Adventure in Lostness (WWHS)

This is the text of he message I brought to Kaniva Active Retired Group for their December 2022 Christmas Service (Break-up). It comes in place of the annual Blue Christmas service, since many who would have attended that evening service are now too frail to come out.

John 1:1-5, 10-14

There are some years when I want Christmas to come without the pageantry, and this year is a year like that. With two years of lockdowns and border closures behind us as we entered 2022 we had such hopes for this new year that finally we could get on with a new normal. Things would never be the same again, but in a farming community maybe the land would do what the land always does, and as long as Dan and Steven (and now Peter) kept their hands away from the invisible line at Serviceton we’d be able to get back to where we were, and maybe even some way to where we might have been. But then there was Covid-19 itself, and many of us got sick; perhaps only a week off here or there, and maybe it happened twice, but we felt crook and we stayed home and we wondered what all the fuss had been about. And there was the usual stuff of a year where some friends died and other friends moved away; but the land did what the land does and the crops and the stock grew tall. And then it rained; and it’s still raining, and even though the Wimmera River didn’t do what the Murray and the Campaspe did we still got bogged and our crops and our stock got wet. After two years of rolling bouts of home detention right now I just want to hide under my doona. Yes, my doona, even on 14^th December because it is doona weather this week.

This year Christmas Day falls on  a Sunday, so for those of us who are people of faith it is not just another day of the week or a random 25^th of the month. But with wet conditions for  harvest, and a delayed harvest, even Christmas Day is a day we might not have wanted this year. It’s a day better spent on a header than on a dining chair, a day better spent hiding under the doona than looking out the window at unfinished jobs.

Christmas Day is always a loud and bright day in Australia, and I’m sure it will be no different this year. But will we just be putting on a happy face, or will we have found joy even in this year?

In the opening verses of John’s gospel we have Christmas without the paraphernalia. There are neither magi nor shepherds; no animals, no angels, not even a baby let alone manger. There is no bright and shining star, but there is light and there is a word; a word which is a who (and not a what), a word who is glorious and alive, a word who is light who banishes the darkness. I have often wondered during Advent what a Christmas pageant would look like if we based it on John’s account rather than Matthew’s or Luke’s. It would be less boisterous without the bunch of kids dressed as a flock of lambs; rather one solitary boy dressed as everlasting light. I never got to be Joseph when I was a child, although I did play him in a monologue when I was 42. At eleven I was one of the angels, (complete with magic wand); I wonder what it would have meant to be chosen to play the real light – the light that comes into the world and shines on all mankind.

In John 1:12 we read to those who did accept him he gave the power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name. You know that the name of the Word who came as light is Jesus, whose name means “God Saves”.  The phrase in his name might means to accept Jesus for all that he is and all that he stands for: the whole being of Jesus and his story. If you acknowledge and receive Jesus, the one who exists and proclaims the salvation of God, then you will become a son or daughter of God.  Many did not accept Jesus when he came, and many since then and until today have not accepted him, either they have heard the story and rejected it, or they haven’t heard the story properly told. We read where John 1:12 specifically says to those who did accept him, because in John 1:11 we’ve just been told that many didn’t.

And that’s where we might find ourselves this Christmas because the story is unacceptable. Here’s a story about eternal light entering the world, a story about the Word of God which is God’s authority entering the world. Here’s a story about a man who embodies all of the above and his name is literally “God’s Salvation” as if the man is himself the saviour, and not just a living prophecy whose name is a message, he himself with the name is also the means of salvation.  And yet here I am, on a Wednesday in the side-room of a hospital, and here I am questioning because God did very much NOT save. If God saves then why in 2022 have some been widowed, others orphaned, others divorced, others bankrupted, others made psychotic, or quadriplegic, or simply left bedridden by a virus? Why does all of this light that the Bible speaks of just make the darkness even more obvious to those struggling with the realities of the 2020s, including “post-lockdown 2022”? When we say “God saves” we must acknowledge that others find that very hard to accept, let alone believe, especially at Christmas.

As a local pastor I heed that call to hear the hurt; as Christians at Christmas we all must. My story of salvation is not complete, I have not felt safe at times this year, and even today I am operating from my last reserves. This month I have been so busy working as a minister in December that I have not found space to be a Christian in Advent, and I am really missing Jesus. I wonder whether some farmers and shopkeepers in December might be feeling the same. So, when someone outside Christianity  tells me that God’s salvation is very hard to accept, let alone believe, I believe them, and I accept that story as accurate and true.

But John’s story is also accurate and true, and I know this because it is also my story.  That I am here this year, after fifty years of years like 2022, (and 2021, 2020, and a few nasty ones in the nineties and noughties), and still able to tell my story and connect it to John’s gospel, is all down to the fact that God does save, did save, will save, and that Jesus is the means by which that is accomplished. I am a Christian, a recipient of salvation. God saved me I did not save myself and even in my weakness and irritability this week I know that only Christ came come through for me, because he always has, because I have never been able to do so. That message was easily lost in this busy and rainy December, but I am hopeful it might be found once more. Amen.

Forever God is Faithful (Pentecost 20C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for Kaniva Church of Christ for Sunday 23rd October 2022. It was an ecumenical service of all of Kaniva’s combined churches.

Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

I wonder, do you know what your names mean? I have told some of you before that my names, Damien Paul Tann are each able to be defined as “he who brings into submission (literally “one who tames”)”, “small”, and “dweller in the (alpine) forest”. Damien Paul Tann – bossy little feral – what were my parents thinking? I ask you this question because in Ancient Near Eastern languages the names of people often carried significance. In the case of this morning’s prophet, Joel, his name means “The LORD is God”, sort of “Yahweh” and “El” put together. This is important as well as interesting because his name is also his message: only the named one of the Hebrews (the Judahites) is God, Yahweh is the only God, The LORD is God. More of that in a tick.

In Joel 2 this morning we read a passage that might be more familiar to you from the Christian Traditions, it’s the text from which Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost. As tongues of flame and tongues every language under the Jerusalem sky that morning went absolutely American in their contagion, Peter explained how God’s Spirit was being poured out upon all who needed power for life and proclamation. What was once on and in Jesus alone was now on and in and through the Church; all one of it unity, all 120 of the soon-to-be 3000 of them in ministry.

However, this morning we began reading earlier in Joel’s prophecy than Peter did when he began preaching. Beginning at Joel 2:23 we read a call to worship similar to the one we heard in Psalm 65. “Come” Joel invites his hearers, be glad and rejoice in The LORD your God. Why? Well because God has sent us two kinds of rain in season, rain for vindication and rain for the bumper crop. Our spiritual and physical (economic) needs are provided for by our bounteous LORD, this is why we should exult. This also is why we should worship only The LORD; the Baalim have done nothing for you; you should have nothing to do with them, their cults, nor the horses they rode in on.  Where The LORD has provided The LORD is worshipped.

And it gets better than that, because not only has God provided, and provided widely (across all of our needs), and provided abundantly (deeply and fully), but God’s promise of restoration is also seen in the bestowal of glory upon even the most humble. Everyone gets blessed, in every area of his or her life, full and over the brim. There’s your prosperity gospel, not that if you personally tithe 15% God will give you personally a Mercedes Benz, but that God in sheer generosity and abundance will bless every person amongst the people of the promise just because it was God who made the promise, whether the people have earned it (or deserve to forego it) or not. And, according to Joel (and Peter) this promise is accomplished with signs pointing to God, and wonders alongside these generous gifts upon those whom God loves. Foremost amongst those signs, gifts and wonders is the sign, gift and wonder of salvation, salvation in all of its forms.

Okay, so what does that mean, “salvation in all its forms”. In Joel 2:25 we read God’s promise to repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten. Joel was speaking in a time of devastation, and Joel 1 is all about a locus plague that has wiped out all the farmers. I realise that none of you have any experience of seeing farmers wiped out (ha-ha) but try if you can, to imagine what the overnight loss of your whole crop and flock to natural disaster would feel like. Joel does not say that God sent the locusts and God does not say that God sent the locusts, what we know from a face-reading of the Bible is that the locusts came. Locusts come, that’s what locusts do. No, what Joel writes that God says is that you farmers will not be left impoverished in any way because of the locusts; God will restore your crops, and your wealth, and your food, and your hope. Yes you will have salvation, you are “saved”, but you will also be salved and soothed, and your losses will be restored from God’s bounteous plenty. That’s what God does say, in Joel 2:26-27. You will even get your hope back, and your reputation, and by this you will know for certain that God is with you, is for you, is amongst you in your midst, and is The LORD Godself alone in majesty and worthy of praise.

Praise is due to the One who answers prayer. So we are told in Psalm 65:1-2: not that we needed telling, I hope. Having just heard the story of the Judahites, and perhaps reflecting upon what God has done for you, do you have to be told to worship God? Doesn’t thankfulness for all that The LORD has done for you just bubble up from you naturally? Well let’s ask, Selah; pause and consider and say the last line again; what has The LORD done for you anyway? Has The LORD done anything for you just because it was you? Yes we have all been saved by his blood shed on the cross, and we shall all be raised to new life with Christ at the End of Days; indeed we have each been saved and we all have salvation. But what else is there that The LORD has done for you? Where and for what can you praise God in the areas of restoration and recovery, soothing and settling? I’m going to give you  moment to ponder and hold that as we move on.

Sometimes I wonder whether we are so thankful for the cross (as we should be) that we overlook all the other saving and giving and loving that The LORD has done. We should not overlook or minimise the bounty of God; God is worthy of so much praise and for so many reasons, far more than 10,000.

In our six assorted verses from 2 Timothy 4 we read from Paul himself how proclamation of the gospel, as wonderous as the gospel is, is tiresome and difficult. Here, then, is salvation for the apostle; not just that he has inherited a crown of righteousness because of his trust in Christ alone to save him from sin, but that when all around him were not around him at all still The Lord stood by me and gave me strength. Not just strength to conquer death and sin through the blood of the lamb, but strength to outlast loneliness and imprisonment and road-weariness through God’s comfort. These are miracles, events of God’s intervention which we cannot fully understand or predict. As with Peter, as with the Judahites on the days of Joel, so here with Paul and also true of us God supplies and supports those committed to the work of God with gifts and signs and wonders and salvation.

Come back to that thought you were holding, where we each have salvation, but there is more that The LORD has done for us. Can you think of when God gave you energy, times of refreshing, times of equipping and resourcing, even just times of intimacy and affection? Where and for what can you praise God in the areas of restoration and soothing in these latter days? Go back to Joel 2:28ff, which is actually Joel 3:1 in the Hebrew text (and if you have a Catholic or Orthodox Bible too) where Joel writes of what God promised in the latter days. “And then..” (or “afterward…” is how this paragraph (chapter) begins in Joel’s hand) “it shall happen that…” God pours out the Spirit on absolutely everyone. This is active language, God is doing the pouring out Godself, no passive tense “God’s Spirit shall be poured out” but “God shall pour out the Spirit”. And it’s on everyone, even slaves, even teenage girls, even teenage girls who are slaves. Even Galilean fishermen, even Scythian tourists, even Roman soldiers, even Pharisees going door to door with handcuffs and a flaming torch, even me. And possibly you. Then everyone who calls on the name of The LORD shall be saved we read in Joel 2:32. And when will they call on the name of The LORD? When? After the Spirit has been uniquely poured upon them, individually, by The LORD Godself, the one who saves, and supplies, and equips, and restores, with signs and gifts and wonders.

In this place, Kaniva Shared Ministry, we do not believe that you need to speak in tongues to be saved; neither are speaking in tongues a prerequisite for salvation nor is speaking in tongues the only and compulsory sign of salvation. But there should be some fruit, some gift with its associate ministry in every believer’s witness; Pentecost Sunday and two thousand years of witness and mission are evidence of that. So in reference to Joel and Peter (and Paul) it does not concern me at all that not everyone in this room this morning, in this gathering of various congregations of our town, that not all of you speak or pray or prophecy in tongues. It would bother me if none of you did, (not one?), but I’m happy to look for other evidence. Similar to Paul I’d rather you spoke with love in the language of your neighbours than that you clang around in elitist glossolalia. If you can pray in tongues I want to know first whether you can be kind in English: to be honest if you can be kind in English then Heavenly Tongues are secondary, even if they are present.

So if you have been saved, and you have, for what have you been saved? No, not Heaven and Eternity, but for what ministry? To whom are you a sign and a wonder, for whom are you God’s provision of calm and grace, and love, and money, and food, and whatever else your neighbour needs? Joel tells us that God tells us that much of what we have we have simply because God is generous and loves to give, but you who have benefitted from the generosity and the super-abundance of God’s provision, to whom can you be generous?

Kaniva needs to see God in action if they are to believe God in truth. Show them, because the bossy little feral is on your case, but he’s also on your team. Amen.

Justice is Important (Pentecost 14C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for proclamation on Sunday 11th September 2022, the fourteenth Sunday in Pentecost.

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14

This is a bit of a departure for me this morning, and in case you were wondering it is a brand-new sermon which I wrote on Monday. There’s a lot of ecology going on in today’s readings from the Jewish Traditions, and as someone who is not a farmer in a room full of people who either are farmers or whom have had farming neighbours for decades that’s a place for me to stay in my lane. Fortunately, my lane is preaching the Kingdom, and there’s scope for me there too. Nonetheless this is a new passage for me, I’ve never preached from these chapters before, so let’s see how I go.

Today we have been directed to look at the words of Jeremiah the prophet, and it seems at first reading from Jeremiah 4:11-12 that God, with insatiable wrath, is tracking to send a hot and strong wind to blow judgement upon Jerusalem. Actually that is not true because if we look back a few verses we find that God is not sending destruction, rather God is observing destruction. From Jeremiah 4:23 onward we read that God looked and found only desolation, nothing was growing, no one was there, everything was a wasteland. God has not caused this; human negligence and poor leadership has caused this, but God is naming this and telling the truth where the king and the court have been telling lies. “You are in a mess,” is the Word of The LORD in Jeremiah 4:22, “war is coming and you have been too stupid to see it or plan for it, too busy doing stupid things to prepare yourself for the consequences of your stupidity”.

This seems like a great passage to back up a strong sermon on climate change; I am sure that that has occurred to many preachers this week, regardless of how rural their congregations might be. Because of their blindness and arrogance, because of the evil and the corruption of government and business leaders in the Global West and North, the beauty of Creation is returning to a wasteland. Eden is reverting to the chaos of Genesis 1:2. Ecological disaster is at hand, the void is unavoidable, all life will end and there is nothing Humankind can do about it and there is nothing God will do about it. Where once the Spirit brooded over the expanse of water now The LORD seethes over boundless planes of destruction, with nothing left to share.

Is that it then? Are we doomed? Well, clearly we are not, but that is not clear yet. Two points at this point, two lights of hope:

1. It reads in Jeremiah 4:27, For thus says The LORD, the whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. An end, but not “The End”.

2. It’s Sunday 11^th September 2022 today in the Wimmera, which is 15th Elul 5782 according to the Jewish calendar. The world was not destroyed in the days of Jeremiah. This prophecy, like every prophecy in scripture, was first for the people who heard it from the prophet’s mouth: Judah would (and did) go into exile, Jerusalem would be (and was) returned to rubble, and there would be (and was) devastation and desolation and destruction, and the land would be (and was) empty of life following the defeat and exile of the Judahites. The prophecy of Jeremiah did eventuate; but this is not a prophecy of the “end of the world”. It is not a prophecy “for now and not then” when a Jewish man living in Jerusalem five hundred and ninety years before the birth of Jesus accurately described the events of life in Australia two thousand and one years after the death of Jesus. Prophets always spoke to their day, just as preachers always speak to theirs. However a preacher quoting a prophet can cite patterns and point to the wisdom of God the Eternal Word, and we must hear from scripture what God is saying to the Church.

Twenty-five centuries ago the People of God were selfish and stupid and they all lost their livelihoods. Many lost their lives, and the land which had been promised to them through Abraham, Moses, and David was left for dead. Are we willing to allow such a thing to happen again, or will we heed the warning? Will we read the case study; will we learn the lessons of history? Jeremiah did not even think about fossil fuels and over-fishing; but stupid is as stupid does, and stupid is stupiding and corrupting all over the planet right now, in many places and ways, none of them pleasing to God. Corrupt and arrogant leaders are not a new thing, even if CO₂ emissions are.

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God”. They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good says David in Psalm 14:1, and he would know. The LORD looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. Psalm 14:2 echoes a lot of what Jeremiah has just told us about God’s activity, even if this psalm was probably written first. People are stupid, but God is hopeful; surely not everyone is an idiot. Yeah, nah, they have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no not one reads Psalm 14:3. This really is a sermon for the optimists this morning, isn’t it? Even God appears to be losing hope; I mean, what is occurring, what is actually going on here? The later verses of Psalm 14 tell us more.

What these later verses tell us is that God is not actually in a complete huff, but that there is a specific group of people and a specific set of acts that God is currently finding displeasing. In Psalm 14:4 the stupid crew is labelled as the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread. Such people have no knowledge, and they do not call upon the LORD. Ignorant and oblivious, just like the later Judahites they are stumbling into destruction, and in the psalm we are given a further insight into their mistakes; these people are maliciously unjust. So look at Psalm 14:5b where God is with the company of the righteous. All is not lost and it is not the entire planet which has failed so specifically and so spectacularly; there is a crew that God has found to side with, there is a company which is made up of the righteous.

In previous sermons and devotional talks and essays for you I have defined “righteousness” as “being in right relationship”. I think the same is true here: where all are sinners against God (the story of life in a fallen world) some are sinners against their fellow humans. Inter-personal relationships have been broken where some people have been abusive or violent or cheating or corrupt or greedy or…you get the picture.  In both of our readings today God has shown particular displeasure toward people who are senseless when it comes to other people, and God has desired to show favour for people who are sensitive to the needs of others and/or who have been trespassed against. Stepping aside for a moment from where all have fallen short of God in our relationship with God, God has focussed the attention of the prophet and the king (and perhaps more pointedly the preacher and the leader of worship) on the horizontal relationships between people, the sisters and brothers we heard about last week on Father’s Day. You would confound the plans of the poor, accuses David in Psalm 14:6, but The LORD is their refuge.

So what does this mean for us: I’m confused Damien, so am I meant to buy a Tesla? Well, whether you opt to buy a fleet of electric vehicles and charge them from newly installed rooftop solar panels, or not, opt to live in harmony with each and all of your neighbours, be he or she animal, vegetable, or mineral. That much is clear.

What else does it mean for us? Well, live as if your whole life is accountable to God. Where we read in Psalm 14:1 about what fools say in their heart we are hearing about the muddle-headedness of people who ignore the consequences of their actions. To say there is no God is not about atheism as much as it is about not believing yourself to be accountable to anyone. It’s not a religious question, it’s a moral one. “You’re not the boss of me, no-one is the boss of me!” Yes, thank you for that piece of advice, you toddler, but The LORD begs to differ. If you aren’t willing to hear words of accountability then you probably aren’t willing to hear words of advice either: if you don’t seek wisdom, have they no knowledge all the evildoers, then you will make a mess of things. In David’s mind you’re messing up the neighbourliness of your suburb, in Jeremiah’s mind you’re tracking towards ecological catastrophe on a global scale. In both cases the wise will listen for God’s word, act with kindness and consideration, and seek to be answerable to the wise ones that you know. (And if you don’t know any wise ones, go and find some.)

Everyone falls away at some point. If you aren’t falling away now, genuinely and because you are living daily wit the wisdom of God, you likely used to fall away before you listened for God. Paul describes that situation of himself in 1 Timothy 1:12-14, which is our epistle set for today. No-one is perfect, but all are saved by the free gift of grace; and the righteous live by faith, which is to say trust and dependence upon the one you seek and to whom you listen. Whether you need to be “more of an environmentalist Greenie” because you are “a Christian” is debatable; but you probably shouldn’t be less of a responsible inhabitant, especially if you are “a Creationist”. What you should be more of, with God’s help, is honourable and considerate and humble and trustworthy. You should be righteous, living in right relationship with God, humanity and planet: this is the evidence of your hope in God that you are an example of stewardship in neighbourliness.

To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:17).

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

By Faith, go

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 21st August 2022, the eleventh Sunday in Pentecost.

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Luke 13:10-17

Do you remember when you were called by God? What is the story of your call and, if you can think, to which Bible story do you find similarity? This is sort of the question I was asked when I began undertaking Professional Supervision as a new pastor in early 2019. I wonder if you can answer that question, I wonder if that question seems strange to you. Do you remember when you were called by God?

I think if Jeremiah had been asked that question he might have drawn parallels to Samuel, who was called when he was a small child. Jeremiah might also have remembered that David was quite young when he was called, maybe sixteen. Jeremiah might have heard that Isaiah resisted the presence of God when God invited him into the ministries of prophet, claiming his heritage (people) and his own self (his lips) disqualified him from even being in the same room as The LORD, the Holy One. Despite this the unclean man was declared clean and was there when The Lord of Sea and Sky asked, “whom shall I send”. A little kid, a teenager, and an adult with a good excuse are Jeremiah’s predecessors in a fruity call-story. What’s your call story?

Jeremiah’s call story is an interesting one to me because in his own mind Jeremiah was not old enough. “I am only a boy” is what he says in Jeremiah 1:6, despite the histories of Samuel and David. God wasn’t having any of it from Jeremiah, and God appointed Jeremiah anyway with a touch (Jeremiah 1:9) and a commission (Jeremiah 1:10), just as Isaiah had been. I wonder what we have withdrawn from because of who we think we are.

A few weeks ago in one of my weekly whole-church text messages I mentioned that there is a need for volunteers to lead chapel at the Aged Care Day Centre. Thanks to those of you who have agreed to do a one off or a few Tuesday sessions, I appreciated those replies and that offer of assistance. I also appreciated (because you actually bothered to text back), those who wrote “sorry, but I can’t do Tuesdays because…” Because work mostly; but some of you declined the invitation because you don’t feel capable of that sort of thing. Fair enough, we aren’t all retired schoolteachers here, and I am the only still-active accredited lay preacher. Hear me, I do not see your unwillingness to engage in this ministry as a failing on your part, neither am I disappointed in you; however I see similarity between what some of you said and what Jeremiah said. “I can’t do that LORD because I do not have experience or training.”

Jeremiah approved of the call of God, he saw value in the ministry being offered, but he wanted God to go and find a grown-up for that big job, not an apprentice like Jeremiah. God’s response was to touch Jeremiah’s mouth (since he was to be a prophet, and prophecy is actually about talking) and to give him a mission – with this blessed mouth here’s the names of those to whom you must speak in my Name. Where Jeremiah did not go to Bible College, or engage in work experience, God directly blessed him with all that he would need: Jeremiah might still have been a boy, but he was now a boy with the words of God on his lips and the authority of God on his shoulders to speak God’s words to men. That’s some boy!

One of the witty comments around appointment to ministry is that you know the one whom God has truly called when he or she replies, “here am I LORD, send someone else!” No-one goes into God’s work with an ego, or if they do they don’t last long. Jeremiah didn’t want to be called, and you will remember that Moses didn’t want to be called either. “Great talking to you LORD,” said Moses, “I’ll let Aaron know you rang, he’s the big brother with the posh vowels and no stutter…” There are some who will run ahead of God’s call, they want to be a missionary because they like the idea of being the special Australian in a stone-age village, but I’m not sure that that’s a calling from God. I think God can use such people, but I’m more convinced by the testimonies of people like Jonah, people who understand the majesty of God and what the Kingdom’s mission looks like, and who baulked at the invitation. “Yes LORD, you do that thing, Father God, bring it on Hallelujah! Who LORD? Me? Nah, I can’t do that! Why don’t you send Damien, he keeps telling us how awesome he is with his four university degrees. Or at least send one of the Nuffield Scholars.”

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you says the LORD, in Jeremiah 1:8. In you O LORD I take refuge; says the faithful one in Psalm 71:1, let me never be put to shame. Ask and you shall receive: God’s promise is for protection of all whom God loves, from womb to tomb and into Eternity. God called Jeremiah before Jeremiah was even born (Jeremiah 1:5), and in Psalm 71:6 we see the same image of pre-natal worship. I have been a portent to many, says the faithful one in Psalm 71:7-8, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise and your glory all day long. In words couched in hindsight, “it doesn’t matter to what The LORD has called me, says the faithful one; it works out for good and The LORD has care of me even when God’s words to others through me are challenging to them. All praise to you, Father, that they have never shot the messenger”. Here is confidence. Here also is a missionary not yet finished his journey because I’d suggest “…have not yet shot the messenger…” is a better poem. Jeremiah ended up in the bottom of a cistern, Jesus nearly got himself stoned by the Galileans and ended up on a Roman cross, many Christians from Stephen to now have been killed or banished or tortured or all three for the gospel, and yet God in Christ has been our strong refuge and the one to whom our mouths are filled with…praise and…glory all day long.

Do you remember when you were called by God?

When God calls us individually it is a scary thing. Maybe Samuel and David were so quick to agree because they were too young to know any better. Just like a child happy to leap off the sofa because daddy will catch them and will not drop them, children are trusting. As an adult man I no longer leap off sofas because I know my dad cannot catch me, try as he might, and try I am sure he would. The fear in heeding God’s call, in surrendering control and direction to God, is quite simple; if God is the boss of me then I am no longer in charge and I have no say over what happens. So, what happens if what happens is embarrassing? What happens if what happens sees me fall on my face, in the mud? What happens if what happens means I fall short, and plunge to my death, or at least put a tooth through my lip as I smack my mouth on the corner of the sofa? Little kids jump with trust, responsible adults weigh up the risks and make a sensible path, so what happens when God asks a man to take a run-up and leap into the impossible? O LORD prays the psalmist (who is possibly David in this case), never let me be put to shame.

If God called you out, and you knew it was God and not your mum’s ambition for you, or ha-satan trying to lead you astray, and you were confident that God would not only preserve your life but also your reputation, then what? What could you do in God’s strength, with God’s direction, and without fear of embarrassment? Pretty much anything?

Do you remember when you were called by God? Do you remember what you said? If you said, “I’m too young” or “I’m too old” or “I’m too…whatever it was” and you didn’t walk through that door, how would you answer now?

I want to say that I don’t think God is going to call any of you to the difficult thing. Yes the call of God is always to do the impossible, or rather to do the “only-with-God-possible”, but I don’t think your Father is going to ask any of you to become international missionaries in a field hospital in Damascus. But I wonder if God is still calling you, (okay, you and I, but my call is pretty clear right now), still calling you to do something that you might not win at, and that you might be shamed by.

In today’s gospel reading we find Jesus performing the work of The Father, and of one religious leader’s response to that. The lead worshipper tell Jesus that he should be ashamed of himself, but look at what Luke 13:16 says that Jesus said, ought not this woman, a daughter f Abraham whom satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage? I am not ashamed, because I am acting more in the character of God than you, because I am bringing freedom. That’s what Jesus says. And in Luke 13:15 where we get the grammatical change between what Jesus replies to what the synagogue leader says we get this lovely little intro But the Lord answered him… The leader was indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath…but the Lord answered him. There’s no shame on Jesus in this story, it is clear whom Luke favours.

God does not promise us indemnity from a red face at times, or a queasy tummy, or that we be met and sent away with a mocking laugh. What we are assured of is that we will never be put to shame by God, and that our work will always be fruitful if it is done in accordance with divine instruction and prophetic inspiration. Obey the LORD and the work will be done, go your own way and you will go your way on your own. As Jonah discovered, if God wants you in such a place there is no point trying to be in another place, that place is out of place and there is nothing for you there. Let us therefore enter the field, there is work to be done and it is the Lord of Hosts, the lord of the harvest who has invited us.

Amen.

The Dad Prayer

This is the text of the message I prepared for The Serviceton Church for proclamation on Sunday 24th July 2022.

Luke 11:1-13

In our reading from the Jesus traditions today we hear Jesus speaking not only about prayer but about the right relationships we have with God as Father. The prayer Jesus taught his disciples begins with this word “Father”, it could have begun with LORD Almighty, or Sovereign King, or Master of The Universe, or any of those other words and phrases from Jewish traditions that fit with God The First Person; yet Jesus goes with the one with the family inheritance. And yes Jesus does teach the disciples how to pray, the specific act of praying as a conversation with God where the human does some talking, and maybe God talks back, (are we listening?). However, by beginning with “Father” he sets that conversation and the worship and petitions within it within the framework of a Father hearing words of love from his responsible child.

Further on, in the teaching part from Luke 11:11-13, we get more about this fatherhood of God. God is not only a father but The Father is a good father, even more good than the men who are listening to Jesus at the time. “Some of you are dads,” says Jesus, “and you men know how to do good and bring good to your kids. How much more so then will this capital-F Father”, asks Jesus. The Father is all of those things Jesus didn’t list before, but we know God The Father to be LORD, Creator, Master, Defender, Sovereign. “That’s a dad you want to have,” says Jesus, “and that’s the dad whom you do have, the dad who is God and to whom you might pray with this relationship foremost in your mind.”

So, getting back to his prayer, for what is it that Jesus would have us ask the dad above all dads? Dot points here:

1. That his name be hallowed; (what does that mean?)
2. That his kingdom come; (and what does that mean?)
3. That he gives us each days bread on the day; (okay, that’s a bit clearer)
4. That he forgives us and assists us in forgiving each other; (tricky but useful)
5. That he steers us away from trouble; (yes, could have a bit more of that, ta)

In Matthew’s telling of the same story we get a few more lines of prayer, and in Protestant traditions of prayer we get a few more lines after that which seem to have been added by the Early Church as the gospels were being written down and circulated. But let’s look at this prayer again, through the lens of it being not “The Lord’s Prayer”, the prayer of our Lord and Saviour Jesus, or even “The LORD’s Prayer”, the prayer addressed to Adonai of the Israelites and now the Galileans, but the prayer of a responsible child (adult child?) speaking within the loving friendship with a dad who is still dad.

I am blessed to still have my dad in my life, The Reverend Robert J. Tann. I also have Judith, my mum, but it’s dads I’m looking at today. I grew up with my two grandfathers alive and living not far from my home in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. They both passed away when I was in my thirties and living in England. My brother is a dad, my sister is a mum and is married to a dad, and I am an uncle. My nephew and niece in Tasmania have another set of grandparents, their mum’s parents; my South Australian nephews don’t have another Grandpa or Grammy as my brother-in-law was orphaned at a very small age and he grew up in foster care. Family is very important to my family, and my parents are still parents for my siblings and me at times, even as I am now 50 years old. Much of the time when we get together we are very good friends who happen to be related by birth; other times even though I am not a child I am their child and I still love to love my parents as mum and dad. I know some of you have family like that. I know that some of you didn’t, or did once but don’t now, but you have seen a family or families like that. Some of you are nephews, nieces, and cousins attached to someone else’s parents. Some of you no longer have your parents, but you had them for a time and you remember them with joy. Okay so that was a long paragraph about families but I do want us to think about this prayer in this context. Let’s today think about The Lord’s Prayer as A Son’s Prayer and A Daughter’s Prayer, as appropriate to your situation.  Let’s go back to those dot points.

Jesus opens his model of praying to the Father asking that the Name of the father be hallowed. “May your reputation bring you joy, dad, and let me just begin by saying how awesome you are. I love you dad, I really love you, I don’t care who knows that I love my dad, in fact I want everyone to know that I love you and I want everyone else to love you too.” I don’t think this insight removes any glory from God The LORD, worthy of honour, that we speak of The Father like the world’s best dad. I have said before, in his hearing and not, that I have found my Christian life easier as a son of God because I am a son of Rob. My dad introduced me to Jesus when I was very small, I was raised in a Christian home even before my dad was ordained (I was 17 then). My dad also showed me love and affection; we still hug and say, “I love you”, and he taught me to be a good man through his lived example and direct instruction. That God is like my dad, but awesomer, should be taken as a compliment by God. The Father, (God, not Rob), is wonderful and amazing and worthy of all of the adjectives and affection. Hallowed be The Father.

That the Kingdom of The Father should come. I speak a lot about the Kingdom of God in my sermons and my written newsletters and stuff, so I won’t unpack it all now. But in the context of it being “The Father’s Kingdom” there’s two quick things to say. First is that the coming, or perhaps the rolling forth of the Kingdom is what the Father wants, so because I love The Father and want what he wants, then bring it on, roll it out dad, and be happy. Let what The Father wants be what happens, so that The Father is blessed. The second thing is that what The Father wants, the coming of the Kingdom, is literally the expansion of God’s reign, the widening of the Father’s family. We want the Kingdom to come a) because it’s what dad wants and we want to see dad chuffed, and b) because what dad actually wants is to have a bigger family, so there’s more awesomeness in the world and more sisters and brothers to share it with. Father, your Kingdom come.

That each day we receive from The Father the bread for that day. “Give us what we need LORD, not too much but also not too little. Oh God, be the dad who gives bread to us, and eggs and fish, and not stones or snakes or scorpions.” Getting back to my Rob, and I am sure this is true of Graham and Trav and Paul and Thomas and Garry too with your kids, my dad loves to make me happy, and he gives me good stuff. When I go “home” there’s a freshly made bed, with a towel on the end, and a little soap, and a block of Milky Bar, and usually some freshly washed undies and an ironed shirt from the last time I was home. (Okay, that’s actually mum.) And there’s meals while I’m there, mostly in front of the TV on our laps, but we often go out to McCracken on my last night. And of course there’s a Mum and Damie coffee date each time, and a Dad and Damo beer at the pub. Maybe you think beer is in the scorpion category, but the fellowship and the 1:1 time with my favourite bloke is precious. I need it, and my dad provides. Father, our daily needs.

Jesus asks for us and teaches us to ask that The Father forgives us and assists us in forgiving each other. Obviously, this is massive in itself, the forgiveness of God and the grace to forgive others is not something to be shoved into a paragraph; so again let me focus on this one point, this is something you are asking your dad for. Not denying at all that this is God the…well God!!…but in the sense defined today by Jesus that you are addressing “my Father”, imagine this as literally asking your dad for help. “Dad I’m sorry. Dad help me to do better. Dad my brother, sister, friend has really hurt me and I don’t know how to repair our broken relationship. Dad, daddy, help.” Father, forgive.

In Luke’s prayer Jesus ends with the petition that The Father steer us away from trouble. Matthew and the NRSV footnotes add something around rescue from the evil one, it doesn’t matter here. I mean, it matters, but we don’t lose anything today by not going that far down. “Father, dad, help me to make better choices. Don’t just rescue me from sin and be ready to pull me out of darkness but steer me away from even going there. Be the wall at the top and not the Ambulance at the bottom of the drop, dad. (And if I do stuff it up, well please let me jump back a paragraph, dad, to where we did the whole “forgive me” part.)” Father, lead me.

Undoubtedly this model of prayer is a useful model of prayer. As Protestant Christians we often recite it in church; and Roman Catholics and the national flavours of Eastern Orthodoxy do too. But today hear the invitation from Jesus to receive The Father’s welcome to pray as a son or daughter; enter into a deeper and more nurturing relationship with God, allow yourself to be formed into God’s likeness, and a more attentive and more passionate disciple of the God who loves you even more than you love your kids, and in that same way of looking upon the darling you made. Pray in a way that you bless God because you love God, that you want for God what God wants for Godself, that you want from God what God wants for you, that your relationship with God be unencumbered by tension, and that you are in a place to heed God’s advice and (if necessary) reach for God’s hand like a toddler face-down in a puddle.

And, having learned that, and adopted that as your faith, ask, seek, and knock. That door is your door, and your dad is waiting on the other side for you to come in full of expectation and empty if fear.

Amen.

Pentecost 4C

This is the text of the message I prepared for Kaniva Shared Ministry for Sunday 3rd July 2022.

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.

I wonder, has God ever asked you to do something stupid? Maybe not, or maybe yes and you didn’t recognise that it was God because what you were asked to do seemed pointless or tokenistic or random for the sake of random. One of those situations where your prayer might be “okay LORD, I know you and I know you are sovereign, but couldn’t we just do this the obvious way instead? Do we really need to be so radical and extravagant just to prove that it’s by your Spirit and not by my might?” It can be a difficult situation when you know that it really is God speaking to you, and not a trick of your imagination, but it just seems so extra when it could have been so simple.

This is kind of where Naaman was when Elisha sent him to bathe in the Jordan. If baths had worked then he wouldn’t have come all the way from Damascus, he would already be clean. Naaman was looking for something more in his miracle, but also something less. Okay so wash your skin condition in holy water, which sounds miracle-inducing, but why a river of all places when there are rivers enough back home. With all the effort I have made to get here, where is my prophetic anointing with oil, where is my hocus pocus (hoc est corpus meum)? Sometimes God can be confusingly redundant.

When I look back through the story of Naaman, a story I know I heard first at Sunday school over forty years ago, including colouring in the picture of his scabby arms, there are a few things that I see as stupid and random; but the activities of God and of Elisha are not amongst them. There’s a whole bunch of attitudes here, and what I see is God working as much on men’s hearts as God is on one man’s eczema. Ah, the benefits of hindsight and a Christian upbringing.

The first unexpected outcome in this story is that young Israelite woman shows compassion on Naaman. I say “woman” and no age for her is given in the Bible, but “girl” is probably closer to the point. This young woman (girl) is a captive, probably taken as booty in a battle between the Arameans and the Israelites, and she is a domestic servant. Even so, as a slave and a war-prize she shows love to this man who took her from her family and her people, and now owns her as if she were a domestic appliance; and tells her mistress to tell the master about the man of God in Samaria. Samaria where she is from and where the kings of Israel now rule. Slaves aren’t generally thought to have compassion for their conquerors, but here she is showing kindness. Good for her.

Then we have the King of Israel to whom the King of Aram sent a letter. The Israelite girl had spoken of a prophet, and not a king in Samaria, nonetheless the correspondence goes to the palace. Is there an attitude there I wonder; are the Arameans too important, or is Naaman as a king’s general too important for anything less than top-level diplomatic letter-writing? Let peasants go to General Practitioners and prophets, generals go only to Specialist Surgeons and kings. Clearly the King of Israel has no idea what is going on, and he takes the letter as a threat. Well it is a threat, he’s being asked to do something that he is powerless to do, but then the plea wasn’t supposed to go to him anyway. Regardless of social status you cannot ask a king to do what only a prophet can do: fortunately for all concerned the appeal to help makes its way to Elisha and all works out.  Too much arrogance and status there, Big Male Energy.

Then Naaman hears the invitation from Elisha and he and his retinue continue on from the palace and arrive at the home of the prophet; at which point the general is sent on his way with a simple instruction for his healing (take a bath), but without a proper greeting. Again there is humility and simplicity from the LORD’s agent, and Big Male Energy from the helmet on the horse.

The story we can pull from this Hebrew Tradition is that The LORD stands ready to help, especially when the helpless one does not insist on holding human-ascribed dignity before The LORD. As willing as God is to heal, no one deserves anything from God and no one can command it, not even the general of a conquering army whose victories were won in the strength of The LORD, attested by scripture. Grace is always free and underserved, as soon as you insist upon how deserving you are you actually miss the point, and you begin view God as a tool or even as a slave to you. Naaman is cured because his maidservant was kind and his manservants are open-minded to the possibilities of God’s working, as much as by the power of The LORD spoken through the prophet. Naaman went home healed of his scabies and eczema, but he also returned to Damascus and his place of high honour with a heart softened and made humble toward God, the only LORD.

When we turn to Psalm 30 and the reading which the Lectionary specifically connects with the Hebrew story we find a better attitude toward seeking God and receiving healing than that showed by Naaman. O LORD you bought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from those gone down to the Pit is what we read in Psalm 30:3. This is a man (probably) who understands that God did a miracle, something that the man himself and all of his doctors and advice-givers could not do for him in his serious illness. But have a look further along where at Psalm 30:6 he speaks of a previously held attitude, held in his prosperity where he declared at the time I shall never be moved; by your favour O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain. Well that doesn’t sound so bad, we might think, after all it is The LORD who has built him up in my prosperity as the man acknowledges of himself. When we read along a bit we get the sad story of God that you hid your face; I was dismayed. But straight away to you, O LORD, I cried, and to The LORD I made supplication; there is no sense that the man was ever arrogant, he attributes his prosperity to God, yet he still felt estranged from God. Immediately he prays for a hearing and for mercy, and his next words are you have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. Prosperous because of The LORD and yet humble, his suffering seems undeserved and one of those things that happens in a fallen world, yet he calls out to the God who had blessed him with wealth and he gets his health restored straight away. And then he gets his worship on. Maybe this is a song of Naaman in hindsight. It isn’t actually so, the psalm was (apparently) written by David and so is a lot earlier than Naaman’s century; however the Hebrew subheading suggests that it was later used at Hanukkah, so this song stayed in use and Naaman could well have learned it and used it in personal worship. I think of him praying that “everything I thought I had earned in my own Big Man Energy I now know came from The LORD. Now, and for the rest of my life I will give right praise to God, and I will proclaim the goodness and favour of Israel’s God, even in Aram, (except when the King is looking)” That’s the spirit of 2 Kings 5:15b, 18.

When we turn to the Jesus story today and our two readings from Luke 10 we find a similar-yet-different response to Naaman’s original attitude and an insight into Elisha. How do we best serve God when we are the ones God choses to bring healing? Firstly, your job is to be humble, just as the one seeking God in you comes in humility, because the miracle you provide is not given in your own strength. Go out as ambassadors of grace, with the fullness of God in your hearts, minds, feet and fingertips, but go with simplicity (Luke 10:4), a sense of gratitude (Luke 10:5-8), and servant-heartedness (Luke 10:9-10). Even when you are rejected know that it is God who is being rejected, and simply leave that place (Luke 10:11) and take your blessing with you (Luke 10:6, 11). Leave nothing behind but deliberately and resolutely move on to the next place. And no, James and John, you don’t need to call down fire from Heaven (Luke 9:54-55); were you not listening last week? Just walk on. And when God does act through your feet and fingertips, and when God does act for you through the hospitality and provision of the communities to which you were sent, return praise to God who rules all things and give worship to the one who has called you to salvation (Luke 10:19-20). By all means get busy with The LORD’s work; but remember The LORD and don’t get ahead of yourself as a self-appointed hero of the faith.

There is a lot more that could be said about this Luke 10 reading, but you’ll probably hear that in 2025 when the lectionary rolls this way again. In the meantime live a life of confident humility before God, know that you are precious to the Father and that you do have a place in the affection of Heaven and the mission of the Kingdom, but also know that all of that is by grace through faith and that you can only receive it, you cannot grab at it or snatch it as a deserved prize or wage. Naaman received his healing when he was prepared to do the thing that gave most glory to God, even when in the short term it made him look like a fool. The Psalmist received his healing when he immediately went to God, even with his prosperity in every other area, and cried out for mercy in the place of his relationship. And the apostles who went to all nations of the earth returned rejoicing at what The LORD in God’s glory accomplished through their willingness and simplicity. 

Let us be the same, and do the same, for the sake of the one we adore and cherish: Jesus.

Amen.

Stay The Cause (Pentecost 3C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for Kaniva Shared Ministry and The Serviceton Church for Sunday 26th June 2022.

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

Last week I didn’t quite share some bad news with you. I told you that I had received an unwelcome story in the mail, and that it had upset my apple cart a bit. This week in our reading from the gospel we get a lesson for such a time as that: maintain your focus no matter what the cost. In Luke 9 we read how Jesus was denied entry and accommodation to a Samaritan town because he was going to Jerusalem. In the next paragraph Jesus warned those who would follow him to Jerusalem that they too would face sleeping on the road. Then he invites a potential follower but that man was too busy trying to get his inheritance. Similarly a man who wants to join the progression on his own terms is told to not wait but follow immediately.

This is not just another a travel journey, it’s a major shift in focus for Jesus and for world history. Unlike John where Jesus is in and out of Jerusalem quite a few times in his three and a half years of active ministry, in Luke (as in Mark and Matthew) Jesus is only on the road for a year, and he only goes to Jerusalem once. He begins in ministry in Galilee, and then (at Luke 9:51) he turns toward Jerusalem and spends the next ten chapters walking toward his death and his glory. So that’s what’s going on here, Jesus has just turned his face and begun the big walk South; he’s a man on a mission and he’s spruiking that mission to the people around him.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, writes Paul to the Church in Galatia, because those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Galatians 5:1, 24-25). There are many sermons that can be preached on these verses, and it wasn’t so long ago that I spoke to Kaniva’s combined churches about the fruit of the Spirit. I hope you remember that an orange that is sour is a bad orange, it cannot self-identify as a grapefruit; and that a Christian who is loving and kind but not self-controlled similarly cannot say “well I’m a 7/9 in the fruits and that’s okay”. One fruit, nine characteristics. Today let’s take a different look at the same verses alongside what we have just read from the Jesus Tradition. Discipleship requires us to persevere, with the fruit in all of its character, but with a focus on the goal. The freedom you have in Christ is not a lack of control, but liberation from all of the stuff that is not Christ. You are freed from sin and guilt and habit, released from a yoke of slavery to follow Jesus. As was Jesus departing Galilee, so Paul sees each Christian as a woman or man on a mission: Paul commends to us a similar determination and strategy to stay on course, and on cause. Yoke yourself to Christ, be the bondservants of each other in The Church, and let your self-indulgent flesh-life go the way of all flesh to the grave.

In our story from the Hebrew Traditions and 2 Kings 2 today we get another reminder of the call to stay focussed, and to ignore the voices of distraction. I like this story a lot, it makes me laugh how determined Elisha is to shut out the voices of the doomsayers. “Yeah I know, just shut up would youse” he says to the bands of prophets at a distance. For the second week in a row the Lectionary has cut out the good bit so we didn’t get to hear that today; although we do get to hear Elisha speaking just as much Strayan when he tells Elijah to “stop telling me to stop, I’m coming alright and you can’t make me stay here.” Elisha is staying the course and the cause; he knows what he wants, he know where to get it, and he’s not stopping until he gets to the place and gets what he wants, despite what Elijah and the bands of prophets at a distance are telling him. And he does get it: Elijah’s mantle is powerful in Elisha’s hands, doubly so when you read the whole story of Elisha.

In the various translations and commentaries I referred to this week I found that in Luke 9:51 Jesus is described as resolutely determined, or in words similar. He hasn’t just turned left or faced south, he’s done more even than set the satnav for The Church of The Holy Sepulchre, Jesus had decided to be unstoppable and unwavering in his walk to Jerusalem.  Jesus takes the fullest notice of the time and, understanding that the fulness of time has come, he sends messengers ahead of him at each point to prepare for his arrival at the next point. It is while they are underway and travelling that they come across the recalcitrance of this Samaritan village; but we are told that Jesus takes it all in his stride and simply seeks alternative accommodation. He’s on a mission from God, he’s here to save the world, he hasn’t got time to waste on petty squabbles with petty foreigners. Jesus is a man on a mission of salvation, so he’s not interested in pausing to call down destruction upon anybody, no matter how personally insulting they were to him.

I wonder how we go as disciples with this model of diminishing self-interest. Jesus doesn’t acknowledge the hurt of being denied accommodation, even though the hurt is fully recognised and displayed by the Boanerges brothers. Elijah had indeed called down fire upon people who insulted him, (you see it in 2 Kings 1:10-12, just before the Elisha story we read today), and not only did God send the fire in answer to Elijah’s prayer God also honoured Elijah with a glorious and spectacular ascension. But Jesus doesn’t do that, Jesus rejects anything that distracts him from his goal; Jesus rejects the threat to his majesty by travelling the path of humility and forgiveness against rudeness and rejection, and he sets an example for his companions on the road. Do we follow Christ along the way with such unconditional love for the world he saves, and uncompromising attention to his call? I think the answer is actually “mostly, yes” rather than “no”; we are Christians here and most of us get it right most of the time, thanks to Holy Spirit for guiding and teaching us as we walk.

When Jesus decides to pass through Samaria with a determination to reach Jerusalem he has changed his lifestyle. I’ve already said that he’s leaving local ministry around Galilee to go to Jerusalem, but this is not only a geographical change. Jesus used to pop up in a new Galilean town every now and then and hang around a bit for ministry. Now he’s in transit and he stops only to sleep and eat. Maybe the Samaritan village took that as a slight, an offence to them in the sense that “well he stayed in Capernaum for months, but he won’t even stay a second night in our town,” grizzle. “Fine then, if you’re not gonna stay here and take a few photos of our plastic sheep then you’re not gonna stay here at all!” When you choose a nomadic existence in life and live “only passing through” you cause offence and you attract opposition; and when you, choose to prioritise vision and purpose for the Kingdom’s cause over domestic obligations you cause offence and you attract opposition, even when you are not intending to be rude.

Even if you can set aside self-interest and the yoke of sin, and you live within  freedom for which Christ has set you free, how do you deal with the life-interests of others in you? How do you live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh when Jesus seems to be saying that you can’t even delay your departure from the old life long enough to kiss goodbye to your parents, spouse and kids?

Discipleship is painful, and from the outside it might look hurtful; but it is never to be spiteful, nor is it to be arrogant. Paul reminds his disciples to not become conceited, competing against one another, (Galatians 5:26a). There are no Frequent Martyr Points for the ones who shun their families the hardest. No, be resolutely determined to live by the Spirit, bearing fruit with nine flavoursome characteristics, and submitting to one another in love, delighting in the service of others and their service of you. Discipleship is a radical change; Jesus might not have been killed if he had stayed in Galilee, but then he wasn’t born just to die of old age in Sepphoris, was he? No, Jesus was resolute and determined, but he also was provided with meals and naps and friends, and with the salvation of his family through his consistency to the cause of the Kingdom and course of his ministry under God.

Maintain your focus, and like Elijah beneath the broom tree last week let God maintain you.

Amen.

Lent 5C

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14

From experience I know that when I am reading scripture and I come across the words Thus says the LORD that what comes next is something worth remembering. As Evangelicals we like to think of the entire Bible as the Word of God, but how often do we consider it to be the sayings of God or even an accurate record of what God literally said to the people of the day? God speaks here in Isaiah 43:16ff in black and white (rather than in red, why is that  wonder?) and what God says is…what? Do you remember? C’mon people we’ve just heard it, what does God say, the gist at least? “Forget about the past, I’m about to do something new.”

A few weeks ago I spoke to you about our need to listen for God and to not rely on our own skills and abilities too much. We must never get to the stage of practice where we think that we have all that we need in skills and experience and ability such that we don’t need to listen any more.

Even so, who needs the Holy Spirit when we have the lectionary? And, come to think of it, there is a Bible-verse index to go with SongSelect. And I do have twelve years of experience in preaching the lectionary, and four complete sets of the sermons in Years A, B, and C: today is Lent 5C, so there was no need for me to read the actual Bible and I could and am just preaching the same thing as I did in April 2019, 2016, 2013. I’m getting quite good at just using a previous sermon, replacing “Yankalilla” with “Serviceton”, talking about “the Cougars” and not “the Seagulls”, wondering if there’s a Wimmera version of the word “Gippslandian”, changing “Trump” to “Putin” and “Julia” to “Scott”. This week I was done-and-done in ten minutes, I didn’t even need to get The New International Study Bible (Thirtieth Anniversary Edition, Fully Revised) off the shelf. Indeed even if I had been down to worship-lead this week I would have been done-and-done there too because last year’s songs are fine (our musicians know the tunes), and since Jesus Christ is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever then our prayers of intercession can be recycled as well.

Except that Isaiah says that God says “yeah-nah that’s a rubbish idea”; and Isaiah said that in 2019, 2013, and seven-hundred and eleventy-nine BCE so, “yeah-nah that’s a rubbish idea”.  Just because God is dependable does not mean that the sermons need to be predictable, and we certainly should be singing a lot wider than our favourite fifteen songs, six at a time on any given Sunday in Serviceton and four at a time in Kaniva. Oh, and I would never use the verb “worship-lead”: eww, cringe!!

So let’s not do that, let’s not rely on experience and “what we know works for Kaniva” and let’s actually look at what the LORD thus said. The God of the Exodus, of Abraham, Isacc and Jacob, who revealed Godself to Moses by name as “I Am” in a not-so-burning-bush, and then under the cloud of smoke and fire, says to the exiled people of Israel “yeah nah, gonna do summink else wit youse mob”. It sounds more majestic in Hebrew, but that’s what God says. I, the one who drowned the Egyptians and watered the Hebrews, am not as predictable as your history teachers tell you I Am (tee-hee). Yes I did all of that, but it’s not all that I can do and for you and I will do a different and inventive thing. I Am (tee-hee) still going to save and deliver my people in exile, but I Am (tee-hee) going to have more fun with it and so will you. This new exodus, this ex hodos, this “road out” for you will be easier than the one out of Egypt, just ‘cos.  That’s what Isaiah 43:16-21 says in the Damien Standard Version (2022 Edition), check it out the Good News Bible for yourselves, (or the NRSV if you are enrolled in the presbytery’s worship course).

When we look at our reading from the Christian Traditions today we find a similar story, where Paul engages in some dead-set humble-brag about what he does not boast in.  “Let me tell you how modest I am in not boasting about how awesome I really am” he says. Actually that’s kind of arrogant, but does he have a point? I think he does have a point, and it is a good point: God is always better than our heritage of skill and understanding. No matter who you are or what your experience and/or qualifications say about your abilities, you cannot and should not do discipleship without listening to Holy Spirit. And if not discipleship without God’s ongoing guidance then you certainly cannot and should not presume to lead church, teach seminars, nor preach sermons without asking God before you begin planning to present publicly.

[W]hatever gains I had; these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. “Yes,” says Paul in Philippians 3:7-8, “actually I am all of that and a packet of chips, but it means nothing without him who saves me”. Like me, Paul probably could have been effective in ministry without having to check in with Jesus every hour, he was an experienced scholar and teacher, and a Jew of the Judahite tribes. I’m not a Judahite, but I do have four university degrees; one in language, one in teaching, one in ministry and one in theology. I also have lived experience of prison, illness, suicidality, living overseas, and a whole bunch of random other stuff. Pretty much all of you are the same, in that you have been Christians for ages and you know stuff without having to check: so, let me ask you what you don’t need God for any more. Can you write an order of service without asking God about the coming Sunday? Can you pick songs without checking in? The correct answer is “no”; indeed we do need God for everything, Paul says that, and I say that, and I hope that you would say that and that you would expect it of me and of our rostered lead worshippers.

But why is it important? Two answers, one brief and one more extensive.

Because we are God’s own people and God is our saviour and Lord. If we are not listening to The Lord then how is this lord actually a lord? The Lord can only be our lord when we listen because a lord we ignore is not a lord at all. Alternatively, if the Lord is lord and we are not listening then we are rebels and traitors. “If God is not lord of all, then God is not lord at all” as the old saying says. The lordship of God even involves us seeking direction and listening for the answers in preparation for leading worship and word, even for paid clergy and well-practiced laity.

Maybe God wants to do something different; something new, something we don’t actually have experience of. Here we go back to our readings from Isaiah and the idea that God will bring the people out of Babylon and Persia in a fresh exodus, but it won’t be done in the same way that the people were brought out of Egypt. Moses my servant is dead, says God in Joshua 1:2, (and now so too dead is Joshua), so even if you are familiar with the Hexateuch you can’t just say “same old same old” and assume that Deuteronomy’s teaching still applies where Nehemiah how walks.

In Philippians 3:10a we read where Paul wrote I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. Well, who wouldn’t. And Paul goes on to write and speak of his desire to press on toward maturity and completion of the task, aware that he can only do so as much as he relies on God and not on his Judahite heritage or his rabbinical doctorate. An easy sermon for me then, one I have written before, the LORD’s hand on my shoulder as I did so. Just because a sermon is old and I am repeating it does not mean I’m not listening to God, if it was inspired then it can be inspired now, a fresh inspiration where the LORD says in my mind open for preparation today “that bears repeating, tell them again”. This week that did not happen, this week it seemed good to me and the Holy Spirit to take a new take. This week we’re going to think not about athleticism and the desire to press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call (Philippians 3:14),  but the idea of the power of his resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus the Christ was a new thing. Wasn’t it? Yes, it was. God had never worked through a resurrection before, and Jesus himself had never been resurrected. Yes there had been “raising from the dead”, we can think of various sons of the widows in the Jesus Traditions and the Hebrew Traditions, we remember the daughter of Jairus, the valley of the dry bones, and we know about Lazarus too. But none of these was a resurrection, and through all of Hebrew history God had never vindicated a prophet by returning the man to life. The prophets of Israel’s God, from Abraham to Malachi, to John the Baptist, were always vindicated by the truth of that man’s words; that what he predicted eventuated, and that what he proclaimed was acknowledged as the truth consistent with scripture. The predictions and the proclamations of Jesus were vindicated in this way too, but his whole witness was elevated by his being raised from death, returned to his friends after his murder at the hands of the empire and the temple. The power of the resurrection is the vindication of Jesus’ life’s witness. It was not solely the conquering of the penalty for sin at the cross (in that Jesus died for sin but rose to defeat sin), but that God said, “all of it is true, not just forgiveness; but grace, and shalom, and the stuff about the Sabbath is made for you and not you for ritual, and that Centurions and Syrophoenicians have a place in the Kingdom of the Trusting”.

The message of the empty tomb is Revelation 21:5 and behold, I am making all things new. And the message of the empty tomb is 2 Corinthians 5:17 and in Christ there is a new creation. And the message of the empty tomb is Isaiah 43:19 and behold, I am doing a new thing. The tomb cannot constrain God, the empty tomb is a new way and a fresh example of how God might choose to work.

Does this mean that the resurrection was not actually about the cancelled debt of sin? No, only that the resurrection was not solely about the cancelled debt of sin. The resurrection is a bigger thing than one idea or function. Does this mean that the power of resurrection is not actually about our capacity as Christians to live free from sin for the most part, and the invitation to approach the throne of grace when we do fall? No, only that the power of resurrection is not solely about our capacity as Christians to live free from sin for the most part, and the invitation to approach the throne of grace when we do fall. The power of the resurrection is a bigger thing than one idea or function.

I wonder, is that a new thing for you? Do you believe it possible; is it conceivable for you that what the resurrection did as an event, and the power of the resurrection does as a source of strength for you as a disciple, is bigger than the sin story?  I am going to leave you to ponder on that, that maybe there is more going on in that story and that idea that what you already know, or think you know, and know you think.

God is about to do a new thing, a thing never done before, a different and innovative solution to an old problem. Kaniva, may God do this here? Does God have your permission to act differently? Or must The LORD do God-stuff only according to the expectations of your Christian experience so far, and the way we have always done things here? Give an honest answer.

Amen.

Receive Righteousness: Lent 2C

This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for Sunday 13th March 2022, the second Sunday in Lent.

God’s covenant with Abram is a promise of greatness, wealth and a heritage for generations to come. But Abram answers “what will you give me…my heir is some random in another country;” in other words what is the point of all this blessing when it either dies with me or is dispersed amongst the family of a household slave. But The LORD promises Abram his own family and Abram believes the LORD, in other words he accepts what God has said to be true and trustworthy, and it is on this basis that Abram is accredited righteousness (Genesis 15:6).

God’s desire for us is right relationship, and for God that relationship is most securely fastened when we believe God with complete trust: “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” as the 1980s Christian bumper-snicker says. So your righteousness is proportional to your trust in God; your righteousness is not dependent upon your theological statements, nor your acceptance of the Creeds nor the doctrine of infallibility. Your righteousness depends upon whether you trust God enough to take your hand off it, or put your hand to it, or whatever it is that God has set for you to put [God] to the test (Malachi 3:10b). I understand the word righteousness to mean primarily this, “to be in right relationship with God”. Righteousness as I understand it is not about being sinless, or being theologically correct (and politically incorrect), or morally perfect; these things if they are evident follow from the relationship with God, but they do not supersede it. To be righteous is not to be good, or pious, it is to be beloved by the Father and the Son as a daughter and a sister, or son and brother, and to live from that identity. Abram, Abraham was not useful to God because he was perfect, but because he was trusting and obedient. Your usefulness to God is dependent upon the same, not your “no” to sin but your “yes” to God’s invitation to action, and your acceptance of God’s reassurance when you ask for clarity or encouragement to go.

Our story from the Jesus Traditions today is an intriguing one, especially that first verse. In Luke 13:31 we read that some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here for Herod wants to kill you.” Do you find that interesting? Why do you find that interesting? Isn’t it because the Pharisees are supposed to be Jesus’ enemies and therefore they’d actually have been on the side of Herod and his assassins? So, why do Pharisees warn Jesus to flee? I find that interesting, because of course it’s not so black and white. The Pharisees are what we would today call “Evangelicals”, faithful people who love scripture and love God (in that order) and who are trying to live a righteous life through obedience to the Bible and to biblical traditions. Sometimes they missed the point of what God was doing, mainly because God was acting beyond what they were reading, and here is a case in point. Jesus tells the Pharisees, who I’m going to assume were nice people in this story and genuinely wanting Jesus to escape from his enemies, that I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work, (Luke 13:32). In other words, “look, I’m too busy doing the work of God to think about running away from the malicious yet stupid people arrayed against me”. Here is the righteousness of Jesus, trusting God that since his work was not yet done he was obligated to stay where he was, and that God would protect him not because he was being obedient (as if rescue is some kind of reward for being good) but that his confidence in God for the work he was doing was sufficient for God to be able to warn him off if God needed to.  Thanks for your concern religious friends, but I’m actually pretty tuned in to the Father directly, and God hasn’t told me anything different than stay here and keep up with the healings and exorcisms. Jesus also had confidence in his hearing the wider plan, that he would only be killed in Jerusalem; here in a random highway town he would be okay. Later, in the Christian Traditions of Acts 23:11 and Acts 28:23-24 we find Paul speaking and acting with the same confidence, that God had promised him an audience with Caesar so there’s no worries when he’s imprisoned at Caesarea Maritima or shipwrecked in Malta. “No, sorry chaps, can’t actually be killed yet, still got kings to see and corpses to heal”. Not righteous because he is defiant and obedient, defiant and obedient because he trusts God’s promise absolutely; which is accredited to him as righteousness, the evidence that his relationship with The Father is tight and full.

Is this your righteousness? Is this how you see yourself as righteous before God: not that you are obedient and moral but that you are trusting and confident in your dependence?

In the opening verse of our story from the Hebrew traditions God says to Abram [d]o not be afraid…I am your shield; your reward will be very great, (Genesis 15:1), which with all that we have said I think is the key promise made to Abram. The covenant is for a land and for the descendants to fill it, and when the covenant is reviewed with Jacob there is the added part of those descendants being God’s special nation who will be an example of God to all of the other nations and tribes and language groups across the whole planet. The covenant we recognise is that there will always be a people called “Jews”, and there will always be a home for them in a land called “Israel”, the land of Jacob’s family (but not Esau’s nor Ishmael’s). That is the covenant, but the promise (if there actually is a different one) is the one where God promises to be trustworthy. I am your shield declares The LORD, God’s own self and the Angel Armies at The LORD’s command are your back-up Abram (Damien, whomever). And your reward will be very great not because you have been well behaved and relatively sinless, (with the cross dealing with the down-bits), but because you have trusted God and followed God without delay or caution and have therefore been able to enter most fully into the best that God has for you. You went beyond waving and smiling distance to approach God, beyond even hi-five or handshake distance, beyond even an embrace; when God called you in, you climbed right up onto God’s lap and snuggled under God’s beard and into God’s belly, your reward is the complete feeling of love and security and home-ness when other may only feel noticed. Only the most trusting child and the least afraid get to snuggle, and wouldn’t you rather snuggle with The Father than wave across a room? Do you trust God enough to approach, do you feel safe in God’s presence? That’s the definition of righteousness. And then of course the righteous are obedient and attentive; but its love freely given that calls you close and attentiveness that keeps you close, it’s not terrified obedience that earns you a place on God’s armrest.

After dismissing the worrisome Pharisees, kind-hearted but misguided that they are, Jesus goes on to lament over Jerusalem. He will be killed there, all prophets are, and that is where Herod (and the Sanhedrin) will finally nail him. But it’s not his impending death that prompts his lamentation, but the lack of righteousness amongst the Jerusalemites. How often have I desired to gather your children together, asks Jesus in the voice of The Father, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. The LORD the God of Abraham does not need you to defend God’s reputation against even a false Messiah (let alone the true one), The LORD invites you into a relationship of paternal and maternal lovingkindness and utter trustworthiness. You don’t need to be afraid of falsehood in the streets, you don’t need to be afraid of how Pilate might react to a shouty Galilean in the streets, you just need to accept God’s invitation to be your Father and you The Father’s children: and you were not willing! No wonder Jesus is desolated; not only will they assassinate the Messiah for blasphemy, the King of Kings for treason (pause and consider), but God invites them to snuggle, and the most religious men in the most holy nation say no!

Abraham said yes and was blessed with the fruit of obedience because he trusted God to lead him well and ultimately he was well lead,  even when Lot took the best pastures and Abraham twice gave Sarah to the local rapey-king to save his own skin. Paul (the one-time Pharisee) said yes, was blessed with the fruit of obedience because he trusted God to lead him well and ultimately he was well lead, preaching the gospel in Rome and in Caesarea. Abraham died a very old and very wealthy man. Paul died less old man and was executed as a criminal, but both went “to their fathers” knowing that they had finished the work set for them, their lives complete, and then they died. Jesus died the same way, he said “it is finished”, and then (and only then) he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30). The key to running the race to the end is not perseverance or sinlessness, it is trust which drives obedience.

Today, right now, I invite you to come to God. Come to The Father and have a cuddle, come to the hen and be gathered under her wings. Listen to God’s word for you, just you, and hear your mission. And then, and then go knowing that everything is in place for you, even the end. And then, after the end, you get to go home. Hallelujah, Hosanna, Amen.