The Named One (Pentecost 14A)

This is the text of he message I prepared for Stawell Uniting Church for Sunday 3rd September 2023, the fourteenth Sunday in Pentecost Season.

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b; Matthew 16:21-28

We read in Exodus 3:1 that Moses was keeping the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian when God called him. Moses was a defeated man, a murderer on the run who is keeping as low a profile as possible beyond the wilderness. He is not working his own flock, or even his father’s generational flocks on family lands, but the mob of his father-in-law and in foreign country. Yet it is when he is in this state, and beyond the wilderness, that we read (in Exodus 3:2) that he comes upon Horeb, the mountain of God where God addresses him personally (in Exodus 3:5) saying that the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

As Christians, or if you happen to be Jewish you will also know this to be true, we know it is no surprise that God’s most precious places, most sacred spaces, are beyond the wilderness. But let’s not get it backwards, as if God has withdrawn from the centre of human activity to go make a place in the solitude: yes there is a religious tradition for that in Judaism, (we see it in Jesus heading out on retreat in several places, notably in Matthew 4), and in Christianity we have a long history of hermit monks and desert, mountain, or ocean rock retreats. But this is not that, God has not withdrawn to Horeb; God has always been at Horeb and humanity hasn’t ever got there.

In this place beyond the wilderness, the place where God is but no-one has yet ventured and found God, Moses hears a thing never before heard by a human: he hears the personal Name of God in God’s own voice. Adam and Eve heard the voice of God, but they never heard God’s name in the garden. Others heard God’s voice give instruction; Noah, Abram, Jacob, Joseph, but never in such intimacy and never did they receive God’s name. And Moses, Moses before he hears The Name, and leading up to this great piece of self-revelation, Moses hears that God has observed the misery of God’s people who are in Egypt, that God has heard their cry, and that God know[s] their sufferings.  He hears that God has come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. There is hardship in Egypt right now, and there will be hardship in the activity of leaving Egypt and occupying Canaan in fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham; God and Moses in conversation agree on those two points, but only God seems to have confidence that it will happen. For Moses, the task seems insurmountable, so much so that he doesn’t even know how or where to start. All well and good that God has seen Israel’s suffering, all well and good that God has made a promise to give Israel a bountiful land of their own, but like Moses beyond the wilderness the Israelites in Egypt are demoralised and defeated, working someone-else’s land for no benefit to themselves beyond sustenance. Moses sees the task ahead and he just can’t, he can’t even, even though the picture is grand and it is the God of the mountain, the God of the flaming but not burning bush, who is telling the salvation story. It is then, when all is big and dangerous and too much of both, that God says to Moses, “yes, but I AM”.

From whom do you need to hear the salvation story? From whom would you believe it if it were told to you? From whom do you need to hear that yes your world is big and dangerous right now, hugely dangery in every area, but that The One Who Is, is with you?

Perhaps the usual way, or probably better to say the most popular of several ways of describing what Exodus 3 is on about, is to say that it is the commissioning of Moses. It is the great commission for Moses, go and tell the People of God that the God of the people has heard their distress and is already present to alleviate and restore. Moses is given a mission (go and tell Pharoah and the Hebrews) and a set of victory conditions (get Israel out of Egypt and get them home to Canaan); he is also given equipment (access to God’s Name), and assurance (God will go with Moses). All of that is true, however I think there’s something else going on. So this is not a story of only, but of also; Moses is to get the Israelites out of the foreign place and into the home place, the place that will be named Israel for them; but Moses is also the first to hear the depth of whom God is. Other have heard God’s promise of presence and protection, but none before Moses were told to make that revelation plain to others for others. So Exodus 3 is very much about Moses and God’s call of him to lead the exodus, the ex-hodos in Greek, the way out; but Exodus 3 is also about us in that God’s word to us, distinct from God’s word to Moses, is that God has heard our distress and has plans for our salvation, and that the God who hears and saves is the I AM. In other words, Exodus 3 is a corporate text a group promise, it’s not only about God blessing Moses for Moses and the jobs that Moses has been given.

“Who am I?” asks Moses in Exodus 3:13, “why would anyone listen to me?” And what does God reply? “Moses, you are the one sent by me.” “Okay,” says Moses, “then who are you?” And God says, “I AM, I am what I am, I Will Be, I am The One Who Endures.” God is the one whose identity is beyond question, beyond doubt: God is who God says God is, and no-one can offer a dissenting opinion (as if you could argue that God was something other than what God says). Why do we need to know this? Because this is the one who has heard our cry, and this is the one who is already here with a plan and a promise to deliver us from evil.

O give thanks to the LORD, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, we read in Psalm 105:1. The reputation of God has gone down the ages and in the psalms we often find Judah and Israel looking back to Abraham or Moses, or more recent history, to tell the story of God’s intervention. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek The LORD rejoice says Psalm 105:3. Yes that verse talks about God’s name, as it should because we are to be specific in our worship and there is only one God who we trust and whom we call upon, the One with the Name, but for me the more important part of this verse is the call to let our hearts rejoice. Why should our hearts rejoice? Well, because the LORD has come through, we have been saved from the distress of foreign taskmasters. What does this mean for us? In Psalm 105:4 we read seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually. That is what it means for us, the God we can name is the God who delivers; who saves, soothes, and salves. This is the one we turn to, and the one we want near. So, get busy in prayer, that what the instruction to seek the LORD is referring to, (inquire of the LORD and His strength is how Jewish scholar Robert Alter phrases this), and remember the wonderful works he has done as we read in Psalm 105:5a. As life goes forward do not forget what God has done for you: do not be like the Pharoah had forgotten what God had done for Egypt under Joseph, and do not be like the wicked kings of Israel and Judah who would forget about God’s deliverance in the days of Joseph, and of Moses. No, remember the wonderful works and seek the LORD, and then be ready when God calls your name and gives you a job.

In today’s reading from the Jesus Traditions we find him at the point where he begins to speak more openly about what lays ahead of him, and the crowds around him, as God’s work draws to its high point. Great suffering is predicted, and unlike the stories of Moses as celebrated by later Israel, God is leading Jesus toward the pain and not away from it. God always heads toward the pain; and since God has always sent the prophets into the place where the greatest pain is, God’s women and men acting with divine agency often move from rest and hiddenness into places of discomfort, even peril. So it’s no surprise to us, really, that Jesus has begun to speak about Jerusalem and suffering, but it comes as a complete surprise to the discipleship mob travelling the road with him. The desire to save your life (Matthew 16:24) is as blatant as it seems in terms of self-preservation: if you wish to keep your head down and avoiding denouncing the injustice around you, you will be safe in this world but you will miss what God is calling you to do and to be, and you will miss out on God’s reward for the good and faithful servant. Moses had been keeping his head down beyond the wilderness, but God’s plan was for him to stand up in Pharoah’s own house and declare God’s judgement upon injustice and God’s plan to set free the oppressed. Moses agreed to go, with the assurance of God’s company, and the system of abuse was overturned. Here Jesus announces his response to universal injustice, and he sets out the consequences for him and for anyone who accompanies him to Jerusalem. This is why we read in Matthew 16:24 that Jesus told his disciples, “if anyone wants to be my follower let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is effectively re-issuing the call to discipleship to those already in his posse. “Follow me” he is saying, “but here’s what that now looks like”. It’s no longer about being the student of an itinerant teacher of parables and worker of healings and exorcisms in Galilee; discipleship with Jesus is now about collaboration in taking a prophetic stand against the injustice of the world right in the heart of Roman Jerusalem, and in the Temple, and the very real possibility of crucifixion, a traitor’s or rebel’s death. “Are you prepared to continue to follow,” asks Jesus, “now that you understand what the mission truly is?” We know that Peter voices strong objection, but he submits to Jesus’ instruction to get back into followship (Matthew 16:23), and he remains a follower of Jesus at the front of the crowd.

Where Peter was looking for a victorious outcome in the ministry of Jesus in Matthew 16, so that Jesus’ talk of his own death is scandalous, there is no promise of success even in Exodus 3. God never promises that Moses will prevail, just that God will be with Moses when Moses goes to Pharoah and then to the Hebrews. Jesus suggests at the very least and promises at the very extreme that for anyone who continues along the track of discipleship this will lead to his or her hideous death. But even death as the end of discipleship is death for my sake as Jesus says in Matthew 16:25, and such a death is an entry to a more full life: not that martyrdom leads to a better room among the many in Heaven, but that a life lived on earth with passionate abandon to the call of God in Christ will be a big life.

Give up your multitudes of stuff and your dreams for even more. Give up your thoughts of achieving a seat at the high table in the coloniser’s palaces. Give up your reluctance to look your suffering neighbour in the face, and your learned incapability to be moved by the sights and sounds of her or his oppression. Instead, choose to deny yourself, inquire of the LORD and His strength and thereby remember the wonderful works he has done. Let God call you from beyond the wilderness where you are safe, but useless; or let God call you from the centre of society to a ministry beyond the wilderness: whatever it Is, follow with Jesus to the places where you will see The One Who Is act powerfully. Even if your body and your dreams die, you will see God win and you will see captives eternally set free.

Amen.

Maturity is Emulating the Master

This is the text of the message I prepared for proclamation at Kaniva Church of Christ and The Serviceton Church for the sixth Sunday in Epiphany (Year-A).

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

In our reading from the Jesus Traditions today we continue to hear Jesus speak to the crowds on The Mount. As was the situation last week, so today, we find Jesus engaging in interpretation of scripture, using the phrase you have heard that it was said…but I say to you… I have heard it said, and I remember who said it, that you will never find Jesus contradicting the scripture. Her argument (her, she, the one who said the thing) was that the Bible is trustworthy and even Jesus obeyed the Bible. I sort of disagree.  I don’t disagree with the entire premise, I do believe that the Bible is trustworthy and I believe that there is much in it that should be learned from and applied. Not everything, you don’t have to follow Judas’ example if you have ever let down your saviour, and you don’t have to follow Jephthah’s example either if ever you have made a rash promise to God; but if you read with wisdom there is much wisdom to be read. However I do disagree with my friend that Jesus never contradicted scripture, because he did in the sense that he contradicted accepted interpretation. “This is what you’ve been told to believe about this book, but here’s what it really means” says Jesus. In fact that’s what many preachers also say, the Bible is trustworthy but the people who explained it to you before I got here got their explanation wrong in places. I need to be careful saying that, as will your next minister who might point out my glaring errors, but clearly it’s what Jesus is saying here and as far as I am concerned he can say what he likes. When The Word of God, the Word who is God (John 1:1) speaks then we must listen, especially when The Word of God is speaking directly to interpret scripture.

So, what does Jesus say here? Well what he says is that discipleship is not just about obeying scripture, or tradition, or scripture within tradition, but about leaning into the character of God. Stop looking for what you can get away with, just behave like Christ himself did, with eyes of adoration for the Father and a heart full of love for the world. Look to serve the world by sharing that love, not just the news of that love, (telling people by evangelism that God loves them), but by being that love and doing the loving things. That all sounds good, although it does take some pause and consider, because there’s a lot there. But it all sounds good, until you have paused and considered and you realise that Jesus has just set an impossible standard. Torah says, you have heard that it was said…don’t murder. True, Torah does say that, and Moses heard correctly and he told you correctly.  But I say to you…don’t even hate, but I say to you…don’t even think of an insult in the moment. Jesus says to you that to think of calling another person a “fool”, even if you don’t say it, is as big a breach of the commandments of God as would be murder.

Last week we heard that the Ten Commandments have not been rescinded but that even as they remain they need to be thought of not as rules but as descriptions: the woman of faith does not behave in those sinful ways, because through attentive discipleship she behaves otherwise, in God honouring ways. This week we hear where Jesus sets the lower-limit on God honouring ways, the minimum standard expected by the Master of his Disciple. That limit is not that you keep your aggressive hands to yourself, (which Moses said); and the limit is not that you keep your aggressive words to yourself, and the limit is not that you keep your aggressive thoughts to yourself, but the limit is that you do not even begin to form aggressive thoughts. The line is not where you swallow your insult, the line is where you don’t even begin to formulate the insult. And the same is true for lust, envy, disloyalty and untruth. Moses says don’t do it: Jesus says don’t even think it.

And Paul says, in our reading from The Christian Traditions today, that some of us are still at the breastmilk and bottle-fed level maturity as Christians because we are disloyal, untrue, prideful, distracted, double-minded, envious, and spiteful. As Jesus says to Laodicea in Revelation 3:17-18 you think you are insightful, but you’re blind; and to Smyrna in Revelation 3:9 you think you are wealthy, but you are naked and impoverished. Clearly issues of spiritual and emotional maturity were not limited to the first few Christians at Corinth, or the first disciples on that hillside in Galilee, but are rife across the whole Church for the whole of time.

Our reading from The Jewish Traditions today points us not only at Moses but at Torah, The Law of Israel. God speaks directly to the Hebrews on the cusp of entering Canaan, saying through Moses in Deuteronomy 30:15, I have set before you today… a clear choice. In God’s words the choice is between life and death, between prosperity and adversity, and God has left that choice to the people. Live within the limits of obedience and life will go well with you, choose your own way and you won’t live long and you won’t live well. I wonder what Jesus would say if he were asked to interpret that piece of scripture. According to my friend Jesus would not contradict it, and of course Jesus would not; the way to abundant life is utter obedience, I think we can be sure that Jesus would uphold that and that he would say it that way too. However I think he’d go further, I think Jesus sitting beside the well in John 4 speaking with the Samaritan woman, or Jesus standing on the hillside speaking to his disciples with the whole crowd listening in from Matthew 5-7 would say more. I think he’d say “and this is what utter obedience looks like, not that you avoid sin but that you practice righteousness, not only that you avoid bitterness but that you specifically practice generosity.” And maybe he’d make it clear that even though God specifically speaks of other gods in Deuteronomy 30:17 that God is not only speaking about the Baal altars and the Asherah poles, but about anything that takes first priority in your life. Congratulations if you’re a Christian and you’ve never been a Buddhist, congratulations if you’re a Christian now and you’ve given away your dedication to Buddha; but if your first priority is your family, or your job, or your reputation, or your stuff, then you’ve still missed the point. You can have all of those things, the prosperity of God promised in Deuteronomy 30:15, and the living and becoming numerous and the blessing of the land in Deuteronomy 30:16 includes children and flocks and crops and all of the benefits; but don’t put those things or the getting of those things above God. There is no maturity in being malicious and ravenous in life yet taking a quiet time with the Bible, outward conformity to religion did not impress Jesus, nor did it impress Paul, and it will not impress God. It also will not impress your neighbour, or your client. Idolatry, especially when the idol is yourself, is never a good witness.

Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD. Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways. So reads Psalm 119:1-3 in the New Revised Standard Version. The word that I want to pick out is “also”, look how it reads who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong. Are there two things there, seeking the LORD will my whole heart, and also, doing no wrong? Is there a difference between seeking God wholeheartedly, and living without sin? Is there? Well there is. Of course they are related, they are connected, and if one is present then you would hope that the other is present also. However they are two, two things and not one. Obedience to the Law and seeking God are not the same thing. Do you seek God? Or do you just obey the commandments? Is your faith life about obeying the rules, the Laws of God, and “being good” and “doing good”, and do you leave it there? Or do you also seek God for God, not even having a quiet time and reading the Bible and the study notes for seven minutes each day but taking time away from time to just be with The Father, to sit in love and silence and attention? Do you listen, or do you only read? I am assuming you do read because if you don’t then you may well be thinking “well Damien I don’t actually do a quiet time, so I’m really struggling with being a good Christian”, and that would be fine. My concern is with “I have a quiet time every day and even if I’m in a hurry I’ll take four minutes and skim read rather than sitting for seven but at least I have done it.” As if that’s what God wants from you, and the Master of the Universe is grateful that you squeezed Jesus in between more important things. God desires your heart, and your first attention, more than anything. If God has your heart first then you are also likely to find yourself in quiet prayer and reading, because love takes you there. But if Bible Study is a Christian duty that must be done because it would be a sin to skip a morning, and you avoid sin so you practice Bible Study, then you’ve missed the maturity that God is calling you towards. As the commentator I read this week noted about Psalm 119:1-3, it’s about the right deeds and the right disposition. How well are you disposed to God, or are you merely rigorously obedient?

You are so divided within the church, says Paul, that I have to talk to you at the level of unbelievers. You can name the actual evangelist beneath whose hand you prayed The Sinners Prayer and gave your heart to Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, and those named evangelists are Paul and Apollos, dead-set apostles, yet I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1). Paul then speaks in gardening metaphors about planting and watering and how both he and Apollos work in the same field for the same God, so who cares which hand pushed your seed into the soil? The soil is The LORD’s and so is the seed, and so are you. I think it’s obvious and incorrect to draw parallels here between Paul and Apollos at Corinth and between the Uniting Church and the Churches of Christ at Kaniva; much as there has been squabbling in the past and those squabbles are not entirely in the Past, obvious but incorrect. It’s there, but it’s not the point. The point is what is the underlying immaturity that Paul calls out, immaturity that leads to squabbles. Who cares who planted you in Christ, just grow in Christ.

From Paul, very briefly, we have heard not to let your identity be in anyone but Christ. I think that you can still belong to your family, and your denomination, and your town, and your vocation, and whatever else it is that connects you to other people even in this congregation. But put Christ first as your identity, and then put all of those other identities not second to Christ but subject to Christ. “Okay, having got the Christianity part out of the way, said, done, tipped my hat, rendered unto God that which is God’s, yeah I’m also ex-Presbyterian and that still matters.” Why? I mean it can, but why and how does it still matter?

From Moses, from The Psalmist, and from Jesus himself we heard not to let your worship be for anyone but The LORD. As Christians we might say “but Christ”, but Moses and the Psalmist didn’t say that. So not only your identity but also your worship, which I have pointed to as your priorities. Do not put God first and everything else a distant second. I’m going to say that again and with an imperative, you must not put God first and everything else a distant second. Make God your only, and let everything else come to you through Christ, or let it not come at all, and that includes your identity.

I cannot name the one who lead me to Christ, it was a group effort beginning in my infancy involving my parents and my teachers, and it has continued for fifty years. I don’t care who lead me to Christ, what I care is that having been lead to Christ I am now Christ’s own and his alone. The only name that matters to me is that of Christian, one who belongs to Christ. Yes I have a religion (called Christianity) and I have a denomination, which is also my employer; but I have had other denominations, and other employers. It is him, Christ, who matters to me. Because of Christ I like the Bible, and because of Christ I enjoy Church, because of Christ I go to church even when I’m not preaching because I love meeting Christ amongst his people. But neither the people of Christ, the precepts of the religion of Christianity, nor the conservative evangelical Protestant interpretative lenses on scripture are what define me, Jesus defines me, and nothing else defines him for me.

I invite you to meet that Jesus, the one he says he is. Amen.

Bienvenue

This is the text of the message I prepared for a guest preaching spot at Horsham Uniting Church for Sunday 28th August 2022, the twelfth Sunday in Pentecost.

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

In a culture of honour, hospitality is the greatest and most counter-cultural virtue. In today’s story from the Gospel Traditions Jesus says to hosts that they should invite those who cannot repay them with an invitation, and he says to guests that it is best to sit at the foot of the table and allow yourselves to be moved higher if that is appropriate. In both cases Jesus calls people to honest reflection upon self, asking whose glory you seek when you visit or host members of the religious community. It’s a great passage to preach from on a communion Sunday.

“The sharing of food is a barometer of social relationships,” says one of the commentators whose work I read in preparation for today. Jesus’ questions are not only about where to sit yourself and seat others at the shared table, they also go to questions of who even gets to share the table and with whom you will eat. Who doesn’t get an invitation to your table at all? To whom will you RSVP “yeah nah and you know what actually, how very dare you for even thinking I’d walk within half a mile of such a scabby soot-hole like your place, let alone eat there”? Remember that in Luke 14:1 we are told that Jesus’ host is a leader of the Pharisees, so the remarks are even more inappropriate than me using the phrase “such a scabby soot-hole” in a sermon. He’s really laying into the whole table of poseurs, and there’s shades of Peter at the house of Cornelius and Peter at the Last Supper here too, not that Peter knows that yet.

Let mutual love continue says the writer of Hebrews 13:1, keep on loving one another as Christians is another way of putting it. This sounds more like the behaviour we’d expect from people who love God and who acknowledge their need for grace. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers we read in Hebrews 13:2, and okay going on to suggest that the sooty scab-face at the door might actually be an angel undercover, but that isn’t really the point. What if the sooty scab-face isn’t an angel, and this isn’t a test, and that one created in the image and likeness of God really needs a meal, and a bath, and some ointment, and a clean bed? As someone who has been both scabby or sooty at times, sometimes both at once, and who spent a short period “sleeping rough homeless”, but who has never been an angel, I’d rather that Christians were just hospitable. After all, that is what Jesus said in Luke 14. Nonetheless, make use of every opportunity to be kind: as I reminded the Serviceton people three weeks ago, if Jesus comes back this arvo to Rapture you you’d rather be caught with the beggar eating at your table than with the beggar shivering outside your gate.

Think of the prisoners we read in Hebrews 13:3; think of those being [persecuted and] tortured. I’ve never been tortured, although I have been alone and in great suffering in hospital. I have been in prison, I worked At HMP The Mount in Bovingdon in Hertfordshire for eighteen months; and even though I always had keys and a radio with me, and I was allowed out at the end of every shift, I didn’t like it much. I mean, it was a great job, but I never want to go to gaol. Given the choice I’d rather be a gaoler than a prisoner, and I have seen first-hand the joy when a letter or a visitor comes for an inmate.

Be content with your partner and your income, trust in The LORD who will never leave you or forsake you says Hebrews 13:4-5; even if you do end up in a Care and Separation Unit (solitary cells), or in ICU, know that God is your comfort, your hope, and your defence. Hold to what you know of The LORD’s own character and what you have heard preached and modelled by the church: Jesus is trustworthy and consistent; he is always a safe place to rely. Therefore says Hebrews 13:15-16 let us continue to worship our wonderful God and continue in the next breath to live out the character of Jesus while we live and breathe. You are allowed to drop the rituals if you are doing so to bring gospel hope and mutual love into the world; in fact if you can bring the story of Jesus to a world that hasn’t heard it, and the practical work of hospitality and compassion to a world that hasn’t had it, then you should leave the rituals well alone and focus on the worship and welfare.

That last sentence might seem a little odd, maybe it’s what you’ve been longing to hear, maybe you are glad that I’m only here this once and you can get back to proper theology when Rev Frank comes back and I go away to Kaniva again. Do not neglect the work of generosity is a better translation of share what you have in Hebrews 13:16, but should we really neglect the work of rituals so as to spend time being generous instead? If one of you has a child, or an ox that has fallen into a well will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day asks Jesus in Luke 14:5. The principle here is not that social-justice trumps worship, or that becoming “a real Christian” is about becoming less religious, but that the practice of honour for God should always mirror the character of God. God does not want your eyes shut and your hands aloft in worship when the person within arms reach is dying of cold or hunger or loneliness. Imagine if Jesus had stayed in Heaven glorifying The Father and being worshipped by the Host of Angel Armies while two thieves died anonymously one Friday in Jerusalem, and had never shown up in Bethlehem, let alone Gethsemane. Since it is in the nature and character of God to intervene and to rescue, how can it not be in the role description of disciples and worshippers in spirit and in truth to do the same? It is in our role description, and whilst we should gather as community for worship and fellowship (the first and great commandment) we must not neglect the care of souls and the neighbours they invest (the second commandment which is like the first).

I’m not sure whether it’s irony or serendipity, or even pure coincidence, (it’s probably not coincidence), that the man Jesus heals on the sabbath is experiencing oedema. See, it tells us in The Good News Bible in Luke 14:4 that his legs and arms  were swollen; less helpfully in the New Revised Standard Version we are told that he had dropsy. What is wrong with this man? Figuratively speaking, he is too full. He is swollen with an excess of fluid, and somewhat ironically this causes him to be excessively thirsty, at least according to the commentaries I read this week (and several of them say the same). This man is like a living parable for greed; so full of fluid that he looks like an over-inflated wineskin bursting at the seams. He is in pain and he has trouble moving, and he needs a good draining. But what does he crave: a good drink! Of course this man is not actually greedy, he is very sick, and in his sickness and his desperation to be well he is prepared to find out where Jesus is, (even on the sabbath), and upon finding that Jesus is in a leading Pharisee’s house, (even on the sabbath), he goes there. And he is healed, literally and figuratively drained of the excess, and he goes away well. And what is Jesus’ moral of the story for the people around the table? Well there’s two:

One; it’s okay to seek good on the Sabbath. It is good even to ask for the work of healing by yourself doing the work of seeking God in your desperation and hope and trust. Compassion always trumps tradition, kindness overrules doctrine.

Two; (and here’s the good one); don’t be so full of yourself! Sit at the far end of the table. Invite people who shouldn’t even be allowed into your posh dining room, let alone the far end of the table, and seat them in the velvet chairs right next to you and your wife. Let all of your puffed-up be drained out, because it’s actually an illness and you are not well.

From both of today’s stories we hear a very strong push toward not only hospitality but compassion. In Hebrews 13:1 the message is about family love, and in Hebrews 13:2 the message is about love for strangers. The Greek words used are different (philadelphia and philoxenia) but they both mean “love” or “love of” (philia). The message is practical, and it is heart-warming. It is gut-wrenching, and it is potentially dangerous. Jesus could have got himself in trouble with the Pharisees at the table if they did not have hearts ready to receive a revelation of the character of their God, and to suffer-alongside the incarcerated and the excruciating may well cause suffering that is not just compassion and empathy but the same experience and situation. Visit a prison in a manner which the guards don’t like and you may well find yourself staying in that prison. Even without the doomsaying of that idea, think of visiting a sick friend and finding yourself aching and sneezing within a week, we’ve all been there. Jesus commends us to go anyway, to friend and stranger, and to rely on himself who is constant and consistent (the same yesterday, today and forever) in his assured presence, and  also his capacity to release and restore and resolve.

Let love be your ritual: if you’re going to light a candle of praise then light it in the company of someone who desperately needs the light and warmth of it too.

Amen

Lengthen your Gaze (Lent 2B)

This is the text of the message I prepared for Lowan Uniting Church parish for Sunday 28th April 2021. Lowan is the near neighbour to Kaniva and Serviceton and I was invited to assist with word and sacrament in the absence of a Minister in Placement.

Something which you may not know about me, but which my previous preaching places and my current congregations know to the point of absolute nausea, is that I am a language nerd.  I have four university degrees, (I know, how amazing am I, you’re like so blessed to have me here really), and the earliest of those degrees was in Sociolinguistics.  This is a multisyllabic word of distinguished importance describing why and how different cultures, which share a language, use that language differently, among other things.  I’m telling you this to explain why I am so excited by the first word in the first reading we read this morning, which was the place at which I began to write my sermon.  That word, that amazing word, is the word “then”.

In the course of more recent studies I spent some time with a rabbi, and she was telling us about how her scriptures “Tanakh” had been changed in form and shape to become “The Old Testament”.  The Old Testament of Christianity is not actually the Jewish Bible: the Jewish Bible, which Jewish people call “Tanakh” has a shape of its own; mainly that the books are in a different order to the Christian Old Testament, and English-language copies don’t have Christian footnotes pointing to Jesus.  I mean, Hebrew copies don’t have Christian footnotes either, but that would be obvious, wouldn’t it?  Obvious.  Anyway, I knew that already from my third university degree which was a Bachelor of Ministry in which I majored in Bible and in Mission. (I actually have four university degrees; did I mention that?)  What I did not know, and here’s the fun part, was the way in which some English translators really ramp up the flowery bits (not a technical term) when they translate Hebrew to English, and the phrase my rabbi friend quoted was how the King James Version often says, “and so it came to pass”.  “And so it came to pass…dah dah dah blah dot;” or “in the fullness of time… dah dah dah blah dot”.  So we asked her how she would translate the phrase “in the fullness of time”; I mean, what does that Hebrew sentence actually say?  And do you know what she said?  C’mon, think about it!  “Then, it means then.”

The New American Bible subtitles Psalm 22 “The Prayer of an Innocent Person” and in whichever translation you read it you will hear of a man (probably) who has been ravaged by life, and who calls upon God for salvation.  At Psalm 22:23 in the NAB and in Tanakh (which is actually Psalm 22:22 in the New Revised Standard Version) we read then I will proclaim your name to my brethren.  “Then.”  My new favourite word!!  I like this “then”, especially as a first word, because this “then” explains that the man is able to praise God only because he has been saved by God.  And then, in Psalm 22:23-31 (NRSV) we get the prayer itself, and we discover straight away that it is a public prayer of relief and thanksgiving.

Another rabbi, in another place, summed up for Christians the major thrust behind many Judaic festivals.  Passover in the Moses story, Purim in the Esther story, even Hannukah in the Maccabean story, they all follow the same ritual meaning: “some Gentiles tried to kill us, but God saved us, so let’s now eat together!”  Think about it, Pharaoh, Haman (boo!!), Antiochus IV (who?): now think of the key Christian festival where at The Lord’s Table (and perhaps especially during Lent) we celebrate how “we tried to kill God, but God saved us, so let’s now eat together”.  Oh, so many rabbis in today’s message; but the point is clear, and if it wasn’t clear it will be clear now.  God, since before the days of Abraham, has been in the rescue business; salvation, resurrection, restoration, comforting and soothing and preserving and keeping safe.  This is what God does and this is why, (in the fullness of time when things such as these shall have come to pass), we can worship God as Saviour of the individual and of the mob.  And not only can we worship God specifically as saviour (and not just as Lord and Creator worthy of adoration anyway), but Psalm 22:29-31 also reads that all people in all places and every stage of health and sickness will worship this God, the Only One who saves.

Righteousness is reckoned to us without a preceding need of merit.  That is a rather bold statement, and it come to us from one of the commentators I read and not directly as a quote from Romans 4.  It is, however, how this chapter reads, and it is an excellent summary of Romans 4:13 and the twelve verses ahead of it.  God chose Abram before Abraham deserved God; in fact, Abraham never deserved God because he, like us, could only ever respond to the salvation freely offered by a God he didn’t even know before accepting the offer.  That’s a profound summary of grace, and of faith, and of how Paul made connections between the religion of the Pharisees and the religion forming up behind of the Way of Jesus.  This is not a uniquely Christian message, we have just seen how Paul takes the most fundamental Jewish truth and extends to a new readership, but it is the Christian message in its entirety.  We who are saved by the Saving God, are saved by the grace of God alone.  Obedience does not save us, whether to the Law of Moses nor to any other standard.  Neither does birth into the right clan save us, because even as grace is freely given to all who are Abraham’s descendants, Abram was not such a one.  If you are saved just by being a son (or daughter) of Abraham, then how was Abram himself saved?  For this reason, says Paul in Romans 4:16, it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all…who share the faith of Abraham.  All, not just the random circumcised bloke wearing ritual fringes yelling out his praise to the God who brough his people out of Egypt, but to all who trust this same God, the only God to whom they are not related by tradition nor by maternal DNA; that is, the God to whom Abram gave his trust.  What that bloke was yelling in Psalm 22 you can yell too, and for the same reason.  God is your deliverer, and you do have a testimony of what God has done for you, don’t you?  Don’t you?  That is what we proclaim, because that is our own story of life from the dead, of resurrection.  Yes we must proclaim Christ who lived, died, and is risen; but we can only do that in the stories of how  we personally lived, died, and were raised by God.  Like a paralysed man whose legs are restored to him in evidence that his sins really have been forgiven, so our testimony of forgiveness is that we were lifted up from the paralysis caused by life’s misfortunes and personal stupidity, and set upon our feet again by God who saved us just because God saves.

Do you know why you were saved by God?  It was because you needed saving!  And how did you know that you needed saving?  It was because God revealed the nature of divine love to you, and your eyes saw the gap between God’s situation and your situation.  And how did you actually get saved? It was because when God took your hand and began to draw you up and out and over and through and past and by and home, you did not take your hand back; that is where and how righteousness was reckoned to you, and how obvious it is that God did it all without needing you to be meritorious, or even conscious of your predicament really.  You were saved in an identical way to how Abram was saved, which is not the way that Judaism understands salvation for Jews, but is a recognisable action of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, (and of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel for that matter).  And what did that act of saving you actually look like?  It was as Paul wrote in Romans 4:24-25 that we trust the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead; we did not pull our hand away when God reached for us, but held on to Jesus who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.  The place and the proof of your salvation are found at Friday’s occupied cross and Sunday’s empty tomb; this cannot be made clearer.

In Mark 8:34 and the verses following we read where Jesus speaks openly about the cost of discipleship.  I like the phrase “cost” of discipleship rather more than the “price” of discipleship, because “cost” is more present tense for me.  Discipleship is not some random product on a shelf carrying a bar code or a sticker with numbers on, discipleship cannot be bought.  Since discipleship has no exchange value in itself it cannot be used for barter or payment for any other thing, it can only have a cost.  This may seem pedantic to you, but for me it carries a very important point: you cannot buy salvation with discipleship.  The price was paid by Jesus, Jesus only; but the cost of following him is found on your own cross.

There is no such thing as inauthentic discipleship; either you are following Jesus and carrying your cross, or you are not following Jesus and whatever it is you are carrying it isn’t actually a cross.  Costly as it is, and priceless in various ways too, discipleship does have value.  If you follow Jesus closely, figuratively if not literally walking in his steps (as if Christ himself was…I don’t know…The Way perhaps) you are easier to save.  A commitment to discipleship will not save you any more than obedience to the Law of Moses will save you, and Paul has just told us very clearly that it cannot.  However, commitment to discipleship, taking up your own cross and following Jesus is God’s better path.  The road of God has less trip hazards, and you can’t get lost on a straight road.  The way of God is to walk the road of God in the company of the Word of God, so not just the straight and smooth path but the company of Jesus on the hike itself.  It takes real stupidity (or maybe an easily distracted gaze) to lost on a straight road, but you can lag or race-on without much thought which is why it is important not only to walk God’s road but to walk it near to Jesus.  That way when you need saving again (a-gain!) the sturdy frame of Jesus is within your arm’s reach.

To push these metaphors to their conclusion, and hopefully to some connection, let me put it this way.  You were once saved, gifted salvation, when God took your hand and you did not pull back.    You are continuously being saved when, on those occasions you trip or wander, you have confidence in the strength of your relationship with him that you can reach for and take God’s hand, secure that God will not pull away but will pull you away from whatever it is you’re falling towards.

And then, in the fullness of time, when God has immediately received your desperate grasp and enclosed your hand and pulled you close, you too will be able to pray with the Psalmist “oy mob! Come and listen to what God did for me before I even asked and every time it happened.” Amen.

Lengthen (Lent 1B)

Psalm 25:1-10; Mark 1:9-15

For many religious people, the word “Lent” describes a period somewhere between early February and late April when Christians give up luxuries in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus.  Even in some big supermarkets, (yes I am looking at you Coles), you might see advertisements for “Fish for Lent” above the freezers.  But the word itself actually has nothing to do with giving up pleasures, or seeking sorrow where joy might be found; no, it actually comes from the language of “lengthen” because in the Northern Hemisphere they are entering Spring, and after the vernal equinox on March 21^st the daylight is longer than the darkness.  So on this first Sunday in purple I’m going to suggest, right from the outset, that rather than giving up your fun or shortening your lives with self-denial, this is actually the best time for taking-up something and expanding your religiosity.  Lent offers a fresh opportunity to try-out a Christian discipline or spiritual practice; maybe even one that could be continued after Easter.  And yes, perhaps that practice is less grog and more green vegetables; but perhaps it is prayer, or hospitality, or worship, or regular church attendance.

In February 2009 I left Hillsong Church London, where I had been worshipping for almost six years, to return to Australia.  At that time Hillsong across southern England consisted of twelve thousand people.  You might think that a church with more than one hundred and twenty hundred people, (there’s 25 people here today), would be wealthy; but this was not so because our congregations were mostly made up of young people, and of poor people.  Many of us were students, others were twenty- or thirty-somethings on an OE or a Gap Year; we had lots of energy, excitement, and activity, but very little cash.  Some attendees were newly introduced Christians who were dealing with the complications of their life before Christ and had little cash, or were new to discipleship and working through the “for reals, 10%; I mean really?” thing.  So every Sunday, prayer requests would come in via the care cards on our seats, with requests of God for help.  “Pray for me, I need £400 for bond and I can’t move into my new flat.  I have my rent, but I don’t have a lump sum for bond.”  Or “Pray for me because I have to move out of my flat on Tuesday and I have nowhere to go.”  Our pastor would wave the cards at us and say “no”.  “No,” he would say, “no, we are not going to insult God by asking Him to grant these requests when the Church is sitting in front of me.  You are going to answer these prayers Church, you.  So, come and speak to me after the service if you wrote this, or come and speak to one of the pastoral care team if you can help.”  Then he would pray that “the church will be church”, everyone would give a huge cheer, and we’d move on.  The next week there would be a “thanksgiving” where the cards read “praise God my £400 need was met by my small group and I move in on Friday.”  Or “praise God my need for accommodation was met and I am now staying in a better flat for lower rent, in Zone two of the Tube, and sharing with two lovely Saffy girls I met in the foyer last Sunday.”  Through that, and other experiences, I have come to understand that sometimes God doesn’t really want the Church’s prayers.  God wants the needs of the individuals to be met by the whole congregation for God’s glory.  Those prayer answers were never prefaced with “Praise be to Janien and Mareta from Bloemfontein” or “Praise to Hillsong Church London”; they were always “Praise God” and “I love Jesus so much!”.  When the Church comes through, even for people are not Christian believers, God always gets the glory.

In Psalm 25:1-10 we read a profound expression of extreme trust, kind of like what someone who was blessed by the God of Jesus Christ through the body called Hillsong Church might express in her worship.  Yet if we read on a paragraph or two and Psalm 25:11-22 we hear from a man struggling with the high standards of the discipleship-focussed life. Discipleship is inspiring and impossible, glorious and grinding.  And in Mark 1:9-15 we read the story of the commencement of Jesus’ ministry, and especially his message to repent and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15b, English Standard Version).  Jesus is very clear, the very first thing he says in the very first account of the gospel written in history is that “the time is now”.  Now, not later, now is when you must change the way you think about life, and begin to trust completely and with the total annihilation of all other sources of rescue, that all that God is is enough.  God, and only God, but all of God is what you require to live an abundant life as one person within the global and eternal priesthood of believers.  You are not simply the fortunate hearer of a sacred password which will get you past St Peter’s keys and through the Pearly Gates in half a century’s time or whenever; no.  No indeed, because you are an ambassador of truth and a person who is called to live by trust, through obedience to what you have heard through grace.  Is that true of you?  I’m actually asking and it is very important to me that I hear you answer, this is not a rhetorical question and I want to see hands.  Are you a person committed to truth, someone who lives by trust through obedience to what you have heard through grace?  Okay, if not, because that is pretty lofty, are you committed to the path of becoming such a person as this? 

Lent is all about discipleship, because Christianity is all about discipleship, because Jesus was all about discipleship.  I want to ask whether you are all about discipleship: are you ready to repent and believe in the gospel today?  Maybe you think you already believe, but do you only mean by that that you once prayed the right words of that single, sacred and correct password for Heaven, and your discipleship is evidenced solely in proficiency in memory verse and Bible Story trivia recall?  That is not Christian belief; that is Gnostic superstition.  Don’t you see that there is  another side to discipleship, another side to Lent, a personal side where God desires so much depth for you?  Far removed from six weeks of caffeine detox, Godself summons us to lay aside what has become dry and rote and come to know God afresh.  Begin to pray and read your Bible if you don’t already do so, and if you do already do so ask whether it really is nourishing you, or whether it has become a duty.

I stopped using With Love to the World before the last issue arrived, and did not renew my subscription in October 2020, because over about a year of really trying hard to make it work for me I found it dry and pointless, drying and shallowing like a dam in a drought; and because I wasn’t reading it and my Bible anymore, but I still had the habit that that is what I was supposed to do, I didn’t actually do anything in its place and I neglected my daily practice of devotional reading. And because I wasn’t pausing to read and reflect with scripture I no longer paused to pray either.  That 20 minutes disappeared into the busyness of my morning, usually with me sleeping in, and I have been months without a specific “quiet time”.  I am not ashamed of this, I am quite pleased with my honesty before God that being dryly religious was not honouring God anyway, and it was making me cross.  Of course I continued to pray without ceasing, and I study the Bible in my sermon preparation, but “devotions” got dry and then went out the window.  Is this your story?  Or maybe your story is that you are smugly horrified at my story because you haven’t missed a day’s “quiet time” since ESA Youth Camp in 1978.  Maybe we need to re-assess our disciplines and practices to make them more discipleship-oriented and practical and less disciplinary or habitual; and maybe that includes the smugly horrified.

As for your pastor, he wants to offer freshness; which is why I am inviting you to join our Lenten study in Kaniva.  Or perhaps you might spend the next month and a half reading The Gospel According to Mark alone, and taking time to Selah, to pause and consider when something strikes you.  Maybe some other book or set of books in scripture alongside a set of notes to guide reflection will bless you as you open yourself to God whose word is Jesus.  As for your brother in Christ, I want to share my story of dryness, (“share” because I have nothing to “confess”), and to offer you my continuing story of refreshing at God’s deep wells…which you’ll hear about at the Lenten Study in Kaniva.

So it is that the message of Lent, and it has very little to do with laying off the coffee for six weeks and doubling your intake of fish.  There is a reflective and self-denying quality, with glory given to Jesus for all who he is as saviour and lord; however Lent is just as much about Christ-like discipleship in seeking out the lonely person and taking him to a cafe, or inviting him into your kitchen for a chipped mug of International Dust and a good old natter.  I wonder whether you could set aside time in the next thirty-six weekdays and six Sundays to seek God, and if you could, whether you would.  If you do, please let me know so that I can pray for you as you go.  I may even shout you a coffee at Soul Café; you are free to invite Janien and Mareta as well.

men.

Job

This is the text of my ministry message to KSSM for the October 2020 pewsheet

I wonder if you can fill the blank: “the ____ of Job”.  Evidently this is a well-known metaphor, but until I was faced with the task of filling this blank in a quiz some time ago I had never seen it.  As a Christian who knew his Bible I thought the answer would be “faith”, but apparently it’s “patience”.  I wonder whether the global moderators of metaphors in English have ever read the Bible if that’s what they think The Book of Job is about.  Job is a man of faith and I’d even say he’s a man of perseverance; but he is not a patient man at all.  Job is very human and for much of the story Job is a bit of a sook.

This week I have been mindful of Job and his story because of his remarkable friends.  In most readings of The Book of Job the three friends get a bad rap, and for the majority of Job’s story that’s well deserved: but they start off so well, and that’s been the encouraging message for me.  When disaster befalls Job and he loses his houses, farms, flocks, adult children, health and sense; and he’s left with nothing except eczema and a rather shrewish wife, his mates turn up to mourn with him.  According to Job 2:13 the first thing they do is to tear their clothes and throw dust over themselves, in other words they perform the rituals and appropriate cultural expressions of grief.  Then they sit down and say nothing for a week: they just sit there, in silence, in the dirt, for seven days.

I wonder how much of what we have been experiencing as a community over the past seven months has been grief.  Certainly, we are experiencing stress, depression, and anxiety in their natural and clinical forms; where we were apprehensive in April, we were oh so over-it in October.  But for all of the emotional strength developed through perseverance, for all of the mental resistance training opportunities, much of 2020 has actually been a write-off and we are mourning and grieving the year we lost.  The inertia has been stalled in many places, sparks of life were flushed with foam, and seeds of promise were actively trampled or passively neglected.  Like Job’s friends perhaps we just need to sit with each other for a while; unlike Job’s friends we do not need follow that up with finger pointing and blame shifting around who sinned to cause God’s anger to fall so heavily upon those who did not see Corona coming.

Where Bill and Ted once said, “be excellent to each other”, perhaps what Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz should have said is “be kind to yourself”.  So, be kind.

Rips Given

This is the text of the message I prepared for email sharing amongst God’s people at Kaniva Shared Ministry for Sunday 2nd August 2020.  Still we were in Covid lockdown..

 Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit, (Romans 9:1)  Well that’s a good way to begin an address, kind’a wish I’d thought of it actually.  Of course Paul isn’t beginning anything here, other than a new paragraph, but since we’re taking up where we left off last week it’s a good place for us to start.  This is the truth as confirmed by The Spirit says Paul.  It’s not the truth as Paul sees it, it’s not the truth as Paul would like to think the truth to be, it’s the truth that Godself confirms to be true, the truth of the one who says I am The Truth, (John 14:6b) or perhaps I AM, Truth.  When I AM speaks, or sends a messenger on God’s behalf to tell the truth of I AM it’s a jolly good idea to pay attention to what I AM is saying.  In Romans 9:2 what Paul says, with The Spirit attesting to the truth, is that he (Paul) has great sorrow and unceasing anguish in [his] heart.  This cry of grief from a truthful man, we are told in Romans 9:3-5, is Paul’s weeping before the LORD for the lost nation of the Jewish people, his own people. I wonder, how often do we weep with great sorrow and unceasing anguish in heart for our people?  Are you gutted by the lack of response by your fellow Australians, Victorians, people of West Wimmera?  Does grief stir your bowels at the presence of lost souls in your street, town, district and nation?  Or are you a bit disappointed but not much more.  Maybe you’re not bothered, because after all if you are saved and the unsaved are…well…unsaved, then that’s their problem and not yours.

I have told the story before so I shan’t share it in full again, but for those of you who have been listening to me for a while you might remember that I used to belong to Hillsong Church London, and specifically to the “New Christians Team”.  I’ve told you of the one service where I was “on” and there wasn’t a single hand raised in the congregation during the call to repentance, not one salvation for Christ in a room of 600 people.  I’ve told you of the desperation amongst “Team” as we looked for that lost soul; “even if there’s just one, Father, Oh God let there be even one,” but there was not even one.  I’ve told you of the desolation amongst “Team” after the service, of hot tears and real wailing that no one had “come to Christ” or even “come back to Christ”.  I’ve also told you that that is what, for me, makes Hillsong Church the church that Hillsong is; not for its smoke and mirrors, its loud riffs and even louder drums, its happy-clappy mezzanine and its bouncy-shouty downstairs (no jumping in the balconies!!), but the fact that it gives a rip for the lost of London and is abject in disarray when the gospel is proclaimed to six hundred people and not one responds to grace afresh.

I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  For I could wish that I myself were accursed, and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people. Do you remember praying like that?  “Oh God I’ll give up my own salvation if it means that Australia can be saved.”  Do you remember praying like that?  Nah, me neither actually, (and not just because I’d rather England be saved instead, not true).  But following from last week and last month really this is the groaning of Holy Spirit in us for the world.  If Australia were to be entirely saved by God then I would be saved along with it; even if we follow the Abrahamic method in Genesis 18 and only Victoria were saved, or West Wimmera, or Kaniva, or Commercial Street East, or just the odd numbered houses in the 90s, I’d be swept up amongst those I’m praying for – God does not need my salvation back so as to save my neighbours.  So if their salvation won’t actually cost me mine, then why can’t I just TELL THEM ABOUT JESUS????

Mea culpa as the Roman Catholics say, it’s my guilty fault.  I’ve neglected to “give a rip”: I am no longer being desolated hourly and hourly again that not one, not even one, has been saved by the ministry of Kaniva and Serviceton Churches of Christ and Uniting Church since before 1^st October 2018 (the day my contract began).

Phew!  Now before we go too far and start bring self-flagellation into the order of worship, (although that could be something new to try after we get back to church in September, and flails are currently 30% off at Koorong), God does not want us desolating ourselves hourly at the condition of Australia’s soul.  Some groaning in intercession is required, no doubt; more groaning from more of us in the present is warranted, but we’re not to build a Kingdom out of Romans 9:1-3 as if it were the entirety of scripture or even the complete package for discipleship.  We should grieve for the lost, we should seek for the lost, we should comfort the found (who were lost) and we should bring the found home where Jesus waits to meet them (where he wasn’t already with them keeping them company until we arrived).  What we should also do is celebrate our own found-ness, delight that we were each once the one and Jesus joined us to the 99; we should work on being the 99 to whom Jesus adds the ones, and twos, (and thousands if you’re a Hillsong franchise).

In today’s reading from the Jesus Traditions, from Matthew 14:13-21, we read of Jesus feeding 5000 men.  It’s a well told story, the only miracle performed by Jesus that all four gospels record, so I’m sure you’ve heard it before and from Matthew as well as his mates.  So yes, blah-de-blah 5000 men doesn’t include women and children so probably 20,000 mouths in total; blah-de-blah twelve baskets for the twelve tribes of Israel; blah-de-blah fish and loaves because Jesus is lord (LORD) of both sea and land; blah-de-blah leftovers because in Christ there is always more than enough; blah-de-blah a living parable because it actually happened in real life but it carries symbolic and metaphorical meaning as well; blah-de-blah-de blah.  Does this sound like the preaching of someone who gives a rip?  Well it should, because I do, because here’s how the otherwise blah-de-blah story fits with Paul’s anguish.

In Matthew 14:13a, we are told that when Jesus heard of it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.  Heard of what?  Heard of the murder of John the Baptiser, Jesus’ prequel in prophecy and his cousin in flesh.  So he’s just heard about this, John is dead because Herod thinks with his pelvis and is an idiot of a king anyway, so Jesus withdraws for some alone time.  Maybe Jesus went off to pray so his alone time is also “Quiet Time” where The Son is with The Father, or maybe he went off deliberately so as to be in private when he pulled the wings off some newborn kittens and lined up a few torpedo punts from outside-50 in his grief and anger.  More likely the first option, but Matthew doesn’t tell us.  What Matthew does tell us is that the news of John’s death was the cause for Jesus to step away, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.  Now he’s alone in the boat, the Greek words “by himself” literally mean that no one was with him at all.  (Actually I have no idea about Greek words, but it’s clear enough in English isn’t it?)  What we do know is that a tradie from inland Nazareth goes out on the sea specifically without his fisherman mates from lakeside Capernaum; duh, maybe he wants to be alone (except for the kittens…).  Anyway the crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns, and not only did they do that none of the men (or women for that matter) bought any food with them.  So, Jesus is distraught with grief, he’s held it together just long enough to get the boat moving before he breaks his grieving heart out before The Father, and when he gets to the place of solitude he’s met by eleventy thousand people who have walked all day and between them have two sardine sandwiches and a scone.  So Jesus (after putting down the kittens) entered the vast crowd and with a heart moved with pity for them…he cured their sick.  We haven’t even got to the miraculous picnic yet but we can already see that Jesus gives a rip…about 20,000 actually (give or take an unaccompanied minor).

God’s message to us today is to give a rip, to care for the lost as Jesus himself cared for the lost, (and the hungry, and the wildly inconsiderate).  Are you tired?  God knows this.  Are you grieving? God knows this.  Do you have a bag of kittens nearby?  God knows this (and soon shall the RSPCA also know).  It is Covid season still, and whilst we are (more than) conquerors we are Victorians; where even Bordertown has thumping church-life today we have desolation.  I’m missing church so hard today that I don’t even feeling like going to church even if it was on, I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit.  God knows this.  We cannot emulate Jesus fully: I could not have ministered to that crowd on that day that Jesus did, not with what Jesus had just been told; but Jesus did sustain that crowd and he’ll sustain our crowd too.

In Christ’s strength I am prepared to step up, in grief for Australia and fed-upness for Victoria’s lockdown, to minister where I am called.  Are you?

Give a rip, groan in prayer a little, and share your lunch.

Amen.

Pentecost 8A

This is the text of the message I prepared for Serviceton Shared Ministry for Sunday 26th July 2020.

So, how’d’ya go?  Last Sunday I set you the task of spending some spirit-searching time with God’s Spirit, to diagnose the condition of your faith and to discuss with God some therapeutic options for your growing in strength.  How was that?  For those who haven’t got to it yet there’s still time, (there’s always time with God), but there’s no time like The Present.

The parable of the Mustard Seed speaks to what some of us have done in the past week, and of course what we have heard in the past two weeks.  Once again Jesus speaks a farming parable, and he’s still in that boat just off the beach at Capernaum, the town where he lives and the hometown of Simon (Peter) and Andrew, and James and John.  The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed says Jesus, it is the smallest of all the seeds which grows to become the greatest of shrubs in its day.  Perhaps this means that from little things big things grow (undoubtedly true) and that in the context of Christian faith you don’t have to have much of God to start with, but by the end of your life walk you’ll have become something big and fruitful as God has grown you up.  That is true from experience, but it’s not all that Jesus is saying here.

One of my commentators informed me  this week that in Jewish traditions trees often represented the rule of a king, and birds were symbols of the oppressed people of God.  So the story of a shrub that becomes a tree big enough for nests is not just about how big the shrub grows from its tiny seed; the story is saying that Heaven’s Kingdom is a kingdom where the oppressed find shelter.  The Kingdom of God is not just a massive empire, it’s a spacious sanctuary.  Today (Jesus’ day) is not looking good for the Kingdom, says Jesus: present day Jerusalem is full of Romans, and the Roman Empire is enormous and vicious; but that’s not the future.  No, says Jesus, the future is that the tiny presence of God’s new thing in the world, the Kingdom coming through Jesus Godself, will one day outshine Rome and the Romes to come (Byzantium, Russia, Britain, Spain, USA) to be a place of enormous influence and abundant shelter.

So, how do these two ideas relate, and how do they connect with us?  Well it is true that big things do grow from small, no seed is ever bigger than the tree it produces, so the idea that what we see now can and will be bigger in the future, with the right conditions, is clear.  That Jesus is using this as a metaphor for the rolling out of the reign of God, and that the world will be safer with more God presence evident in the world in no way undermines the idea that I can grow in faith from small faith to big and be a more effective disciple and witness.  I suggest that these are related ideas, the more Christians there are in the world and the bigger the faith inside each Christian the more effective and spacious the Kingdom to come will be.  And, going back to last week, the best way to build bigger Christians is that each one spends time with God assessing the growth and condition of his or her heart.

Christians who are conditioned by God’s close attention, especially at that Christian’s invitation, are chosen by God to be effective in the world.  God sends out those whom God trusts to speak the truth and to speak effectively: the whole point of the Kingdom according to today’s gospel is that it is effective in saving the world.  In the parable after the one about the mustard seed Jesus speaks of the Kingdom as being like yeast.  Once again the kingdom is small and secretive, but give it time and it will has great significance in the future thing.  Yeast is another one of those daily items that has metaphorical meaning; in Jesus time yeast was considered to be a contaminant.  When the Kingdom of Heaven comes in power the kingdom’s people (that’s us) will spoil and corrupt the Roman, Flesh world; that’s the story of the Parable of the Yeast.  But in the meantime, as with any parabolic saying of Jesus, shh!

So the Kingdom is small but influential, and when the time is right it will be massive and welcoming.  Jesus also tells his disciples in private that the Kingdom is precious, priceless, and pure.  The Kingdom is worth attaining.  “Sing out your song, but not for me alone; sing out for yourselves for you are blessed! There is not one of you who shall not win the kingdom; the sick the suffering, the quick the dead,” sings Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, and this is true even if it is not scripture. Buy the field, buy the pearl, sell all that you have and throw everything at this one thing because it is the only thing worth having says Jesus in Matthew 13:44-46.  Even if it costs you all that you had, go and buy it.  In the privacy of the house (Matthew 13:36) Jesus tells the disciples that the Kingdom sweeps up everyone in its net (Matthew 13:47) and that the good fish who represent the righteous people will be separated from the bad fish, and that the bad influences will be removed and destroyed.  And the point is not to worry “oh but what if I’m a bad fish”; the point is to exclaim “thank God that one day I’ll be in a world away from those things that distract from the things of God, I am blessed!”  The disciples, the ones in the house with him, understand the points that Jesus was making (Matthew 13:51) and are able to teach the same stories.  The Empire of God will crush and destroy all other empires, not only Rome but systems of religious legalism and human barbarity and injustice as well.

But that does still sound a bit scary; I mean, what if I am a bad fish?  Or, okay so I am a good fish (I’m a Christian) but I have a lot of “the flesh” in me and I’m easily led astray, what then?  Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness offers Paul in Romans 8:26, in the context of prayer and repentance.  The one who searches the heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit, (Romans 8:27), and God is this one who listens to what the Spirit says about you.  “This one”, says the Spirit, “is a work in progress: not there yet but well along the way, and being cooperative towards change”.  Our job as Christians, as citizens and participants in the Kingdom of God, is not to be perfect but to cooperate with the Spirit who is perfecting us.  Your strength comes from God, your healing comes from God, but God is not yet finished making you strong and safe.  In all things (good and not good) God works for good for those who love God says Romans 8:28, and that means that God is not restricted by your offerings but is free to use the wealth of options provided through grace.  So even if you are a good fish with a lot of worldliness left in you God can still use you, and heal that worldliness while you are ministering to others.  This is grace, that God can do more.  If God is for us who is against us? asks Romans 8:31, you needn’t resist God’s work of restoration any longer when you know that God is kind and is working for your benefit even in the bad times.

God is for us; God is for us; and in all things we are victorious and then some because of the One who loves and guides us.  But, where does this lead us?  To two places I think.

1. When God searches for us in the world where we live, God is listening out for the noise of Holy Spirit at work in us. It is the Spirit’s groaning within us that draws God’s attention to the work of perfection going on.
2. We are not separated from the love of God. God does not not love us (a double-negative says that God loves us even if we can’t think it’s true), and God does not keep the work of the Spirit in the world secret from us, rather we are fully informed partners in that work.

Our role in God’s work is to allow Holy Spirit access to our hearts for the work of perfection, and that we join the Spirit in praying (interceding) for the world in its brokenness.  Holy Spirit groans in prayer not because prayer is extraordinarily hard work (although it is) but because it is grievous work, it is groan inducing in its reality that the world is so sick and so sad that God’s essence groans with compassion.  Where God has not separated us from God’s love not only are we loved by God, but we are grieved by what grieves God – we groan too at the condition of the world and we urge God with the fulness of our own guts to make the world good.

When the Kingdom fully comes there will be grace enough for everyone, and shelter and healing for all.  Right now the Kingdom is small and hidden; it is insignificant compared to the globe of turmoil and the universe of pain.  This small but belligerent Kingdom is God’s work and God’s solution; now heed God’s invitation for you to check your spirit with God’s Spirit for healing and perfection and answer God’s call to the purpose of being one of those who activate the Kingdom in the world.  If you didn’t do it last week then I encourage you to check in with God for some spirit-care; in fact even if you did do it last week check in again for some more.  And then, on the way to wholeness by God’s grace, partner with God to bring wholeness to the whole world.  Go and be yeast.  Amen.

Pentecost 7A

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 19th July 2020.  We were still in lockdown.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Romans 8:12-25

The parables are radical and provocative stories, which is the main reason why they are told at all.  Throughout Matthew 13, and the other chapters made up of parables in the gospels, Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven; the way the world will be when God alone reigns and all other kings and empires are overcome by the presence of God fully revealed in the world.  If Jesus was to teach openly about these things, to use a list of facts rather than a story with hidden meaning, then the people who are threatened by the Kingdom’s coming might have an insight into what lays ahead, and arrest and silence Jesus.  Of course this is ultimately what did happen; however, in the short term Jesus was able to get away with teaching subversive stuff by hiding it in his weird little stories.

The villain in the Parable of Weeds is satan, not Caesar nor the Sanhedrin, but this isn’t always the case where Jesus is teaching.  It’s true that satan doesn’t have an army occupying Jerusalem’s posh suburbs, so Jesus might have been able to be a bit more upfront this time, but in the middle of a long teaching time for him he’s kept up the narrative with the parable form.  So, let’s look at what Jesus actually says, openly then in private about what he said in parables and in public.

In Matthew 13:24a Jesus makes it clear that once again (or perhaps “still”) he is talking about the Kingdom of God and specifically what that Kingdom is like.  Then in Matthew 13:24b he tells the unique point of this story, that the Kingdom began as a good and pure idea which in Matthew 13:25 is seen to be destroyed later by the fault of an external force, an enemy who sows destructiveness.  Weeds are destructive, we know this from last week’s parable (which was only five minutes ago in Jesus’ day), where in Matthew 13:22 Jesus describes the weeds as choking influences.  So it is interesting that in this story the master does not instruct his slaves to get rid of the weeds which might choke the wheat; indeed he resists their offer to get out the Roundup because of the potential danger to the good crop.  It is as if Jesus has such faith in the seed of the gospel that he assumes it to be choke-resistant and weeding is not required.  Or maybe his confidence is in the soil, and that his crop will always grow better in his soil than weeds will grow.  “Nah, don’t worry about the weeds in this paddock,” he says, “weeds won’t grow well in that soil anyway so they won’t be a problem.”  Whether it’s a superior class of soil, or of seed, the danger from the weeds is lesser to the good crop than the danger of the weeding.

In last week’s parable the seed was the gospel and the soil was your heart; but today the good seed is you (the children of the kingdom according to Matthew 13:38) and the soil is the world.  There are two kinds of seed in this story and that same verse, (Matthew 13:38), tells that there is bad seed which is the children of the world alongside the good seed which you are.  At the right time Jesus will send the angels to remove the weeds and then to gather the harvest; the crop depending upon its seed ends up in the fire or in the barn, and that’s the point of the story.  Last week one of the points made was that good crop can be crowded out or choked by bad crop; this week Jesus’ people are imperilled by satan’s people, but Jesus’ people don’t need rescuing just yet because they will be known by their steadfastness even in peril.

So, what is your seed quality?  Maybe the better question, far more accusative and personal, asks which seed you are.  And, even more blunt, whose child are you?

In Romans 8:12 we are told that we owe nothing to the world but everything to Jesus.  Is that true of you?  How true is that of you?  Since I am writing for my congregation here, people I know to be Christians and children of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:38), I’m more concerned for degree than identity.  I know you are all Christian, none of you belong to satan at all, but as much as you belong to the kingdom how much do you belong to the kingdom, and how much do you still belong to the world?  How attached, how deep are you within the Christ whose you are?  How dead are you to the world and how alive to Christ: how much has the Spirit [put] to death the deeds of the flesh, your body (Romans 8:13)?

In Romans 8:13 we are told that those who live according to the flesh…will die, which does sound rather dire, however Paul goes on to say that if by the Spirit you abandon and neglect, (or even actively kill), deeds of the body you will live.  I see this not as a “sin leads to Hell”, to eternal death rather than eternal life, kind of teaching; rather it is a “stupid things have stupid results”.  Which is not to say that sin does not lead to spiritual death (it does), but this verse says more than that.

It was a widely publicised phrase a while back that “Christians are not perfect, just forgiven”, and whilst I’m much more likely to preach from scripture than from bumper stickers the phrase holds a lot of truth.  We are not perfect, yet, and we are in the process of being perfected, still, and in the mean-time when we do stupid things we require grace and forgiveness.  That’s what I get out of today’s passages, that it is good to hunger for God and righteousness and to want to be “a better Christian” by being more like Christ and less like the world.  But when you fall short and do something stupid; or you engage in some self-reflection on the quality of your person as a seed or a bed of soil, and you are disappointed at how far you haven’t yet come, the solution is not to sulk but to seek grace.

I was talking with a friend recently, (in fact she and I were workshopping sermons a bit and I wrote the first two pages of today’s effort in her company) and we were discussing the difference between treatment and diagnosis.  Without a diagnosis it is hard to get the right treatment, but with a diagnosis the treatment options are opened up.  I have a Mental Illness for which I take an anti-depressant medication, and I practice a healthy lifestyle where I avoid excess alcohol and stressing situations, and I drink a lot of water and spend a lot of time in solitude and quietness.  There’s no point in my taking insulin injections, or blood thinning medication; a wheelchair is of no use to me, and I won’t benefit from thrice-weekly physiotherapy.  At the same time if all I had was a diagnosis but wasn’t engaging in therapy at all then what would be the point of that diagnosis?  It would just be a name, perhaps a label.

Again I ask you the questions, as a diagnosis.  What is the quality of your seed?  What is the quality of your soil?  Whose child are you?  What deeds of the flesh do you continue to practice?  None of this is a about judgementalism or for me to assert moral superiority; it’s about you being able to identify areas in your life that you need to work on (or maybe work towards) by the Spirit (Romans 8:13), the same Spirit who is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children then heirs (Romans 8:16-17a).

Jesus spoke often of the Kingdom of God in his parables, knowing that the news was radical and provocative: it is this same Kingdom of which we are joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17b).  The news of grace, and of God’s supportive empowering available to us (treatment) beyond God’s forgiveness of our sinful state (diagnosis), is equally radical, equally provocative.  In this knowledge I encourage you to take some time this week or next to search your spirit with the Spirit of God as company, diagnose and address with God the help you need, and then allow God to meet with your strength to work toward your salvation.

Amen.

A Roman Road

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 12th July 2020.

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Romans 8:1-11.

Something I’d never noticed struck me as I read the gospel this week in preparation for sharing thoughts about it with you: Jesus tells The Parable of the Soils from a boat. Now there’s no reason why Jesus can’t do that of course, after all I’m now retelling it from a desk and a laptop. If you’re attached to Serviceton Church you might be watching me via YouTube, preaching to an otherwise empty room except for that laptop. I dunno why that bothered me; maybe I always thought of the parables as being a bit more local, as if Jesus would just grab something nearby or point to something in the visible distance and say “see this, well the character of God is reflected in this ordinary thing/scene because…” and there would be your parable. So when Jesus climbs into a boat, which is outside his house, and then he starts talking about farming rather than fishing I wonder. I do.

Okay that was a random and maybe pointless diversion, but that story of “The Parable of the Laptop” might have hidden meaning. Don’t forget to be surprised by scripture: even if you’ve read the stories before and you know every doctrine, dogma and memory verse, there might just be something new for you this time. I don’t know why Jesus told a soil story when he was sitting in a boat at Capernaum, but I’m a little bit delighted to have finally noticed that he did.

So, in this very familiar parable which Jesus does tell, more familiar here since many of you listening or reading today are farmers or neighbours of farmers, Jesus speaks about four kinds of soil. This parable is often called “The Parable of the Sower” and fair enough, but for me the point is the soil; the seed is the same and the sower is the same, it’s the soil that matters in this story. Some hear but the message is lost before they actually get it, others hear but the implications of the message don’t take hold, others still hear the message and its implications but other messages crowd out the hearing so the message is garbled or forgotten, others still hear the message and put it into practice and the Word goes forth to God’s own praise and glory. True, you probably can’t tell that story with fish, so it does seem that Jesus knew what he was doing.

True also is that if you’ve heard this story eleventy hundred times before you might tune out when it’s read. Or perhaps you like the story part in Matthew 13:1-9, but you’re not so keen on the evil one or the necessity to name the hundredfold against the thirty in Matthew 13:18-23 where Jesus shuts down all other interpretations. “I already know what’s going on here,” you say, “why do we have to read this one again?” Or “why doesn’t Jesus just let his parable stand for itself, by interpreting his own story he’s just undermining the parabolic genre entirely?” Interesting questions, so which type of soil asks these sorts of questions? Maybe there’s something new in your complaint and boredom, the sign of a movement in your faith. Maybe you are right to question Jesus and there is more than one interpretation of a parable, and maybe the soil degrades between seasons and the point of retelling the story is re-addressing the condition of your heart.

And yet, as Paul writes in Romans 8:1, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If your once prime soil is lacking nutrients, or has become poisoned by the run-off from next door, the Parable of the Soils suggests that something can be done about that.

In all of his letters Paul is writing to Christians, and the promise of this verse for the Roman churches was for those who are in Christ Jesus. I understand this phrase to refer not to those who have answered an altar call and prayed “The Sinners’ Prayer” to walk “The Romans Road of Salvation” and who have learned “The Four Spiritual Laws”, but those who have heard the message of Jesus and who responded with joy (Matthew 13:20). At some point these people took notice of who Jesus was and trusted that he was who he said he was; they lived and moved and had their being within the world in the way that Jesus did. So, yes those who are in Christ Jesus are the ones who received salvation from sin; but it wasn’t about a rigid as a rote recitation of a written prayer of invitation or the memorisation and unwavering devotion to every word of the Nicene Creed, but a joy-filled response. In the parable these joyous recipients are the ones whose soil is rocky ground; perhaps a bit more rigidity might have kept the wavering Christian on the straight path. Or maybe dedication to rigidity threw the rocks up and hardened the fertile soil into lumps of clay. Moving from soil (our heart condition) to paths (the testimony of following), the Way of Christ is shown to be a better way than the way of rigidly legalised faith, just as much as the Way of Christ is better than a way of wordly compromise and spiritual shallowness. This is what Paul is saying and this is what I am saying. (So if you don’t like what I’ve just said, take it up with Paul.)

According to Paul in Romans 8:3 only Jesus can save: the Law can point out error but it cannot do anything to save a transgressor. In response to this revelation Paul invites us to emulate Christ in our lives: ultimately true discipleship is not about being careful around sin but about being carefree around Christ. Paul says this secure in the wisdom of experience that if you live for Christ then sin becomes an unlikely experience for you. The light of the Word (Psalm 119:105) is revealed in Jesus the Word made Flesh (John 1:1) and not in rigid adherence to the syntax and grammar of the scriptural texts. The New Revised Standard Version calls such a revelation for discipleship “Life in the Spirit” in its subheading for Romans 8; we can see this is true in two ways:

1. In the spirit of the law we find the way in which the law was supposed to be read and applied.

2. Life is supposed to be framed by the presence and up-taking of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit who is counsellor, advocate, friend, and empowering one.

   Do not let your obedience of the Law get in the way of your discipleship of Jesus Christ reads Romans 8:7. If your way of following Christ by obeying the commandments and practising the rites and rituals of the faith leads you to act or think in ways that Jesus did not or would not act or think, then it is your way which is wrong, not Jesus and not his method for discipleship. And if your way is not the way of Jesus what does that say about your way? This is not condemnation from Paul or from me: Paul desires that the Romans follow Jesus, not him, and I desire the same for you. Receive this invitation to reflect upon what your Christian life looks like, and deeply ask yourself whether your Christian life looks like the life of Jesus. I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

Paul continues in Romans 8:9-10 and he reminds the Romans that no-one is bound by their narrow ideas of God but that all can be swept up by God into fellowship with Christ, by the Spirit. Those who have the Spirit belong to Christ, and because we have the Spirit we have life and not death. And if not death then not condemnation either, nor guilt, nor punishment, nor fear. We have a saviour who can deliver us from the consequences and shame of sin, not just a judge who points out our wrongdoing but is powerless to do anything more than point and frown, which is all the Law can do.

So walk with Christ in his Way; and let the one who is the Word of God, the light and lamp of God, guide your feet along the Way of God. To disciple to Christ is to choose the way God chose for him and to be fruitful and useful in that way. Provide a place for the seed to multiply, seek grace when the ground is poor, and live beside the Spirit who empowers you for service, and cossets you in love.

Amen.