How it is to be (Epiphany 7C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for Kaniva & Serviceton Shared Ministry gathered at Kaniva Church of Christ and Serviceton Uniting Church on Sunday 24th February 2019.

Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40; Luke 6:27-38

So, the last couple of weeks have been pretty exciting for me as a preacher because I have been excited by what God is saying to us.  Often when I open my Bibles (plural) up to begin writing a sermon I have no idea what’s coming.  The readings don’t always follow the previous week’s, and since I tend to be about a month ahead in my preparations I’m never actually writing on my Monday afternoon “the thing after what I said yesterday”.  So when the last three sermons came out as they did, writing a month ago, I was really pleased that that is what God wanted to tell us.

So, what did God tell us during January and February?  Well, a few things:

1. You’se mob are all ministers, with ministries. This includes me, but it is not exclusive to me.  If you’ve been baptised then the Holy Spirit is upon you and you have a job to do.
2. You’se mob are all able to listen to God’s instruction for yourself. Also, God’s instruction for KSSM in February was to focus on rest so that we would enter the year of 2019 with peace and energy from God, not with frazzle and rush.  This message has not been superseded or countermanded, and even though some of us are now at the chalkface of ministry, the reminder to come back to God between-times just to sit and be with God remains.  For others of you the sitting and being is what you are doing all the time.
3. Some of you are being called to ministries of proclamation, and to proclamation of somewhat unwelcome messages. If God has given you a message for the church and the world we want you to speak it out.
4. Some of that proclamation takes the form of looking ahead. You will tell people to think about what is coming next, and think about what is life-giving and foundational to what we trust now.  Our message at KSSM is that we are confident because we have heard and experienced how God gives life to us, and energy to finish the work we have been assigned.

Today is something different.  It’s still exciting, and I’m looking forward to what I have to say now.  It’s about a new way of looking at proclamation and preaching, and it is useful for anyone who listens to preaching.  Okay, so it’s not pointers for the couple of lay preachers and the rest of you can tune out, it’s God’s wisdom for everyone who hears what God and the Church are saying, and pulling from that story whatever is wisdom for where you are.  But first, some Bible stories.  Yay!

In our Bible story from the Hebrew tradition we read how Joseph showed himself to his brothers.  We haven’t got the whole story here, but the gist is that Joseph’s brothers sold him to some Arabs to be used as a slave, which was not very nice of them.  Then yada-yada-yada, false accusation, time in gaol, Pharaoh overdoes the pizza one night and has crazy dream, drought everywhere, Hebrew asylum seekers (aka boat people on donkeys), Joseph’s brothers rock up in Egypt and don’t recognise Joseph who is the Prime Minister.  (Breathe!)  So, today’s story, Joseph does not exact revenge on his not very nice brothers, instead he shows stupidly generous kindness and hospitality to them.  True?  Is that what happened?  Yes.  Biblical truth?  Two things, God’s plans always work out well for those who remain faithful to their calling; and it’s always better to be generous and kind, even to people who are not very nice.  Done?  Yes?  Done!

Psalm.  So today it’s 37 and bits thereof. This is a song of patient trust in God, patience grounded in the assurance that salvation is coming.  We can’t say that Joseph was familiar with this song of David because it’s something like eight hundred years after his day, but Joseph certainly kept the faith and did not keep it to himself.  Joseph understood that God is faithful and he told whomever would listen, even his brothers, who were not very nice, especially to him.  Message?  One thing, God’s plans always work out well for those who remain patiently faithful to their hope in God.  Application?  Well since the lectionary has already pointed us to Genesis 45:3-11 and the story of Joseph’s graciousness we might conclude that since we know that God is our security and not ourselves we can afford to be generous and kind, even to people who are not very nice.  Done?  Yes?  Done!

Am I moving too fast?  No?  Excellent.

Right: Jesus story.  Excellent, I love Jesus stories.  We read from Luke 6:27-38 where Jesus himself is speaking, and more than speaking he is teaching.  Jesus says love your enemies, (and in brackets love your brothers even when they are not very nice) and listen to your teacher.  Jesus is quite a challenging teacher if you think about it, and (slowing down) here is where we find the point of today’s message.  Jesus was faithful to God, faithful to his trust in God (the things he knew and believed), obedient and always seeking the Father’s direction.  As an Evangelical I’d like to say that Jesus was entirely and absolutely perfectly faithful to scripture, and I have heard that said before by other Evangelicals, some of whom (but not all) were preachers.  But was he?  Was he?  I am entirely convinced that Jesus never contradicted God, nor the written word of The Law and The Prophets, but see even here where he uses the phrase “but I say to you…”   He often said that, or perhaps often did that, changed the meaning of Jewish religious tradition and the interpretation of the scriptures in Hebrew or their Greek translation of his day.  “You’re reading that wrong”, might be another way of saying it.

Let me give you an example, perhaps in a different way.  I was recently allowed to overhear a conversation between a farmer and his pastor where the farmer was concerned, convicted of his sin really, about his farming methods.  He had been reading Genesis 3:19 where it says quite clearly by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.  Right?  Got that?  Okay, so he was concerned that even though he was actually a grain farmer, so the bread thing really did apply, that in his closed-cabin, air-conditioned header his face didn’t get all that sweaty any more.  As a Christian farmer, saved by the cross but still living as a sinner in a fallen world, hadn’t he become too worldly, wasn’t he compromising his faith and the word of scripture by not using a horse-drawn plough or a scythe in the sun?  Doesn’t the road of the air-conditioned lead to Hell?  Now in Kaniva and Serviceton we know the answer to that, of course it’s true and almost all of you are going to Hell.  You know that and that’s fine.  Or maybe Jesus would say “well you have heard it said, (or perhaps seen it written) by the sweat of your face, but I say to you…” and then what would Jesus say?  Maybe he’d say something like that anyone who works for a living to provide for his family is blessed, regardless of the physical toil involved, because each man is accountable to God for his gifts and responsibilities.  And then in the twentieth century scholars would have added “and women” to their commentaries and twenty-first century pastors would have drawn out applications for women and men who work at white-collar jobs.  Would such a thing be entirely faithful to scripture?  Depends who you’re asking I suppose; there’s always a hardliner somewhere.  My question, which I have been leading up to all day, is such a thing faithful to our concept of God.  In other words, is the God of Joseph and his brothers, the God of David the Psalmist, the God of Jesus the rabbi who taught love even for enemies, the God of Jesus the crucified messiah who prayed “father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing”, is that God burning with unquenchable wrath because Christians work on tractor or in classrooms where there is air-con.  What say you?

So yes I did bolt through the set readings from Genesis, Psalms, and Luke this morning, and yes I deliberately overlooked other great nuggets of applicable truth for your and my lives as disciples, but I hope I have made my point.  And if I haven’t, here it is: read the Bible with the characteristics of Jesus of Nazareth in mind.  As you begin to reflect on any text, any text at all, ask yourself how Jesus would explain it to the woman beside the well in John 4:10, or the woman caught in adultery in John 8:11, or Simon son of Jonah beside the lake in John 21:15.  Remember how Jesus never twisted scripture but he often redefined and refuted a harsh interpretation of it to show the compassion and loving-kindness of God whenever the scribes and Pharisees try to set a trap.  Look at today’s passage and Jesus’ own words in Luke 6:36 where he says be merciful just as your Father is merciful.

There is no doubt that God dislikes sin.  Jesus wasn’t too keen on it and he still isn’t, it cost him six bloody, painful hours on a Roman cross beneath a black sky.  The message to read with mercy is not about taking a permissive stance on sin or injustice or idolatry or anything else that the scriptures condemn: no way, never.  The message is to think of the people involved; the people trapped by sin of course, but for me even more so the people trapped by false interpretations of the scriptures which make God seem petty or petulant and not very nice at all.  Don’t laugh at the farmer, help him with gentleness to understand that he is allowed to not sweat and still be a beloved son of the Father in righteousness with his Lord.  But more than that, don’t ever, ever, be the one who agrees with such a farmer and insists because of the word of God that agricultural machinery is contrary to received revelation and an act of witchcraft in the eyes of a wrathful deity.  But more than that that, that, whatever: do not ever ever be the one who snatches a farmer out of his header and demands he use a scythe or else it’s Hell for him and his family for four generations because that’s what the Bible says.

So, proclaimers of God’s truth that you are; as we go further into 2019 let us all make sure whether we are preachers, prophets, or just mates of people who don’t come to church that it is God’s truth that we are proclaiming.  If what you’re saying contradicts the written gospel, or the letters, law, prophets or poets then it’s probably not God.  But if your word contradicts the nature and character of Jesus then it certainly is not God, no matter how many Bible verses you can quote.

Amen.

Respice Finem (Epiphany 6C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 17th February 2019.

Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

My mother was not born with the surname that she has now: I suggest your mother probably wasn’t either.  Many of you here today who are mothers, the same.  My mother, Mrs Tann, was born Miss Fisher; no, not that Miss Fisher, she’s Judith, not Phryne (or Peregrine) although she does love a good crime drama on Foxtel.  I raise this because mum’s key ring, the one with her actual keys on it, bears the Fisher family coat of arms: it’s much more impressive than the Tann coat of arms let me tell you, and yes there is a Tann coat of arms.  The Fisher coat of arms, (much more impressive), bears the motto Respice Finem.  “Regard the End”, or, to put it another way, “consider the future”.  Hold that thought.

Last week in our reading from the Jesus traditions we heard the story of Jesus calling the first of his named followers, namely Simon, James and John, from their lives of fishing to a new life of discipleship and fishing for souls.  By the time we pick up the story in today’s reading Jesus now has a band of followers, and the twelve have each been chosen and brought to the front.  Having begun his ministry in earnest with some healing and teaching Jesus takes some time away from the road to sit with his mob, so the twelve plus the crowd, and he begins to lay out for them the ways of discipleship.  Luke records Jesus speaking in a short series of dot pointed blessings and woes, and the content is similar to the Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew, who was probably there (whereas Luke was probably not).  You may have recognised some of the beatitudes along with some of the later content on the Sermon on the Mount.  What Matthew takes three chapters to cover in his account; Luke takes twenty-nine verses, but what does Jesus say to his disciples?  Well it can be summed up in two words, Respice Finem, consider the future.

Last week we also heard from Paul and his letter to Corinth.  Today’s reading follows immediately after last week’s, and it begins with a similar theme to that of the Fisher family and Luke’s first words from Jesus’ “sermon on the flat place”.  “Regard the end”, respice finem says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: consider the future if Christ has not been raised: our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.  I have wasted my time, preaching only emptiness, says Paul, and you have no hope, if there was no (and therefore is no) resurrection.  What appears to have been going on in Corinth is that some Christians, Christians mind you, not agnostics or Sadducees or cynics, some Christians had evolved an idea that Paul’s regard for the end of the world and the soon to be returning Jesus was more like a metaphor for a spiritual life in the present.  Heaven, and the bodily resurrection of the died-in-Christ was not real, it was more about what life is like before Jesus and after Jesus.  You know, dead to sin, alive to Christ in repentance and rising again to new life, but in this life as a new life: it doesn’t actually mean that corpses will be reanimated in tombs at The Rapture or that we will live eternally in the sky with the angels.  That’s what people were saying and Paul is saying “no”: no there really is eternal life and there really was an empty tomb.  If Christianity is nothing more than a moral code for good citizenship then it’s a bit of a waste of time says Paul, and it’s certainly not the Kingdom or the future that Christ proclaimed.

Good one Paul.

Also, says Paul, hold on to your “good one Paul” for a tick, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, as we have been saying, then we have been lying.  Because we said it happened but it didn’t: (I mean it did, but what if it didn’t).  Look at 1 Corinthians 15:15: we have been proclaiming as gospel that God raised Jesus from the dead, and by implication and explanation have declared God to be all mighty and powerful enough to raise even the crucified, ex-sanguinated (drained of blood), dehydrated, asphyxiated, corpse of a man beaten half to death and then speared through the chest to make sure!  We have not been talking about some random Ambo who did a close to brilliant resuscitation thing with a set of de-fib pads and some well placed CPR; Jesus was dead!  He was dead dead, so dead he was dead, D-E-double-D dedd!  He was dead, he was so dead, but God raised him.  So if God didn’t raise him then we’ve been lying (or fooled), and if we’ve been lying or fooled about that then what else have we been lying or fooled about, and therefore what else have we been saying that isn’t true.  Mate, is any of this true?

Yes.  Yes mate, says Paul, any of this is true because all of this is true, including the resurrection part.  He says that in 1 Corinthians 15:20, and he says more than that.  Paul says respice finem, Jesus was not only raised from the dead but he was the first one raised from the dead.  Not “the one”, not “the only one”, no Jesus was “the first one”, which to me at least suggests that there will at least be “the second one”, and if God can do a second one then a seven billionth one is probably not out of reach and therefore I can (and will) be raised too.  Regard the end sister-brothers in Christ, the end is not death but resurrection and life eternal.  And life eternal we read elsewhere in scripture is not just everlasting life, infinite in time and going on forever, but “a life for the eons”, a life that is long long looong but is broad and tall and fat and thick and rich and full and…and you get the idea.  And as the great yet underrated theologian of the twentieth century Jewel Kilcher wrote “let eternity begin”.  In other words, the fat life has already begun for those alive in Christ, dead to sin, and regarding God’s end which is endless.

In Psalm 1 we read what the compositors of the NRSV have subtitled “the two ways”.  There’s the God way, the way of discipleship, the Yahweh Way, that’s one way.  There’s also the “no so” way, the way of the wicked, we way where respice finem suggests that the end is not good.  Look, whether the way of Psalm 1:4-6 is a way of fire and brimstone for eternity, or whether it is just a way of frustration and tears in this life where there is no flow and everything is hard, the point is not to focus on where the dead and stupid end up.  The point of Jesus, of Paul, of the Psalmist, of Jewel and of Damien is the end for the disciple, which is not an end at all.  Delight in God says the Psalmist in Psalm 1:2, so this isn’t even about begrudgingly following the rules and regulations of organised religion and steering clear of the whirring saw-blades of heresy.  No, delight in life, drink from the cool springs, sit in the shade, laugh and play, make toddlers squeal with pleasure, and eat the cake.  Prosper!  Not in a prosperity gospel way: God is not going to give you a new car if you tithe 95%, (although I might get a new car if you tithe 95% so don’t let me stop you), don’t be afraid of the news that God wants your life to be rich and full so long as your life is about the richness and fullness of God.  We do not seek God for the reward, we seek God for God’s own pleasure, but we know that when God is pleased then blessing flows and we can live with joy and security in the everlasting life of the eons.

Have you connected, maybe you’re still thinking about it so let me make the connection for you, Psalm 1:1-3 only makes sense if 1 Corinthians 15:20 is true.  Respice finem, regard the end if Christ was not raised: if God is not able (or not willing) then scripture’s promises of blessing are empty.  The story is not that only Christians prosper in the Kingdom of God: the story is that there is no Kingdom at all if Jesus was not raised.  But if Jesus was raised, and he was, then there is a Kingdom and the power of God is trustworthy and available and prosperity in God’s manner is given to all to receive if they choose to receive it.

Respice finem: have you chosen to receive what God has for you?  If not yet, then how about now?

Amen.

A Call To Prophesy (Epiphany 5C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for the people of God gathered as Kaniva & Serviceton Shared Ministry on Sunday 10th February 2019.  We met at Serviceton Uniting Church for holy communion and at Kaniva Church of Christ also for holy communion.

Isaiah 6:1-8, 9-13; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Today is one of those good days for a preacher, because the message contained in each of the four lectionary readings is well structured and exciting to preach.  It’s all about God’s call and the story of how each of three men first heard God saying to him, “go and tell”.  It’s a great message for a church of eager disciples such as this one, so the sermon shouldn’t take very long at all.

Let’s start with the passage read to us this morning.  In the opening words of today’s reading from the Hebrew traditions we read how Isaiah dates his call to ministry to a specific time and place; he knows his origin as a prophet and teacher.  In the activity of the story Isaiah overhears The LORD calling for volunteers to take the message of God to humankind, and Isaiah steps up for the job (Isaiah 6:8).  Oftentimes when this story is read in church this is where we end our reading; we hear how great and holy God is, we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” before the sermon and “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky” after it, and we all go home.  Even today Isaiah 6:1-8 is listed to be read, with Isaiah 6:9-13 in brackets, as if you don’t have to read on if you don’t want to.  See what I’m saying, easy message, familiar concept, fast sermon is a good sermon, let’s go home.

Meh-yeah-nah.  Sadly for you if you were hoping for an early minute, this is a red rag to a brown bull for me; I mean what are those lectionary writers trying to hide?  Why don’t they want us to read on?  Well maybe it’s because in these optional verses what we get is God’s actual word to the world, the text of what is to become Isaiah’s message, and it’s not very nice; in fact it’s very not nice.  In essence Isaiah’s job is to make the people stubborn and hard-headed because God has decided in advance of Isaiah’s mission to punish the people.  This is not like Jonah where God sent the prophet to seek repentance so that God could relent; this is where God is baiting the people to further resistance to the gospel so that when divine wrath falls it is more fully deserved.  That’s harsh.

A strong comparison with Isaiah 6:2-3 is offered in Psalm 138:1 where the spiritual beings gathered around God’s throne hear a man, let’s call him David, singing his praise and thanksgiving to God.  Instead of God the holy, holy, holy One asking in the hearing of the cherubim and seraphim for a volunteer to carry a message of wrath and devastation, here we see a man in the same company thanking God for God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.  (That’s in Psalm 138:2.)  God tells Isaiah to make the people resistant to God’s voice; but David tells the seraphim that the moment he began praying with distress God came close and answered him (Psalm 138:3).  It’s as if we’re speaking about two different gods here, or at least about the one God dealing with the Chosen People on one hand and the pagan and heathen nations on the other.  But no, and you know it’s no, this is Adonai on both occasions, and Israel on both occasions.  What is going on?

At this point let me interrupt myself and say that this is my favourite type of Bible study.  So often our evenings of fellowship and study revolve around opening a letter of Paul or a gospel and reading around the circle from a familiar story, looking for the obvious answers to the reading comprehension questions posed by IVP or Scripture Union.  This sort of Bible study, the one we’re doing today, looks at unfamiliar texts and searches out the hard questions.  Awesome fun, I hope you’re enjoying this as much as me.  Let’s get back to it.

In today’s set reading from the Jesus traditions we read Luke’s account of Jesus calling his first disciples.  And it is one of those intensely familiar stories: Jesus teaches a pressing-in crowd from a boat, then he asks the boat-owner (who is a stranger at this point) to put out and go fishing.  Twenty-seven trillion fish are caught in just under four minutes, causing that fisherman to recognise that a miracle worker has turned up in his boat and that he utterly unworthy to be in such a lord’s presence; kinda like Isaiah in Isaiah 6:5 and his “woe is me, man of uncleanness” lamenting.  And our familiar story continues, Jesus says to Simon “get up,” and he says “don’t be afraid,” and he says “you will no longer fish for men, but for people,” and without a second thought Simon, and James, and John from the next boat walk away with Jesus and into the sunset.  So there’s nothing heard-headed or confusing about that; okay the “fishers of men” reference is a little opaque, but we trust Jesus, he seems nice, and so we leave everything behind and just walk away and follow him.  As Christians we get that; no biggie, Jesus is worth dropping everything else for, there’s no stubbornness amongst us to the voice of God calling us to discipleship.

In today’s set reading from the Christian traditions we find ourselves at the other end of Jesus’ mission to earth, and Paul’s explanation to the churches of Corinth how the resurrection works as a theological and soteriological truth.  In other, less-greeky words, how the facts and understandings we have around the resurrection make us think about God, and how they make us think about what it means to be “saved”.  Very recently, on Vision Radio in fact (which is broadcast on 88.0 FM into Kaniva from a small box and a big aerial in my back yard), I heard someone describe 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 as a perfect distillation of the whole gospel.  It was a passing comment, with no further discussion, but I remembered it as I wrote this sermon down at 03:38 am this morning.  We have just heard the passage read, do we agree?  Is this all you need to know about Christian doctrine in one handy-to-open box, no easy payments, no postage and handling?  Indeed could we sum the whole Christian story up in one line, 1 Corinthians 15:3b-5a which plainly says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to... well a lot of people actually.  That’s all you need to know isn’t it?  I’d argue no, that there is more to the whole gospel than that, but I acknowledge that any telling of the whole gospel must include that.  The thing is that in some ways this passage, what I’ve just read, is not actually the point of the paragraph you find it in.  The real point of 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 is found in 1 Corinthians 5:8-11, where Paul uses the brief nub of the gospel to explain how he too is an apostle, just like Cephas in 1 Corinthians 5:5, and the twelve also in 1 Corinthians 5:5, and the many living witnesses in 1 Corinthians 5:6, and James and all the “apostles” in 1 Corinthians 5:7.  So “yeah-yeah, yada-yada, died, buried, rose again, Jesus awesome” is there, but the point is that Paul is allowed to say that because he’s just as much a follower of God, and a bearer of divine ordination as Simon (aka Cephas), and by extension David and Isaiah.  Paul has been called; Paul is an apostle, an individually dispatched messenger of God’s light about Godself to a world in darkness.

So, that might have been a good place to move to a paragraph on how we apply Paul’s and Peter’s stewardship of the apostolate to our own lives, and how we too are called to carry light into the world.  I could say that even though God has not spoken to any of us like God spoke to Isaiah (in a vision in a temple), or Simon-Peter (literally as a flesh and blood man asking us for a favour after a long night at work), or Saul-Paul (blinded and yelled at in the middle of a highway on a multi-day road-trip), God still calls some of us to be witnesses and prophets today.  Paul may have been the last on his list to see Jesus in person and to be commissioned by a lordly figure in a vision, but he is not the last in all history: you need to watch and be ready for Jesus to appear in your dreams-slash-windscreen.  And all of that would be true, and neat, and good, and we could move on to the benediction and beverage service.  But we can’t do that: there’s a loose end.

So, yay! let’s get back to the awesome fun of finding hard questions.  Well, we’ve already found the hard question, and now we’ve put some shape around it to make the question even harder.  With all that Isaiah, David, Jesus, and Paul have said about God and the call of God to tell the good news of salvation, (case in point the cross and empty tomb), why did God send Isaiah to make the ninth century BC Israelites and Judahites resistant to that story?  If Christ died for all, and if Christ died for sin, why would God a) deliberately exclude Jews, and b) deliberately make them sin more badly so they would deserve the punishment already lined up?  God effectively says to Isaiah, “ look, I really want to smack them, but they don’t deserve it yet, so stir them up to rebellion and I’ll wait until I can really smack them so they stay smacked”.  I mean, where’s the grace?  Where’s the honour for the covenants with Abraham and with David?  And if the situation really is that dire for the people of God why does God make them wait another 800 years for the Messiah?  Don’t send Isaiah to harden their hearts LORD, send Jesus to redeem them!  I mean, you’d think God had never even opened a Bible the way this is going.

So, what’s the answer?  Anyone?  Do you need the question again?  The question is, with all that we know of God in Christ, and all that we know of David, Jesus, Peter and the twelve, and Paul, why did God send Isaiah to make the Israelites more naughty rather than more repentant, just so that God could snap them with a backhand as well?  So, what’s the answer?  Anyone?

Well what I’m going to do right now is keep you in suspense, but let you off the hook.  And I am also going to wrap up, so here’s the final paragraph.  As great and profound a question as that is, and would be on a Tuesday night, it’s not a question for Sunday morning.  A good teacher, a good pastor, a good preacher knows that.  And you don’t only have a good teacher, pastor and preacher, you have a great one.  You’re blessed.  No the question for a Sunday is, given all that, given David and Jesus and Paul and yada-yada-yada, how do you respond in Isaiah’s place when God calls you to prophetic witness and sends you to the Church with such a message of desolation.  Again, anyone?  You proclaim it.  For me the question is not why God wants to do this to my people, but how do I go about telling the leaders who need to know what God intends for us.

As your pastor let me say this: I know God is calling some of you to ministries of proclamation, and God is calling all of us to witness and fishing-for-men.  So, whatever God tells you to tell me, and to tell us, please just tell us.  Be brave, for The LORD your God is with you.

Amen.

How do we care?

This is the text of my ministry message for the newsheet at KSSM for February 2019.

That’s an interesting question I think, “How do we care?” because there are many answers.  I have been thinking about it in preparation for some appointments I have in February.

In my previous churches in Gippsland pastoral care was one of the things the people wanted me to teach them about.  I was in a supply role, preaching every Sunday and doing some visiting one day a week, and I was asked whether I could run a Q&A for the congregation on what I do and how I do it.  Sadly time never allowed for that even; my diary was too full with visits to the aged care facility and to people’s homes for me to set aside time to explain my work, but “how do we care” as a request for training in care is a great question to ask.

In my previous job in South Australia pastoral care was the key aspect of the work: I was a “Christian Pastoral Care Worker” in a school and on-the-spot care rather than evangelism was what I was supposed to do.  That occurred often in by sitting outside classrooms with a kid who needed to “take 5” because of something happening in his life right then, or “just being there” unobtrusively in the classroom for the same kid.  That role led me to work as a speaker with Beyond Blue, a job I still do and will be doing at Lameroo on 7^th February.

How do you care?

Damien.