Category: Sermon

Abandon Distractions . . . Behold!

Sermon for next before Lent – OT8 Year A
Isaiah 49:9-16
Psalm 16
Matthew 6:24-35

The words of God through the Prophet Isaiah “Behold! I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands”’

Behold! The everlasting God has carved you into the palms of his hands. Behold!

Of course that was not what we heard – we heard ‘See!’ There are times when one despairs of the committees which translate our scriptures out of Hebrew and Greek. The Command ‘Behold!’ occurs more than one thousand three hundred times throughout the Scriptures. Yet the NRSV has it just 27 times outside the New Testament and not at all in the New Testament. And this translation is the most widely used now in the Western Church . . . Perhaps it is no surprise that we have lost sight of God . . .

One thousand three hundred times, behold! Behold! Behold! The first word God directly addresses to the man and the woman in the Garden? Behold! God said, ‘See!’ NO ‘Behold!, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’

We are perhaps the first culture in the history of Mankind to have all but lost this facility. So people will say – ‘oh it is an old fashioned word for looking – so we will get rid of it’ Look! See! That will do.

Looking and Seeing as we shall discover in our Lent course are ways of blindness. They reduce the World to a set of objects for our use, for manipulating for putting to our own ends – because we do not ‘Behold!’ We perhaps do not even know how to begin and after all there is SO MUCH to SEE!!
We look this way and that – we lost the facility to Behold, rather we have advanced to the highest art form the facility to create a million and one things to look at. ‘Look here!’ Look there! Did you see?? we are held captive by a blizzard of images – and we can no longer Behold the Image of God. The author Matt Crawford – a motorcycle mechanic philosopher 🙂 – argues in his book ‘The World beyond your head’ for the right ‘not to be addressed’. He is writing about the fact that everywhere you look someone is trying to grab you attention – trying to get you to buy something. A local school is ‘Recognised by Apple as a distinguished school for innovation, leadership, and educational excellence.’ Recognised by Apple . . . Does no one See? Are we blind to this?? Have you ever taken time to consider their logo . . .? We have created an existence in which we are surrounded by a million and one human artefacts – look! Look! Look!

Returning from retreat at Ngatiawa on Monday I took the bus to the airport. Disoriented by the sudden blizzard of visual stimuli having spent a week in the bush –  I glanced at the screen where our route was shown – only to see the name of a stop followed by ‘alight here for Burger King’.

And our distraction leaves us open and vulnerable to everything under the sun. We are an age like no other plagued by mental health issues and anxiety disorders. A young girl comes on retreat. She wants to know ‘what is the wifi code’ and is disturbed to find that there is no wifi available.’how will I keep in touch with what is happening in the world?’

In the time of Jesus – worries were sharp and upfront and pressing – what WILL we eat? what WILL we drink? What WILL we wear? And Jesus advice sounds at first like no more than a pragmatic answer. Who by worrying can add an hour to his life??

in the movie Bridge of spies – a Russian spy played by Mark Rylance, is caught in America. As his lawyer (Tom Hanks) explains his situation to him, of how he may well face the electric chair he seems unperturbed, so he asks ‘aren’t you worried’. Rylance putting more power into three words than most can in thirty three thousand replies ‘Would it help?’ But Jesus wants us not only to wake up to the futility of worry. He desires that we ‘Behold!’ And so in the fulfilment of those words first spoken in the Garden of Eden, he says ‘Behold! The birds of the air! they neither reap nor sow nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.’

The gentiles worry about these things – those who do not know that they are the children of God. Who do not Know God as their Father – who do not Behold his engraved palms and see themselves there. Those are the people who worry. Your Father in heaven knows you need all these things. So strive for his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you . . .

What does this mean? to strive for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness?? It is to desire God through all, above all and in all. it is nothing new – It is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and souls and mind and strength – it is to make every effort to enter in through the narrow Gate – to Love Him above and through and In all.

As St Augustine puts it – in the words of our collect – our hearts are restless – this is a matter of our desires – Look here! Look There! Did you See? Our hearts are restless until they find there rest in you.

Jesus has been teaching this all the way through the Sermon on the Mount. Don’t store up for yourselves treasure on earth – where your treasure is – there will your heart be. If you set your heart on the things of this world they will fail you – they will rust and the moths will get them – or someone will hack your bank account – or or or a thousand and one worries . . . all because our hearts are not set on God. Where your treasure is there will be your heart . . . you will be devoted . . . you will gaze longingly on it . . . and the eye is the lamp of your body – so if your eye is set on things that will decay, then so will your heart – your Life, your existence. you cannot serve two masters – you will hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other

For the first thousand years of the life of the Church, the church new this – they had a strong word for distraction – they called it ‘fornication’ – it was to have as it were those adulterous eyes that look for life anywhere but to the Life giver. Eyes set anywhere but on God – looking, Seeing, but not Beholding.

There is the lovely story of a man sat in a church  – same time each week he would turn up – finally the Vicar asked what he was doing sitting there. The man gave him a beatific smile – Oh, I just sit here smiling at God and he smiles back at me . .

The Psalmist speaks of this beholding – ‘For God alone my soul in silence waits – for my hope comes from him’

A brother came for a word from the Elder. Father, give me a Word/ Love the Lord your God with al your heart and soul and mind and strength’, The brother went form his teacher. Ten years later he returned, ‘Father, I have learned that word. Give me another Word. the Elder replied ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ The young man went out from him never to return. Such I suggest is the deep work which beholding God in Silence does. This Lent, if we have begun this work, let us continue. If we have put it down, let us pick it up again. If we have not yet picked it up, do so. for truly ‘Behold! He has engraved us in the palm of his hand’ This is not one fact amongst many – it is THE Fact – It is Life – it s The living God – it is We who are found there in His hand. It is there that our True Life is to be known

Amen

Sermon for Fourth Epiphany Year A

Micah 6:1-8
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed are the WHO?? (This sermon is given in a very different form to that written below)

“There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

I wonder if anyone can tell me who said that??

Well it comes from the lips of one of the characters of the more interesting philosophers of our age, JK Rowling . . . Lord Voldemort . . .

And I think it sums up in practice if not always in explicit theory the prevailing philosophy of our day, indeed of any age. Our hopes are either raised or dashed by the people, we the people put in power . . . Let’s be honest about this, we are not particularly interested in the moral character of our leaders, rather we just want them to ‘get the job done’ (as long of course it is the job WE want them to get done.) Given the choice over the effective brute and the ineffective Saint . . .

It’s interesting in this light to consider a couple of things – firstly why we make the choices we do for those who lead nations, where we have a choice – and democratic processes . . . well enough said about that. The Scriptures are really NOT big on Kings, Emperors, Leaders in general – indeed the idea of The Leader is in a very large part something which grew out of the movies 🙂 . . . but we still look for the person who is going ‘to get the job done’

So again locally what do we really want in a new bishop??? What are we interested in when in a few months time we come to elect Bishop Kelvin’s successor? It’s one of the ironies about human life that the more closely we know people, often the more clearly we see their faults and so are tempted to go for someone we only know vaguely, but then again, as the old saying goes ‘better the devil you know . . . than the devil you don’t’ yet be under no illusions as to where your choice lies 🙂 Perhaps out there there is some bishop with a proven track record in restoring crumbling dioceses, they have a really impressive CV – come over really well in presentations – and they want to be our bishop . . . They ‘get the job done’, then there is someone else, not at all much to look at. Known to be kind, humble, meek, pure in heart, with an at times sad disposition about the world . . . but will they ‘get things done’?? What do we look for in a bishop? With whom do we agree? Which way? The way of Jesus? Or the way of power?

We might of course readily say, well the Way of Jesus of course, but after a few hours wrangling over it that old temptation to ‘get things done’ can rise to the surface . . . after all Jesus’ track record doesn’t exactly speak volumes does it – Yes he was a Good man, but at the end all his followers have given up on him and he’s dead on a Roman Cross . . . oh yes there were rumours that that wasn’t the end, but . . .  we live in the Real World. The world of Realpolitik go ‘getting things done’

Of course that ‘realistic’ desire to ‘get things done can extend right to the heart of religion. If we just . . . pray hard enough, if we just worship in the right way, if we just get ourselves sorted out. The prophet Micah leads us off down this track pondering “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high??? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?’ Will that be enough to twist his arm?? How about something bigger??? ‘Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?’ Perhaps that doesn’t quite cut it – it’s really not all THAT sacrificial  – hang on a minute ‘Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”’ The Religious world is just as prone to Power – Power over God to ‘get things done’ Ramping it up. If we get a thousand people praying for this . . . if we give more . . . if we . . . if we get the right bishop, the right leader . . . if only . . .

And God is having none of it ‘He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you?? but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? While the World calls for bigger and louder and more and more Impressive, more ‘powerful’ – the Human scaled response is all that God calls for – in our day to day lives, our daily bread existence, act justly with the people you meet, don’t seek to win out over them, be fair, Love Mercy – treat others as you yourself are, fragile and frail and like the grass of the fired that is here today and gone tomorrow, but a breath of wind . . . that’s all you are – so walk humbly with your God. Wake up to the scale of your existence  – lose your illusions . . . for in that small thing you may find you are much closer to Him than you might think

As St Paul says ‘Jews demand Signs’ Show us a sign that we might believe win you they said – do something spectacular Jesus! ‘Greeks demand Wisdom – well worked arguments – a decent apologetic – explain your faith!’ and all we have is ‘Christ crucified’ . . . humanly speaking no power at all . . . I think it is probably fair to say that if no one has ever laughed at you for your faith, you haven’t really explained it to them properly 🙂 And then says Paul – just look at yourselves – Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. . . humanly speaking the church was never meant to look like much – funny how we get anxious as in the eyes of the world we become ‘irrelevant’, small, nondescript.

Blessed says Jesus, blessed are the nobodies . . . In Lent we’ll be looking at some of the ways our faith doesn’t make sense in The Modern world . . . not with any view to change it, mind you . . . there’s enough folk trying to do that, not enjoying the way in which the world ignores all this sin and salvation stuff, this message of the cross . . . but lets be honest, look at those Jesus says are blessed – no wonder we don’t get a ready hearing – Blessed are the WHO . . . Really?? The Meek shall inherit the Earth?? These words of Jesus are SO hard to hear in our culture of Power of ‘getting things done’, of the irrelevance of Good or Evil, just Get Results – as I have mentioned before these words of Jesus so stick in the throat of some Modern Christians that they try and avoid them – to paraphrase one popular writer, ‘God’s Kingdom is so wonderful that even the losers get in!!!’ But in so doing rejects not only Jesus’ words, but Jesus himself – the poor, mourning, meek one, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaker finally persecuted and killed for righteousness sake.

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God he uses metaphors about things small and hidden – not obvious, not demanding our attention. In amongst all the people putting their money in the treasury, he picks out the widow putting in her mite, the woman who brushes her hand against the hem of his robe, the child in their midst. the lost coin, or the one sheep in a hundred or the mustard seed . . . ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. Jesus was low and despised, he was mocked, laughed at, spat upon and finally crucified – and we expect that our faith will seem respectable?? Wise? Significant??
It is hardly surprising that when St Paul goes to Corinth taking only this message of Christ and him crucified he goes ‘in weakness and in fear and in much trembling’. Trusting God to work through his Holy Spirit to bring people to faith – because sure as eggs is eggs, only God can bring us to faith in the One revealed to us in Jesus on the Cross, for He in no way tallies with the way we are taught to understand the world – Blessed are the WHO???

Finally we have a stark choice – the one the world holds before us, and of which Voldemort’s words are the unveiled truth, “There is no good and evil, there is only power . . .”, or the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus sounds to us so other worldly – after all how is THIS the way to get things done?? Pray by all means, but come on ‘we need to get things done!’ But if the words of Jesus sound otherworldly, perhaps it is because the world in which we live is so distorted??

For in the same way that God chose the weak and poor and the foolish – those ignored in the world, – those are the same people who receive his message so readily. The poor in Spirit, the mourners and the meek. Those with no power of themselves to save themselves find themselves to be the recipients of God’s salvation.

Occasionally people rise to power who effectively throw off the mask – who agree with Voldemort not only in deed but in word, but the way of the World is in practical agreement with him even if it has not the self understanding to admit it  “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.” As someone commented about Donald Trump this weak – ‘well at least you can’t accuse HIM of being a hypocrite’ WYSIWYG . . .

there are only two ways, the way of power and the small hidden weak poor foolish merciful and humble way of Jesus. Each of us Is small, our days are few and race by like the wind – let us not waste them – let us follow Jesus in his humiliation, for finally the way of Power will be revealed to be a Lie. This we believe – let us so live

Sermon for 23rd Sunday after Trinity – Ordinary Time 31, Year C
31st October 2016

Luke 19:1-10

Change??!!!

An acquaintance of mine is a chaplain at Rimutaka in the Hutt Valley – following an encounter with a particularly notorious Mongrel Mob member she found herself calling into question her whole approach. He was interested in becoming a Christian – and she was teaching him all about Christian beliefs and reminding him over and again of God’s unconditional love and acceptance for him, when he finally lost his patience with her and shouted, ‘but you’re suppose to tell me how to live my life!!’

That there might be a Way of existence – the Christian life was more than ‘knowing you were loved by God’ and a set of beliefs – whilst she wouldn’t deny it – she was far too vague about what that might mean

Another story. Sarah and I were doing the tourist thing – sat on the floor of a typical Fijian dwelling, discovering the ‘pleasures’ of kava [not to be confused with Cava . . . 🙂 ] whilst listening to the chief. He was the Methodist minister for the community and spoke at some length and without embarrassment about their ‘Christian’ way of life together, how they all shared the little they had and never closed the door to a stranger. After a while this became too much for a young Australian tourist – – well I think he was Australian . . . 😉 – who burst out, ‘but what right had those missionaries to tell you how to live? Imposing their views on you!’
The chief paused, put down his kava bowl, looked him in the eye and said, ‘young man, our people are very very grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and for those missionaries who gave everything to bring it to us for, before they came . . .

we used to eat each other . . .’

Perhaps there really was more to this Christian Existence than ‘living YOUR life, knowing you were loved by God’, plus a set of infinitely variable beliefs about that God. That, to become Christian was somehow to change – or perhaps, to be changed?

Last week we considered the Pharisee – part of our difficulty in hearing about the Pharisee is that we think we know what a Pharisee is – but, as we explored last time we are perhaps more like the Pharisees than we like to think – for example, an important element of ‘being a Pharisee’ is thinking ‘I don’t need to change. After all, I am a good person and my life doesn’t harm anyone else.’ Pharisees are ‘Respectable’, fine upstanding members of the community. Certainly not like those Mongrel mob sorts, and have certainly NEVER!!! had a taste for eating other human beings. The judgment of the behaviour of others requires a sense of security in our own goodness – and whilst I am sure the Pharisee would say ‘well of course no one is perfect . . .’ I guess he gave little thought to his own need to change

So we come to a story about a tax collector, but not this time, a parable. The story about Jesus encountering the tax collector Zacchaeus – and it is a Wonderful story, and like so many of the ‘stories of the Bible’, we actually miss how wonderful it is as we have become so accustomed to hearing it 🙂

Imagine for a moment if you will that we are coming to this story afresh, and have been paying attention to the gospel week by week – this IS important, the Gospel is itself a whole story. We don’t hear the Gospel by taking a chapter out of the flow. That would be like reading a novel as if it were a set of essays which you could read in any order. Luke has gone to a lot of trouble to set out ‘an orderly account’, and the order matters.
So, recently we’ve listened to lots of Jesus’ teaching about the terrifying perils of wealth. The last time we encountered this together was a couple of weeks back with the Dire parable of the Rich man and Lazarus – with the chasm fixed between the two, in life and then in death. Then – although we missed it – Luke includes the story of the young man, whom was unable to follow Jesus, because ‘he was very rich’. How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God’ Followed by the agonised question of those who heard him, saying ‘Who then CAN be saved??’

And in-between The Pharisee and the Tax collector – the Pharisee, just like that Wealthy ruler – ‘I have kept all these commandments since my youth!’ – and the tax collector, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’, who went away justified rather than the Pharisee.

So if we’re paying attention, it seems Pharisees and the wealthy are OUT, Tax collectors and sinners are IN . . . but!!!!

. . . ‘Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And, behold [!] there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the chief among the [tax collectors], and he was rich.’ Luke says – Behold!! That strong form of look, or see – Behold – he is the Chief tax collector – a sinner amongst sinners – AND He is RICH!!
On the one hand, The tax collector went home justified, on the other, the Rich man ended up in Hades with a gulf fixed – and ‘it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle . . .’ if we have been paying attention, Doctor Luke has got us now on the edge of our seats 🙂 ‘Chief amongst the tax-collectors AND he was rich . . .

Let’s read on  . . . Zacchaeus – whose name by the way and somewhat provocatively means ‘Righteous . . .’ was seeking to SEE Jesus – he was trying to Really See him, to BEHOLD Jesus – and of course we know Zacchaeus cannot see him for the Crowd – The Crowd was doing the Crowd stuff, Getting in the way . . . ‘for he was a little man . . .’ 🙂 But Zacchaeus WANTS to SEE Jesus and will not be stopped, so he runs ahead and climbs a sycamore tree . . . how do we know it is a sycamore tree? Because it says so in the Greek, συκομορέαν 🙂

Well as Jesus is walking along, he lifts his eyes – Zacchaeus is a little man – he would have to look up to see Jesus and as we know, tax collectors can’t life their eyes to heaven, rather heaven lifts His eyes to a tax collector. ‘just’ to see, Jesus of course doesn’t need a special word for Really Seeing, because that is all he does, his vision is not clouded. Jesus looked up and said to him ‘Zacchaeus, hurry, come down, today I am going to dwell in your house’

‘Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.’ Zacchaeus wants to See Jesus, and thus Jesus wants to come in to be with Zacchaeus 🙂

So he hurried down and Rejoiced to welcome Jesus . . . [David and Michal??]

Meanwhile ‘when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner!’ . . . looks like a whole crowd of pharisees, of course Everyone despised the tax collectors, the whole crowd, and Zacchaeus would have been Notorious – a Chief tax collector. The tax collectors took their cut, and Zacchaeus took a cut from the cuts!! In this encounter, nearly everyone IS a pharisee . . .

And so we have come to the crux . . . How can this be resolved? We know that Jesus is ’the friend of notorious sinners’, BUT it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God . . .’ Is the door shut or is it open – well of course it is open – He rejoices that Jesus has come to his house – and Everything is Changed, most especially, Zacchaeus.

‘And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.’

Here is the crux, here is the difference, here is what really matters. For Zacchaeus what really matters to him is he wants to See Jesus and Jesus wants to be with him and THAT changes everything. Jesus hasn’t asked Zacchaeus to do anything – but He is SO happy that Jesus has come to be with him that He spontaneously opens up to the generosity of God. He SEES Jesus, he GETS Jesus and He just wants to be like Jesus.

The Pharisee thinks he is living a good life, the Young ruler, just wants to ‘live a good life’ – they want some tips on getting it right, or to have a sense that THEY have got it right. Careful, measured, have I met the requirements of the law. They are not interested in Jesus except to see whether he measures up, or as a teacher of timeless truths

Zacchaeus is under no illusions, he KNOWS he is a Sinner – he KNOWS he doesn’t measure up, and he doesn’t want some tips on the good life or the virtues, or living better, He wants Jesus, He wants LIFE and in wanting to See Jesus, Zacchaeus is Set Free from that which held him, his riches. This Love and Life that he has encountered overflows from him – there is no carefulness here – If he were the Rich young man, who wanted to be right by the law, well The Law says, ‘in a case of defrauding another, repay, plus twenty percent.’ Not Zacchaeus, in Jesus he has discovered Grace in abundance, welling up to eternal life – it is pouring out of him –  ‘Lord, if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will repay him four times as much – the Law says 20%, but Zacchaeus is now living out of the Generosity of God, forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven, not 20%, but 20 times 20%, 400%. God’s forgiveness is Rejoicing, God’s Generosity is Overflowing

The Christian Life is utterly a Life lived out of all that we have received – as Jesus says, ‘those who have been forgiven much, Love much’

God is not carefully calculating with us – he sends his Son, He gives everything he has for us – in Jesus, the Salvation of God. Like Abraham, he responds out of Faith, giving all that he has – he Sees Jesus, he believes in Jesus and his Life CHANGES beyond recognition. Jesus has come to stay – the Life of Jesus is now beginning to pour out of him.

The Christian Life IS the Life of Jesus – As Jesus says ‘Today, Salvation, Life eternal overflowing and in abundance, Salvation has come to this dwelling place where I have come’

May we too desire above all to See Jesus – to live out of HIs abundance day after day after day. May we throw off the careful calculations of the young ruler, the self security of the pharisee and the crowd, let us leave all that behind to follow him and be changed from one degree of glory to another, we who with unveiled faces BEHOLD HIM. May we truly desire Him, for in truth he has come to seek and save the lost and ‘with God all things are possible . . .’

Sermon for Sunday 9th October, 2016
OT 29 Year C

Luke 17:11-19

‘Turning back . . . to Jesus’

If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’ Luke 17:3-4

One of the lovely co-incidences which mad Rose’s wedding such a joy for me personally was working with one of my former colleagues in Bradford, Robin Gamble, someone for whom my respect is unbounded.

Robin is a born evangelist with a desire for people to come and know Jesus, and even at the end of the wedding service he was issuing an invitation to any who had been touched by the palpable blessing of God on our worship, that they might come and explore faith with him!

Today’s gospel reading put me in mind of Robin for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was one of his enduring complaints that in presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to children, we often distort is and water it down, and that this has an unhelpful effect when they come to encounter the church and the person of Jesus in later life. He used to put it like this ‘When people are young we inoculate them with a weak form of Christianity, so that when they get older, they are in no danger of catching the real thing!’ And of course we can see this working out in this familiar story of Jesus encountering the ten lepers.

It takes little is any imagination to hear the Sunday school teacher re-inforcing the voice of our mother ‘now then, what do you say to the kind man?’ – saying ‘Jesus wants us always to say thank you!’ But whilst giving thanks IS a Christian virtue, this bourgeois form of politeness – saying thank you to those who are kind to us, is nothing but an inoculation against Christian Gratitude – which is shockingly dangerous to our ears. As St Paul puts it, Give thanks in all circumstances . . .When you are ill, give thanks, When people assault you give thanks, When you are hungry, give thanks . .  . The perfect expression of Christian gratitude is found in the words of Job, when everything he holds dear has been taken from him – ‘Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

Although it ought to be pointed out  that the very fact that we have to be taught to give thanks surely reveals something  we’d rather not admit about our human condition, whatever this story of the ten lepers is about, we should flee any attempt to turn it into the tasteless gruel of a moral story about ‘saying thank you’, which inoculates us against the outrageous nature of Christian gratitude.

So what might it be about? Well, I remember something else about Robin, in particular his sermons. As I have already noted, his one desire was that people might know Jesus, and his sermons reflected this. As anyone who had heard him over any period of time would attest, Robin only had three sermons – all of what he said followed one of three patterns. Either ‘Come to Jesus’, or ‘Come closer to Jesus’, or, if you have been close to Jesus but drifted away, ‘come back to Jesus’

Now its always worthwhile looking at the context for a reading to better understand it. St Luke isn’t haphazardly putting material together – he like Robin is an Evangelist – proclaiming the Evangel, the Good News, which is Jesus himself – that God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself, that Jesus Is the place of that reconciliation.

Just a few verses earlier, and curiously committed from our reading last week, we hear these words of which Brett reminded us: “Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’” And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’

What is Jesus saying here? If they turn back to you seven times a day, day in and day out and say ‘I repent’, you must forgive? He is saying that you must put no obstacle between that person and Jesus. To encounter you seven times a day, to turn back to you seven times a day, mist be like turning back to Jesus himself, who forgives everyone for everything. He says ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble., therefore ‘Be on your guard! Be alert – be attentive!! Don’t forget whose servant you are!! Do not be an obstacle to them meeting ME. You Must forgive – you must not put a stumbling block in the path of your brother or sister however weak they are – you must not get in the way – if they encounter you, they must encounter my radical forgiveness.

They turn back, and they encounter Jesus, and to encounter Jesus is to encounter the Salvation of God . . . So we turn to the encounter of Jesus with the ten lepers.

We are told that Jesus was passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee. He was on the border somewhere – in an age without fences and walls and border posts, he was in that curiously undefined area – where he meets ten lepers – and of course their leprosy would have meant that they were pushed to the edges – they are even on the edge of the village in this borderland. ‘Ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  Why ten?? Well as we shall see in a moment, matters of worship are in the background here. You will remember the encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, and how the conversation gets onto where you should worship. This stuff mattered hugely, and of course the lepers were excluded from the Temple, THE PLACE in Judaism where you went up to regularly to worship. They couldn’t participate in worship because they were ritually unclean. BUT they could still engage in public worship, as long as there were ten of them. Ten was if you like the quorum for worshipping together – [note how Jesus reduces the quorum to two or three gathered in his name . . .] – primarily for Public praying.

But when you are the lowest of the low, you don’t get to choose your fellows, so in order to pray together, the 9 Jewish lepers have no choice but to get together with this Samaritan for public prayer,  BUT Pray is what they do!! ‘Jesus, master, have mercy on us!’ they cry out, publicly praying! ‘Jesus, master, have mercy on us!’ The most basic of prayers, and one known well in the Tradition of the Church, the Jesus prayer. ‘Jesus, have mercy on us’ – this utterly transformative prayer which reaches deep into who we are as it reaches deep into the mystery of the Living God. ‘Jesus, master, have mercy on us’ Out of the depths we cry to you O Lord. On the edge – shut out by their disease – they get together and publicly pray, to Jesus.

And he Sees them – He is the God who sees, as Hagar, the mother of Ishmael call him, El Roi. Jesus Sees them – it is the strong Greek word which traditionally we translate, behold – he sees them and says ‘Go show yourselves to the priests  . . . and as they went, they were made clean’

Now it is worth noting here that there is a profound act of faith on behalf of all ten. Here they are, in the nomansland between Galilee and Samaria – unclean – keeping their distance . . . and Jesus tells them to go to the priests . . . and they would have known that to do so would have resulted in their rejection! For they are still leprous. Go to the priests . . . but just as when you have nothing, you have to make do with the people around you to call them friends, so also, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose . . . still it is an act of faith, and they act in obedience to the Word of Jesus, ‘and as they went, they were made clean’. They epitomise the ‘unworthy slaves’ of whom we heard last week. They have no life of their own, so they respond to this command of Jesus the master – why not? They have no sense of their own worth or anything else and discover the wonder of a life lived in obedience to Jesus . . . and we hear nothing of them again, they are cleansed and become fit to enter the Temple once again, to worship with the crowds.
Their affliction lifted, one is now ditched, for they’ll easily make up a worship quorum now . . . their uncleanness now dealt with they are free from having to associate with the unclean Samaritan – There is one who still cannot come to the Temple, or can he??

When Jesus responds to the Samaritan ex-leper, he uses an unusual word. Now Jesus of course spoke Aramaic, but Greek was a public language. It was used widely on notices – for Jerusalem had visitors from all over as we know from the story of Pentecost, many of whom wouldn’t speak or indeed read Aramaic, but who would all know  Greek, pretty much as English is a global language at present.
Jesus said ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’  The Greek word used for foreigner is not found anywhere else in scripture, but it would be well known to any visitor to the Temple, where the very same Greek word, allogenes, was there for all to see, as in ‘No foreigners!’ Rather like post Brexit Britain, the Temple was a place where foreigners were told in no uncertain terms, keep out!

They were excluded from the place of the worship of God. But they had their own places of worship – upon Mt Gerizim, the Holy Mountain. The big dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans was precisely this – where did you worship . . . so the nine Jewish lepers go off to find the priests at the Temple – but what of ‘this foreigner’  . . . surely he’d go off to Gerizim?? We all have our own places of worship . . .
One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Jesus Saw the ten lepers, but only one, ‘this foreigner, this allogenes’ who could not approach the Holy of holies, Sees Jesus, Sees Who he is . . . he falls on his face at Jesus’ feet in an act of worship . . . when he saw that he was healed, he turned back  . . . to Jesus . . . and there he finds the much deeper healing. ‘Get up, go on your way’, Jesus says, ‘your faith has saved you’

When Jesus commands his disconcerted disciples ‘if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’ He is saying to them, in my name, in obedience to me, you become the gateway for the deepest of all healings . . . after all, which is it easier to say? Your sins are forgiven you, or ‘take up your mat and walk. Reconciliation is the heart of what God is doing in and through Jesus. Not to be reconciled to God in Christ and through that reconciliation to be reconciled justas deeply to one another is to miss out on the Salvation Life in and through Jesus.

And what of the other nine? ‘Were not ten made clean? The other nine, where are they?’ Day after day the goodness of God is poured out upon all people – in food, and sunlight, in clothing and warmth – week after week we come to his house, to Hear the word which brings Life, to feed on the bread from heaven . . . but do we give thanks? Moreover, praising God, do we fall on our face before Jesus in Worship?

Within just a few short years, the Temple is destroyed, never to be rebuilt – for God’s Temple, God’s dwelling place was now fully established in the Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of His Son. There is Life, There is Healing, There is Salvation, In Jesus and Through Jesus and with Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit. And he still is that place today, now and forever, wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there He is.

A time is coming when all the places of worship will finally be closed, but the place of Salvation is always the Same, yesterday, today and forever. The Samaritan turns back to the place of healing and Life and Salvation – he turns back to Jesus. May we do likewise.

Sermon for Sunday September 25th, 2016, 18 after Trinity, OT26

Luke 16:19-31

‘when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

‘Hell’, said John Paul Sartre, ‘is other people . . .’ Now I must admit that I am a little confused trying to figure what Sartre meant by this saying. French existentialist philosophers are not always the easiest to understand, but part of what he was pointing at was in a sense something quite Christian – that the mere existence of other people places responsibilities upon us, responsibilities which are inconvenient to our lives and which we are very good at avoiding . . . even in ways to which we have become oblivious.
Like it or not, there is something deep within our fallen human psyche which leads to us avoiding those who are ‘not like us’ – even down to those beside whom we will sit on a Sunday morning 🙂 And this has deep, genuinely tragic consequences for society, community, and most sadly, even the Church.

By way of example, just this last week I was reading a most disturbing article from the UK written in the wake of the success of the Paralympics. It said, ‘don’t forget in the midst of all this hype, the plight of the profoundly disabled in this country’. It was a very distressing read.
In short, government policies have led to huge reductions in the amount of care the profoundly disabled are entitled to. The article told the story of a paraplegic woman with significant needs – who had had her care hours cut from 64 hours a week, to 7 as part of the reduction to local authority budgets. She had no continence problems, yet was now required to wear incontinence pads, for under the new system she was no longer entitled to the help which would mean that she could get to the toilet when required . . . Shocking, no?

Yet, here is the rub. The council in response to her protests suggested she asked her neighbours for help . . . I wonder how many of her neighbours even know her, let alone think that somehow THEY have a responsibility towards her?

One of the reasons I am very wary of those who argue long and hard for Christian’s involvement in politics is that for the Christian, the neighbour is not an abstract or a statistic, they are our neighbour, the person in the gutter in front of us, the homeless person we encounter on the street, the families in our community who often go to bed hungry. Not a problem to be solved, but a person to be loved. Jesus, in fulfilment of the Law and the prophets sums up Torah in the Greatest and second commandment – Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, Love your neighbour as yourself. Neighbour love can in effect be summed up in the golden rule, do to others as you would have them do to you.

If we were in need, would we want someone to be engaged in politics so people like us weren’t in need or would we want someone to come and care for you. And before we answer, well its both / and – just remember, you are the person left to sit in incontinence pads day and night whilst people fume about poor government policies – the person who has to wear incontinence pads all day, the person whose children are going to bed hungry in our city – in their place what do we want? Yes, it may well be wonderful to think that there are people out their ‘fighting for your rights’, but how long do I have to sit in my filth before the ‘unjust structures of society are fixed . . .’ Surely we want to see another human being, come to us . . . from the other side of what must seem like a gulf, fixed.
And perhaps, just perhaps, if we heard the gospel and believed it in obedience to Jesus with his command of radical neighbour love, we might find we didn’t actually need such structures, which will always be unjust . . . Whilst some criticise those Christians who speak of heaven in terms of pie in the sky when you die – a society in which each is cared for according to their need must seem a similarly, perhaps more abstract version of heaven to those who are hungry and lonely and cold, and sat in incontinence pads . . .

Political structures. Systems of ‘making sure these things don’t happen, are profoundly deceptive substitutes for human relating. Worse they contribute to our gradual distancing from our neighbour. Imagine  for a moment if we lived in that perfect state, where our neighbours had no needs that we might meet. We might be able to live our own lives as we wish. It would be Sartre’s vision of Heaven – but in truth this is the Christian vision of Hell.
The irony is – we aim at abstract versions of heaven, blind to our own biases which keep us avoiding our neighbour, and perhaps like the rich man in the parable – we may be surprised to wake up in the other place.

And this is true of the church also.
Last week at Synod I perceived an example of just how the system separates us out, and how we don’t see it. Of course it had been staring me in the face for years, and I had been captured by the same blindness to the narrative as everyone else – I have been to so very many Synods – about 75? And many associated with budgets and fair share formulas, and over and again I imagined that this was somehow a Christian conversation – rather than an example of how we have been taken captive by what our own St John calls, ‘The World’. So year in year out, we try to get a fairer formula for how parishes contribute to the financial aspects of our life together . . . and then last week, after all those years, I saw what was happening

There we were and discussing the budget and the ‘fair share’ – and in a line of similar comments, someone from parish X got up and said that they couldn’t possibly pay the extra $2500 share requested as it pushed them into even more unviability. A few moments an another speaker later, the Archdeacon of Parish X stood up and said how as Archdeacon they Could be very happy with the proposals, as overall the Archdeaconry was being asked for $9000 less overall . . . yet they couldn’t support the new formula for Parish X was suffering so . . .

You see? The system, the political structure had separated us out, for management convenience and then we had not only acquiesced in that, but it had become our way of understanding the world. The idea that all the parishes in the Archdeaconry might get together and SHARE what they had with one another, to either take the pain or the gain together had not crossed their minds, and to be fair I have been in that same conversation so many times, and not seen it myself. It had taken me more Synods than even Bishop K had been at for this penny finally to drop . . . And as I have pondered this, it has become clear that in other ways, the political organisation of the diocese has actively kept us from the difficult, messy business of trying to have a genuine common life

Of course . . . it would mean sitting down together, Face to face. Could we do this without judgement? Parishes which had had their bills cut, their debts forgiven, might need to help pay the debts of others . . . I thought of our own archdeaconry and what it might be like to sit down together to begin that conversation . . . and then I thought, ‘oh, maybe the formula is a better way after all . . .’ after all, Hell is other people . . .

Love of the real neighbour is HARD, because we are sinners, and in part that means we unconsciously avoid the other – we sin in ignorance – a gulf we don’t see exists between us. In an odd sort of way, our difficulties over life together make The Kingdom of Heaven seem like the other place. Much of that gulf is found in things we don’t even see or realise. In socio political structures, in the power of money to separate us one from another. As I said, no one seemed to see that we might possibly sit down together and share out the share – it was as if it had been cast in stone that each parish must pay in separation from the others, we just need to make the share fair, but the formula will never in truth be ‘FAIR’ Such a concept is an abstract and The World delights in such abstract concepts as ‘social justice’, and ‘challenging the unjust structures of society’ – because it keeps us from the plain commands of God, to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Structures, mechanisms, organisations become our way of at once seeking at once to obey the command, and avoiding it.

Our parable today shows what happens in the end when we do not cross the Actual Neighbour gulf – it gets deeper and wider and deeper and wider until in the final judgement it is fixed and we cannot pass from one side to the other. What happened at Synod made me wonder if we had reached that point, where the Judgement that Christ comes to announce is fully enacted – although there were also signs that we might not have got there quite yet.
Imagine the plight of that poor disabled woman in the North of England – she knows that fixed gulf which no one may pass over in that remark from her local authority ‘perhaps a neighbour could come and help you . . .’ Like Lazarus being told, ‘you hungry? Perhaps the rich guy next door might feed you?’ How devastating to hear this in a modern urban liberal democratic state, where we are all Individuals and community has all but disappeared . . . Yet does the rich man who might help, feel the gulf as sharply? I know that increasingly over the last couple of years, the reality of that gulf for me has become more and more apparent as my life has got tangled up in the often chaotic and dangerous lives of those who have nothing.

Jesus parable is  stark. The curtain is drawn back on ‘The World’ and its ways and everything is revealed for what it is. “The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.”

If we have been paying any attention at all to Luke’s gospel these past weeks we should have seen this coming. The gospel is the announcement of the Mighty River of the Justice of God, Israel’s God, ‘coming with judgement to save us!’ Announced by Mary ‘The hungry he has filled with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. We should have seen this coming.  Following that song of vindication for the poor and the weak, along comes John the Baptist – calling people to a baptism of repentance. When the crowds ask ‘what should we do in the light of this gospel announcement’, the answer is simple. If you have two coats, share with the one who has none. If you have food, share with the one who has none. Simple – but The World has changed this. Someone who has no coat or no food becomes an abstract symbol of a failed abstract society – a gulf is coming into being, not fixed but it is there, but slowly one thing after another conspires to make the gulf deeper and deeper, We should have seen this coming. As Jesus said ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. Woe to you who are rich for you have receive your reward’ ‘Use wicked mammon to make friends for yourself so that when it fails you, they will welcome you into eternal homes . . . Live this way, because surely you can see what is coming??

We know nothing about the Rich man, he is so disconnected from his neighbour, he himself has no identity, no name. He has ceased to exist in the world. we do not even know his name. Who knows, he may have been a political figure working day in day out to ‘fight for a more just and equitable society’, then driving home past the line of the hungry and the homeless, comforting himself with the thought that, ‘one day even that guy at my gate will have something to eat

The parable says, you should have seen this coming – this was what the LORD has always said would happen. The Rich man, finds his ‘social superiority’ the thing that had perhaps kept him from going to Lazarus, was now ineffective in getting Lazarus to come to him. So he calls to Father Abraham – ‘send him to my brothers and warn them!’ And Abraham says, they have the Moses and the prophets . . . they should be able to see this coming. Jesus remember comes only to fulfil the Law and the prophets – in a sense there is nothing new, except for this one thing – God’s final Victory is revealed in that he raises Jesus from the dead, and of course the gospel is addressed to those who know this – what difference does it make to us? If death itself is overcome, then what is there to fear from crossing the gulf now?

The Christian way of making the world a better place is living as if heaven is already here, breaking in amongst us and sharing that news with those around us, that in Christ God is breaking down every barrier between us – reconciling that greatest gulf between God and the human and thus making the bridge across we might walk to the neighbour, sharing in what we have with one another. Revealing the Life of the Risen one amongst us – amongst us . . .
And this is where it starts . . . As I said, at Synod we were challenged to talk together about the simple matter of our parish shares and how together we might help one another as parishes. For if we cannot do this simple thing, do we truly believe the LORD will entrust us with the treasure of The Holy Spirit, the Life of the Kingdom? Again – it may come as news to folk that Diocesan Council has decided that ten out of 14 church buildings will close in Dunedin by 2020 . . . a political answer to a problem of our common life. Surely if the gospel is true we might as the Anglicans in the city come together to think, pray and share with one another what wisdom we might have. It is not as though there are all that many of us! What vision is there that the LORD grants us? Or do we in truth believe Sartre? Hell is other people, we’ll allow the politicians to fix things between us, to fix the gulf in place.

Are we unable to do even this little thing, this small act of crossing the gulf set up between us in our separated parishes? Do we really have a gospel to proclaim?

God is coming with judgement . . . coming with judgement to Save his people – we of all people should be able to see this coming.

Sermon for 12th Sunday after Pentecost, OT19C

Luke 12:32-48

Let your waists be girt and your lamps lit

whilst back in the UK, a dear friend gave me the present of a book about his homeland, where he grew up, in the PNW of the USA. In its early chapters it is dominated by the story of the great Columbia River which empties into the pacific between the states of Oregon and Washington. At that point of collision where mighty river meets the worlds largest ocean (if not its most terrifying) the seas are so rough and terrifying that for many years sea farers didn’t even realise that a river lay behind them – and to this day even those charged with rescuing those from the waters, and those who pilot ships into the Columbia live in fear of those tumultuous waters.

For almost all of its history the Columbia was as terrifying as its outfall. Whirlpools and rapids made the navigation of the river far from straightforward, but as modern humans have done almost everywhere now, the river has been tamed by dams. Where once one might have regularly expected to be hurled into the foaming waves, now people waterski.The great flow broken into people friendly lakes for fishing and what we have been trained to call ‘recreation’ – the River has disappeared. And the church herself lives in constant danger of doing the same with Holy Scripture. The words of a friend of mine ‘My concern with the scriptures is to look for contemporary answers to contemporary issues’ is symptomatic of such taming. The text now reduced to little more than a somewhat confusing encyclopaedia of ‘spiritual problems’. So we are reduced to sitting aside from Scripture, distancing ourselves from the invitation to find life in and through them. For as the Columbia was once a scene of vibrant life and its taming has led to ecological devastation, so our attempts to ‘tame the scriptures to make them serve our ‘concerns’, has led to the imminent death of the church in so many parts of the world [And, let the reader understand, this is no mere metaphorical parallel]

So Sunday by Sunday, if we are careless, we come to a gospel reading as a little snippet, a thought for the day, a little something helpful to tuck away, rather than an encounter with the Living God, whom no one may see and live. From riding the terrifying rapids clinging on for life, we are reduced to spiritually moribund tourists on deckchairs – most of us, lets be honest well past the age even for waterskiing!

And Luke’s gospel, if we dare approach it so, is like a mighty river in full flow – of a whole. Its end in its beginning, the tumultuous climax known even as its waters are first seen high in the mountain air of the Birth Narrative – for those who Hear Scripture, like those who navigate rivers, we Know where this is headed. At the outset this Mighty River is framed by two great prayers which form the Gates of the life of the church in her daily prayer – the Benedictus in the morning, the prayer of Zachariah at the birth of John the Baptist and The Magnificat in the evening, The Song of Mary which heralds the Birth of Jesus – And out through these flood gates flows the Story of God’s coming with judgement to save his people. Judgement and Salvation woven together. So John comes and announces the one who is coming the thong of whose sandals he is not worthy to untie – the one who will baptise you ‘with the Holy Spirit and with Fire’. Judgement and Salvation!! And these Themes are the flow, the rapids, the whirlpools, the rocks and the occasional still pool in the journey of this River as it flows insistent, urgent, with a power that overwhelms towards its [] as it joins with the mighty Ocean that is the Living God.

So when we hear the Gospel, we do not come as those who are set apart from it, for as the baptised we have been thrown into its waters. In that light, to say that we have domesticated Scriptures, Worship and the life of the Church seems almost to obvious as to be of comment – we have not ‘come to church’ we have he Living God, to come to share with all the heavenly host around the throne of Grace with thousands upon thousands of others, hidden from our sight yet present to us by the sight of faith.

So last week – we may remember the story of the man who built barns – this is no mere fridge magnet ‘nice idea for the week’ ‘There’s more to life than your stuff’ – which we all agree with, go home and do not even begin to think about what it requires of us – no this is a parable of the coming Salvation and Judgement of God. This is coming! It is present in the words of Jesus. ‘You fool! this very night your life will be required of you, and who then will get all your stuff?? Your life reduced to a stuffed owl . . .’ Jesus says – in the light of God’s Presence, in Judgement and Salvation, to live like this is as mad as setting off down the Columbia and into the ocean on a child’s beach toy. It is a call to wake up to existence!! One of the great myths of our existence is a loss of the sense of our fragility – here and there there are still faint voices calling us to wake up – I remember for myself one of those was the news when I was about 20 that a friend, just a few years older ‘just dropped dead’ in London . . . I was too insulated from such stuff – modern life, insulated as it has made itself from the reality of existence in the world had told me that these things didn’t happen, that I would live a long life . . .

And so it is in this light that the words of Jesus to his disciples are to be heard – not in the sight of a river that has been dammed to make a pleasant lake, a little gospel nugget – hiding the river from us – but in the sight of the mighty torrents – for they only make sense when we are alert to our predicament and our place. God is coming! God is present!
Jesus is not offering us a ‘thought for the week’ – ‘try to worry less, after all what does it acheive’ not leading us into some sort of Zen detachment from life – rather he is speaking to those who are in the full flood and trying to hang on – ‘do not be afraid little flock’. A good parallel would be where Jesus is asleep in the boat in the midst of the Storm – and rebukes them for their fears! ’Oh ye of little faith!’ –
So these words ‘Do not be afraid little flock’ are to be heard in the context of the great flow of the Gospel – in the announcement of God’s coming in Judgement to Save his people . . . and then seemingly Jesus pushes us even further into the flood – Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . . for after all, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give You the Kingdom. In the midst of the flood of Life in which we encounter the Judgement and Salvation of God, what is it that we are given to cling to – the promise of Our Father, the One who has taken us to himself in Jesus – that he desires to, that he is pleased to give the kingdom to this tiny – humanly insecure flock.

And then this little phrase. ‘Let your waist be girt and your lamps bright’ The pilot of the Colombia river straps his crew to the deck with a double line and equips them with emergency flares and locator beacons should they be thrown into the maelstrom, as indeed they are from time to time. Jesus likewise tells us how to be equipped in the midst of the flood, in the light of the Judgement and Salvation of God – in these two ways – let your waist be girt and your lamps lit . .

But, we may well ask – what does that mean? Is he just saying be ready, or is there substance to these phrases. Again we need to be caught up in the flood of the revelation of God in the scriptures. Our contemporary translations often do not help – we heard about ‘Dress yourselves for action’ but this rendering of the words of Jesus actually takes us away from picture that was highly recognisable to GOd’s people throughout the ages. ‘Gird up your loins’.

In the Scriptures there is perhaps no book which more speaks of this Storm of the encounter of the human with the Living God –  this judgement and Salvation  – than the Book of Job. Job finally is addressed by the LORD out of the whirlwind and is asked ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.’

To Gird the loins was an action which would be heard as ‘make yourself ready for the conflict’. A man would be working in the fields, enemy forces would be coming over the hills – the cry would go up – gird up your loins!! Prepare yourself for the coming storm! And so they would take their long robes and wrap them up over their waistband – Girding their loins so that they could run! Do not be deceived – you will face the LORD and that encounter will be just like the encounter of the LORD with Job. Prepare yourself!! This is coming. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by the many lakes of the river – the river still heads assuredly to its Source. You will see Him face to face – and who may abide the day of his coming?

Yes, but how!! Simply by living deeply into this reality in our daily lives. Through prayer, Through self examination before God, through throwing ourselves into the Majestic River of the Living Word. For our End is every before us in and through Jesus Christ – the Beginning and the end. As the life of a river is present in its source as much as it empties into the ocean, so our End is ever before us in Jesus Christ. Guiding and directing deeper into our life in him, so that that day might not catch us unawres, like a thief in the night. Yes, the Encounter with God is every bit as Challenging as those mountainous waves, but we are not unprepared . . .

And so also ‘let your lamps be bright’. Of course these words of Jesus about a master returning from a wedding – find a powerful parallel in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins and their oil. or lack of it for their lamps. But what might it mean?? Of course unless we are immersed in the story of God’s people and indeed Luke’s gospel itself we might just wander off and put any old meaning which seemed amenable to us upon it. But we do not, instead we attend to lamps and understand that the lamp always indicated the presence of God. Aaron the priest was commanded not to allow the oil of the lamp of the presence to go out form before the Ark of the covenant. Unfortunately we live in an age of ‘symbol and metaphor’ where one thing is separate from another – but for God’s people the lamp in a powerful sense Was the presence of God. When God left Israel to her fate for a season, the Light of God is seen leaving the temple. the Angels of the Church in Revelation are warned, lest their lamp be removed.

The lamp is a very real sense was and Is the presence of God. Let your lamp be bright. but what might that mean for us? Well, as we pay attention to Luke and if we have travelled down the river of the gospel, we have already heard Jesus say, ‘Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.’  The ‘Eye’ here should be understood as what the Church calls ‘The Nous’ – the Eye of the heart – that place within your body where we See God – where we Know His Presence. For in the same way that the lamp in the Temple was the Presence of God before the Ark of the Covenant – so your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit. The Oil of the Lamp? The Holy Spirit. Let your lamp be bright, to quote st Paul, ‘Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit, with whom you were sealed for the Day of redemption . . .

I think we ponder very little this profound mystery, that as the baptised, our very bodies are Temple’s of the Holy Spirit of God – what care we might take of them, and indeed of that lamp were we just a jot more aware of this reality. As St Paul puts it again, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

in the light of God’s coming with Judgement to Save us, so much of that with which we fills up our lives looks like so much broken flotsam and jetsam, so much detritus. The man who builds barns, that will crumble to dust and be over run with rats, even Martha – God coming with judgement to save his people comes into the house but in the Light of God coming with judgement to save his people . . . And of course that light of apprehension is the Gift of God. As I was sharing with a doctor whom I had to see on Friday, Faith is a Gift – It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, but we get upset and worried, distracted by many things, pleasure, wealth and care . . .

Just a couple of weeks ago we heard Jesus say to us hear in this place – ‘Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?’ Later that week I saw a post on the internet which asked – ‘what do we do when it seems that God has given us a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg?’ it went viral – and many people praised its wisdom . . . sadly, for it completely missed the point, that God’s good pleasure is to ‘give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. What is the Kingdom which it is the Father’s good pleasure to give? What is it but his very life!! ‘If you, though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him’ God gives to all who seek all that is needed to ready ourselves for that Full encounter, and he continues to do so, day in and day out, week in and week out – in prayer, in confession, in reading of the Scriptures, and in the Eucharist.

To quote the magisterial 8th Chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans

He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God is coming with Judgement to save his people – do not be afraid little flock for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Let your waists be girt and your lamps lit, for you know not the hour – and do not be afraid . . .

Loving God with all you have and all you are, and loving those you meet as if they were your very own flesh and blood is the fulfilment of the Law and the prophets, that is it is Union with Jesus Christ.

Everything that gets in the way of that state of reconciliation effected in Christ is Sin. When Jesus talks about Money, he talks of it in terms of Sin, for Money ‘gets in the way’ . . .

Imagine for a moment going for a meal. The person who serves the food is obviously in a very bad mood. Whoever cooked the food clearly isn’t a very good chef, it is badly cooked and close to unpalatable, and whoever is looking after the housekeeping hasn’t done a very good job, for their are gravy stains on the table linen.

Question – how might we respond?  The answer is, as always, probably dependent upon the context.

This might be a meal at the home of a friend. Their life is troubled, hence the bad mood, they have never been taught how to cook, and with the way things are housekeeping is not anywhere near the top of their list. But because the person is your friend, then (one might hope) we will be far more concerned for their well being than the ‘quality’ of the ‘experience’. We may know them well enough to discern that actually this is the best meal we have enjoyed in their company – that they have extended themselves for us despite everything. (Of course, it may be that such a person may not be someone we would want for a friend. . . for food like anything else can be an idol, keeping us from others . . .)

On the other hand, we might have gone to a cafe or restaurant for the meal. What now is our response? We are wired to have a very different response – after all, ‘we paid for this . . .’

It might be that we go to a restaurant where the waitress has just acrimoniously split up with her boyfriend, the chef is doing his best and really is in the wrong job, yet it is all he can get to keep body and soul for himself and his family together, and the company they outsource their linen cleaning to went bust the day before. The manager is in despair . . . Yet none of this is important now.

There is of course no difference between the two except that in one case we are divorced from those who are doing their very best under trying circumstances to feed us. Money has got in the way. Who the people are, their lives and circumstances are of no interest to us. We paid for this! Life has made restaurant critics of us all – well those of us who can afford such luxuries . . . (We might add that the idea of paying to ‘eat out’ is a rather odd one in itself when you think about it, but another time perhaps . . .)

Put another way, money is very effective at keeping others at arms length. Indeed it could be argued, this is precisely why we invented it. It depersonalises our neighbour, and in the process reduces us also to objects, perhaps to ‘uncaring and obnoxious customers’ (My daughters, all having worked in the dining trade know this all too well). Put another way, money distances us from the messy reality of life with other people and their lives.

This, as I have remarked before is plain in the way people live. The more money you have, the more separately you live. In my home country, the poor live cheek by jowl in tenements; moving on up the wealth and ‘social’ scale (although the greater the wealth the less the sociality . . .) one might live in a terrace; or up again to a ‘semi’, or even a detached house; or finally we get what we really aspire to, a large house on its own – behind gates . . . all because we can, because we have the money.

The heart of Jesus is Reconciliation [sic] St Paul says ‘He reconciled us to God in one body by the cross’ Jesus is in his very flesh and blood pulling us together. It is no surprise he is no fan of money. Of course one cannot serve God and money, for God in Jesus is drawing together and money at best keeps us apart and so actively works against God’s good purposes in Christ. The fact that we might begin to try and argue otherwise is only because we are so separated, it has become normal for us, being ‘Friends and neighbours’ little more than a breath, and we have lost the Sight to discern God’s work in Jesus. We do not See.

And so when, many years ago now, my family was visited by the local priest to organise my dad’s funeral, I vividly remember him agonising over the sermon he was to preach that evening (a warning to me not to ‘go on about my own stuff when with others’) He was preaching on the parable of Jesus about ‘unrighteous mammon’ and the story of a man who is about to be thrown out on his ear for for whatever reason (who cares why, money is involved!) he has made a bad job of his masters affairs (haven’t we all?), and is about to be thrown out on the street. Physically he can’t labour and begging is beneath his dignity, so he comes up with a scheme whereby he embezzles his masters business ‘to make friends’ – People who will welcome him to dinner (because friendship and food are what it is all about, no?).

The priest agonised, for Jesus seemed to be ‘commending dishonesty’ – and of course he was, in a very deep sense. For Money so sets the rules of what is ‘Right and Wrong’ – Money determines the meaning of honesty for us – thus  Jesus’ parable is morally shocking, for we have a money ethic. The fact that the man was about to be out on his ear on the streets and destitute mattered less it seemed to this cleric, than a financial accounting.

Jesus parting shot as always opens a new vista. ‘Make friends for yourself therefore with the mammon of unrighteousness’. Yes, use unrighteous money; you have little choice after all in the world you have made for yourselves, but do so to undo money’s story – its power to depersonalise. Use money to undo its power over you – use it to subvert its own impersonal story about your lives – ‘Use unrighteous money to make friends . . .’

Perhaps in the restaurant, we might pay double for our lousy meal – throw a party for the beleaguered staff, they might even welcome us to eat in their homes after we did . . . or perhaps we might just go home and write a fierce critique on Trip Advisor?

Friends – like family – don’t charge for their services. We don’t bill our relatives, our brothers and sisters for lodging and food. The Church, which is in theory supposed to be this community of the Reconciled and reconcilers has largely forgotten this. More and more it has adopted other stories and thus has become radically depersonalised. Clergy want to be thought of as ‘Professionals’ and have job descriptions etc etc etc. We might talk of Church as family, but money subverts the gospel and thus the church. We cannot subvert the gospel without subverting the embodiment of the gospel – Jesus himself. Thus ‘Jesus’ becomes no more than a nice idea, or a ‘spiritual’ guru.

Yet, the Gospel is Jesus Christ in the flesh, in whom God is reconciling the world to himself and thus us to one another – making friends. Making One Body

At present in our Anglican Diocese we are pondering whether we will have another bishop. Money of course, what else, is the reason why. Do we have the imagination and indeed the faith to live deeper into the gospel message, imagining the Church as it is – a family, or will we still be looking to ‘get what we pay for’? Perhaps if we can only see it in these terms we have no gospel??

Oh, and by the way, how does Jesus do all this reconciliation??

He doesn’t spend money, he spends himself.