and on her relationship with us here in Stirling.

The whole time he was here, he had a Bible with him. From time to time, he’d ask for different strength glasses, so he could keep up with his daily reading. Every time we spoke, he’d ask that we could pray together.

At some moment, he’d changed. He’d entered a place of stillness; of peace. His vision deepened with a distance, with a timelessness, with an ancient dignity. He was transfigured. But his transfiguration is still only now coming into our view – now that he’s gone – coming into view up in Papunya at the sorry camp; in our prayers and sadness down here, and in our friendship with his family. We’re discovering his transfiguration.

That’s what we saw on the mountain in today’s Gospel. Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John. But he knows they won’t begin to comprehend it until after Easter – until its full meaning can be put together. How can they understand that they’ve been present to the God of all time and space? It frightened them so badly that they collapsed in dread? How do you make sense of such a vision? But then he touches them so normally; tells them get up; don’t be afraid. The whole majesty of God, then a gentle touch of encouragement; can we grasp that?

Have you seen anyone transfigured? Did they do something, or say something, or did anyone tell you something about them which utterly transformed the way you see them? Often it’s close to their death, or after it – stories at their funeral that we’d never imagined – that does this.

Some of these moments we call mountain-top experiences. They bring us clarity and vision that we seldom know apart from the closeness of death. My hope for a medical miracle blurred my vision of my friend’s epiphany and transfiguration – it hindered me from entering into it with him.

Matthew gets that point across to us. It’s amazing how blind we can be. Jesus is dazzlingly transfigured on a mountaintop with his close friends. Moses and Elijah appear with him. And Peter says I’ll pitch three tents for you Let’s contain this in something we can comprehend. Is Matthew trying to show us how bizarre our reaction to the transcendent can be? He can afford to be knowledgeable; he’s writing this after Easter.

The season of Epiphany opens with the light of the star of Bethlehem, and it closes with the light of the Transfiguration. It’s the time of the light of God’s presence – God revealed among us, vulnerable and gentle, touching us and saying, ‘get up; don’t be afraid’. It’s the light by which, if we truly look, we can see people being gently transformed into God’s likeness.

I’ve learnt in the last months that I’m in God’s presence when people are open to God. I mightn’t necessarily notice until it seems too late. But God makes sure it’s never a too-late time. I’ve watched Christ transfigure limitations – even death – into a vision of God’s Love. I’ve seen a man in Christ’s image accept his death and gently prepare his family and friends for what they would face.

The light of the world calls us to transfigure lives and set the captive free: hallowed be his name! Amen

Epiphany + 7A ^{19-2-17 A & C Mt 5 33-48}

The Sermon on the Mount (the Sermon on the Mount) is enormously challenging – it does our heads in. For 2¾ years out of every three, we proclaim Jesus as the one who sets us free from the rules and regulations of religion. We learn how we can’t earn our salvation by good works; because of Jesus, we don’t have to. God loved us first and we’re saved by his grace. But then in the Epiphany season of the year of Matthew, we run slap bang into the the Sermon on the Mount and a find a whole lot of seemingly impossible, impractical demands. At one point, Jesus even tells us we have to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. ^{Mt 5.20} Then he goes on to explain how we are to do that.

So last week we were challenged by three confronting sayings of Jesus. 1. Don’t be angry; anger is pretty well the same as murder. 2. Don’t bear grudges, or what we offer to God can’t be acceptable. 3. If we’re already committed to a life partner, don’t even think about another one; thinking about it is just as bad as running off with them. These are extraordinarily demanding sayings. Jesus doesn’t hold back, because he knows as well as we do what it’s like if anyone in a community gives themselves over to anger, resentment or cheating. Everyone gets hurt. Jesus says that our connection with the spirit of the Law is vital. What’s in our hearts – our choices – can bring us and others closer to God, or drive that Love underground.

Jesus teaches us to be a people who show the world a better way – to become more complete – mature – perfect ^{(τέλειός Mt 5:48)}. We may get angry, but let’s not act on that anger; let’s seek respectful, just reconciliation. We may resent the Sermon on the Mounteone, but let’s not act out that resentment; let’s seek reconciliation. That’s better for everyone. We may be attracted to the Sermon on the Mounteone who’s not our partner, but let’s not to act on that attraction; it hurts everyone involved, and most of all, the ones we love the most.

These are teachings for perfecting a community, and a self-willed individual can find them very confronting. Our wider culture promotes individuality, so the the Sermon on the Mount is more counter-cultural in our community now than at any time I can remember.

Jesus carried on with this confrontation today. Don’t be a person who has to swear an oath so the Sermon on the Mounteone will believe you; our yes and our no should be enough. We should be people everyone believes. Don’t retaliate against injury; turn the other cheek. Give more to people than they’ve asked for. Go the extra mile whether they deserve it or not. And love your enemies because God loves them just as much as God loves us. We are to be like God; to be kind and patient. The Church has always struggled with the way Jesus put these teachings.

There are things to say about each of them, but first let’s remember how Matthew set the the Sermon on the Mount in his Gospel. It comes after Jesus’s baptism and his temptation in the wilderness. Jesus has come out of his seclusion to learn that John the Baptist has been gaoled in Galilee. Hearing this, Jesus goes straight to Galilee. He continues to preach John’s message of repentance, and he call his first disciples.

The the Sermon on the Mount is a preparation course – a crash course – for these brand new disciples before they are sent out themselves to proclaim a new message – the Good News, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has come near / is at hand.’ ^{Mt 10.7} As he sends them out Jesus will command them to take no money or supplies – to trust God’s provision along the Way. ^{Mt 10.9-10} That’s another saying the Church has struggled to receive.

And of course, the ultimate context at the heart of the Gospel is Jesus’s self-giving on the Cross. We have to bear all this in mind as we read the the Sermon on the Mount. Earlier, in the wilderness, Jesus rejected temptations to being self-sufficient ^{(bread from stones 4.3)}, to keeping safe ^{(throw yourself from the pinnacle 4.6)} being rich and powerful ^{(all these I will give you 4.9)}. Instead, he chose humility, integrity, a self-giving, risk-taking trust in God – ie the core messages of the the Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus prepared his disciples by teaching them these qualities which are central to any true proclamation of the Gospel.

The the Sermon on the Mount is a call to us to grow into a community of humility and integrity, self-giving and risk-taking trust in God. Only then can the world take the Gospel seriously as God’s transforming message of salvation.

So the sayings – one point each: don’t swear oaths, turn the other cheek, go the second mile, love your enemies, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Swearing oaths: St Chromatius said “the Lord forbids [this] in case we only appear to tell the truth when we swear.” ^{Tractate on Mt 24-2.2-4 ACCS 1a, 115-6} He means that all of us should be known for our simple integrity – always; oaths are irrelevant to this.

Turn the other cheek: Ex 21:23–24 (eye for eye, tooth for tooth) said an injury should only be compensated in direct proportion to the offence – c.f. ‘payback’. Jesus goes beyond this to counsel non-retaliation; to go behind the literal words of the law and humbly accept the truth that lies at its heart. God loves us both.

Give your cloak too – go the second mile: Dt 24:10-13 describes taking a person’s cloak as pledge for a loan; to return it at night so the poor borrower could sleep in it – but presumably call for it again next morning. Jesus calls for more generosity: “Give to everyone who begs from you.” And the extra mile? Where Matthew’s community lived, a Roman soldier could make you carry his pack for a mile. the Sermon on the Mounte people wanted revenge for this, but Jesus tells us we have the power to choose to do more than is required, to go the extra mile. Doing that proclaims God’s freedom.

Love your enemies: We heard Lev 19.18 today –love your neighbour as yourself. Earlier in that reading, farmers were told to leave enough food behind at harvest time for the poor and the alien to gather for their own needs. God loves the stranger too. So Jesus reminds us that everyone is neighbour; strangers and enemies too.

Finally, be perfect: Jesus reminds us that God loves without discrimination. God sends blessings on both the just and the unjust. So Jesus calls on disciples to be like that; be like God: be perfect. It seems an enormous burden. How can we be perfect? But the Greek word used here τέλειός doesn’t mean to be without fault or never to make a mistake. It means complete, whole or mature. As Susan McCaslin puts it, be open to the flow of the whole – which is the flow of divine love. Amen.

_{Arousing the Spirit – Provocative Writings by Susan McCaslin.© Copyright 2011 Susan McCaslin, CopperHouse,an imprint of Wood Lake Publishing Inc}^.

Epiphany + 6A ^{12-2-2017 Mt 5 21-37}

A long time ago, I was a parishioner in a Bible study working on the Sermon on the Mount. The minister began by asking, ‘What would you think if I got up in the pulpit one Sunday, and instead of my own sermon, I just read out the Sermon on the Mount?’ One lady responded immediately, ‘I’d be disappointed.’ And she didn’t mean she’d be disappointed because the preacher wasn’t doing his job. It was because she finds the Sermon on the Mount so frighteningly challenging.

And at first hearing, it is. Today, Jesus teaches that we’re not to be angry with each other – that it’s tantamount to murder. If he left it at that, it would be impossible, wouldn’t it. Really? Which way do you turn? Is God really that strict? People do things all the time that will make us angry. We can’t help reacting the way we do. Or can we? … Jesus goes on to warn us not to insult each other and not to maintain a state of conflict with each other. So his concern ‘… seems to be less the having of anger than what one does with it: does anger shape our relationships, or preclude reconciliation?¹ … Now I get it. Living in a state of feud or fury is a living hell. You don’t sleep, you can’t think of anything else, you’re consumed by rage; locked out of normal life until you’re reconciled or avenged; which is it to be?

If we look at the news, we find many stories of the latter – vengeance: domestic violence, road rage, ‘coward punches’ and home invasions. And at a more public level, we see it work out in the law-and-order emphases of so many election campaigns. Anger gets whipped up at particular groups who end up wildly over-represented in our prisons. Or there’s racial profiling, which is increasingly openly expressed in calls to strengthen our public security. Communal anger; it often means feeling so justifiably outraged – so unable to consider the other person’s perspective – that hurting them, hating them, locking them up or writing them off as fully human – that an us-and-them mentality seems acceptable. Jesus says it’s not.

Jesus knows where anger can lead. Ever since his childhood, he was a daily witness to the suppression of his people by a foreign power; he knew the corrosive, impotent fury of the zealot factions calling his people to futile resistance. He had to rebuke his close friends when they wanted to resort to violence. ^{Mt 26.51-52} His own choice was to forgive rather than curse the people who killed him. ^{Lk 23.24}

So he calls us to renounce anger’s power over us; – and in particular, to stop it from making us de-humanise anyone else. With Jesus, there can be no them-and-us; no ‘other’. Jesus modelled a lifestyle which focussed on being with outsiders – humanising outsiders whom no-one else treated as human: tax farmers, Samaritans, Romans, whores, lepers and lunatics. Today, they’re boat people, Muslims, welfare recipients, Aboriginal activists, people of minority sexual persuasions. Imagine if people didn’t believe today’s warnings against outsiders –Jesus is calling us to be that people; to renounce a sense of entitlement to anger; not to let anyone make us forget the humanity of the other. There is no other; only God’s children – us.

The quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer which Katrina sent us describes the difficulty of choosing this mindset, but also how it is ultimately a triumph.

The community of the saints is not an ‘ideal’ community, consisting of perfect sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance. No, it is a community which proves that it is worthy of the gospel of forgiveness by constantly and sincerely proclaiming God’s forgiveness.

 Bonhoeffer was gaoled then hanged for living his convictions. …Anger – murder? It’s a question of degree, says Jesus.

Shocking things can happen when we don’t see another person as human – when we objectify them and only consider them in terms of our feelings. And this is the theme Jesus pursues again in the second of his sayings we heard this morning.

²⁷ ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Jesus is telling his followers not to do what the English-speaking world in particular has just about legitimised now: ignoring someone’s humanity and only seeing them as a body that we desire, or that doesn’t interest us; an object. A majority Christian nation just elected a man who publicly judges women by their appearance – humiliating those he doesn’t find attractive. This is not about relationship or respect but ownership; domination. These have nothing to do with humanity – nothing to do with the love God has for all of us, and that God wants us to have for each other.

We live in a world which traffics millions of women and children as slaves in a sex trade. A Royal Commission is investigating how this evil has happened in the Church, and even in this very community. So are Jesus’ words about tearing out our wandering eyes and amputating our offending limbs overstatements? I doubt that a victim of domestic violence or rape or child abuse would think so.

The contemporary Jewish scholar of the NT, Prof A-J Levine writes this;

“By collapsing the distinction between thought and action, [Jesus’] extension of the law against adultery to include lust suggests that no one should be regarded as a sex object. The burden here is placed on the man: women are not seen as responsible for enticing men into sexual misadventures.”

This has implications for the third saying Jesus gives us today – about divorce. In his time, and still in much of the world today, a woman can be handed a certificate of divorce by her husband for burning his toast. This isn’t just possible; it happens, and the right to do so gets fiercely defended. We know how John the Baptist was gaoled and killed for criticising Herod, who divorced his wife to marry his sister-in-law. Women were chattels; belongings. But Jesus’ word about divorce says women and men are equally precious in God’s eyes; there are spiritual implications to violating the humanity of women. Sadly, the Church only saw a prohibition of divorce here, and ostracised both divorced men and women. Wrong again. Jesus was talking about relationship; about respect; about change; about Love. Live what Jesus declared from the mountain-top and we show the world a community of real, humble Love.

Amen

Epiphany + 5

^{February 5th 2017 Isa 58, Ps 112, 1 Cor 2, Mt 5 13-20}

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

That’s an amazing sentence; the goodness of God; the light of Christ – people are meant to see it because of things that you and I do. Or even more daunting, what we do is supposed to affect people so profoundly that they will see the things we do – hear the message we proclaim – and thank God for what they’ve experienced.

But what is it we’re meant to do that will have this extraordinary effect on people? Are they meant to see us heading off to church each week and somehow experience God for themselves just because they see us do that? Probably not – but it might be a start. … Are they meant to come to church with us and see us actually praying and singing – and because of that, will they suddenly have an experience of God that makes them break out in praise? That might be more likely than if they just see us head off to church each week. But I still wonder if it would constitute the sort of life-changing experience which makes people burst out in praise of God. There has to be a more blinding light – an overwhelming, transforming realisation take place – than seeing something inward and spiritual from the outside might make possible.

So what is that light? And how do we give people a chance to experience it. I wrote in my weekly that in this season of Epiphany, the central symbol is light – light shining in the darkness which:-

• drives away fear and replaces it with peace;
• drives away ignorance and replaces it with understanding and tolerance;
• drives away deception and replaces it with truth and fairness;
• drives away despair and replaces it with hope;
• exposes bad motives, revealing their selfishness and injustice , and so enables equity and justice to flourish.

As I said, it’s quite an impressive list – and even so, not a complete one. Only actions and words will enable these sorts of transformations; powerful actions and words which will inspire people to give glory to God. And that will happen whether or not people recognise that it’s God’s goodness which lies behind these transformations. When peace drives away fear, when hope drives away despair, when justice drives away oppression, then kindness drives away isolation and people rejoice; people feel gratitude; people are connected with each other, and so they’re given their own selves back; their dignity and their worth. Their feelings and re-births give glory to the God who inspires and enables all these blessings.

How do we know that? Why do we know that? … Do you remember last week how we heard words from the end of the book of the prophet Micah; words which told us of the compassion and faithfulness of God and challenged us to “…do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God”? Today we’ve heard something equally challenging and wonderful from God through another prophet, Isaiah. We’ve heard God call us to an intensely sleeves-rolled-up lifestyle:

^58.6“…to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷ … to share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house; when [we] see the naked, to cover them”.

What really struck me most powerfully when I read this during the week was something I’ve actually taken pretty much for granted for most of my life. It means a great deal to God that this light of kindness and compassion and faithful care shines in our world. It really matters to God that a society treats its less fortunate members with compassion. Maybe it struck me particularly powerfully because I was experiencing the exact opposite at the time I read this passage from Isaiah. My week in Melbourne saw me reading headlines from one of my least favourite newspapers. Huge headlines blazed across the front page with foul names for the homeless people being evicted from their camp outside Flinders Street Station. The names were ‘serial pests’ – ‘ferals’ – and ‘thugs’.

Who has the right to describe a whole class of people as if they are rodents? What pours out of words like these is darkness – not truth. Such words bind these street people into a de-humanising stereotype from which God wants us to set them free. These homeless people are the very ones Isaiah is telling us are the ones who need to know the light of compassion, kindness and good faith.

God declares through Isaiah to a community which frees these vulnerable people from the callous, unjust demonization they suffer, a community which instead shares bread, shelter and clothing with them,

God says ⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am’.

Today we heard Jesus affirm the prophets we’ve been studying over the past weeks. They faithfully teach us what God is passionate about. And I am inspired and deeply grateful to know that God is passionate about justice, about kindness and about faithfulness. They are the marks of a love which make life a joy – they are the marks of a love which make the service of Jesus utter freedom; they are the marks of a love which are something like an infectious healing; infectious ease.

And we are the ones who have the awesome privilege of being named the carriers of that infectious love. I’ve always thought Jesus is the light of the world, but here he’s telling us that we are; we are that light. We are called to be a lamp in the darkness – a city lit-up on a hill – a beacon of peace, hope, justice, trust, love.

So during the season of Epiphany, when we remember the Magi’s visit to Jesus, our focus is on the way we embody that baby boy – and everything we saw him become – in a world that is desperately in need of all the qualities that his light can offer. I find that calling a staggering privilege, and a daunting, inspiring trust.

Thanks be to God! Amen

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Epiphany + 5 ^{February 5th 2017 Isa 58, Ps 112, 1 Cor 2, Mt 5 13-20}

Kids- what lurks under your bed in the dark? What is the best protection from it? (Torch time with kids; hiding it near my heart whilst claiming it shines on everything around me)

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

That’s an amazing sentence; the goodness of God; the light of Christ – people are meant to see it because of things that you and I do. Or even more daunting, what we do is supposed to affect people so profoundly that they will see the things we do – hear the message we proclaim – and thank God for what they’ve experienced.

But what is it we’re meant to do that will have this extraordinary effect on people? Are they meant to see us heading off to church each week and somehow experience God for themselves just because they see us do that? Probably not – but it might be a start. … Are they meant to come to church with us and see us actually praying and singing – and because of that, will they suddenly have an experience of God that makes them break out in praise? That might be more likely than if they just see us head off to church each week. But I still wonder if it would constitute the sort of life-changing experience which makes people burst out in praise of God. There has to be a more blinding light – an overwhelming, transforming realisation take place – than seeing something inward and spiritual from the outside will make possible.

So what is that light? And how do we give people a chance to experience it. I wrote in my weekly that in this season of Epiphany, the central symbol is light – light shining in the darkness which:-

• drives away fear and replaces it with peace;
• drives away ignorance and replaces it with understanding and tolerance;
• drives away deception and replaces it with truth and fairness;
• drives away despair and replaces it with hope;
• exposes bad motives, revealing their selfishness and injustice , and enabling equity and justice to flourish.

As I said, it’s quite an impressive list – and certainly not a complete list. Only actions and words will enable these sorts of transformations; powerful actions and words which will inspire people to give glory to God. They’ll do that whether or not people recognise that God’s goodness lies behind these transformations. When peace drives away fear, when hope drives away despair, when justice drives away oppression, then kindness drives away isolation and people rejoice; people feel gratitude; people are given their own selves back – their dignity and their worth. And those feelings and re-births give glory to the God who inspires and enables all such blessings.

Why do we know that? How do we know that? … Do you remember last week how we heard words from the end of the book of the prophet Micah which told us of the compassion and faithfulness of God and challenged us to “…do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God”? Today we’ve heard something equally challenging and wonderful from God through another prophet, Isaiah. We’ve heard God call us to an intensely sleeves-rolled-up lifestyle: ^58.6“…to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷ … to share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house; when [we] see the naked, to cover them”.

What really struck me most powerfully when I read this was something I’ve actually taken pretty much for granted for most of my life. It means a great deal to God that this light of kindness and compassion and faithful care shines in our world. It really matters to God that a society treats its less fortunate members with compassion. Maybe it struck me particularly powerfully because I was experiencing the exact opposite at the time. My week in Melbourne saw me reading headlines from one of my least favourite newspapers. These headlines blazed across the front page with foul words about the homeless people being evicted from their camp outside Flinders Street Station. The words were ‘serial pests’ – ‘ferals’ – and ‘thugs’.

Who has the right to describe a whole class of people in this way? What pours out of words like these is darkness – not light. Such words bind these people into the sort of invisibility and de-humanisation from which God wants us to set them free. These homeless people are the very ones Isaiah is telling us need to know the light of compassion, kindness and good faith.

God declares through Isaiah that a community which frees these little ones from the unjust demonization they suffer, and instead shares bread, shelter and clothing with them, ⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am’.

Jesus affirmed the prophets we’ve been studying over the past weeks. They have always faithfully taught us what God is passionate about. And when I think about it, I am deeply grateful that God is passionate about justice, about kindness and about faithfulness. They are the marks of love which make life a joy – they are the marks of love which make the service of Jesus utter freedom; they are the marks of love which are something like an infectious healing – infectious ease.

And we are the ones who have the awesome privilege of being named the carriers of that love. I’ve always thought Jesus is the light of the world, but here he is telling us that it’s we who are that light. We are to be a lamp in the darkness – a lit-up city on a hill – a beacon of peace, hope, justice, trust, love.

So, in short, during the season of Epiphany, our focus is on the way we embody that baby boy – and everything we saw him become – in a world that is desperately in need of all the qualities that his light can offer. I find that a staggering privilege, and a daunting, inspiring trust. Thanks be to God! Amen

Epiphany + 4A 29-1-17 ^{Micah 6 1-8 , Ps 15, 1C 1 18-31 Mt 5 1-12}

Our readings today are powerful calls to good relationship – with God, and with our fellow citizens on Earth. Micah laments that God, who rescued the Hebrew people from slavery, who protected them from foreign armies and brought them safely across the Jordan – the God whom they owe everything – has somehow come to be seen by the people as a burden, thanks to some of their religious leaders’ fixation on the importance of ritual. Micah sweeps that aside and speaks words of timeless, challenging wisdom: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Forget the impossible; just love your neighbour and love God. It’s the whole of the Law; it’s the Gospel.

The Psalmist asks the same question – who is worthy to approach God? – and the answer in the Psalm echoes Micah’s; live decently, modestly and kindly – not as a selfish individual, but as one who builds up and protects a humane community.

Paul writes to Corinth, a city of new wealth, glamour and pomp, and he says that these are no way to prove our worth to God or anyone else; nor are they a way to connect with God. God’s way is radically different from all that. We don’t meet God or come to know God through our efforts or our worth. Instead, God reaches out to us – comes to save us through the foolishness and weakness of the Cross.

We know the Gospel well – the Beatitudes which begin Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are beautiful, confronting and counter-cultural. They are a call to cherish people our wider culture does not value; to see simple people the way God does; to see the heart, not the wealth or accomplishments. It’s the same message Paul was trying to get through to the Corinthian Christians. Just be real; don’t be sucked in by the trappings. Love! It’s what the Church needs to keep modelling in our time. God has a great heart for the little ones – and we are to keep offering ourselves as the means by which God’s little ones might experience that special love. As I said, so beautiful, yet so confronting and always counter-cultural.

How should we relate to God? How should we relate to this world we’ve been born into? Those are the questions today’s readings put before us. And the answer each one of them gives us is consistent; be humble, be real. Lots of people would have us think a humble person is a bit of a doormat; a push-over; a nobody. So it might surprise them to discover that someone who discovers their own humility before God is wonderfully blessed.

Whoever realises their humility before God will be surprised by God’s deep love for them. These deeply blessed people are set free from self-consciousness; free simply to thank God for all they have and for who they are. These people realise they don’t have to offer God presents to make sure they’re noticed or loved or forgiven or acceptable. They know God loves them without all that, and so they’re free to respond to God’s love – to thank God with deeds and thoughts and words of kindness, justice and mercy. Because that’s what these people have experienced from God; they’re like children who’ve known a secure upbringing.

For anyone who comes to know God through Jesus, that sense of a secure childhood can begin at any time – even in late adulthood. Look at the people we saw Jesus call last week – adults. And nurtured by his love, his example and his guidance, those humble, ordinary fisher-folk and all the multitudes who discovered his transforming love grew into leaders of a movement which would transform countless lives through simple loving kindness and practical care.

Can you think of anyone you know who’s been brought out of their shell like this? Who’s moved from a place of injury and mistrust – from pain and shame – to become an entirely new person? I’m sure you can think of such people. And what do you think has transformed these people? My guess is that it will have been unquestioning acceptance – love; trust. Being recognised as a worthwhile human being; being taken seriously; and as a consequence, having ourselves, our gifts and ideas received seriously and carefully. And then growth can begin.

In the Jesus community, being taken seriously doesn’t mean that everything we say or think will go unchallenged. We don’t avoid change; we don’t avoid challenge. But those challenges – those calls to change – will be respectful and thoughtful. They’ll lead to growth, to transformation for the better; to a change of course; the start of a new life; to become all we can be. And it’s amazing how much more you can become when you know your challenger believes in you.

Even so a prophetic challenge in this community of God’s people won’t be easy to face. Micah begins his challenge to God’s people today by declaring a court hearing. He says that God calls the people to “Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.” The Land was God’s gift to the people, and so the Land – the mountains and the hills – would be the jury who would decide whether the people have been living as people of the Land should live – as a light on the hill which truly guides other nations into God’s ways of justice, peace, loyalty and compassion. (The Land is our judge. Very contemporary isn’t it.)

It’s an open and shut case. The religious leaders haven’t been challenging people’s violence, dishonesty or greed. Instead, they’ve been encouraging people to offer bigger sacrifices; to buy God off; to get God to turn a blind eye to the decadence that’s wrecking their community and dishonouring their heritage. And the sacrifices themselves are going off limits too: Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgressions! a ghastly travesty of the community God founded.

And yet God meets all of this with mercy; with hope. We never get to hear the end of Micah in our Sunday services, but we will today. Micah says of God, ^7.18 You don’t stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you’ll tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. You will be true to Jacob and show unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you pledged an oath to our ancestors in days long ago. God is faithful, no matter what. So what other response can we offer but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God? Amen

Neil Douglas Klotz Translating the Beatitudes from the Aramaic

The translation of the Beatitudes that we are using this Sunday is from the New Revised Standard Version, copyrighted in 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. It’s an upgrade of the RSV version published in 1952, and the revision copyrighted in 1989 was made by the Revised Standard Version Bible Committee, a continuing body of thirty scholars from a wide-ranging ecumenical background, including a Jewish and Eastern Orthodox member, several Roman Catholics and a variety of Protestants. Why keep revising you might ask? Partly it’s because scholarship continues to identify mis-translations from the past, perhaps because of the difficulty in reading early texts, scribal errors, the lack of punctuation, the lack of vowels in Hebrew texts, and so on. Fragments of early Greek gospels continue to be discovered and studied, and some of these are identified as earlier, or more likely to be a record of lost originals.

Now let me read you a very different translation of the Beatitudes by Neil Douglas-Klotz:

“Tuned to the Source are those who live by breathing Unity: their “I can!” is included in God’s.

Blessed are those in emotional turmoil: they shall be united inside by love.

Healthy are those who have softened what is rigid within; they shall receive physical vigour and strength from the universe.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for physical justice; they shall be surrounded by what is needed to sustain their bodies.

Blessed are those who, from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them.

Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of love; they shall see God everywhere.

Blessed are those who plant peace each season; they shall be named the children of God.

Blessings to those who are dislocated for the cause of justice; their new home is the province of the universe.

Renewal when you are reproached and driven away by the clamour of evil on all sides, for my sake…

Then, do everything extreme, including letting your ego disappear, for this is the secret of claiming your expanded home in the universe.

For so they shamed those before you:

All who are enraptured, saying inspired things – who produce on the outside what the spirit has given them within.”

This translation comes from one of the most fascinating spiritual books in my collection, “Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus” by Neil Douglas-Klotz. It contains multiple alternative translations of the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, and three sayings of Jesus, based on Jesus’ own language, Aramaic. The original source for the Aramaic text is the Syrian Aramaic version of the Gospels known as the Peshitta version, which the church of the East regards as one of the oldest and most authoritative versions of the Bible, or at the very least, much closer to the thought forms of Jesus than the Greek versions on which our translations are based. One of the problems with what we call a literal view of Scripture is that it doesn’t take into account the complexities of translation, which with Jesus’ words, has multiple phases, from the original spoken Aramaic, to spoken Greek, to written Greek, to various English versions. Further complications are added when you consider that before the Reformation produced translations into the common languages of different countries, Latin versions of Scripture were considered authoritative, and influenced the perspective of scholarship. Across time and cultures there are great differences in the context and implications of words. Neil Douglas-Klotz explains some significant differences between Aramaic and the Greek of the New Testament. I’m quoting from his introduction to the book, pp 2,3:

“Unlike Greek, Aramaic does not draw sharp lines between means and ends, or between an inner quality and an outer action. Both are always present. When Jesus refers to the “kingdom of heaven,” this kingdom is always both within and among us. Likewise, “neighbour” is both inside and outside, as is the “self” that we are to love to the same degree as our “neighbour”. Unlike Greek, arbitrary borders found in Greek between “mind,” “body,” and “spirit” fall away.

Furthermore, like its sister languages Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic can express many layers of meaning. Words are organized and defined based on a poetic root-and-pattern system so that each word may have several meanings, at first seemingly unrelated, but upon contemplation revealing an inner connection. The same word may be translated, for instance, as “name,” “light,” “sound,” or “experience”.” (end of quote)

Douglas-Klotz also describes a tradition in Middle Eastern and Hebraic mysticism “that each statement of sacred teaching must be examined from at least three points of view: the intellectual, the metaphorical, and the universal (or mystical).” Our modern Western view of Scripture has been locked into the first of these, often called “literal” meaning, but even that aspect has multiple choices if you consider the linguistic and cultural aspects that influence translation.

I’ve only given you a taste of the complexity that lies behind the difference between the NRSV Beatitudes and the various poetic translations that Douglas-Klotz provides. There’s a richness of spiritual wisdom in his translations, his textual notes, and the body prayers that he suggests, again consistent with Middle Eastern tradition. Let’s focus on the different understandings he provides for the first word of each phrase. He uses the ones we are familiar with “happy” and “blessed,” but he also suggests these alternatives: “healthy”, “healed”, “aligned with the One”, “tuned to the Source”, “integrated, resisting corruption or delusion”, “renewal”. I find these options give me a more complete understanding of what it means to be blessed. That’s doubly helpful, because Jesus’ description of who is blessed is counter-cultural, almost the opposite of what our society and his would have regarded as people who are blessed: they are not the rich and famous, or the powerful or the party animals, or those with notable families, but the poor, the meek, those who mourn and are persecuted. How are these people “happy”? Not in our fleeting sense of entertained, high spirited or lucky. They are happy in being in relationship with God, and moving towards wholeness, integration and renewal. That’s the blessing that those who are spiritually mature are seeking, and that I long for, beyond the ups and downs of emotions or circumstance.