Touch and see

A reflection on Luke 24: 36b-48, Sunday 26 April 2009

There are some conversations that just stick in the mind. I may have already shared this story with some of you before, but this just sticks in the mind so please excuse any repetition.

Three or four years ago, I was out shopping and I bumped into an old workmate. Twenty-five years is a long time between drinks and so he invited me to his house for a cup of tea and the opportunity to catch up. Now, I need to say up front that this friend of mine was never a religious person. Well, over that cup of tea, I was drawn into conversation, not with my friend, but with his wife.

His wife is a self-confessed atheist, a card-carrying disbeliever in God, not just an atheist but a born-again atheist. And she set out to convert me!

Let me tell you, this was a truly scary experience. This highly articulate, well-researched, intelligent woman put forward a litany of reasons why faith is irrational, why belief is not just unhelpful but is positively bad for us. With unerring accuracy, she pointed out all of the shortcomings and fallacies of organised religion: the hypocrisy, the inconsistency, the evil that has been done in the name of the gods over the centuries. Everything from creation in six days to the resurrection was held up for question and ridicule.

Time and again, she asked me, “Do you really believe in these things?” And if I seemed at any point less than a hundred percent convinced, she would pounce, “Well, what do you believe in?”

[I now have a high degree of compassion for anyone who is set upon by another person intent upon converting them to their set of beliefs. It is a truly disturbing experience.]

So, for the next few days, I was haunted by the question, “What do you believe in?”

It’s a good question.

For my friend’s wife, there was the explicit assumption that, as a Christian, I would believe everything contained in the bible as the inerrant, literal word of God. However, if I wanted to express anything other than that black and white approach to scripture, I was immediately accused of “picking and choosing” which bits I want to believe. And that’s not a bad challenge either.

Do I pick and choose which bits I want to believe? In fact, are we all guilty of picking and choosing which bits we believe? I would have to state that I don’t know any Christians who believe unreservedly in a literal interpretation of every single portion of the scriptures. I know some who may claim to hold that position, but who seem to practise their faith with much greater emphasis on some things than on others. I don’t know any Christians at all who follow the strict injunctions of the Hebrew Scriptures concerning food, clothing, Sabbath observance and so on.

Now, before you think I’m only interested in questioning the position of Christians, let me add that I think that atheists are just as guilty of the picking and choosing phenomenon. After all, there is such an amazing hodge-podge of secular beliefs circulating in our society that no one is capable of believing them all. Everyone chooses to believe some bits and not others. Economic theory? Take your pick. Theories of healing? You can take your pick there too. The best recipe for rock cakes? Take your pick.

So what do we believe? Or, more to the point, what do we believe?

This is pretty much what today’s gospel reading is all about. And what the gospel readings for the previous two weeks have been about as well.

Jesus is alive. Do you believe it or not?

We are told that Jesus said to his disciples: “Why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see…” This is, in many respects, the pivotal challenge of the whole of the Christian scriptures. If Jesus has not risen from the tomb, then what meaning is there at all for our faith? Following Jesus is reduced to nothing more than, as my friend’s wife puts it, “Jesus was just a good bloke.” Is that it? Is that all there is, or do we grasp the hands and feet of a risen Christ?

What difference does it make if we do “touch and see” a Jesus who has emerged from the tomb of death? Apart from all of those things associated with salvation and life after death, believing in a resurrected Christ has some major implications for the here and now. After all, Jesus says to those who believe, “You are witnesses of these things.”

The Macquarie dictionary gives eleven definitions for the word “witness”. They are all variants of one of two broad definitions: a witness is either someone who sees something, or they are someone who tells others about something they have seen. I think the first definition is wishy-washy.

Someone who is simply present and who sees something is not, in my book, a witness. They are an observer. A witness has to testify to what they have seen. There has to be some personal account given to others who were not there.

And Jesus says to his followers, “You are witnesses.”

Now I have a question: How is it possible for me to be a witness when I was not there?

This is the problem I was having with the accusations of my friend’s wife: I wasn’t there! How do I know which bits to believe? I wasn’t there. Was the earth created in six days? I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

What do I believe in? What am I willing to testify to? Which of “these things” am I prepared to witness to?

This is my short answer: I am a witness to the unconditional love of God.

I am a witness to the unconditional love of God.

This is for me the one thing I know beyond all doubt, and the one thing I am prepared to stand up in a court of law and bear witness to, because I have been present! The grace of God is real. The willingness to love so much that even death is no barrier is real. The power of God which transcends human limitations, which returns Jesus from beyond the very worst that humanity can do, is real.

A love which accepts; a love without strings attached; a love able to embrace the unembraceable: that is what makes me a Christian.

That is what I have touched. That is what I have seen. That is what I bear witness to.

It’s strange, you know, that I never remember, in my first thirty-odd years of being a Christian, I never remember hearing anyone talk about the grace of God. I do remember lots of sermons and talks and bible studies on the judgment of God, of the price of Jesus’ death being my guilt and need for repentance. But nothing about the unconditional love of God, the grace of God.

Why is that? Why are we so focussed upon what we deserve or don’t deserve that we fail to see the only thing that is worth witnessing: we are loved.

For me, the scales fell from my eyes the moment I was touched by unconditional love. The moment I experienced, not just saw but felt, the truth of what it means to be loved without strings attached. The moment I knew that I was loved without reservation, without condition, regardless of the past, no matter what the future may bring, the moment I was touched by grace I became a witness to the resurrection.

I became a witness to the truth that life always triumphs over death, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it, that the grace of God is here … to stay.

Daily, the resurrection is witnessed to. Daily we are able to proclaim, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” Amen.

Witnesses to life

A reflection for Easter Day, 2009 based on Mark 16:1-8

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land… Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”… Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. Mark 15: 33-37

The world is full of nails: big nails and little nails.

The world is full of people who cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

During the last few weeks, I have heard all sorts of stories which witness to death:

· The ongoing war in Iraq. How many years ago is it now that American, Australian and British troops invaded Iraq? Before the troops arrived, there were wholesale slaughter, oppression and human rights abuses. But there has been no end to violence: both Iraqis and their liberators are still being killed daily. Just recently two more Australians were added to the list of casualties. Thousands of innocent people have died, and are still dying. And the nails that are used are patriotism, religion, democracy, might is right, military technology.

· Our headlines have been dominated over the last few months by what we have all come to call “the global financial crisis”. What were very recently proclaimed as booming economies are now poised on the threshold of collapse. The thousands of Americans forced from their homes by mortgage foreclosures are being joined daily by more and more people across the world who are losing their jobs. And, while payouts to executives are in the spotlight, there is yet to be an end to million dollar handshakes. And the nails that are used are greed, self-interest, lack of conscience, capitalism.

· We seemed to have stopped worrying about asylum seekers. But the number of people living in refugee camps around the world is still in the millions. That’s right, millions. Africans dying each month of HIV/AIDS are counted in tens of thousands. There are millions upon millions of people who have never seen clean water in their entire lives. And yet politicians ignore these realities, deny these realities. And the wars that continue around the world bear testimony to politics at the expense of compassion. And the nails are expediency, politics, self-justification, self-preservation.

· How many Australians do you think died on our roads in the past twelve months? In the last few years the figure has been around 1600 people killed per annum. That is more than 7 deaths per hundred thousand people. And I don’t have any figures on the numbers of people injured. One thousand six hundred lives lost. How many families is that? How many children orphaned, parents childless? How many friends devastated, workmates shattered, emergency workers numbed? And the nails are “It’s not my family”, “I don’t know them”, “It won’t happen to me”, “Let’s have one more for the road”.

If I pause for just one brief moment, there are so many witnesses to death that I feel overwhelmed. Witnesses to death: my TV screen and my radio and my newspaper are full of them, and if they’re not, they should be. And I want to cry out, “My God, my God.”

Where are the witnesses to life?

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome … went to the tomb… As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” Mark 16: 1-6

He has been raised? He is not here? Where is he, then?

· The story is told of a German concentration camp during the Second World War. I wish I could remember the details properly, but the story goes something like this: There was trouble in the camp, and in reprisal, the German authorities decided that ten prisoners should be taken out and shot. One of those selected broke down and wept for his wife who would soon be widowed and his young children who would soon be fatherless. A young clergyman stepped from the crowd and said, “Take me instead of this man. I have no wife or children. Take me instead.” And there in the concentration camp was the risen Christ, witnessing to life.

· The renowned Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of his despair in the communist gulags. He told of the day he could take no more and put down his shovel and slumped to sit in the dirt knowing that at any moment a guard would notice his actions and would come and shoot him or club him to death with his own shovel. Another man stepped from the work detail and, saying nothing, squatted in front of Solzhenitsyn. After a moment, the man picked up a stick and drew in the dirt a cross. Then he stood up and returned to work. And Solzhenitsyn, with that cross in his heart, stood up and returned to work too. And there, in the gulag, was the risen Christ, witnessing to life.

· I heard a story about community gardens, and this account of how we might deal with those who come to us from elsewhere: A hospital in Melbourne has a community garden, a place where patients and their families can go to be surrounded by growing things, where they too can touch and feel life in all its greenness. Some time ago, an Afghani family came to the hospital from one of our detention centres; one of their small children was seriously ill. At one point, they were shown the community garden. The father was given a pair of secateurs and, without prompting, he began to prune the roses. The mother was offered some cuttings of basil and a bulb of garlic, and she began to weep. Seven years in a detention centre, and this was her first opportunity to hold these simple yet sacred symbols of her former life. And there in the hospital garden was the risen Christ, witnessing to life.

· How did you celebrate Valentine’s Day this year? One of the large charismatic churches on the northside sent some of its women to visit the sex workers in the Valley on Valentine’s Day. They didn’t go armed with bibles, or gospel tracts, or four steps for giving your life to Christ. Instead they took foot scrub and nail polish and massage oil and mascara, and those women spent their evening giving facials and neck massages and manicures and pedicures to the sex workers of the city. And there on the street was the risen Christ, witnessing to life.

· A month or so ago, an acquaintance of ours was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In a short space of time he was hospitalised and his death was obviously imminent. He was visited by a number of people including a young newly married couple. After they had left, he told anyone who would listen, “She’s going to have a baby.” Although the couple had told no-one, he was right. A week or so after his death, the grand announcement of the pregnancy was made. Even as he faced death, our acquaintance recognised the presence of new life. There, in the hospital ward, was the risen Christ, witnessing to life.

Where do you go for good news stories? Where do you hear stories of resurrection life, of the green shoots of life pushing themselves through the black earth? Not just happy, happy stories, but stories of adversity confronted, of pain and loss turned to joy and delight. When we hear those stories, what do we do with them? Do we share them? Do we hasten to spread the good news of life beyond death? Are we witnesses to life?

Let me share with you some words written by a member of this congregation, shared with her permission. It is a poem entitled “An Easter dream”:

“Wipe away your tears of sadness,
Sweet child of God,
For the golden sun has risen again
This Easter morn.

“Look no more at my tomb of humanity,
My brokenness has truly become whole.
Death’s finality has been conquered.

“Release your earthly burdens with mine.
Go forth with purpose, strive to new heights.
Proclaim the wonderment of the resurrection.”

Laura Brown 2009

The world is full of nails. Big nails and little nails. But the world is also full of witnesses to life. The stories go on and on and on: witnesses to the truth that life will always overcome death, that resurrection is God’s answer to the nails of this world. Story after story tells us that the tomb is empty.

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

Cry "Hosanna!"

A narrative sermon preached on Palm Sunday

O Lord, how much longer?

Hosanna! Hosanna!

I mean we’ve been doing this for hours now. Two steps forward, one step back, wave that palm branch and, all together now, Hosanna!

And the crowd pushing and shoving. Everyone’s having a grand old time, shouting and screaming, laughing and carrying on as if there’s no tomorrow. A grand old time of it, except for those whose feet are trodden on, or whose cloaks are borrowed without permission and tossed for the donkey to walk on, and the donkey itself don’t look too happy about it all. And I wish I were somewhere else.

I know, shameful ain’t it? Me, Judas son of James, one of the Twelve, would rather be somewhere else than trying to push a way down this street towards the Temple.

Hosanna! Hosanna!

Save us, Lord. Save us. Save us from hysterical crowds and save us from smelly armpits and palm leaves in the eye.

I mean, it’s all right for some. Some are in their element. Look at Simon Peter there. Hosanna-ing away as if he’s fit to bust. And James and John – “Sons of Thunder” all right. Those two are a crowd all on their own. And Simon the Zealot. My, but don’t he love it all. Any moment now I reckon he’ll start up:

Whadda we want?
Freedom!
When do we want it?
Now!

And they’ll all join in.

Except for me.

Whadda we want?
Peace and quiet!
When do we want it?
Now!

What do I want?

A nice cup of wine.
When do I want it?
Soon, please.
And then a nice lie down in a darkened room.

Anything to get off my feet.

I didn’t know I was signing up for this. I mean, what’s it all about? Look at them. Half of them have never even heard of Jesus, let alone want him for king. And the other half? I’m not sure what they’re on about.

Jesus – king? Not likely. Anyone who’s spent five minutes with him knows he’s not interested in kingship. Him – king on a throne? Not on your life.

But look at them, listen to them:

Hosanna! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

They want a Messiah. They want someone to get the foreigners off their backs and get ‘em out of the Temple and back to their heathen country. They want a Messiah. They want a rebellion.

They’re nuts. They think Jesus is going to turf the Romans out? They think it’s back to the good old days of King David?

I tell you, they don’t know Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth. He’s not interested in kingship so much as compassion. He doesn’t want an army; he wants us to love our enemies.

Save us! Save us!

If this keeps up, we’re going to need saving, because the guard will be here in double quick time and palm branches aren’t much use against short swords and spears. Yarmulkes and fringed shawls won’t do us any good against a cavalry charge.

Hosanna! Come and deliver us!

It would be quite comical if it weren’t so serious.

At least Jesus don’t look so amused. He looks fit to burst into tears, he does.

Where does he think this is all heading? Does he reckon this is happy ending material?

To hear him speak the last few days, you wouldn’t think so. It’s all, “when I go to my Father’s house” and “the time is coming for the Human One to be lifted up”. It’s not that he’s miserable; it’s just … somehow, he sees that some things are inevitable. He sees that doing what he’s doing is never going to make him popular in the long run. At least, not popular with the bods who’re currently running the show, nor with the rich who are going to find it hard to get into heaven according to him. And not popular with those who don’t get what they want either.

I mean … Hosanna! Deliver us!

What? Deliver us from having to pay our taxes? Deliver us from having to get on with our neighbours. I mean look at that pair: He looks like it’s, “Deliver us from nagging wives” and she looks like it’s, “Save us from bone idle husbands”!

For goodness sake … This isn’t what Jesus is on about. I mean, he wants to deliver people all right. You only have to see him with the sick to know he wants to deliver people. You only have to hear him talking to those on the outside to know how passionate he is about saving people. When Blind Bart cried, “Hosanna” Jesus heard that all right.

Come and deliver us! Oh, yes. Come and deliver us from our pettiness and our smugness and our looking down our noses at anyone who can’t claim a lineage back to David. Oh, and come and deliver me from being such a cynic.

Hosanna indeed.

I remember when I was little, and anytime there was shouting and yelling and people getting all excited like this, and my mum would say – I can still hear her – she’d say, “There’ll be tears before bedtime.” And like as not she’d be right.

And, funny thing, she said it the day she met Jesus. Oh, she said lots of other things as well: “Wonderful to meet you, sir. Such an honour to have you in our house, sir.” And, to my great embarrassment, “Thank you so much for taking on our young Judas.” As if I was still a kid in Sabbath school. And then, watching him eat his dinner and laugh with some of the ragbags he invited in – and she never even said a word about that! – then she says all quiet like, “There’ll be tears before bedtime.”

Hosanna! Come and deliver us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

But I can’t help thinking she might be right. There’ll be tears before this lot’s all over.

Between the dying and the rising

A reflection on John 12: 20-33

[When this was preached, it began with a story about a friend of mine whom I referred to by the name Zoe – the Greek word for life. Zoe’s story is one of abuse, great pain, and her eventual emergence into the light of life. Zoe’s great insight is that: the glory lies between the dying and the rising.]

In today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks of a grain of wheat having no purpose unless it is buried in the earth and dies. We are reminded that to be a follower of Christ – a Christian – means losing one’s own life for the sake of others. And then Jesus speaks of God’s name being glorified.

The image of the grain of wheat buried in the earth is not a comfortable one. Bruce Prewer writes:

Let this be admitted plainly:

I shrink from being buried

alive in Christ’s mission.

Where is hope to be found

in grain shoved underground?

But, when Christ speaks of dying and rising, and when Christ says that those who love their life must lose it, when we are challenged to take up our cross and follow Jesus, then we cannot pretend that Christianity, being a Christian, a disciple of Jesus is an easy path to follow.

Easter is approaching. We will listen to the story of the crucifixion, Jesus’ betrayal, suffering and death. There are some who say that it is the crucifixion which brings glory to God. But the temptation with that line is to use the crucifixion to justify human suffering and death. Such an understanding does nothing to restore faith in God within a child who has been sexually abused by someone they trusted. The cross never justifies innocent suffering and God does not require the suffering of innocents in order to be glorified.

On the third day, we will gather to listen with joy to the story of the resurrection, and there are some who say that it is the resurrection which brings glory to God. But the temptation with this line is that if we see the resurrection through worldly eyes – as a success story in which good triumphs over evil – then we will miss the glory of God. We need to see the resurrection through gospel eyes as a statement of God’s faithfulness, of God’s liberation, of God’s love. The resurrection is not a statement about worldly success. God is not glorified in the resurrection alone, just as God is not glorified in the crucifixion alone.

The Basis of Union reminds us that “The church preaches Christ the risen crucified One and confesses him as Lord to the glory of God.” (The Basis of Union para. 3)

Crucifixion and resurrection must be held together if we are to understand something of the glory of God.

At the point at which Zoe faced the abuse of her childhood she became a broken woman. It was as if she died. When the healing journey was complete she was born again. But in between it was as if she was buried in the soil and nothing she could do or her counselor could do, or her friends could do, could force new life into her.

It is at that point, where there is seemingly no hope, that God is glorified – for in our hopelessness all there is, all we have, is God and God is faithful.

We need to be careful about how we hold crucifixion and resurrection together and this is where I believe Zoe’s insight is helpful. Too often as Christians we collapse Good Friday into Easter Day. We race from Friday to Sunday. We look at Friday with Sunday eyes.

But the glory lies between the dying and the rising.

It is immensely difficult for us to submit willingly to the way of Christ. We don’t want to give up all that we have known and loved, we don’t want to allow ourselves to be taken to uncomfortable and lonely places, we don’t want to face those experiences which feel like becoming a grain of wheat, being buried in the earth to await something unknown and uncertain. We would rather rush straight to new birth, to new beginnings, new certainties and new life.

But we must have crucifixion and resurrection: they cannot be separated nor can we collapse them into one glorious Easter event.

The dying, the waiting, the rising are one event and the glory of God emanates from the waiting – for at that point there is nothing apart from God.

The glory lies between the dying and the rising.

Created for good works

A reflection on John 3: 16-21 and Ephesians 2: 1-10

There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can’t.

Actually, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who are good, and those who are not; those who are saved, and those who are damned; those who know Christ in their lives, and those who have rejected Christ; those who are going to heaven, and those who are going to hell; those who are righteous, and those who are unrighteous; those whom God loves, and those whom God rejects; and I don’t believe a word of this stuff.

I used to. I used to firmly believe that we could divide the world neatly into two entirely separate, mutually exclusive groups; and I used to lie awake at night worrying about which group I belonged in: was I going to heaven, or was I going to hell?

It seems at first glance that the writer of Ephesians is a subscriber to the “two kinds of people” philosophy. One the one hand are those who are “by nature children of wrath” and, on the other hand, those who are “created in Christ Jesus for good works”. The world in which Paul lived was a world of dualisms: light and dark, flesh and spirit, powers for good and powers for evil. And, because this is the world Paul inhabited, it is also the language which the writer used.

However, it would be a mistake, I believe, to turn the language of duality into an anthropology where there are “two kinds of people”. The letter to the Ephesians goes far beyond such a simplistic understanding of what it means to be human. There is no neat separation between those whom God loves and those whom God rejects. When the writer speaks of those who are “by nature children of wrath”, they are speaking of themselves: “we were by nature children of wrath” followed by the immediate qualification, “like everyone else”. This is not a dualistic anthropology; rather, this is an identification of the writer and readers of the letter together in a common humanity.

The biblical scholar Bill Loader points out that this:

is a central theme in Ephesians. The 'we' is: we, Jews, and you, non-Jews. Together we have become something new.

The great risk of thinking there are “two kinds of people in the world” is this: those who know Christ becomes “us” and those who don’t are obviously “them”. Dividing the world into “us” and “them” is a very easy way of avoiding some truths about ourselves and of absolving ourselves of all sorts of responsibilities to others. In the world of “us” and “them”, we are tempted to congratulate ourselves simply because we are “us”; we are enticed to see this as being something we have accomplished for ourselves. It is easy to fool ourselves into believing that we have saved ourselves.

This is why there is in the reading so much emphasis placed upon what God has done:

God, who is rich in mercy… even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved… For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

Salvation is not something we have achieved for ourselves. Each time I baptise an infant I am visibly reminded that it is what God does, not what we do. Each child who comes to be baptised is utterly dependent upon the grace of God. And to ram the point home even further, the baptism service quite deliberately places the parents’ responses after the act of baptism. The water is poured and the words are spoken: “you have been baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” And then, and only then, do the parents make promises about what they will or will not do. Parents can not buy their children’s salvation, nor can we buy our own. It is by grace we have been saved.

And the letter to the Ephesians puts us all, everyone, into the same boat: “we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else”. We have very little cause for self-congratulation because we are just the same as everyone else. If we are in any way different from others, it is because of what God has done for us: “we are what God has made us”. We are what God has made us.

Interesting, isn’t it? When I look at my life, when I consider what I may have accomplished, what successes there might be, I need to pause and take a long hard look at myself: I am no different from anyone else; I am only what God has made me to be.

For each one of us that is true: we are what God has made us.

Does that make us uncomfortable? Do we really believe that? As a child of wrath, I am extremely reluctant to set aside what I have done.

And there is another dimension to this: note that the reading says, “we are what God has made us” (emphasis added). This is not just about us as individuals; this is also about us collectively, communally, as we make up the body of Christ in this place. And that is hard to take as well. So often, I have heard in churches around this state and this country about what “we” have done, how this is “our” church. We built it, we made it. Almost as if God had nothing whatsoever to do with anything.

But, whatever we have, it “is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast”.

Now, if we have to pause to identify that we as individuals are what God has made us to be, then we must also collectively, communally accept that we are what God has made us to be. If we don’t save ourselves individually, no more do we save ourselves corporately.

And there is one more thing that needs to be said about all of this: “we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” “For good works”. With great privilege comes great responsibility. Whoever God has made us to be, we have a purpose. And Ephesians is quite blunt about what our purpose is: good works.

To be a Christian is to be someone who is called to do good works. To be the church is to be a people called to do good works.

It is not enough to belong to a wider church that does good works; it is not enough to point somewhere else and say, “See, we are doing good works in the name of Christ.” Each of us, each and every one of us, was created “in Christ Jesus for good works”. Nor is it enough for us as a church to point to some individuals in our midst who are doing good and say, “See, we are doing good works.” As a community, we are created “in Christ Jesus for good works”.

We are not saved by good works. They have no power to earn us a place in heaven. Good works give us no reason to boast. But good works, if we are living the genuine Christian life, are the inevitable outcome of that Christian life.

This morning after worship we are going to spend some time together reflecting upon who we are. When we look at the profile of the congregation, regardless of the data we consider, the vision proclaimed on our planning day, irrespective of the size of our congregation or the sums of money in our coffers, the inescapable fact remains that, “we are what God has made us”.

Whatever we have, it “is the gift of God”. Amen.

A light shines in the darkness

A reflection on John 1: 1-5, 10-18, Jeremiah 31: 7-14 and Ephesians 1: 3-14, preached Sunday, 4 January 2009

I’ve been rereading some of my recent sermons. “Why on earth would he do that?” you’re thinking. Well, I wanted to check just what it is I’ve been saying to you in the last few weeks. We had four weeks of Advent – the Sundays of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love – and then Christmas Day and last Sunday, the first Sunday of the Christmas season. All of those opportunities for excitement and rejoicing in anticipation of the coming Good News. But after revisiting those sermons, I’m starting to think I may be a miserable sort of person.

It’s been good news and bad news, with plenty of opportunity to think about the bad news: there’s been wandering in the wilderness and AIDS and war and poverty and injustice and loneliness and sadness, and a church in decline in Australia, and even on Christmas Day I managed to talk about the Millennium Goals and the millions of people dying unnecessarily each year, deaths which we have the resources and the ability to prevent.

Cheerful soul, aren’t I? It seems I’m not so much a glass half-empty person, as a “someone took my glass and drank it, and even when I did have a glass, it wasn’t as big as everyone else’s” kind of person.

In my defence, however, I want to say that from the very beginning I have been putting the bad news together with the good. My starting point was to suggest that good news only makes sense in the presence of those things which are not good news. I’m not talking about bad news because there is nothing else. I’m talking about bad news and the Good News which breaks into that and transforms it, removes it, converts it.

There is a light which shines in the darkness.

In the beginning, all was darkness, and God said, “Let there be light”! John tells us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

There is bad news, but the Good News is greater.

By way of illustration, my sermon on this Sunday six years ago (yes, I even read sermons from other times and places) my sermon was all about Australia’s refugee detention centres, and it was about the prevailing attitude in some circles which seemed to suggest that refugees somehow brought their bad news upon themselves. Six years later, detention centres are no longer headline news in our country. Somehow, good news has replaced the bad; a light has come into that particular darkness.

Of course, that is not to suggest that we no longer have refugees in our country or that we no longer have detention centres, or that there is not still much work to do. Terrible damage has been done to an unconscionable number of people, some of which will never be healed. But there has been and continues to be a move towards the light of reason and compassion. A light shines in the darkness.

And those who believe in the light have been a major part of the change which has taken place. Christians have proclaimed the necessity of good news for those living in darkness.

It’s not often that I use three readings from Scripture on a Sunday morning. In part, it’s a time thing; it’s also a “how on earth can these readings go together?” kind of thing.

But this morning we have heard from Jeremiah and Paul and John, and all three of them are about how good news overcomes bad, about God’s great desire for hope, peace, joy and love in our world, in this time and in this place.

Jeremiah proclaims, “Sing! Exile will not last forever.”

Paul says, “Rejoice and give thanks. There is forgiveness for sin, and adoption for orphans.”

And John pronounces, “There is grace upon grace.”

Grace – that extraordinary love which imposes no conditions, no limits, no exceptions. In the face of all that would deny it, there is grace.

So, what will 2009 be like for us?

For the world at large, I’m imagining that it will be more of the same: more economic crises, more job losses, more natural disasters, more unnecessary sickness and death, more ills for the health of the planet; but there will also be more acts of random kindness, more cures developed, more children raised in healthy families, more expressions of love and compassion, more efforts to heal our fragile earth, more good news even as there is more bad news.

And for the church? What lies ahead in 2009? I’m imagining that Christianity will also experience both good and bad news. It’s likely that, in the developed nations, people will continue to turn away from traditional expressions of the faith in search of a different spirituality which they feel speaks more directly into their lives; and it’s likely that in many other parts of the world – Asia, South America, Africa – that Christianity will continue to grow as more and more people see how the Good News of Jesus Christ is extraordinarily applicable to their everyday lives.

And for us? The fact remains that we live with the former reality rather than the latter. That is the bald bad news. But the Good News is that there is a light which shines in the darkness. And the darker things appear, the more clearly the light shines.

The spirituality which people in our culture so desperately seek at this time is still the spirituality of grace, of love, of compassion, of relationship, of all those things which lie at the heart of our faith, that have always lain at the heart of Christianity, and will always remain at the heart of Christianity. The Good News is still good!

One extraordinary part of the grace of God is that we are invited, indeed commanded, to work with God in bringing Good News. We need to remember that it is God who is at work – each of our readings makes that abundantly clear; Paul says, “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to God’s good pleasure” – it is God who is at work and we are asked to join in with whatever it is that God is doing.

What will God do with us in this place in 2009? I don’t know. But I do know that, whatever it is, whatever it looks and sounds and feels like, it will be Good News.

The celebration of the meal we share each Sunday morning reminds us that the central metaphor of our faith is that of death and resurrection. We believe that God brings new life out of death. And we are called to hear and to speak words of hope, new life, new possibilities in a future with God.

Jeremiah, Paul and John tell us that God breaks into the world, for all those who are in need, in need of love and in need of hope. We are called to live hope-filled lives, proclaiming that God is with us, and praising God for God’s blessings.

A light shines in the darkness! Amen.

It's a miracle

A reflection for Christmas Day 2008

It’s a miracle! It is, isn’t it? That helpless infant lying in the manger is God come to earth, God born as one of us, Love made flesh. The tiny squalling child, entirely dependent upon his mother, is the Creator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of all, yet somehow one of us, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone?

 

It’s a miracle, but I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

 

I read somewhere that miracles are never answers to our questions; they are, at best, questions. Miracles are questions that set us seeking answers, in much the same way that the miraculous star sends the magi, the wise ones, far off into foreign lands in search of an answer. What does this mean? We must search for an answer.

 

The birth of the Christ child is a question: a “ Why?”; a “What is the point?”, a “What is the purpose?” inbreaking of the Divine into our human existence. And seeking the answer is our life work.

 

A week or so ago, I stumbled quite by chance upon a movie on TV. It was called “The girl in the café”. And I found the movie to be a kind of miracle; it was a question popped unsuspectingly into my life when I least expected it. (And isn’t that also one of the main criteria for miracles? We don’t expect them.)

 

The movie’s premise is quite an intriguing one: an aging career civil servant falls for a young girl he meets in a café. And he then takes her with him on his next trip, which just happens to be advising the British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the 2005 G8 Summit.

 

I don’t know how good your memories are, but the 2005 G8 Summit had on its agenda the Millennium Goals, the bold declaration made at the turn of the century to Make Poverty History. Now, the young woman turns out to be a bit of a problem for the civil servant because she keeps asking questions and she won’t stop asking questions, even when she’s in the presence of the Chancellor or the Prime Minister or even the heads of the other nations at the summit.

 

She asks, Why do 30,000 children die every day from preventable diseases?

 

Why are the major powers of this world spending obscene amounts of money each day on armaments and warfare when children are dying?

 

Why isn’t anyone doing anything when, for the first time in human history, we actually have the resources to halt poverty, to eradicate diseases like AIDS and cholera, and to provide education for all?

 

She even interrupts the Prime Minister’s speech at a special dinner, and this is what she says:

I don't know how much the rest of you … know about what's going on but my friend … tells me that while we are eating a hundred million children are nearly starving. There's just millions of kids who'd kill for the amount of food that fat old me left on the side of my plate, children who are then so weak they'll die if a mosquito bites them. And so they do die. One every three seconds.

[snaps fingers]

There they go.

[pauses, snap fingers again]

And another one. Anyone who has kids knows that every mother and father in Africa must love their children as much as they do, and to watch your kids die, to watch them die and then to die yourself in trying to protect them, that's not right. And tomorrow eight of the men sitting 'round this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don't, some day someone else will. And they'll look back on us lot and say - people were actually dying in their millions unnecessarily, in front of you, on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it happening and you didn't do those things. Shame on you. So that's what you have to do tomorrow. Be great instead of being ashamed. It can't be impossible. It must be possible.

 

The girl from the café keeps asking, “Why?”

 

“The girl from the café” is a miracle movie because it asks us questions just when we least expect it.

 

And the birth of the Christ child is a miracle for the same sort of reasons.

 

Why? Why does God bother entering into human existence? Why does the Almighty put on human flesh, identify with us? What is the purpose? What is the point?

 

And we cannot celebrate Christmas, truly celebrate Christ-mas, unless we are looking for answers, unless we are searching the Scriptures trying to work out why we have to have an incarnate God, why we have to have a baby for a Saviour, why can’t things just go along as they always have gone along without God having to get in the middle of it all. Why?

 

It’s a miracle all right – but it isn’t comfortable; it isn’t just a sweet story of a young mum and a beautiful infant and angels and wise men – always three, always men – and simple shepherds with woolly lambs.

 

It’s a miracle! The helpless infant lying in the manger: God come to earth, God born as one of us, Love made flesh, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.

 

It’s a miracle and it’s a question. It’s any number of questions.

 

How about, What does God coming mean for those millions of children who are hungry today? How about, Why do we need more presents when some folk don’t even have a roof over their heads? How about, If God thought the world was a good enough place to be, then why are we destroying it with our green house gases and our fossil fuels and our carbon emissions?

 

In just a moment we’re going to sing again. “Infant holy” is, I think, one of the sweetest and most poignant of the carols, but I wonder how we’re meant to respond to the last line. “Christ the babe was born for you.”

 

If Christ was born for me, then surely Christ was born for each one of those children the girl in the café was talking about too.

 

Christ the babe was born for you. (Click *)

 

Christ the babe was born for you. (Click *)

 

May this be a blessed Christmas for you all: one full of little miracles in the shape of questions, and full of searching. And may we be great in 2009. Amen.

"Peace" and its meanings

A reflection on Isaiah 40:1-6 and Mark 1:1-8

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, “peace” can mean one of three things:

1. Freedom from disturbance, or
2. Freedom from or the ending of war, or
3. Within the Christian Church, the peace is an action such as a handshake, signifying unity, performed during the Eucharist

 

The dictionary also tells me that “peace” is used in a number of common English phrases such as “at peace”, or “hold one’s peace”, or “keep the peace”, or “make one’s peace”.

 

Because this is the second Sunday in Advent, I would like to take a moment or two to consider some of these meanings and uses of the word “Peace”.

 

For a start, I’m not entirely happy with the notion that “peace” simply means freedom from disturbance. I’m quite sure that there are lots of people whose lives are basically free from disturbance but I’m not equally sure that their lives are truly peaceful: a prisoner in solitary confinement has a bed and three meals a day, but is hardly likely to describe their circumstances as peaceful. A patient in a coma in Intensive Care is free from disturbance but their family is not going to say that that is a peaceful situation.

 

Similarly, I’m not convinced by the definition of peace as an absence of war, any more than I would want to define war as simply the absence of peace. Yes, I recognise that the ending of hostilities between warring parties is a great and good thing: the end to death and destruction is to be hoped for and hungered for and celebrated when it arrives, but I would want peace to be something more than just an absence of war.

 

My problem with both these definitions is that they suggest peace is not something rather than is something: they tell us that peace is not disturbance and war, but they don’t tell us what it is.

 

Where we find the word “peace” in our bibles, it is most often the word used to translate the Jewish term “shalom”. But there is a difference between “peace” and “shalom”. Shalom is a positive word, a word to describe positive attributes, things to be sought after, rather simply the absence of something.

 

The Encyclopedia of Jewish concepts tells us that:

"The Hebrew word shalom has a wider meaning than the English equivalent peace, for it signifies welfare of every kind: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart..."

 Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts 
by Philip Birnbaum

 

When we celebrate the Sunday of Peace, surely these are the things we wish to celebrate: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart. These mean so much more than merely an absence of disturbance or freedom from conflict.

 

Last week, I spoke about hope in the context of good news and bad news. Hope is what we hold to when our circumstances are bad news circumstances. The family gathered around the bed in Intensive Care needs hope; they reach out to the possibility of good news. In any number of circumstances, in the midst of bad news people hope for good news.

 

And peace is a good news thing. Security is good news – when all around us the world is in financial turmoil, security is to be hoped for. Sound health is a good news thing as well – the family gathered around the sick bed will attest to that. Friendship is very good news – someone to depend on, to offer counsel and support, to share the journey through the valley of shadow: friendship is surely good news.

 

Where is John the Baptiser in this morning’s reading? In the wilderness. Where is the way of the Lord to be prepared? In the wilderness.

 

As Australians, we tend to think of the wilderness as a bad news place – without water, surrounded by dangerous creatures, without knowledge of where we are or how to get out of the wilderness, it seems like bad news.

 

But I wonder how we would feel if the story of who we are took place in the wilderness; if our identity had been shaped by a forty year journey from captivity to a Promised Land? Perhaps then the wilderness would be the place of hope. Perhaps then we would see the possibility of good news springing forth from the journey.

 

It is into the wilderness of our lives and the wilderness of our world that Jesus comes. He comes to bring good news; he comes to bring peace: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart…

 

Not that we will necessarily recognise these things because the world has been blinded by false definitions; the hopes of the world have been dulled to the point that we have come to believe that peace is nothing more than an absence of disturbance. Our culture has been deluded into thinking that prosperity means money in the bank, and contentment means shopping trips with credit cards.

 

In short we have settled for less than mountains leveled; highways smoothed; valleys filled. We haven’t dared to hope for a wilderness transformed with roadways straightened; ruts plugged. It has been beyond us to ask for rocks to be rolled from the doors to new life.

 

But it is into this disillusioned world that the Messiah comes, bringing hope and bringing peace.

 

I want to leave you with one last reference to “peace” in the dictionary – the phrase “to make one’s peace”. The dictionary tells me that this means “to be reconciled with another.” Jesus is the peace bringer, who hungers for us to be reconciled with God, with one another, and with ourselves.

 

And that is why we greet one another with words of peace in church: as a foretaste of that reconciliation, as sign of our unity, as a symbol of shalom.

 

Peace be with you. Amen.

Watch, wait, be ready

A reflection on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:33-37

A patient wakes up following an operation to find the doctor standing beside him. He’s not feeling at all well, but he manages to ask, "Doctor, how did it go?"
"I have good news and bad news", says the doctor.
"Give me the good news. I feel terrible and I need cheering up"
"The good news is that we managed to save your kidneys."
"That’s terrific. What's the bad news?"
"The bad news is I have them here in this jar."

 

My suspicion is that, if we are offered a choice between good news and bad news, we will want the good news. And not the good news first, but only good news. Being rational human beings we avoid the bad news if we possibly can.

 

I think that’s one of the reasons we like Christmas: it’s a good news time. A story about a little baby born in a stable – that’s a good news story. A story about a fat man dressed in red bringing presents to all the girls and boys – that’s a good news story. The whole idea of Christmas parties, gatherings of families and friends, gift giving and receiving, it’s all such a good news thing, isn’t it?

 

But our Bible readings this morning don’t seem very good news at all; they seem far more bad news. I mean, just listen to some of these verses from the first reading. God’s chosen people are speaking to God and they say:

   There is no one who calls on your name,

    or attempts to take hold of you;

    for you have hidden your face from us,

    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

(Now that’s bad news.)

 

    We all fade like a leaf,

    and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

(And that’s bad news too.)

 

   You meet those who gladly do right,

    those who remember you in your ways.

(Good news!)

 

    But you were angry, and we sinned;

    because you hid yourself we transgressed.

(Bad news.)

 

The reading from the gospel of Mark, the words of Jesus himself, aren’t terribly positive sounding either:

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come… you do not know when the master of the house will come [and] he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 

 

Sleeping when the boss returns? Bad news!

 

So what is this all about? This time of the church’s year is set aside to prepare for Christmas. So why the focus on bad news rather than getting excited about the good news that is to come? Surely we can prepare for the good news of Christ’s coming into the world without having to think about anything too depressing.

 

Or can we?

 

Perhaps, we need to face the bad news in order to recognise our need for good news. Perhaps, we have become so accustomed to good news – comfortable lives, security, good health, good times – that we don’t even recognise that there is something missing, some need in us that is not being met because we are anaesthetised by too much good news.

 

And the Bible is really excellent at this: pointing to what is real in this world to remind us that we need something from beyond this world. The Bible is a consistent reminder that the world in which we live is not just a good news world. There are countless biblical references to what is wrong, and each of those references is meant to point us towards what is needed to make what is wrong right.

 

Instead of living in a fantasy world, where everything is jingle bells and Christmas stockings and plates heaped with turkey and ham and enough food to provoke the most profound indigestion, instead of a fantasy world where everything is all right, we are asked to recognise a greater truth: all is not well, and Christ comes into the real world in order to do something about it.

 

Did you know that tomorrow, the first day of December, is the fiftieth anniversary of the day Rosa Parkes got on a bus? “Who is Rosa Parkes?” you ask. On December 1, 1955, a black woman got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in the United States. She was required to go to the back of the bus because the front was for whites only. This is the U.S. just fifty years ago. But Rosa Parkes was tired and weary from a long day of hard work, and she sat herself at the front of the bus and refused to move. Her small act of defiance is seen by many as the initiating event for the movement for civil rights in America; the whole Martin Luther King revolution which has made it possible for a black man to move into the White House began with a tired and weary woman who refused to change her seat.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to allow our dissatisfaction with the way things are to bring Christ into the world?

 

Another thing about the first of December is that it is World AIDS Day. Do you have any idea how many people in our healthy, rich, well-educated world are going to die between now and Christmas from a disease which could be controlled if not defeated through education and spending some money on making medication available where it is needed most?

 

But, of course, those who suffer from HIV/AIDS aren’t on our TV screens at this time of the year. They aren’t even in our country. So we can choose to ignore HIV/AIDS; this is a problem we don’t have to see unless someone is rude enough to disturb our good news preparations with some bad news.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to do something about bringing real good news into this world?

 

Jesus says,

Beware, keep alert… It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work.

 

There is work for us to do while we watch and wait; there is a readiness we have to adopt. Perhaps this year it is finding a red ribbon to wear tomorrow, the first of December, World AIDS Day, and to keep on wearing right up until Christmas to remind ourselves of the bad news and to remind ourselves that good news is needed and good news is coming.

 

Watch, wait, be ready.

 

Where will we look in the days and weeks to come? Will we look only under the Christmas tree? Will we only wait for Santa Claus? Will we be ready only for good news for ourselves?

 

Or will we look for the lost and the lonely, the despairing and deprived, the suffering and saddened? Will we wait with those whose daily news is bad news? And will we be ready for the good news that comes into our world at Christmas?

 

Watch, wait, be ready.