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!

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

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.

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.