Category: Sermon

Many are called, but few are chosen. Sermon for Ordinary Time 28, Year A

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Sermon for Sunday October 12th, 2014
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Exodus 32:1-14
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

“For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The writer to the Hebrews says this, “But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.” Last Sunday we were blessed, and I use that language advisedly, we were blessed by the presence with us of Mother Keleney and her friends from the Community of the Sacred Name. Once more we were confronted with the truth of Jesus’ brother James observation ‘Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?’ People who have little, and indeed since the Christchurch earthquakes far far less, yet RICH in faith, as exemplified in Mother’s preaching urging us ‘Church, push on into God and his Kingdom!’
A group of people who in our terms have EVERYTHING to worry about, a living example of lived obedience to St Paul’s words ‘do not worry about anything!’ Fearfulness throughout scripture is revealed as Sin. Those who shrink back are lost. Like the man who hid his talent – Jesus asks can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? One of the reasons we worry is not because we have so little, it is because we have so much! Our home contents insurance renewal has just come up – and once again I am asking myself, why??? After all, nothing I particularly value is replaceable 🙂 Whilst there are hungry to be fed, and naked to be clothed, what am I doing spending money insuring my possessions?? What exactly am I afraid of? Perhaps not The One who commands me to live with an open hand to the poor??

If you remember Mother’s sermon, you will remember that she spoke of the leadership of Moses – and his singleness of vision and purpose. Such it was that he was more than prepared to leave the people at the foot of the mountain for what seemed to them a complete age to learn from the Lord upon Mount Sinai – a reminder again to those who are ordained that their work is not  to be rushing around ‘holding things together’ but primarily to do with God.  When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” I must admit, hearing these words again, and the call of the people, I can’t help acknowledging my own anxieties about taking Sabbatical next year. Setting off on a journey with a community and then disappearing for three months! The echoes are clear 🙂 Will I come back to find the people running riot? Will Andrew have erected a golden calf in my absence!! 🙂 Clergy and I cannot say I am immune to this, all too often live responsively to the anxieties of those they are called to lead – rather than in faith, especially when the journey of the Church is one into uncharted territory, as we are currently exploring. God does his most important work with his people in the context of such uncharted territory – where we have nothing but Him – It is there that we learn faith. Of course it is so often the Poor that have vibrant faith, for they have no-one else in whom to trust
So it is in the uncharted territory of the wilderness of Sinai, away from  comforts that God tests his people – tests their metal – sees if for all their words of faith, their faith is enacted – performed – lived out. Whether they trust in the LORD, or whether their faith is a sham, idolatry masquerading as faith. ‘Having the form of religion, but denying its power’ They can say they trust God until the cows come home, but never step out to show that that is true.

The temptations are always the same – in the absence of a visible God to put your trust in what you can see. This story of Aaron in his anxiety throwing in his lot with the people is one which is not only old, but ever new. We might read this and think, what on earth has this to do with us? A golden calf??
But as St Paul reminds us, using this very incident ‘I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. [What is Paul saying here?? He is pointing us to a profound mystery, they like us were baptised into Christ, they like us partook of the Eucharist, the life of Christ, even though in temporal terms this was long long before] Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.’

This story has EVERYTHING to do with us.  Idolatry is always the way of false faith, cross avoiding faith, faith which knows nothing of sacrifice. Faith which does nothing. But here also is the twisted genius of Idolatry – that it masquerades as the real thing. Listen again to the reading from Exodus Aaron said to [the Israelites], “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”

The memory of the Exodus is still fresh – they cannot deny that a god  or gods have rescued them from the Egyptians So Aaron making the calf says – ‘Here they are!’ How much easier to believe in a god you can see and feel and touch . . . and of course as the years go by and the memory of what The LORD had done for them, how much easier to begin to believe it was all a dream, and not to be trusted . . .  indeed one might speak thus of the Church in our day – how long is it since we have seen the mighty hand of God acting amongst us?? Have we forgotten? Has it all become nothing more than a half remembered dream?? Who will stand up amongst us and give testimony to the saving power of God amongst us? Mother Keleney and the sisters? Did not the prophetic word leave its mark?

As for Aaron and his anxieties mirroring those of the people, the  amazing saving act of God was only five minutes old – only a few weeks ago had the horse and rider been thrown into the sea and slavery in Egypt become something that had been definitively been left behind. So the memory of The LORD is still strong for all that , and Aaron invokes the Divine name over the gold calf “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD” By sleight of hand, the people are now not worshipping The LORD, but a calf whom Aaron calls The LORD. He fears the people more than he fears God . . . which is always the way of it. The people of God have an alarming predisposition for the comforting narcotics of idolatry, rather than the challenge of life changing faith. Easier to stick with what we know than face the difficult realities of living by faith . . . inconvenient faith. After all, a golden calf won’t ask any difficult questions of you, won’t require you to go on life changing journeys. It is a pale and ghastly imitation of The Living One.
And this golden calf cannot save us. Oh the irony of those churches in this diocese, and indeed across the Province and the Western world that have closed their doors with a healthy bank balance. Oh the mountains of chalices tarnishing away locked up in safes – oh the glorious robes which the moths are eating away at. All the idols, turned to dust.
Two weeks ago I preached on the theme ‘No Buts!’ The word BUT  is a hallmark of an idolatrous heart – Of course we trust God, BUT . . . Everything before the But . . .

Jesus Life is Invitation – Invitation to a life unknown to those who live not by faith but by trusting in what they can see. And perhaps here is a huge challenge for us – if we have never known what it is to live by faith – And this Life is expressed in terms of a marriage. What more can we ask than to be United with The One who calls all things into being?? God comes to his people and the metaphor is marriage – so a King ‘gave a wedding banquet for his Son’ He sent out the invitations, Everything is Ready!! But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, [Too busy for the demanding life of discipleship . . . How often is the word of life held out and people make light of it??]  ‘while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.’ Let us never forget that the world crucified Jesus. The Crucified One is a ever present reminder of what the World thinks of the Kingdom of God, which is why the Church in its anxieties is continually tempted to come up with a more palatable version of The Kingdom of God, an idolatrous and perverse sham, rather than the call to the Obedience that comes through faith, which calls all of our lives into question. That calls forth from us a totally new way of living . . .

This Kingdom invitation is denied. The messengers murdered – The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. it not the case that we get all squeamish about the wrath of God, because we have such a vapid bland perception of the Love of God? A love which requires nothing of us – a wrath that cannot harm us?? Eternal life a vague wish, but nothing worth changing the path of our lives for, and Eternal perdition? Well who believes in that anymore??

But This Love will not be denied!! The World Crucifies Love – THERE is the figure of our failure to understand Love. But God Raised Jesus from the Dead! The Wedding Banquet Will take place he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ 10Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. This gift requires a response, the response of faithful obedience – as the Kingdom is announced by John the Baptist and the Jesus, the message is the same “The Kingdom of God is at hand – Repent and believe the Good News” This LOVE requires a changed life!! You were following in the way of death – your Life has to change . . . And one who has turned up hasn’t got it – when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. 13Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ As our own St John puts it in the Apocalypse And from the throne came a voice saying, “Praise our God, all you his servants, and all who fear him, small and great.” 6Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. 7Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; 8to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. Without the response of faithful obedience, no one will enter the Kingdom of heaven . . .

And it is all there in the story of God’s people in Exodus who all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink . . . Not long after the incident at Sinai with the Golden calf they came to the borders of the Promised Land. The rescue from Egypt fresh in their memory, they sent spies into the land, amongst them Joshua and Caleb. When they came back they were full of all the wonders they had seen . . . but, there were giants in the land. The anxieties kicked in – faced with potentially costly Obedience to the LORD, or playing it safe, they chose safety. And the LORD said to them, have it your way, none of you (Except Joshua and Caleb’s families,) will enter the Land – you can stay put here in what you call your safe place until you’ve all died. Well as this message is conveyed back to them, they think – perhaps we ought to give it a go – but the door is shut – remember the foolish virgins with no oil??

Many Many were called out of Egypt – Many many were called to learn faith through obedience in the wilderness, but only a few were chosen to enter the Land. God’s banquet, the fullness of Life in the Kingdom, a life of obedience and faith is set, many are called, but some make light of it, others think they have more important things to be doing, others get angry with the messengers – still others turn up, not thinking that the invitation requires anything on their part . . .

I close where I begin, with that encouraging word from Hebrews – Encouraging – giving Courage – Giving a New Heart – a Heart of Faithful Obedient Love – This is the heart of the Church – the heart of God’s people – Faithful Obedient Love. Hear this word

“But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost,
but among those who have faith and so are saved.”

‘Church! Push on into God and his Kingdom!’

The Life that is Good – Sermon for 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year A – 2014

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Sermon for Sunday September 21st
25th of Ordinary Time
Jonah 3:10-4:11
Matthew 20:1-16

Whilst I’m not the greatest watcher of the TV, just occasionally I’ll sit down beside my family out of curiosity. And of late I was interested to see what the new Dr Who, Peter Capaldi, a man more of my generation would bring to this institution. And I wasn’t disappointed for in the episode I saw, he grappled with the question of ‘Goodness’ Asking his companion, ‘please tell me, be honest with me, Am I a good person?’

As the episode unwound, the Dr found himself once more confronted by his oldest enemy The Daleks – but one which rather than trying to ‘Exterminate the Dr’, wanted to exterminate the other Daleks. This particular Dalek had had a bit of short circuit and had decided that life would always triumph so it was futile trying to destroy it, better to destroy those who would destroy life. . . . Now of course if we’re at all alert to what is going on here we’ll recognise there is a problem, one that as a whole the world never addresses at a deep level. ‘Is it good to do evil to destroy [a greater] evil?’ . . . Of course we have to call it ‘a greater evil’ as if there were gradations of evil, for otherwise how could we live with ourselves??

Later in the episode Dr Who comes to horrible realisation, that deep within him lies Hatred. Beneath all the beauty and goodness, there is hatred, hatred for the Daleks. And the Dalek, tapping into this hatred sets off to destroy the other Daleks. After all if Dr Who hates, it must be OK, mustn’t it?? The Dr is left in an existential agony, and I think this is a pretty good set up for the series.

The question ‘Am I a good person?’ is answered at once indirectly and also very directly by Jesus. We will remember the story of the rich man who comes to Jesus, with his question ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ But, perhaps trying to curry favour with Jesus, or perhaps because he sees something in Jesus he doesn’t possess (and this incident is all about what we possess . . .) he addresses him ‘Good teacher’ to which Jesus responds with words that we tend to gloss over, but which demolish the way we are taught to think about the world. Jesus says ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone’!!! WHAT????

[At this point I could make an extended excursus into why within a Platonic philosophical understanding this is a perfectly reasonable assertion and that we find it shocking because for the last 1000 years or so, Aristotle has been our philosophical father, even for those who’ve never heard of him 🙂 . . . but I won’t]

‘Am I a good person?’ Asks Dr Who . . . of course we all want him to be good . . . but Jesus would say ‘No, but you’re missing the point. This isn’t about you and your goodness, it is all about God and His goodness. To enter into the Life that is eternal, you must enter into the life that is good, to participate in it, to lose your self in the Life of God’

And our readings today point us very clearly in this direction, as indeed the gospel readings have been doing for the past few weeks.

Today we hear once more the old familiar story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet who runs from the Word of the Lord, but without success. God’s purposes will not be thwarted by his people, however unwilling they might be.
“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’”

And as we all know, Jonah runs off in the opposite direction and then there’s the whole ‘Big fish’ thing,  before most unwillingly he travels to Nineveh. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. “And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. . . .” Which brings us to today’s reading – “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. . . .”

Now we may well ask, Why did Jonah run off to Tarshish? Why was he so reluctant to do what God had called him to do?? We might think ‘ Well it seems like a lot of hard work! He might have been lazy.’ But no, it wasn’t that. Or, we might think ‘well Nineveh was a big city with a terrible reputation and you want me to go into the midst of it and shout out God’s judgement??’ Imagine doing that in Dunedin!! Imagine doing it in the middle of a city which was a byword for violence and wickedness, the seat of the cult of the warlike god, Nimrod, the home of thousands of armoured chariots. Perhaps Jonah was scared . . . but no. Indeed Jonah tells us precisely why he went to all that trouble to flee from the Word of the Lord.

“Seeing the people repent of their wickedness, God relented from what he intended But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Here is the prophet of God shaking his fist at God because he knows him to be a God of mercy, not operating to Jonah’s standards of justice . . . in Jonah’s eyes, they deserve to be destroyed . . . but not in the eyes of God . . . in Jonah’s eyes . . . Jonah was reluctant because deep down, he didn’t want to take part in the Life of God . . . I’ll return to Jonah in a minute

Our gospel, like the gospels of the previous weeks, faces us with a similar challenge. The landowner pays everyone the same. Some have born the heat of the day. They get what they agreed on, but he is generous to those who were employed late in the day, and worked but an hour.
Now there is an entirely coherent account of godly economics underlying this, that people need to eat. For those who live in poverty, a days wages covered your necessities and no more. People need to eat. A days wages will provide what they need . . . and perhaps we can hear voices, perhaps our own saying ‘well this will only encourage laziness’, or finding ourselves with those who have laboured long hours criticising the owner for paying those who had worked but an hour.
Not seeing that people need to eat and perhaps there is not enough work that all can eat . . . the landowners ways seem unjust to us . . . but Jesus seems to suggest that this is the way of God, the only one who is Good. Just like Jonah, those who have worked a whole day find the ways of the Lord indigestible, uncovering their profound hatred of their fellow men. Not seeing the need that they had for food . . . not seeing . . . the landowner says ‘are you envious because I am generous?’ In the very graphic literal translation of the words ‘Is your eye evil because I am good?’ Is your eye evil because I am good?? What do we see?? Jonah sees God’s mercy and he hates it. The workers see some receiving enough to live on although they haven’t worked all day, and they hate that . . .

In other words, does the goodness of God revealed to us what is the truth of our own hearts? Like Dr Who, confronting the terrible truth that deep down he was filled with hatred, what do these parables confront US with?

These stories, Jonah, Jesus’ parables confront us with what is deep within us.
Two weeks ago we heard the challenge that ‘when another member of the church sins against you’ Go to them, like the Good shepherd take no thought for your loss, rather seek to bring them back. Love them! Mercy triumphing over judgement!! but we might say ‘but you have no idea what they did to me!!’

Last week the gospel was the parable of the servant who was released all his debt, yet refused to live in the same generosity towards others . . . each week we pray ‘Forgive as we have forgiven’ . . . God who forgives according to mercy not deserts. Again the same response, ‘but can’t you see what they owe me??’

And Jonah, ‘I know that you are full of mercy, and to be frank I can’t stand it . . . How can we make the world a better place if you insist on having mercy every time someone repents?? There has to be an end to all this mercy . . .’

An end to mercy?? What then would we have??? Who then would have mercy on us??? Of course we can only call for an end to God’s mercy, because we do not think we need it. We can only call God too generous, because we are very nicely off and don’t require anything of him. we don’t see our life in the light of His.

Today, we are challenged about the nature of what we call generosity in the light of the generosity of the Kingdom of Heaven, who gives according to need not to deserts. ‘But if we all lived like God did, the world would go to hell! . . .’ How easy it is to tell the poor that they deserve to be . . . Perhaps this is the only way we can protect ourselves from the realities of our own comfort when others struggle so . . . What IS God’s Generosity?? Brothers and Sisters I believe we are a very long way from knowing this as yet . . . as yet

These stories uncover what lies in our hearts . . . BUT, the Life that is eternal Always triumphs. If we are baptised into Christ, then this is NOT the last word about our condition.     We are not eternally condemned either to lives of meagre generosity, self serving forgiveness or self centered love, like Jonah and the ones who worked through the day. NEITHER are we condemned to be like Sisyphus, eternally rolling the rock up the hill – eternally trying to do a better job of living our lives like God, which seems all too often to be the only remedy preachers offer. ‘Try harder next time, and don’t worry, God is forgiving’, as if it was all about you . . .
When we are baptised into Christ, God by the Holy Spirit goes into the depths of our hearts and there plants something truly wonderful. His Life. His Life becomes the foundation of our existence, the Good Life – however buried under old hurts and the rest. It is there. And we do truly have a choice, to live out of that new life. To live by the Spirit. To reveal who we truly are, children of God.

Christian life is not fundamentally a set of beliefs, or indeed practices – rather it is a new life. The Life of the eternal God within us. This is what we have been given . . . but perhaps we haven’t heard the Good News

We say ‘I find it so hard to love as you love’ God says ‘ I know’
We say ‘I find it so hard to forgive as you forgive’ God says ‘I know’
We say ‘I find it so hard to be truly generous, for my eye is evil and I am only generous to those I think deserve it’ and God says ‘I know’

But I am the eternal God, I alone am Good – let me dwell among you. Let me live in and through you, let me give you my life. Let MY love and justice and mercy and generosity, My goodness live in and flow out through you

This is the invitation to Jonah – it is God’s good invitation to us all

Sermon for Sunday August 24th- Church as Chosen People – Responsibility and Gift

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Sermon for Sunday August 24, 2014.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A

 

Isaiah 51:1-6

Psalm 138

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

 

‘Church as a Chosen People – Responsibility and Gift’

 

 

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Eph 2:8-10

 

The poor bloody infantry

This year as we are well aware marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of what we have come to know as the First World War. This has been commemorated in a rash of events and of course television programmes. One, called ‘Our World War’ has been put out by the BBC and I happened to catch the first episode the other day. Entitled ‘The First Day’, it was a dramatised reconstruction of The Battle of Mons, the first in which British troops were engaged. In keeping with much of what followed, it revealed the chaos and terror of Total War, as British troops hopelessly ill equipped and poorly informed about the forces arrayed against them were overwhelmed in a day. The focus of the action was a battle to hold a key bridge across the Canal which lay to the North of the city – in the end coming down to the actions of a Private Sidney Godley manning the only machine gun for several hours against huge odds.

Eventually the British forces were forced to withdraw, and Godley covered their backs, left alone to face almost certain death – he was critically wounded, but survived and saw out the war in a prison camp, being awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in the action.

 

Heroic?

Of course one way in such acts are described is as ‘heroic’, but it was then and remains all but impossible to find a veteran of war who would accept the description. They were faced with little or no choice – as the war ground on, increasingly conscripts – fighting for their lives. To sustain the myth of war, the myth of the hero must be upheld, but of course it is sham, as attested by the continuing history of the abandonment of these heroes to homelessness, and lack of care when they return home. A form of collective shame placed on those asked to pay the highest price. Its hard not to think of them as scapegoats.

 

Now seeing the title for this sermon, you may be shifting a little uneasily. The myth of war and the myth of religion, at times finding themselves too close for comfort for those who are called to follow in the footsteps of The Prince of Peace, the one who calls us to turn the other cheek, love our enemies, and do good to those who hate us. But if we step back from the myth of War and its mythical heroes, to the reality, we find some significant parallels which we would do well not to ignore.

 

Of course it would be Very easy to say that the western church is like those poor soldiers at Mons ‘hopelessly ill equipped and poorly informed about the forces arrayed against them’ thus we are being overwhelmed in the historical equivalent of a day, and that is undoubtedly true in some respects. But another time

 

Chosen and not for ourselves

As the ‘poor bloody infantry’ had little choice but to fight. So it is with the people of God. They didn’t ask for this. As they complained in the wilderness, they didn’t ask to be rescued from Egypt, they didn’t ask to be put to the service of this strange God, they didn’t ask to be those who would be light to the world. But they were. And here we rub up against the difficulty of this language of Chosenness, not that it is wrong, but in terms of what it means. For Being the Chosen people of God is much more akin to the Reality of a conscript thrown into the front line of a battle which he did not desire, than of that of the myth of the happy volunteer living with dreams of a Glorious inheritance and Noble Victory.

The idea of ‘a Chosen people’ is a difficult one for us to accept, and thus it is so very far from how we perceive ourselves, in no small part because within the history of the church it has been most unhelpfully been tied to that curious and only faintly biblical concept of ‘going to heaven when you die’ , or being the unique objects of God’s love. To say the least if we consider what it means to be a chosen people in these terms, then it is little surprise that we wish to do away with the idea. God’s Love is not limited, and indeed for the first of God’s people, the Jews, the idea of a life beyond this one was at best hazy.

 

The Chosen One

As always, when we try and understand anything of what it means to be The Church we must look to Jesus, the Author and perfecter of our faith. To understand ‘Chosen People’ we must look to ‘The CHosen One’ When God inhabits human flesh to walk amongst His people – in his very being he is a stark reminder of this. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head – he is dependent on the hospitality of an often hostile world. Being The Chosen People does not get you a table at the finest restaurants or a room at the swankiest hotels – not even something as comfortable as the lair of a fox. The Chosen One, The Son steps into the world in humility – and in truth, the weight of the world is laid on Him. So it is not at all apparent to the human eye, trained in the world’s myths of greatness, that this itinerant preacher with his motley crew of disciples is indeed The Annointed One, The One chosen since the foundation of the world. So caught up in the myths of chosenness, His own do not recognise him in his poverty.

 

‘You are the Christ!’

But one of this motley band does. Peter in response to the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ responds – ‘You are the Messiah! The Son of the living God’ And Jesus replies ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’ It is a Beatification, a Blessing to recognise Jesus for who he is, it is Gift. Of course there are many who in truth fail to see who he is – whilst making much of Jesus’ poverty and humility, in truth they’re still expecting God in a more splendid garb – perhaps as a fine politician who will really put the world to rights through the exercise of intelligence and power, making the world a better place. The pattern we always try to revert to. The idea of a crucified God ultimately too much of a contrast for us, as of course it threatens to be for Peter himself. But let us let Peter be for the minute, Jesus hasn’t finished with him yet.

 

 

Revelation and Responsibility

Jesus accepts this recognition – and then Reminds Peter that it was a gift from HIs Father, not anything to do with his own perception. Reminds him as it were of His Chosenness, and promptly makes the most breathtaking statement. You have been Chosen to see me for who I am – to see through the lack of worldly glory . . He renames Peter, the Rock for this confession of Jesus will be the rock on which the Church is established – The Church Of Jesus Christ – on this rock ‘I will build my church’ the One who has revealed himself as the true interpreter of the law – ‘you have heard it said, but I say to you . . .’

Jesus, The Chosen One, never shies from his responsibilities, from his identity – he takes the Law of God and acts as its true interpreter – breathtaking. And he declares that this new community is HIS church, and on the confession of himself as God’s Chosen one, the Son of the living God, he will build His church against which the gates of hell themselves will not prevail . . . but then gives then says to Peter these unbelievable words – I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

 

True and false humility

 

And at once we look at the church and say ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jesus! How can you put that responsibility in our hands??’ We are nothing!! I’ll come back to the keys in just a moment. But to look at this responsibility from another angle we might take Jesus’ words ‘You are the light of the world’ Recently I’ve been working on adapting a service of Night Prayer that we might all use. I’m working from an existing adaptation of the NZPB service, which includes the words ‘we are to be the light of the world’ – Well the problem with that wording, however ever so ever so ‘umble it is, is that it is in contradiction with the words of Jesus, who says to his ‘Church’ – you Are the light of the world – let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Again we look at ourselves and say ‘Don’t be ridiculous!!’ YOU do the whole light of the world thing, Jesus, we’ll tell people about you – well if we’re trying hard anyway . . . We undo the connection between Christ and his church – we evade our responsibility. Or to put it in terms of Private Sid Godley at the Nimy bridge, we abandon our post, the place we have been put, the place what is more that we were told the gates of Hell would not prevail against . . . to be called is to put our hand to the plough of inhabiting that calling – of Being in Him, the Light of the World, of binding and loosing, in heaven and on Earth

 

However strange it might seem to us that Jesus gives into our hands such responsibility in His name, it is I suggest far less strange than the notion that this first century wandering Jewish Preacher should in fact be the Son of the Living God, no? This truth cannot be found out for ourselves – it must be revealed to us by God the Father. We are never Christians because we worked it out for ourselves, nor can we live as Christ’ people except in that same dependence upon him. And that is the Core of it – that we can only live out this responsibility as we offer ourselves as living sacrifices – saying we have no life apart from Christ.

 

Responsibility . . . and Gift.

Here we have perhaps to abandon the parallel with those conscripts – for our war is not against flesh and blood. Indeed it cannot be for we are poorly equipped for that – rather it is against the powers and principalities of this dark age – not the human aggressor, but that which fires him or her, and our weapons?

Prophecy – the gift of seeing things as they are – ministry – teaching – exhortation – generosity – diligence – cheerfulness – St Paul – ‘think of yourselves in accordance with the measure of faith God has Given to you – these gifts which ‘differ according to the grace given to us. These GIfts are just that – they are not of us, but of God – most fully the life of God made present in us by the Holy Spirit. And above all forgiveness – Love which covers a multitude of sins. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound, whatever you lose will be loosed – whomsoever sins you forgive are forgiven – whomsoever sins you retain are retained – the keys of the Kingdom of heaven – which we enter through forgiveness of sins and which we offer to those around us.

 

Responsibilities we never sought, Gifts we were given . . . underlying it all though the sheer wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ that has Peter say ‘to whom else shall we go!’ As St Paul puts it, we are captivated, compelled by the love of Jesus Christ, revealed in costly obedience to Him. We rejoice in our calling, not because of anything to do with us, but the Glory of the one who calls us. We remain joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. because of the one who in Love has called and chosen us. Insofar as anything rests with us, insofar as anything springs from us, it arises out of a deep love for Jesus Christ, for whose sake we have left everything.

 

Paul expresses it thus I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Having in 11 chapters of the letter to the Romans, set forth the wonder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – Paul encourages us to a glad sacrifice of our lives, not for national myths; not as so many are tempted to do within the church to perpetuate the World’s own story about itself; but as a cheerful and reasonable offering to the one who has given us His all, The Christ, The Son of the Living God.

 

As he puts it in the second chapter of the letter to the church in Ephesus It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Responsibility – and Gift

Sermon for Easter – Year A – 2014 ‘Do not be afraid!’

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Easter 2014

Matthew 28:1-10

Christ is Risen

“One has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised again for us”

Two events of personal ‘significance’ have come to pass this last few days. On Thursday, the Diocese in which I was ordained ceased to exist. As someone asked me, ‘how old does that make you feel?’ The Old diocesan boundaries have been swept away, and today something radically new has been established. The Country which I once inhabited has disappeared. So in a sense I am now homeless . . . But!!!

The second thing happened not only to me, but to my family and I a week ago Friday . . . We were finally granted Permanent Residency status in New Zealand . . . which means it is safe for me finally to come out and stop pretending . . . I hereby declare in front of you all, without fear of immediate deportation – I DO NOT like Pavlova. . .

No home to go back to – am I an insider or an outsider here? . . .

It is interesting to note how we use ‘Culture’ to denote insiders or outsiders. A few years ago in England a government minister suggested the key test of whether folk really belonged was ‘Who do you support at Cricket?’ It was a particularly barbed choice as his target was the English born Asian population who turned out in droves if either India, or Pakistan was playing . . . or rather the Indians turned out for India, and those from Pakistan for the Pakistani team . . . ‘Real English people support England at Cricket!’

And what drives that determination to define, to mark those who are in and those who are out? Fear. Fear of the other . . . and in the Ukraine for example we see where that leads – where it always leads – and will always continue to lead. I find it immensely sad if not tragic that in the church we seem to have baptised the idea of ‘culture’ – for it is a way of seeing the world that in the last analysis is profoundly contradictory of the Gospel of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – no matter how much we try to dress it up in the sheep’s clothing of ‘celebrating diversity’. As St Paul says ‘For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.

The hostility between us. As I have been teaching through Lent, our perception of healthy community is one in which we have sufficient power to negotiate a comfortable distance from one another, it has little if anything to do with Life in Christ. Our fundamental problem is estrangement. The more power, and generally wealth we have, the easier it is to believe that it doesn’t exist – that all is well with the world – one way or another it rules all human lives. Through the sin of Adam, all of us become strangers to one another, for we have become strangers to God. The relationship between the Man and the Woman, between brother and brother is broken – and that leads to only one place – ‘In Adam all die’. Fear reigns – Life is extinguished. As Baxter Kruger puts it, in his wonderful exposition of the gospel ‘Jesus and the undoing of Adam’ – ‘Anxiety became the matrix of human existence’.

And thus the New Life, The Life of The Risen One is heralded with these words ‘Do Not be afraid!’ Fear is no longer what it means to be human. The consequences of our estrangement have been overcome in Jesus Christ. To Be in Christ is Not to be afraid.

In dawn’s early light ‘Mary Magdalene and the other Mary’ come to the tomb ‘And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightening, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men’ And the first words out of the angel’s mouth? “Do not be afraid”??? And indeed the women struggle to take in this command – for they run from the tomb quickly ‘with fear’, but as it dawns upon them, also ‘great joy’. ‘Suddenly Jesus met them and said “Greetings!” As usual our diminished translations do this salutation little justice – Better “Rejoice!” “Be Glad!”. The women are already running ‘with great joy’, but now the words of Jesus to them as they worship him, “Do not be afraid”. ‘He is our peace . . . for in his flesh he has broken down the dividing wall, the hostility between us’, Life in Christ is never determined by fear and estrangement, for in Christ, the old order of things has been judged and done away with.

And so it is unsurprising, totally unremarkable that the Resurrection is twice heralded with the words ‘Do not be afraid’ – The most oft repeated command in all of Scripture comes forth with full force in these Resurrection accounts – the declaration of New Life in the Risen Christ. The Old way of fear and separation is done away with at the cross.

The Old has gone, the New has come. Matthew marks both the death of Jesus and the Resurrection with earthquakes. As we know only to well, here on the PAcific Rim, Earthquakes change everything. As many have remarked following the Christchurch earthquakes, nothing can ever be the same again. But Matthew does not tell us that the Earthquakes changed everything, rather he is telling us through this metaphor, that everything has changed. The Old has gone. The Old life that was our life has been judged and declared finished in the death of the representative human, Jesus of Nazareth. We are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.
Now He is Risen – The New has come and so we who know our old life to be done away with as the One man dies are invited to walk in newness of Life. As Paul reminds us And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. We, the baptised are called forth from the death of Sin, to Participate in the New Creation, of which the Resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits.

This is no ‘better’ life than those amongst whom we live – it is a life of a totally different order. There is no continuity, between the life we once lived, and that which no pertains in and through the Risen Christ – and we should expect no less – for if the Resurrection is ‘beyond belief’, then surely its consequences also lie beyond categories that we can simply lay hold of. It is Radically New

And this is why we observe the discipline of participating in Holy Week – for without that full participation, that dying to ourselves that we might in the words of Thomas ‘go with him that we might die also’ – without that then, all we do is keep rehearsing the Old story which has been judged at the Cross – our lives just echoing the words of Macbeth

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Without participation in Holy Week, the Resurrection is at best a plaintive hope, and at worst a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. This is why we go with Jesus through Holy Week.

It is why we walked in here last week waving our ‘palm branches’ – worshipping the one who comes to us ‘meek and gentle on the colt of an ass’, in our worship of the one who makes himself nothing accepting that as our Way also.

It is why we have gathered in the dark three evenings to be with Jesus in Holy week, to strip away our illusions about our lives, about Light and Love.

It is why we came together to share in a common meal, to wash one anothers’ feet, that we might grow deeper into fellowship with Him and with one another – Knowing that this is no mere ceremony but our Way of Life together.

It is why we joined in The Last Supper, and watched in the dark as the story was played out in the night. Finally it is why we joined together twice on Friday – to rehearse the tale and then to hear these words ‘It is finished’ To hear God’s judgement on the way of sin and death – to See in the death of Jesus our own dying to that old life controlled by fear, that life lived on our own terms. To see there the death of History as we know it. To Know the End in ourselves. To know in truth what St Paul tells us ‘that one has died for all, therefore all have died

These are not things that are put on by the church for us – they are the actions of the Body of Christ – for this is the story of Christ, who is our life. Participation. And it is Knowing our Participation in his death – that we might know our participation in His Life. that we might with those women Know the Joy of the Resurrection – and HEAR the words deep within us – Do not be afraid!

So, to conclude I fearlessly proclaim amongst you ‘I do not like Pavlova!’ 🙂 Because if we are participating in what Christ has done, through the Cross, those things that divide us, both great and small are swept away. What matters is no longer my culture or yours, that which divides and therefore is a token of fear. What matters is a New Creation, and that, our lives hidden in the Risen Christ, we are brothers and sisters, with Christ and one another.

And the end of my old diocese? When I was in the UK in July I visited the diocese for the last time – it is no longer there – I cannot go back. That the new diocese comes into being today is a powerful statement. For so it is with the death and resurrection of Jesus. The old order of life has come to an end in the death of Jesus. The Earthquakes heralded the End, yet also an utterly New beginning. As with the diocese – all the boundaries of the life we once knew have been swept away and something new has been established. This is why if we hang onto our life we lose it, for upon the Cross it has come to an end. What is on offer is nothing more that participation in the Life of the Risen Jesus. The Life that we call eternal life. For what is God doing? Baxter Kruger once more – nothing less than ‘recreating the human race through death and resurrection’

“One has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised again for us”
Christ is Risen from the Dead. The Old has gone, the New has come
He is our Life
Nothing can ever be the same again

Sermon for Lent 3 – Year A – Sunday March 23rd, 2014

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What follows is a set of notes as much as a text – apologies where it is unclear [or better, ‘even more unclear than usual!!’ 🙂 ]

Apologies but the recording did not work – I may be able to upload one at a future date

Sermon for Sunday March 23rd Lent Year A 2014

Jesus and the woman at the well

The seriousness of our Vocation

Last Sunday evening I spent some time reflecting on the Seriousness of our vocation as the Baptised people of God. That as Children of God it was a requirement to forgive everyone for everything – not something which we might choose – that in times past the church spent several years preparing baptism candidates for the seriousness of the life they were entering – that as that sense of seriousness fell away, all the training except in monastic settings fell upon priests and that, to be truthful scandalously, we are part of a church which does not even give time to training clergy prior to ordination. As part of what I said we thought for a moment about the significance of prayer

I wonder how important we understand our prayers to be?

‘Did you pray everyday for every member of your parish? If you didn’t, then the days they stumbled, you were implicated as well for they were depending on your prayers.’

Do we pray as if it really matters that we pray?? As if the salvation of our brothers and sisters was in some sense we cannot see dependent on it. As if all our lives were woven together in ways we cannot begin to comprehend, especially in this day and age?

I wonder how important you think what we are doing here is, this act of worship?? Do we understand that it is Vital indeed NEcessary for the Sustenance of the Cosmos? HOw might we approach it if we did see it that way? What might we forgo to be present at the Eucharist if we thought it was of ultimate significance

In our gospel – Jesus reveals the truth about the woman he meets at the well. Immediately she shifts the conversation to matters of worship . . . I wonder how we hear this? I’m going to return to the encounter of the woman with Jesus in a moment, but for now, just ask yourself what you think is going on here

One writer on this passage I remember saying she is dodging Jesus – and indeed we may well think so. After all this act of worship is – well just one thing amongst many, no? I mean the worship of our lives is what really matters in the long run, no? Jesus has revealed the truth about her life and so she shifts the conversation to seemingly obtuse matters about where we worship . . .

I wonder, how important you think what we are doing here today is? Think back to the prayer question . . .

Certainly our forebears in faith saw Worship Very differently . . . If I said ‘What we are doing here in this act of worship is maintain the cosmological order – the heavens and the Earth – the Creation – the angels – all of humanity depend on what is going on here this morning . . . that this act of worship was the point in the Created order where EVERYTHING was held together?

As I suspect we probably pray without recognising its significance (not its power – its significance) so also we probably didn’t come here this morning thinking I must be there for all of creation hinges on this act of worship – All through the history of the people of God, from the earliest times of the Jewish people – through the time of Jesus and for the first thousand years of the life of the church, this was Precisely the understanding of what we are doing – and most especially in The Eucharist – the Place where in Jesus Christ Earth is offered to Heaven and heaven to Earth . . .

And then something changed – people stopped looking at everything as if it was connected, started to understand it as if nothing is connected – humanity disconnected from the wider creation – how else can we despoil the Earth and pollute it if we see we are part of it? and humanity disconnected from each other – to a point where in Western society (educated by Scientific objectivity) there is an epidemic of loneliness and even where people occupy the same space, they are not present to each other but texting and surfing – lost in their solitariness. Where we are all solitary observers and nothing is connected to anything anymore . . . A lie of the Prince of this world

Let us return to Jesus and the woman at the well – She is VEry different from Nicodemus – night – day. He comes as the expert – she is there for she has utterly Failed in life and everyone knows it. Nicodemus comes in fear – the woman is utterly vulnerable – and so Jesus can approach her ‘Give me a drink’

She is shocked – I am a nobody compared to you . . .
Jesus gently pursues her – ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Jesus sees her thirst – she is has come for water – she who has no life is seeking life. Well as Nicodemus – you must be born -so the woman – but you have no bucket!! Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob??!! Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Go call your husband . . . Religious matters – I have no husband . . . and immediately Jesus responds you are telling the truth – for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband – what you have said is true. The Truth about the woman Jesus draws out of her – she is in the light. Proud Nicodemus of course in the dark – has no further part in the conversation

And so begins the conversation on worship – The Samaritans worship on Mt Gerizim – You Jews worship at the Temple . . . and Jesus tells her “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Worship in Spirit and in Truth – Last week we reminded ourselves that this Gift of the Life that comes from God, the Life of the Spirit by which we are made his children through baptism – is GIFT. So we worship with the life that He has given to us – He is seeking those who offer that life back to him ‘in Spirit’

And worship in Truth – the woman in her vulnerability lays her life bare before Jesus. Thus she is healed, thus she receives life and thus if we read the story further – the whole community comes to life

She has nothing to lose, unlike Nicodemus who has much in terms of his respectability, his status as a teacher and more. This is why the gospel so readily takes root amongst those who’s public lives – who’s lives in the light are far from respectable. The woman at the well is truly poor in spirit – everyone knows it – that is why she must hide in the noon day sun

So she can receive the Spirit of Life – She is liberated as the truth about her is laid bare.

As we seek to grow into the fulness of our calling as the church – our lives must also be marked by such openness one to another. Walk in the light – these are the words of John the Evangelist.  The community of faith is not one of moral respectability, it is one where who we are is brought into the healing light of Christ – where sins are forgiven. It is the life of the Spirit filled baptised children of God.

Formerly we have recognised the depth of the seriousness of our calling through three years of baptismal preparation – confession of sins – preparing our bodies to be vessels for the life of God – that forgiving everyone for everything is not second but our new nature – our first nature

But because we have failed to treat our vocation with any degree of seriousness, seen it as primarily about OUR salvation and not that of the whole world, the emphasis has switched and all that work which properly bleongs prior to Baptism, ends up as a curriculum with no date on it for completion after baptism. As I said last week – our problem is that we have forgotten who we are and our life together is in large part a shared amnesia – where we think nothing of not coming to worship – we think nothing of worship apart from the Sacramen. The spillage of this can be seen throughout creation. LIFE is known in the mutual Love of the believers – LIght ot the World. Rleaionships of Truth and Light, in the Spirit.

This Community of Light is the Vessel for the Life and Love of God into the world – we are called to be such vessels and as we gather for worship, in the presence of the One who Is Spirit and Truth – Christ is present in his body the church, offering the acceptable sacrifice to God the Father – so in the Sacrament, Christ is given back to the world for healing

How would we treat Sunday worship if we thought that through it the healing power of God flowed into the world?? Well it does

The Churches primary vocation is Worship and Prayer. It is why we exist. What we do here is of Ultimate significance – truly Heaven and Earth are woven together here for the sake of the whole world.

The Father is seeking – Jesus the good shepherd comes looking, for those who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth – for the sake of the whole world, and for his eternal glory.

The Seriousness of Vocation. Sermon for Evensong – Lent 2 – Sunday March 16.

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Sermon for Lent 2 – Evening Prayer – Year A – Sunday 16th March 2014

Numbers 21:4-9
Luke 14:27-33

‘The Seriousness of the Christian’s calling’

One of the to me enjoyable facets of life here in New Zealand that I am still getting used to is that to travel any distance you have to fly, and that this is nothing of note. Back in the UK, although I often travelled several hundred miles, trains were the way most folk got about. I quite enjoy flying.

Imagine for a moment though, that the next time you fly up to Wellington or Auckland; prior to the flight the Captain introduces himself with the words, ‘Although I’ve spent many hours on simulators, I’ve never flown one of these for real, so I’m very much looking forward to our flight today, and I hope you share my sense of anticipation! . . .’

I don’t know about you, but I think I would be joining the queue for the exit. Recently we hosted a friend from the UK whose husband has been training as a pilot to fly with British Airways. Airspace in the UK is very crowded and there isn’t room for lots of folks to be up in the air training – so they train here instead where there is still realtively little air traffic. Of course, one might say, simulators being so good, they COULD train on the ground . . . BUT . . . as I know from my own very limited experience as a pilot, there is something about the threat of imminent death should you make a serious error that sharpens your training and makes you a better pilot than someone who has never flown for real. (And therein perhaps lies a serious warning for an entire world increasingly immersed in the Virtual . . . )

Flying aircraft as tragic circumstances this past week only reminds us is a very serious business – lives, many of them are at stake. When I went skydiving, one of the things that helped me to enjoy the experience rather than scream all the way down, was the knowledge that the instructor to whom I was attached had made over 10,000 jumps – I wasn’t jumping with someone who hadn’t done it for real, AND what is more – HIS life was every bit at much at risk as mine – which of course is the same as for pilots – their own lives as well as those of their passengers are in their hands and THAT I suggest is a thoroughly good thing . . .

But this begs for me a troubling question – or rather it causes me to ask troubling questions of the church, especially here in New Zealand and in our Diocese. In the Catholic and Orthodox churches, before anyone is ordained Priest, they must train for many years – in the case of the Catholic church, for seven years. Even back in the Church of England there is a minimum requirement of either two years full time or three years part time study and formation required prior to ordination, and that is on top of evidence of several years of study and formation in courses for the laity of the church. When I arrived on these shores I was and remain seriously troubled by the practise of ordaining people to Holy Orders in the Church of Christ with NO prior training . . .

Now of course for some this may be a matter of little or no concern. The prevailing understanding of priesthood in the church seems to amount to little more than an ability to manage a church, or to be a generally nice person. Why begin my remarks with such illustrations as Pilots or Skydive instructors – there is no comparison! And I agree. However much the spirit of the age might have blinded us to this fact, and this is an age when the truth of the matter has been hidden from us, more than ever,  there is no comparison with pilots and skydivers, the vocation of a Priest in the church is immeasurably more significant, dangerous and responsible. (In a few moments I shall broaden my comments to include the life of the whole church, but please bear with me . . .)

It is 20 years since women were ordained to the Holy Order (a sign of my own immersion in the problem is that I first wrote ‘Office’), the Holy Order of Priest in the Church of England, in Bristol Cathedral. I was privileged to have one of those 12 women as my spiritual director. Christine had the insight that only comes from a priestly life, one dedicated to prayer, devoted to Christ, and more than once she revealed my sin to me, and the deadly peril I was in through my pride or some other aspect of my nature. To use a metaphor from our Old Testament reading, she showed me how I had been bitten by poisonous snakes and needed to look up for healing before I died spiritually.

Of course, as is true of any good mentor, Christine herself had an insightful spiritual director. And I remember, as a not so subtle teaching method her recounting how in a conversation with her spiritual director, having had a torrid time with her flock, she had commented, ‘well at least I’m not responsible for their Salvation’. Quick as a flash her director was back at her – ‘whatever gave you that Idea!! You ARE!’. Like on occasion Christine’s comments to me opened up the ground under my feet, this comment saw her stood over the deepest of chasms

Of course the idea that any of us is in some sense responsible for the Salvation of our brothers and sisters is to those of us who have grown up in a largely Protestant and increasingly secular atmosphere within the church – either a nonsense, or worse an anathema. We are more brazen than Cain – declaring ‘I am not my brother’s keeper’ ‘He is responsible for his own life!’, and we declare this before God. Given that state of affairs it is hardly surprising that we treat preparation for Priestly ministry with such indifference and carelessness.

And we all suffer as a result. The Protestant error is based on a number of wrong assumptions, but like many wrong assumptions, with a tincture of truth. In this respect the truth is a quite proper insistence on ‘The Priesthood of all believers’, but coupled with an emaciated understanding of what a Priest is. So that rather than all being Priests, ministering the Grace of Christ, one to another, confessing and forgiving sins, none are Priests . . . and thus neither are those who are so ordained.
This is the consequence of treating lightly something which is Holy. Another example might be the Rock star who stands on stage and loudly declaims ‘I love you all!’, in an instant revealing himself as one who loves no-one, except himself. I have to admit that in my earlier years I fell into this trap, announcing the priesthood of all believers and at the same time loudly saying that no one was called to be a priest . . . God has a sense of humour and I was the butt of the joke when my own call to ordained ministry came. Admitting to people before whom, indeed whom I’d taught that Holy Orders were invalid that I was called to such Orders . . . humble pie

The Church sets apart Priests, not to flatten or lower the vocation of the laity, but to elevate it. To remind us all of the Seriousness and costliness of our calling as the body of Christ. That God in Christ has chosen to reveal his Light to the World, to Save the world in and through the Church.
So, the Priest is the one who first must count the cost and then lay everything aside to be a disciple of Jesus, even if as often the case this finds him or her at odds with God’s people. Priests must understand within themselves and seek to reveal what it means to Carry the Cross, to ‘give up all their possessions’. It is why as the Church we have demanded so much of those who the church calls to Holy Orders – we don’t want to hear from the flight deck, ‘I’ve never laid my life on the line except in a simulator – hope you enjoy the flight!’. Lives are at stake in the very fullest sense of the word. For we are dealing with The Holy, with Life or its absence, with Death

And so as the role of the Priest is a Representational one, Representing the Life of the Community to the Community of faith – that the role of the people is revealed as of ultimate seriousness, for which we all need to be trained.

Jesus as he speaks with those who seek to follow him, again reminds them of the costliness of Discipleship. It requires Cross bearing, which means laying aside our own priorities for those of the Kingdom of God. Cross bearing is NOT that suffering which is the common lot of human kind, broken relationships, pain and illness and the rest. Along the lines of ‘we all have our crosses to bear’ – no, Cross bearing is a laying aside of our life to seek the Kingdom of God. God becomes the Centre of our lives in the sense that the meaning of our lives is found purely and sufficiently in his service. The Priest is to have no life apart from that of Discipleship. And Jesus makes this plain at the outset – this will cost you Everything you have – take note of that. This Journey of following him has a cost – don’t disregard the cost. Don’t find yourself some way down the track grumbling about the conditions of your life serving God, not your own desires.

But as I said, this IS about all of us. So again in former times, the church required candidates for Baptism to undergo three years catechesis, training, rigourous confession of sins – for the call of Christ would demand everything of you. It was only right to do this. Now it seems that in the church we baptise blithely and then spend years afterwards trying to show folk what they have signed up for and finding few are enthusiatic about the way they are shown. In a sense perhaps the emphasis on Priestly training might be because having failed to call people to count the cost at Baptism, the church decided that it couldn’t make the same mistake twice. ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’. Now as I said, it seems that here in New Zealand at least we are more than content to continue to make the same errors over priests as well – and thus the whole church suffers . . .

And of course in Lent we remember that Christ himself is tested – the Reality of his calling is tested by being sent into the desert, fasting forty days and nights, that he might be tempted of the devil and the reality of his heart exposed . . . and this forty days and nights mirrors the 40 years of preparation of the children of Israel in the wilderness prior to entering the promised land where they are to be light to the nations. Prior to taking up the LIfe of Christ, there is a counting of the cost

This strange story of poisonous snakes and the Bronze serpent can only be understood in terms of this testing of the vocation of Israel to be a light to the world. Having been adopted as God’s children they were now being trained for that which God called them to, to participate in God’s saving Acts – to be a visible sign of the life of God in the world, to share in God’s work of Salvation, to take the responsibility offered them by God. But they have not counted the cost. All too eager to be out from under the heel of the Egyptians, they pay no heed to what life in God’s service will mean and so they grumble and fiery serpents are sent amongst them. Like careless trainee pilots, they have lost sight of the horizon to which they are heading, they have not taken the call seriously, they do not see that they are engaged in life and death matters and so there are bitter consequences.

This is no story of a moody God who just gets angry and lashes out. No it is the story of God who so loves the world that he sets aside a people to be his vehicle of Salvation, who invests himself in living with them, showing them his Life, training them for the life he is calling them towards in ‘entering the promised land’. A people through whom one will be born who will bear all the sin of the world – a people whose vocation is to herald and reveal Him. A people who need to be trained, prepared, carefully taught all that it means  – all that it will cost. The cost is great for the very life of the world is at stake.

And as it must be where God is, it is a story of Grace. The people recognise that they have failed, sinning against the God who rescued them from cruel slavery in Egypt and so God commands Moses to make the serpent of bronze – which will be for their healing; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

And here to is Grace for us, for when we also take our eyes of our vocation to be God’s people, we too find that their are many poisonous serpents around us, the rapid decline of the church and many other signs of that – where will we look? There is One to whom we can look for our healing – our renewal.  just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Through the disciplines of Lent – may our senses be reawakened to the seriousness of our calling – our responsibility before God for our brothers and sisters and their spiritual condition. Let us give thanks to God for the training of Lent – may we in and through the Hikoi, our mission partners visit, but above all the simple yet testing disciplines of this season find our focus restored on Jesus Christ. The One in whose life we are all called to participate through the Grace of baptism.

Sermon for Lent 1 – Year A. 2014. Following Jesus into the Desert

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Sermon for Lent 1
Matthew 4:1-11

‘Unless one is tempted, he cannot know himself’ Augustine

Many years ago, I went to a church conference in North Wales. There a speaker, a man named John Smith – one doesn’t have to have a memorable name to be remembered 🙂 – said something which I think was utterly profound and when we hear it sets us better free to follow Christ in the world. He said ‘Becoming disillusioned is a good thing. For you can only be disillusioned if formerly you were suffering from an illusion!’ As many of the spiritual greats have noted, one cannot begin to make progress in the church unless one becomes thoroughly disillusioned with it, laying aside your fantasies of how it should be. Of course some in pride go off to find a better church, one more suited to them, but to be more truthful about this, they go seek one more suited to their own self delusions. Charles Spurgeon was once accosted by a member of his congregation saying ‘Mr Spurgeon I am leaving your church to find a perfect one. Madam, he replied there is no such thing. However, should you happen upon it, do not join it for you would only spoil it. Oh how I love straight talking 🙂 Others who have chosen the path of humility, who recognise that the church is not perfect because they are not perfect, stick with it and work with the reality they have been shown, rather than the dream they have woken up from.

I don’t know how many here would be familiar with The Matrix trilogy of films. The story briefly is of a dystopic future in which machines have taken over. Human beings are being used a batteries to power their world, and vast fields of these ‘humans’ are connected to The Matrix. They live a life of illusion, fed by computers directly into their nervous system – a largely comfortable world, not disimilar to the world which we know. The hero figure, Neo, is rescued from the Matrix by a small group of freedom fighters, but his life out of the Matrix is far from pleasant – the only food they have is a chemical protein soup – their lives are lived in semi darkness, all the time on the run from the machines. But at least it is Real. Of course not everyone of the rebels is ‘happy’ with this existence, however Real it is and one decides he wants to return to the Matrix, for which he will need to betray his friends to the machines. He is seen in a restaurant – eating the juiciest steak, and drinking the finest wine with one of the machines agents. He says,’I know that this steak is not real, I know that the incredible flavour and texture are merely bits of data being fed into my mind by a computer, but you know what? I don’t care anymore’

Our churches and indeed ourselves are suffering from many illusions – Lent if we observe it well helps us to strip these away, but of course that is far from comfortable. It may be a good thing to be disillusioned, but thank you we’d rather not be. I don’t really care for Reality, it’s far too uncomfortable, it asks too many questions of Me, and I’d rather ask questions of Reality.

Lent takes us to that place, if we will allow, where we are faced with our own tendency to prefer the comforts of life over the Reality of Life in Christ – of Life with God. And so it is hardly surprising that in a world of ever increasing comfort that Lent is not exactly the most fashionable of seasons in the church’s year. Jesus can go out into the desert for fasting and prayer, we’ll make do with some pleasant non too challenging devotional reading.

For Lent is about our becoming disillusioned – and we can only begin to understand this if we have like Jesus taken considerable time for fasting, or given many hours to prayer. Both of these practices create that Wilderness where we confront Reality, where our illusory comforts are stripped away, where we face that we are with the traitor, saying, ‘I know that none of this is real . . . but really I don’t care’

And I’d like to think particularly about Fasting for a few moments. Fasting of all the disciplines is about stripping away the illusions. At least in prayer you can sit in a warm room, you can light a candle, you can put on pleasant music – few practise prayer which is a conscious stripping of comfort, that goes on hour after hour. But fasting deliberately takes comfort away – the comfort of food.

My family know this all too well. My wife’s maternal Grandfather was notoriously grumpy if dinner was more than a few minutes late. Not that he was one of those meticulous types who wanted a regimental life – far from it. But something happened to him physiologically that meant his mood altered and dramatically. His name was Fred Jee and so in the family it is called Jee Syndrome. My brother in law also has it, as does one of my children 🙂 Well that is what fasting does. it reveals who we are when our comofrts are taken away. As one of my mentors pithily puts it ‘you might think you are on the whole a good person, but if they cut off the water supply you’d be killing your neighbour within three days.’ The lack of food and other comforts affects all aspects of our being. It strips away our illusions about what lovely people we are, and most importantly of all, it strips away our sense of God. It takes us to a place where we realise that our perception of God is far more to do with how we are feeling, than God’s reality. That is not to say that God is not there, God is always present, but we see that our perception of God is more often than not a function of our own psychology and physiology, which when fasting kicks in, don’t function. The comfort blanket is ripped away. We are awakened to Reality

So Jesus, as he goes out into the desert does not go out to have an lovely extended quiet time with God – quite the opposite – ‘he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil’. Now there are two knotty problems for us here – firstly what is the Spirit doing leading Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil? Put briefly it is this, that Jesus is fully human – that temptation is part of his lot. If he suffers not temptation, then how can he help us who are daily tempted?? [There is also a striking parallel with the story of Job]
Secondly there is the source of this temptation – ‘to be tempted by the devil’. Part of the illusion that has been cast over our minds has been the continuing attempts to deny the existence of the devil, to such a point that the Church of England is now wondering whether to remove him from their baptism liturgy – oh, and by the way, before we recoil in horror, do not forget that we in the Anglican Church in NZ did this years ago . . . It seems to me that the two chief temptations the devil tries are Firstly, to tempt us to deny his existence – that works easily for most. But where it doesn’t, we are tempted to inflate his significance far above that which it is. All he is is a fallen angel of God who in some mysterious sense still has a part to play in God’s ordering of the world – no more, no less. Of course those who fall prey to the second temptation and are always going on about the devil, do the devils work in that they help him persuade the majority group how wise they are in Not believing in his existence.

And Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, after which he was ‘an hungered’ as the King James BIble has it. Tired, Weak, emotionally and physically utterly drained. Unable to summon up of himself any ‘sense of God’, like Job utterly afflicted . . . the tempter comes. And the three temptations teach us much if we have ears to hear.

Firstly The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” We were created to find our satisfaction in God alone. Our lives provide us with multiple alternatives, but they are never enough. As I said a few weeks back for me it has long been books, ‘just one more book . . .’, as if I might find what I am looking for there, for others any number of things. Some live for controversy in the church, some feed on conflict, others on the endless deluge of media we live in – indeed we have become an age unlike any other in our capacity for creating distractions, vacations, consumer products, and of course endless variations on the oldest of them all, Food! For most people in history food was ‘what you could get’, no it is ‘whatever you want!’, all presented to us in endless cookery books and programmes. Gluttony as properly understood is not over eating, it is making food your life. The most sparing of consumers who satisfies themselves and their waistlines with the tiniest nibbles of ‘only the very best food’, is as much a glutton as the person who feasts alone on a family size tub from KFC.

But Jesus reply is startling. There he is – at the end of all his resources, but Satan’s testing only reveals one thing – underneath everything else, the human is created to be hungry for God. The lack of fasting in our culture only reveals how easily we are bought off . . . there is no hunger for God himself. The things of God, yes, God’s provision, rain in due season and the rest – for of course all good things come from him, but not for God himself. If we do not occasionally fast, if we do not lay aside these ‘God appetite’ suppressants, we do not even recognise who is tempting us. There are many things to be consumed by

Secondly Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Of Course the one who hungers truly for God himself, so Loves God that he does not require God to prove himself. he knows and is content to know that God does not exist for his sake – quite the opposite – Jesus knows and understands that He Lives for God. Again so much in our contemporary world and indeed our contemporary church screams the opposite. We call out to God, why aren’t you doing things for us? We doubt God because he doesn’t serve us and our endless appetites for comfort. Again we under our illusions do not begin to comprehend what is going on.

Again Jesus does not name Satan – it is almost as if at this point he does not recognise who is behind all of this. He is purely the righteous man of God. And neither do we, but by and large we fall so readily for the first two temptations that we never get anywhere near the third . . . Jesus forces Satan to show his hand. Here is someone who is devoted to God, who hungers for God above and beyond everything, who Live to serve God ‘though he slay me’ (to use the words of Job). Satan is forced to do that which he hates. Jesus forces him into revealing himself as ‘the ruler of the world’ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Live my way, and you can have that which you really desire. We are slaves to our desires – and so is Jesus, except his desire is for God and he now sees and names his adversary – and in so doing reveals his authority over him Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

The constant refrain of Satan is ‘If you are the Son of God . . .’ – Is Jesus’ sense of Who he is, his identity just an illusion? . . . This perhaps is why we do not take Lent all that seriously – if at root it calls into question our sense of who we are . . . ‘Children of God’ what we call ourselves. Why would we want to call that into question?? Better surely to get on with our lives and hope it is true?? After all, my life is quite good, I’d rather not rock the boat . . .

Jesus of course was not the only one to go out into the desert, years later others followed, realising that the city had become a place of illusion. Seeking after God and thus rejecting all the comforts which they knew would distract them from Him. Abandoning distractions they saw deep into the reality of things. They were much sought out by those who wanted to live more truly as Children of God – ‘A disciple came to Abba Poemen and asked, ‘When Jesus said ‘he who is angry with his brother without a cause is in danger of judgement’ – what did he mean by “without a cause”’ The Father replied to him ‘If your brother angers you by his arrogance, and you are angry with him, you are angry without a cause, and if he gouges your eye out and cuts off your right hand, and you are angry with him, you are angry without a cause. but if he cuts you off from God, you have every right to be angry with him”

Those who are revealed through testing to be children of God are those who pray ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Who see not the assault on themselves , but pray for mercy for the one who wounds them’

Such a saying destroys all our comfortable illusions about ourselves, our church and our Christian Life. It leaves us disillusioned, and that is the best way to start Lent. For only if we are so disillusioned might we set out together as a church determined to seek out the Life Of God. May God plant in us such holy disillusionment this Lent. May we have the courage to follow Jesus, to discover who we really are, and by God’s grace grow up into the fullness of him who fills everything in every way

Amen

Sermon for Sunday next before Lent – 2014. The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom

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Sermon for Sunday next before Lent – 2014 – Year A

Isaiah 49:8-16
Psalm 131
Matthew 6:24-34

“The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom”

As most of you know, my family celebrated my 50th birthday by throwing me out of an airplane at 15,000ft! Perhaps that is toying with the truth 🙂 Actually they knew that I harboured a wish to skydive, but weren’t too keen on the idea . . . and for their concern I was and remain, duly grateful 🙂 So rather than offer me simply a skydive, they offered what to their minds were two less risky alternatives – lying in bed for a day – or lying in bed for two days 🙂 I jest, although the stats would show that I am far more likely to die in bed than skydiving 🙂 Actually they offered me parascending and hang-gliding. They were I think a little unhappy that I still chose to skydive – even though my careful research had revealed that it was by far the safest of the three options available!

Our society is a tremendously fearful one. Revealed in many ways, not least our idolatry of good management. We idolise management and pay good managers well because we are afraid of the alternative. On Friday I spent what should have been my day off at a Governance workshop for the Diocesan Council – it was a good workshop, but the more I immerse myself in the narrative of the Scriptures, of the Life of God with his people, the more alien such things seem to be in terms of the Kingdom of God. We seem in the church to imagine that Good Management and sound governance will usher in God’s Kingdom. However loudly we proclaim this Not to be the case, our actions reveal the truth about us. The Church spends far far more time in management than prayer. The Fear of the Lord far less evident than the Fear of ‘getting things wrong’. It sometimes seems to me as if we believe we can actually ‘manage God.’ As if the Holy Spirit can be directed into  the plans and strategies we have so carefully put in place. And to be frank, God laughs.
The French mathematician Laplace once presented to the Emperor Napoleon his mechanical model of the Solar System, The Emperor who was clearly not an insensitive man asked Laplace – Where does God come into this?’ the mathematician answered ‘Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis’. Put another way, The Universe can get on quite happily without God. And if often strikes me that we would at best struggle to begin to describe How God fitted into our life in the church. Certainly the ‘visitor from Mars’ would be hard put to find any evidence.
As a result of which we are afraid, for now everything is utterly in our hands . . . we bestride the world and confront the great moral issues of our time – We have to figure this all out by ourselves, which is a terrifying thought. So we try and manage things and if we are of a religious bent we get on with our managing and ask that God might bless it, but in our heart of hearts we do not actually think that things come about other than by our efforts. This is revealed not only in lack of prayer (we are perhaps the most prayeless age of the church), but also in self congratulation when our plans come to fruition, or self condemnation when they fail. God is small in our consciousness. Even though the One who ushers in the Kingdom of God explicitly tells us not to worry about what tomorrow will bring, after all, you might die in your bed tonight . . . but I’m back where I left off last week, how we avoid concrete obedience to Jesus, because after all, what does a first century Galilean know about the reality of our modern lives.

The Bible knows a Lot about Fear. It reveals it as the condition of humanity separated from God. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Separated from God, we are afraid. We are afraid of God himself, for He is a stranger to us, and all HIs world is strange to us and we are afraid of that also – we are afraid of growing old, we are afraid we shall not have enough to live on, perhaps we are afraid we will not have enough to eat, we are afraid of losing our faculties . . .
The Lord God called to the man, and said to him “Where are you?” Perhaps the most poignant words in all of scripture. I read this week of a child who was lost in Paris for four days, because his father had not managed to get on the same Metro train as him. I shudder at the thought not least because I too once lost one of my children in a town, it is a truly awful thing. The cry of our Parent – from whom we are hiding “where are you?” is an agonised one, which will lead to the agony of the Cross.
And our reading from Isaiah finds that parent seeking out his hiding children, trying to coax them out of their places where they have hidden from Him. Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; 9saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” God’s Saving help is announced in every word of Scripture – God continues to speak of all the goodness he wishes to shower on his children “They shall feed along the ways on all the bare heights shall be their pasture;  they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down. for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.  And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. 
I am seeking to bring my children home!! Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.  Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people,
 and will have compassion on his suffering ones. God seeks his exiled children to bring them home
So why, we may well ask is the Fear of the Lord understood as the beginning of Wisdom. If our Fear of God is misplaced? If God only desires Good for his children? And it is true that Being Afraid of God is not human. There is Fear and there is Fear. The English language at times is so poverty stricken. We need to move from fear to Fear. Our ‘Being Afraid’ needs to be transformed
Jesus commands us to abandon our worries about food and the rest. And immediately fear stands at the gate.  ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’ Money is a harsh master. We try and take care of it – we are afraid it might leave us. Because we hide from God, money which seems to loo so large in our consciousness terrifies us. It distorts our loves and destroys our lives.
On Thursday this week I spent a good part of the day with folk from ‘Christians against Poverty’ – an unashamedly Christian organisation recently come to these shores from Bradford – the Diocese from where I came! Indeed we saw a video of their premises, tucked in behind my old cathedral 🙂 They are devoted to helping people out of debt, that condition which reveals most clearly the nature of our enslavement to money. And we saw some wonderful testimony of folk who had been helped (It brought a tear to my eye, not something of which I am often guilty, not least because we were told of many who have become Christians through their explicitly Christian work (CAP NZ has looked after over 500 families in debt – 247 people have become Christians through their work))

[Here is a Video of the Work of CAP in the UK – I am very proud to say that my eldest daughter works at Jubilee Mill 🙂 ]


So the power of money is a thing of Terror to us – we fear it.  But Jesus goes on to explain what serving God is like, in terms of lack of worry. Do not worry what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear for the Gentiles rush after all of these. Jesus is of course speaking here to Jews, God’s people, like Isaiah speaking to them of God’s Loving search for them – as I said last week, only re-inforcing what they have always known. For God, Jesus says ‘feeds the birds of the air’ – he clothes the lillies of the fields such that even King Solomon was never so attired (how sad we spend so much time on our own appearance when there is infinitely more beauty in a single leaf or flower than in all the latest designs from the Paris cat walk . . .)
So we must ask – If Fear is transformed, what new form does it take? What is this truly Healthgiving ‘fear of the Lord?’ Well I think the best way to explain it is to use an example most of us will have experienced, but few if any will remember. When we were born and indeed if we were fortunate, for the first years of our lives, our parents, especially our mothers dominated our perception. They were our life. We had little sense of ourself except our basic needs for food, warmth, protection and if we were blessed, we received all of these. Our Parents were our World. Jesus says you cannot serve God and wealth – one or the other must consume your imagination, one or other will entirely shape your world. You will love one or the other. But love of wealth leads only to anxiety – it is a nervous fear. Love of God is Holy Awe – the perception of who God is, His profound Love for us so fills our imaginations that all worry disappears. In the way that a tiny baby knows no fear but only the overwhelming of the compassionate presence of its parent
the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones. 14But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
Are we hearing these words of the searching compassionate God of the Old Testament? Or is our imagination still poisoned by the lies of the evil one? God says through his prophet, yes, even a nursing mother may forget her child, yet I will not forget you ‘Look you are inscribed on the palms of my hands . . .behold my hands, my side, my wounds of Love, the glorious fruit of my search for you.
Lent starts on Wednesday. In the minds of most of us, this can often be seen as a time for beating ourselves up – terrible sinners that we are – we cry out ‘Lord have mercy’ because we imagine God with a huge stick desiring to punish us for our wickedness – again where Does that image come from? Not the one who has Pity on us. When we cry out in Lent, ‘Lord have mercy’ it is not as one who cowers in fear, but as one who has seen in Jesus that God is the one who takes away our fears. That we cry out like the blind man, ‘Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And he answers – They shall feed along the ways on all the bare heights shall be their pasture;  they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down. for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
As we go through Lent we will be joining together to think about what it means to be the church, to share in this Life of God, to know the true fear of the Lord. As I hope to show, this Fear that radically frees us from our fears. That being so Set free to Fear God in this way, we might begin the journey towards being the people He would have us be. Until that happens we cannot begin to imagine what it might be to Seek the Kingdom of God . . .
Earlier this week I was reminded in our daily bible reading of the fact that an old name for God was ‘The Fear’, specifically The Fear of Isaac, which led me to this beautiful passage from the writer Frederick Buechner with which I close. It comes from his novel The Son of Laughter, who is of course the Patriarch Isaac. “The Shield was another of the Fear’s names. According to Laughter, it means he shields the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home.”
The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, it is the doorway to seeking his Kingdom, it is the beginning of our journey towards home,.