Month: August 2017

Sermon for the 11^th Sunday after Trinity

The 21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A – 2017

 

‘Look to the Rock’

Jesus and The Church

Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Matthew 6:20

 

Jesus Christ and his body the Church is the joining place of heaven and Earth. It is the link between the life of God the Creator and His Creation. It is the Sacrament of Sacraments, it is the Door of the Water of Life flowing into the Creation, and it is Obscure. It does not readily yield itself to human gaze or enquiry. Frankly if we are looking for a likely people on whom to rest our hopes, then the people of God down through the ages do not leap off the pages of history as likely candidates – and if we are looking for a likely Saviour, then Jesus of Nazareth – an obscure Jewish Rabbi of sorts, although he hardly fits the bill even within the Jewish Rabbinic tradition, who lived two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the then ‘global’ Roman empire, whom we are told died on a cross and some crazies assert rose from the dead – well put like that He seems the unlikeliest of Saviours.

No wonder that Paul speaks of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified as ‘foolishness to the Greeks’. Looking for a sophisticated message about the true meaning of your life? Nothing to see here . . . at least for the Sophists . . .

 

What is more, given all that, it is perhaps no surprise that the church speaks less and less of Jesus Christ, Son of God. It is easier and more in the keeping with the vague spiritual notions of an age which has lost its way to go on at length about ‘The Mystery of God’ – not that the chrsitian Tradition has ever been in denial about the mystery of God, but has insisted to the embarrassment even of those called to proclaim this faith, on Jesus of Nazareth as the only entry point into the Mystery of the existence of God – and the Door for the Life of God to be manifested in the world . . . albeit in obscurity. For facing the Crucifed One all our images of God as we would wish Him to be lie shattered and in ruins.

The notion of God as the one made in our image, shoring up our insecurities by triumphantly improving the world, in tune with the spirit of our age finds no referent in Christ and him crucified. It is easier by far to posit Jesus as a teacher of Wisdom, as yet another guru of The Human Potential Movement, telling us how fabulous we are if we only knew it – if only he had associated with the right people . . . If only God picked his representatives better it would be plain and obvious . . . if only God didn’t join himself to an obscure people as the vehicle of his Redemption . . .

 

 

Of course flesh and blood cannot reveal to Peter the truth about Jesus – who would have guessed?

 

And as her God is obscure and hidden so too are the people of God, although rather like the Wizard of Oz we like to puff ourselves up

Have Important Meetings

Build mighty cathedrals

But God in his mercy brings us low once more – directs our attention to the Rock

 

Look to the Rock! The prophet cries out ‘Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you’

Look to the rock from which you were hewn!! Abraham??

 

Abraham and Sarah? We remember that Sarah  laughed at God’s promise. God makes promises which we laugh at, and we join Sarah in her laughter  – We forget that Abraham laughed first. Abraham couldn’t see the Salvation of God, it took many years journeying before he began to learn to believe

 

Isaac, Son of laughter is the fruit of a man and woman who laughed at God’s promises. The first fruit of that promise – which grew into the people of God . . . who continued not to get it. Who are far from a picture of steadfast maturity in faith

Look to the rock from which you were hewn . . .

 

We do our children no good when we feed their imaginations with stories of ‘the heroes of faith’; airbrushed characters who subtly suggest to us that our salvation lies within ourselves, and that if we only pulled our socks up and generally tidied ourselves up, we could save the world

 

And Peter . . . The Rock . . . and now it is we who are laughing. Peter, the Rock???

Of course those revisionists of the history of the people of God get round Peter’s failings – his betrayal. His speech at Pentecost is the straw at which we clutch – suggesting to us that being a spiritual superhero is on the cards . . .

 

Again we airbrush the history

We conveniently forget if we ever knew, that years down the road, in Galatia, Peter is at it again, saving his own skin. Siding with those who think this whole Christianity business is a matter of what we do, of correct religious observances – not to do with God

 

‘Guilty by association’ we say – the God who associates himself with such as these, He cannot be The God . . . so we remodel. We move the Jew, Jesus away from the Centre and thus His Body The Church also. Lord knows we have more than enough reasons to do that . . . I mean, what can you say about a supposed Saviour who would hang around in such company??

Look to the Rock . . . Look To Abraham, and Sarah in their unbelief, Look to Peter in his cowardice, Abraham in his deception, Peter in his Arrogant presumption, Peter in his deceit, Abraham in his trying to do God’s work for Him, and what about the Church, do we not all have many reasons to reject the centrality of this body in the purposes of God . . .

The point is this – simply put the people of God down through the ages are, well they are sinners . . . because God in Jesus Christ doesn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners in need of repentance. Given that we believe in One who hung out with those at whom the world looked in askance, why do we suggest he has now changed? That he would now disassociate himself from those the world mocks?

Flight from the God who makes himself know to us in the obscurity of God’s sinful failing, lying and deceiving people – people who occasionally have flashes of brilliance, whom hear the word of God and speak it, but often are asleep to this Great Salvation – Flight from such a God who makes himself known in the obscurity of Jesus – is a flight from the reality of our human condition making us prey to ‘other gospels’  – disembodied gospels out there – if we don’t have to deal with the supremely messy people of God and their obscure Saviour hanging dead on a Roman Cross . . .

Trying to speak of God apart from the messy and often shameful history of God’s people, and apart from the scandalous particularity of our faith – that God was in Christ Jesus,  Reconciling the World to himself in a tortured twisted and broken body upon a Roman Cross, for the sake of a bunch of sinners – is to disconnect God from our Life – it is to break the Sacramental connection by which God takes hold of us – it is in and through this mess and obscurity that God takes hold of us and loves us and blesses us, and finally heals us from our Sin. It is the Way of the blessing of God

Look to the Rock! Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many

Look to Peter and how in the presence of Jesus the Truth flows from the Father into the World You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God! Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

Finally look to Jesus, the Christ, this broken Messiah, the Rock which Moses in his anger struck in the Wilderness, and that Rock was Christ – we look to Jesus the Rock for He associates with us – we sinners

The Rock on whom we feed in a sip of wine and a scrap of bread

Nothing to look at – obscure. Like his people once more in this age, nothing about Him that we might desire him – our Life – His Life in our hands at this table he has set for us

The one in whom our Father in heaven has made known to us – the Christ, The Son of the living God. The One in Whom heaven and Earth are joined in and through his body – His Church. And therein is not only our hope but the Hope of the whole world, foolish as it may well seem

Amen

Sermon for Evensong – 10th Sunday after Trinity – OT20A 2017

2 Kings 4:1-7
Acts 16:6-34

Encountering Grace – Encountering God

‘Grace to you, and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ’

I always head my sermons with a biblical text – and usually a reference – but in the case of these words, the references would be too long – for the Apostle Paul opens every single one of his 12 letters in the scriptures with this very same greeting. ‘Grace to you, and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ’. Even his letter to the Galatians, which dispenses with all of the standard courtesies of saying how much he is praying for them etc. has these words. Grace, Grace and Peace to you, From God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ

And there is a temptation to skip over them – to move on to the meat of the theology of Paul’s message – a bit like when you are graced . . . with the receipt of a letter, we skip over ‘Dear . . .’ not least because most letters we receive continue ‘Sir or Madam’ – from strangers who do would not call us dear to our face.
‘Dear’ an address which like so much of our language has lost its density, we just tag it on out of custom – we write back to the bank, or we did, even our writing has now been reduced to typing and that on an all but frictionless keyboard . . . ‘Dear Sir, or Madam’ and what follows the ‘Dear’ expressed precisely why we don’t mean ‘Dear’ Words without weight – no Density

But we should not pass over Grace to you, and Peace . . . For Paul these words are words from the stuff of his life as a disciple of Jesus – they express his being taken hold of by the Living God – they are not mere words. Paul’s culture unlike ours knows no such thing as ‘mere words’. By his Word, God created the heavens and the Earth. Words speak Matter – they are concrete. Paul speaks out of his Encounter, and his words are words of encounter. Grace TO you, Peace TO you, FROM God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. May you be apprehended by Grace – may it come to you, and so with Peace also . . . but that’s another sermon, or 50

Grace is a very familiar word to us as Christians – we sing Amazing Grace, one of the best selling Christian books of recent years has the title ‘What’s so amazing about grace?’ (many of you I know have read it) – but our Faith is in the Word made Flesh. Words in Our dictionary have form, density, materiality always guiding us into the encounter with this Grace which comes to us from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ – who is Grace in the Flesh.

It was John Wesley – that fine Anglican 🙂 – who added to the somewhat cerebral three legged stool of ‘Scripture, Tradition, and Reason’ a fourth leg – and an indispensable one – Experience. The heart of the Evangelical faith, is faith in the Evangel, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who comes to us from God the Father . . . it is in this encounter that Grace moves from being a concept, a nice word, to an experienced dense reality.

That move is the move to the Faith of the Apostles – the Density of Faith. Embodied. We can in our conceptual terms come up with a dictionary definition of Grace – but ultimately you cannot put it into words because Grace is the WORD. But where is Grace to be found? Rather like, or indeed very very like Wisdom, it eludes our searching. Rather Grace finds us, where Jesus is – in the very depths of our existence, in the deep places.

A widow has her husbands creditor banging down the door – demanding her two sons as slaves to settle the debts . . . Grace comes to find her in the person of Elisha (a prophetic figure of Christ) . . in the midst of her distress . . . Oil . . . the symbol of Life – Grace. John Newton in the depravity of his life as a trader in human cargo – in the utter shame of an inhuman life – is apprehended by Jesus. Grace

I think of a couple of encounters this week. With a woman who has an extraordinary ministry as an evangelist . . . but her husband is dying of cancer. She is called to speak at a conference but there is no place for him at the hospice and she doesn’t want to leave him anyway for she fears she may not see him again, and then as she told me, at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, the hospice ring, there is a place, he can go, and she can go and in faith she goes – literally between her home in Auckland and the conference in Wellington she has three encounters – three people encounter Jesus in her and through her, they are converted, they become Christian. As she put it to me, ‘it is Absolute Glory, in the midst of total Hell’ . . . Grace . . . On the Edge of death – Christ who tramples down death – Harrows Hell . . . the earthquake rips the doors of the jail away . . . those long imprisoned in darkness are brought blinking into the bright light of the Knowledge of the Glory of God in Jesus Christ. Someone else who in the hell of a divorce is apprehended by an angel . . . Grace TO you, FROM God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

So, Paul. When he writes ‘Grace to you, and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ’ – he knows what he is talking about. KNOWS. In the biblical sense (a phrase which always raised a titter when I was at school 🙂 ) For in the Bible the Only Knowing is the Knowing of encounter. It is deep and rich and messy – often it is bewildering for we are caught up in something much much bigger than ourselves. We have been sleep walking through life, and then Grace takes hold of us – throws us up – to use a wonderful word, it discombobulates us – throws all our categories up in the air. Paul has the world figured – he sets out to deal with this Jesus sect, and encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus. The vision is so bright and terrifying – he is apprehended by the Grace that has come looking for him, and he sets out on the journey of living by and out of that grace. All other bets are off – Grace has taken hold of him

So we find him living by Grace. Paul and his companions are swimming deep in Grace – attentive to its currents in the depths – ‘forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia – the Spirit of Jesus preventing them going into Bythinia – in Troas a vision, a call to Macedonia. Living by Grace as vehicles of that Grace – and finding Grace . . . going to the place of prayer, a rich woman – Lydia – a worshipper of God – in amongst the crowd, Grace finds her
On the way to her house they meet a slave girl trapped by a spirit of divination – her chains fall off – Grace. So Paul and Silas are thrown into prison – Grace is not always well received – but in the midst, they Know the Grace of God. They’re Deep Deep in its flow – singing hymns – full of Joy even in the dark place. They know the truth of God’s promise of Treasures of darkness, and the earthquake strikes – but why run off? Their freedom is to remain – Grace does this. I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who returns to Germany from England. Grace sets you free to live as free even though in chains. And free people are the only ones who can free people and so the jailer becomes a free man and the Grace spreads to his whole family . . . but what of us? When we sing ‘Amazing Grace’ do we Know that Grace?

 

A man is walking his dog alongside a lake. Absentmindedly he throws a stick into the water for his dog, which calmly walks across the water to bring back the stick. Rubbing his eyes in disbelief he repeats the stick throwing, . . . both times the dog walks across the water and brings back the stick. Thinking he is going mad he calls someone over – ‘Look at this!’ he cries and throws the stick out once more. The dog once more walks across the water and brings back the stick. ‘Amazing!’ the onlooker cries out – your dog!!! He can’t swim!!!

We may well see Jesus walking across the waves, but if you are going to walk on the water, you first have to learn the density of the water – how it will hold you up . . . it is the same with Grace. If we haven’t learnt to swim in it. At the turn of the C17 an otherwise unknown French Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote a short book. most people know it by its modern name, one which is light and spiritual and unchallenging. ‘The Sacrament of the Present moment’ – I have to say the original title ‘Abadonment to Divine Prividence’ far better sums up its thoughts. We Know grace – it comes to find us when we abandon ourselves to God’s goodness and mercy. it is so so so tempting and indeed easy no to do this, to plan for tomorrow and next month and next year – rather than to Seek his Kingdom and allow Him to bear us up.
If we haven’t found the incredible density of the Grace of God, have we even stepped off the side of the lake? Are we mere onlookers to this Grace? is it just a word, like the ‘Dear’ at the opening of a letter? Have we begin to paddle in the shadows, or have we found ourselves away from the shore, swimming in it – as our natural surrounding our true home? Can we bear witness to being borne by Grace

Often people will say – I just found myself in a situation where I had no choice but to rely on the Grace of God . . . to which it seems reasonable to ask ‘but why did you stop doing that?’ St Paul would say ‘why do anything else?’

For most of the churches existence bodily difficulty and hardship was known as a sure way to encounter the healing power of Christ. ‘To share in his sufferings’ as St Paul puts it. Today the physical and the spiritual are in our world all but ‘put asunder’, and we have lost sense that it is in the depths of the darkest experience that Grace meets us. The deeper we go in the life of Christ, the denser it is – and often the harder. For Christ went down into the very depths – he redeems and transforms from the bottom up. That is where he is – and we have to learn to let go and find our true weight, our true density, our Existence as embodied life in the Ocean of Grace From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen

 

Sermon for the tenth Sunday after Trinity – OT20A – 2017

Matthew 15:10-20

Fresh Water

‘Create in me a pure heart O God and renew a right Spirit within me’
Psalm 51:10

There is perhaps not graver danger to our Life before God than confusing what counts for a respectable life in wider society with that Life that comes from God.

As human beings grow ever greater in their own eyes – as wealth and technological developments lead them ever deeper into the deception that our lives are in our own hands, to be presented before God on the last day, if we indeed believe we will have to stand before God to give and account of ‘our life’ – more and more the words of older liturgies sound close to offensive.

Take for example the collect for Ash Wednesday

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Worthily lamenting our sins . . . ‘I’ve done nothing wrong – I am a fine upstanding member of the community

Acknowledging our wretchedness . . . ‘come now, I’m not wretched!’

Or indeed the words of the 1662 confession . . .

‘We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness which we from time to time most grievously have committed.’

. . . and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable . . .

Well pardon me, but is anyone losing sleep over the intolerable burden and remembrance of their sins?? When outwardly our lives look so good and fine – when many fine folk will no doubt bear witness at our funerals to ‘what a fine fellow – or fellowess’ we once were . . .

So of course our modern liturgies catch up with the prevailing mood – One of our liturgies says ‘God forgives you, forgive others, forgive yourself’ or as several folk have put it to me – ‘get over it, it isn’t that big a deal’. Of course if we live in and amongst people who are paragons of comfortable middle class morality – then of course we may well feel we can write such an insipid so called ‘absolution’ . . . but here and there, often amongst those whose lives are not so insulated from the reality of the lives of others, that is not the case – here and there a soul cries out to God in the night time – have mercy on me o lord, for you are justifiably angered by my sins . . .

Jesus of course lives as we do amongst such human beings – he associated with the lost sheep – those who Knew their sin and acknowledged their wretchedness. ‘as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ The Scribes and the Pharisees – those whose society looked up to – criticising Jesus for the company he keeps – for he has not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance . . .

For God looks not at ‘the public record’ – the plaques of attainments – he looks at the heart and Jesus is not unaware of ‘what is in a man’s heart’ The pharisees he called ‘white washed tombs’ For on the surface, as far as their friends and neighbours were concerned they were upright religious people – but on the inside they were dead. Outwardly righteous, inwardly dead – not even alive enough to notice their – evil intentions, murder (hatred of others), adultery (lust for others), fornication, theft, false witness (lies), slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’

One writer puts it like this – “The nature of sin can be easily overlooked in a “merely” moral approach to the Christian life. The “dead men’s bones” that lie beneath the moral surface were obvious to Christ. “We do not have a legal problem,” I have written, “We have a death problem.” “Dead men’s bones” are the result of the . . . corruption that is the very heart of sin. And the deepest and most corrupt sinners among us can also appear to be the most moral. If the morality of your life does not reach beneath the surface and into the depths of the corruption that is at work there, then your life is indeed an expression of moral futility.

An equally great tragedy rises from this untended inner corruption. The assurance of moral rectitude is fortified by the unwillingness to rightly acknowledge and bear the inward shame of sin. This dries up the well of compassion that should mark the soul. A gulf grows between the “morally” competent and those who are clearly and visibly broken by sin. True compassion would require the recognition of a kinship of shame.”

The writer here speaks of that separation between those whom society deems acceptable and those whom it calls unacceptable – the equivalent in our culture of the Pharisees on one hand and ‘sinners’ on the other When our sense of our moral rectitude separates us from others, it separates us from where Jesus is, who comes to seek and save the lost – he is with those who Know their inner state is a matter of shame.

I remember years ago a man who had had long experience of sharing the Good news of forgiveness of Sins in Jesus name – and for those who live with the shame of their inner state, it is THE Good News. He said how much easier his work was amongst the poor of London, for assuredly they didn’t need telling that they were sinners – the way they were ostracised reminded them daily of their need, and the news of a God who loved them and came to find them in their lostness and indeed heal their condition was to them glorious Good News

And what is God’s remedy? It is as the prophet Ezekiel says – a New heart – a New Life. Whitewashed tombs are full of death. those who are not alert to their inner desperate state as expressed in the confession and collect we began with are as St Paul puts it ‘dead in sin’. Jesus in dying for us, does not merely enact some legal transaction – he gives his life so that we might have it. He replaces that life of Sin with His life. To use a very timely metaphor for us here in Dunedin, he gives us a clean water supply, from one that brings death, to one that brings life.

A couple of points to close – firstly we began with liturgy, and our liturgy CAN be a reminder of this Gospel – the words of our opening Collect express this so well. Almighty God, before whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden – We come before God acknowledging that He is Looking at our hearts and Sees everything that is in them, and we do that because we seek his healing – so we ask ‘Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts’ week by week it is our prayer, let us not as it were come here, mutter these words and then go out and forget that prayer, ‘Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts’. How? ‘By the inspiration of thy holy spirit . . .’ by taking in the life giving water of the Life of God, the Life of the Spirit of Jesus. and the result ‘That we might perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name.

If we are obsessed with our own lives, with our outer state – there is little gratitude for one who is only concerned with the state of our heart – but if we are open and honest about our hearts and our need for healing – there is only love and worship for the one who comes to us in our distress with healing in his wings.

So we come, week by week, seeking the mercy of the great healer, and receiving his life. Finally we come to the heavenly banquet where we feast on his life. In bread and wine Jesus makes solid the medicine for our condition. As we come to receive communion, let us not do so unworthily, distractedly, let us not do so absent mindedly, but as those who know the state of their hearts, their need for deep healing, their inability to heal themselves – let us come to His table, for the medicine of Christ himself, the one who will save our Souls. The Good One

 

Amen

Sermon for Sunday 8 after Trinity – OT 18 Year A

 

Isaiah 55:1-5(7)

Matthew 14:13-21

 

The Reckless Kingdom

 

‘My Kingdom is not of this world’

John 18:36

 

Last Sunday, I spoke a little about that story which Ruth Burrows tells, of how we create this life for ourselves and carry it up the mountain to show it off to God, and then discover that God is not there, and that to find God we have to descend the mountain down a narrow perilous path, far too steep dark, narrow and dangerous for us to even consider carrying this precious vase of our life down . . . and we have to make a choice. Is it to be God or what the life we have careful made for ourselves??

For those who have ‘made much of their lives’ this might be a little hard to take, indeed it may be a little offensive. Rather like in CS Lewis’ book, the Great Divorce, where an Anglican Bishop refuses the gift of life in ‘Heaven’ because his great theology isn’t needed there, he’s too full of himself . . . The early church suggested that certain trades were incompatible with life in the church. Being an actor, for example, for it required deception, or being in the army, for it required you to kill people – I’m not entirely sure what the early church would have made of religious professionals either . . .

 

This last week Sarah and I were sharing our regular coffee, and she was telling me about an old friend and her children. How they were all committed Christians although one was an Army Officer. She wondered how the young man squared his faith with his work. After all, it might be reasonable to suggest that there is a bit of a problem with killing people ‘for a living’.

We do find ways to justify ourselves in this respect – we are very good at justifying ourselves, telling ourselves stories about ‘just wars and the like’, calling these killing entities ‘Defence’. But in the light of this weeks readings, I followed up her question with another? Why do we assume his father doesn’t have at least as big a problem as his son, after all he is an accountant . . .

 

For there is no accounting in the Kingdom of our Father – ‘Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!’ Reading the prophet Isaiah we think – what on earth is going on? Where’s the profit and loss account! you can’t just give food away . . . but then if we found ourselves amongst the poor we might perhaps think that it was the announcement of Salvation . . .

 

‘You can’t just give it away’ I know of far far more reasons for not giving to those who ask me – lots of them – I am a child of my culture, i’ve been well drilled in it. ‘they will only spend it on . . .’ Of course we give all sorts of money to all sorts of people without running a moral inventory over them despite the fact that addiction to drugs and alcohol, and any other list of ghastly behaviours seems not to be a unique problem for the poor . . .

 

I have an association with a family who live in a remote part of rural NZ. two parents and a son, the son and the father have cancer. The father struggles to get any work, the police come round and get on their case because the boy isn’t often at school – because the father can’t afford fuel for his car – they are often hungry – drugs for treatment are beyond them, trips to hospital mean they go without more food . . . Escape from the economic order, from the unforgiving bottom line sounds like Salvation to such people . . .  for the world of money and economics is utterly impersonal and utterly unforgiving. If you don’t have money you don’t eat – if you don’t have money you can’t keep warm or a roof over your head – that’s the bottom line . . .

 

Why live with an open hand to the poor? Or, perhaps to put the question better, why live with an open hand towards those who are undeserving . . . because after all that is one of the labels we use to avoid living with an open hand . . .Well I’ll give you two reasons that are at the end of the day the same reason . . .God

 

Firstly lets examine that ‘they’ll only spend it on . . .’ line. Firstly I ought to make a disclosure – I from time to time waste money on alcohol . . . 🙂

 

Our lives are lived moment by moment before God. Someone might say ‘you can’t trust this or that person’, but Jesus says ‘give to everyone who asks you’. To whom am I answerable? My life is a breath – so I am in town and someone asks me for money for food say, and I say no, and then am run down by a bus. So I stand before God – with my fist clenched . . . If I am answerable to God . . . now there is a fairly common get out at this point, it goes like this ‘God has given you a brain and understanding so that you can discern the people you should help and the people you shouldn’t’ Notice three things 1) does that come from God? Doesn’t that sound rather like what the serpent promised ‘you will be able to tell good from evil . . .’ After all, Jesus says ‘give to everyone who asks of you’ 2) If you are at all alert to the state of your heart, you will know that you will find ANY reason to avoid doing these things. If like me you are regularly confronted by these situations you will know that tug. I’ve spoken about Dante’s diving comedy a bit these past weeks – Hell is populated by people who had good reasons in their own eyes for doing what they did . . . and 3) Jesus doesn’t make those distinctions . . . For Jesus’ ways are not our ways, and they have nothing to do with the world of money – of accounting, of making distinctions

 

All of us stand before God – Jesus has given us his command – so I close my hand to someone I judge to be undeserving, I get run over by the bus – and do I really think that God is going to say, ‘well done, I’d have done the same thing in your place . . .’ Really??? This God who loves everyone without distinction???

 

Jesus feeds the five thousand, not counting the women and children. Not counting . . . he seems a bit slack in his counting . . . He has compassion on them, without distinction. He has healed their illnesses and he notes their hunger. Note the disciples question – ‘where could we buy . . .’ They can only imagine a world where everything has a price, and therefore where people are priced out . . . This is not the Kingdom of God – The Kingdom of God is in our terms utterly reckless!! Jesus feeds the these people whether or not they deserve it . . . This is what the Life of God is – it is poured out without calculation – without expectation of return. Many of those people whom Jesus fed will be in the crowd that cry ‘Crucify’ indeed they are the crowd that cries Crucify. for as of Old God fed his people in the wilderness and yet they threw off his rule – so too do these people . . . they prefer another kingdom, a kingdom where they are God and can judge who gets fed and who doesn’t. Who imagine that what they possess is theirs – even their own life . . .

 

To become Christian is as St Paul reminded us last week  to be conformed to the image of his Son . . . to become Christian is to become like Jesus, and we become like Jesus as we spend time with Jesus learning from him, obeying him and conforming our life to His – that our lives might reveal the Life of Jesus, who feeds even those who will crucify him

 

Perhaps to be in the kingdom of heaven requires us above all to change our lives??

 

 

Isaiah’s announcement of Salvation – of bread without money or price – is followed by a plea – a plea from the Very Heart of the Living God – Sadly one which those who prepare the lectionary have missed out – for it is the Therefore – in the Light of this Kingdom – in the Light of the overflowing abundant generosity of God . . . Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; (Don’t put it off . . . you life is a breath! Not one person here can say with assurance that they will live to see tomorrow . . .) let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; (Stop trying to justify yourself – stop walking in the way of judging between people – James the brother of Jesus calls this evil an it is) Rather – Repent! If you have two coats and your brother has no coat . . . if you have plenty of food and your brother has no food – how difficult is this????  Repent – return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, Do we not desire the mercy of God – or do we not see how much we need it???

Return to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. God is no calculator . . . he doesn’t tot up – he doesn’t know what accounting is – bread without money or price . . . he even feeds us with his own life every week in the Eucharist. Living with closed hands to others is to live in the darkness, it is to live ignoring God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ – who dies for ALL, without calculation . . . He is utterly reckless with his Love and looks for those who are his children – those who are conformed to the image of his Son, who live with such abandon, for they See the Great Treasure of the Kingdom and Love God with an undivided heart . . .

 

God’s Life is not life for Himself – neither is that of those who are in truth his children . . .

 

A moment will come when ‘the Lord will take away’ . . . but the Gospel, the Good News is that Now – Even Now is the day of salvation. We feed on this salvation in Bread and Wine – let us not fail to discern God’s reckless love of us in the sacrament