Looking Ahead

I wonder if you have ever thought “Christianity is pretty confusing sometimes?”

If you have I wonder whether it might have been after you read the Gospel story we had today, or something similar.

Sometimes there even seems to be conflicting guidelines about it all.

A few weeks ago we skipped over a section of Luke 12 in which we are encouraged not to worry about what we will wear and where our food will come from.  These words are very similar to the words Matthew records in the Sermon on the Mount – and they are good words for us, aren’t they?

It is indeed clear to us all that we spend far too much time worry about things in the future over which we have no control, and it is a good idea to simply trust that God will sort it out.

This is an idea that St Francis took very much to heart, perhaps even to an extreme.  Franciscans live very much for the moment.  They practice the art of being focussed very much in the present without worry about what has passed or about what will come tomorrow.  A story is told of an example of the extreme to which Francis took this “rule”. 

When you are living on peasant rations, as Francis did, an important part of your diet will inevitably be dried beans or lentils.  Those of you who cook will know that all such things need to be soaked overnight at least before you try and cook them – otherwise they will be neither palatable nor digestible.   However, Francis took the view that putting the beans into water to soak for cooking tomorrow was contravening this rule of not worrying about what you will eat tomorrow.

I suppose we could do the same to any sort of rule, really, but I think most of us get it, that we in our time are surrounded by inordinate causes of anxiety and worry about things over which we have not control, and the idea of shedding those worries and focussing right in on exactly what is happening now is a good idea.

So, we are encouraged to stop and smell the roses.  We are encouraged to put aside the things from our past that cause us to be bitter or revengeful towards others.  We are encouraged live in this moment.

The Gospel story we have before us today seems to be telling us something of the opposite – at least it does if that is the right way to interpret it.

I am sure all of you hearing it this morning would have been puzzled by the possibility that Jesus was commending someone for being dishonest and encouraging us to do likewise if we really want to get ahead.  I know that I did, when I first looked at it earlier this week in preparation for today.

One of the things we have to remember when we read parables is that the content of the story is far less important than the point of the story.  Indeed, if we think the content is the story we will be misusing it.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not about Samaritans and Jews or priests and Levites – it is about how to behave in a neighbourly fashion.

So, in a similar way this story is not about behaving sneakily or even dishonestly with the things we might be entrusted with.

I think the key thrust of this story is Jesus telling his listeners that they would do well to make preparation for their own wellbeing in the future – ie with God. 

The shrewd manager is commended for taking steps to ensure he had some “friends” who would look after him when he was finally disgraced by losing his job.  He knew what was coming and he took steps to protect himself from it.

His wisdom in taking steps to protect his future, I think, is the thing that Jesus is calling us, the “children of light”, to make sure we pay attention to.  Of course he doesn’t want us to be a sneak or cheat with other people’s money; but he is throwing down a challenge – “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? “

This, I think is the nub of it.  If we can be wise and astute about all the responsibilities we have in this world, then it is a shoe-in that we will handle our sacred trusts well, too.  This is the idea that is embedded in the COLLECT for today and which I will echo in my blessing for you at the end of the service.

The focus of our lives should rightly be the things of God and in this area of life we all have a responsibility to nurture our life in God, to always be growing and developing;  and a good way to ensure we make good choices there is to practice making good choices in the other areas of our lives.

So, a question worth asking ourselves is:

“What are you doing today that is laying good foundations for your tomorrow?”

The kinds of things that might weigh in on this could be:

• Cultivating those gifts of the Spirit in your life – faith, hope and love etc. 

• Nurturing your spiritual life by simple daily practices that keep you focussed on God 

• Practising trustworthiness and wisdom in all areas of your life 

• Ensuring you remain connected to that community of believers in which you are accepted and loved 

• Find some small way in which you can give to others that improves their welfare – maybe as a donor but maybe as a volunteer 

I don’t know what will be right for you, but I do know that the work of the Spirit of God involves prompting us about one thing or another like this, and if you are feeling such a prompting, listen carefully to it and see how you can take it up in ways that will show that you have understood what Jesus is commending in this seriously strange but very helpful parable.

"I am the way ..."

American activist and labour organizer Cesar Chavez said, “When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of [people] we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of [humanity] is to sacrifice ourselves for others in totally nonviolent struggle for justice.”

I came across this quote in Common Prayer today and was struck yet again by the simplicity of the Way that Jesus proclaimed, as well as its universality.  His way, the Way we are called into, is that way of death and resurrection.  

How often in our personal experiences have we found that in the great tragedies or losses in life we discover some new resource within us our around us that is able to transform our lives?  Similarly, in the lives or organisations or even the structures of society, out of great calamity can come creative new ways of being.

A story is in my head without a hyperlink to its source but I think it may have been told in one of Marcus Borg's books.  In a seminary in the USA where for reasons understood only in the USA there was a Hindu man on the faculty who participated inclusively with the other members of the faculty in leading the college community in worship in the Christian way.  The text for the day was John 14:6 - Jesus said "I am the way the truth and the live.  No one comes to the Father but by me."

The Hindu man began his homily with words that must have been the least expected.  He said, "I believe those words of Jesus are absolutely true."  So often, when we hear these words we see them as reinforcing our instinctive desire for an exclusive claim that Jesus the person is the way, but this Hindu preacher went on to explain that in his understanding of the major religious traditions of the world, there was this common thread that they way in which a disciple finds life, true life and ultimate meaning is through a death and resurrection experience.  They may use different language to describe it, but when it is all boiled down they mean the same thing.

He went on to suggest that if we were to understand this wisdom of Jesus in inclusive rather than exclusive terms we would find ourselves calling all people into a common experience of true transformation that they really do understand and into which we are called by Jesus.

Its worth thinking about.

I have a dream

Today we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of that famous and inspirational speech by Martin Luther King Jnr by putting together a service of secular and sacred song, video and read out extracts of MLK's speeches, liturgy and prayers that challenged us to re-vision a world of hope and peace in our time.

Here is the Homily I used for the day:

The central element to Martin Luther King Jnr’s philosophy was his belief in a divine loving presence that bound all life together.  This belief was behind all of his quests to eliminate social evil, and what he referred to when he preached of “the interrelated structure of reality” in one of his sermons.

He said: “all [of us] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one [person] directly, affects all indirectly. 

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”

His wife wrote in 1981, “Even the most intractable evils of our world – the triple evils of poverty, racism and war … – can only be eliminated by non-violent means.  And the wellspring for the eradication of even these most economically, politically and socially entrenched evils is the moral imperative to love.”

She goes on in her forward to “Strength to Love”, a collection of Martin’s sermons, to quote Martin in explanation of this:

“When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.  I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen in the unifying principle of life.  Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.  This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first Epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.”

The world we live in today is just as much in need of this dream, this vision of mutuality and commonwealth, as the world into which Martin Luther King Jnr spoke 50 years ago.

This is not to say that nothing has been achieved for the better in those years.  Certainly not.  Much has been achieved, even to the extent of the American people electing a black man to be President not just once, but twice.

But there is still an enormous amount of social disadvantage based on racial grounds both in the USA and our own country, Australia.  As Coretta Scott King observed “the triple evils of poverty, racism and war [things which are at the heart of social disadvantage] … [are so] economically, politically and socially entrenched” that they will only be eradicated when we take seriously this radical imperative to love.

We are very much aware of the effect of pressure on housing stocks of our mining boom years that has made affordable housing something meaningless to the poor.  Homelessness is an epidemic of our time for far too many.

We are very much aware of the structural inequality that keeps the marginalised – our indigenous and refugee people – in the lowest paid jobs if they are able to get work at all.

We are very much aware of the life-expectancy and health outcomes gap that exists between most of us and our indigenous brothers and sisters.

When we say these things we are talking about the lives of real people – people who for the most part are invisible to the policy makers and politicians of our day.

They will only become visible as we are able to mobilise a view in our society that our well-being is inextricably linked to their well-being.  We are unable to be the best that we can be if we have failed to enable these to be the best that they can be.

This is at the heart of the dream, but where are the dreamers and idealists of our day?

Where are the protest singers of our time, challenging the new frontiers of disadvantage that asylum-seekers will be condemned to, as well as the entrenched frontiers of poverty and disadvantage and lower life-expectancy of our indigenous people?

There is still much to be done.

Martin Luther King III speaking at the World Council of Churches’ International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica in May 2011 was asked to address the topic of “affirming the dignity and rights of all and nurturing values of mutuality and interdependence.”

He said, “Today, as we strive to affirm the dignity and rights of all people, many tenacious forms of discrimination continue to undermine human rights.

“There is still racial discrimination.  There is still discrimination based on religion, nationality, age, gender and sexual orientation.”

He sees the beginnings of our ability to dismantle this entrenched discrimination and disadvantage in affirming the importance of cooperation and connectedness.  We have lost sight of these over these past 50 years as we have glorified competition and individualism.

On our political stage we rarely hear the term “commonwealth” – I sometimes hear the phrase “common good” in the prayers of the people in my Anglican church – and most public policy is framed in terms of how much the average punter will think is in it for them.

Another term we have lost, perhaps because of its gender bias, is “brotherhood”.  This term speaks of more than our common humanity – our brothers and sisters are those who are most closely related to us biologically, and perhaps we have been very good at looking after “our own”, as some might say.  In reality, though, we need to begin thinking of all other human beings – and some might even say all of creation – as our kin, our relatives, our biological family and to love one another accordingly.

I am not underestimating how hard this will be – for ourselves individually as well as as a nation. That is perhaps why we need good protest songs to sum it all up for us.  That is why we will need some good moral leadership that can challenge the systems of power.  That is why we all need a dream of what could be.

MANIFESTO: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

I recently came across a 1973 poem by American author Wendell Berry of this title and it seems to me that there is some profound truth in it for our day.

It speaks vividly of our enslavement to our consumerist society and the soul's deep yearning form something more.  I think I want to be part of a Mad Farmer Liberation Front in our northern suburbs.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

(c) Wendell Berry, 1973.

What do you think?

You never know what's around the corner

“I am expecting the end of the world tomorrow!” 

With these words a visiting preacher began his sermon at the North Perth Church of Christ.

You might be able to imagine how stunned we felt when he said that.  We weren’t the kind of Christians who dwelt heavily on the “end of the world” stuff let lone setting a date for it.  In fact I think most of us rather felt that life would go on pretty much as it has been for a very long time – and if that was 40 years ago, maybe we were right.

Now, as it turned out, the preacher wasn’t really expecting the reverse of the big bang to happen the following day.

Firstly, I think he was wanting to get our attention – as I was by using this story.  But I think he had a deeper message that has stuck with me all these years and which I think is at the heart of the two little gospel stories we have considered this morning.

The state of our relationship with God is the most important consideration we can have in this life.  Getting this right is our most urgent priority.

In our guts I think we all know this, and sometimes this gets us into all sorts of almost superstitious difficulties:

1. 1.      Like the Christian people who wanted to say that the mass-killing at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut was God’s judgement on the USA because of its slack stance on abortion and gays and lesbians; or
2. 2.      Like the woman whose husband and daughter are killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver and in the depth of her grief she demands to know from God what she has done to deserve this sort of judgement or pain.

When sudden and tragic things happen we want to attach some sort of meaning to them, and the meaning we most generally like is something selfish – self-righteousness if it reassures us that we are better than those people who got it in the neck, or self-centredness if it beats up on ourselves asking “What have we done to deserve this?”

The people Jesus was referring to had been confronted with similar sudden and tragic events – Pilate had killed innocent people mercilessly, and a tower had fallen killing innocent people as well.  Jesus makes the observation that the people who died were basically no more or less sinful than the people who survived – implying that we should not try to attach judgemental meanings to such events.

But what does he go on to say?

Jesus agreed with Job.  Happiness or misery could not be simply equated with goodness and badness.

Here we see Jesus taking up two news headlines of his day and as usual with headlines, it was bad news:

1/  Do you think that those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices were worse sinners than other Galileans? 

Pilate was an intemperate and arrogant ruler, and he had his soldiers massacre some Galilean men as they were making sacrifices in the temple.  Did that mean that those Galileans were worse sinners than other Galileans who stayed at home and minded their own business?  Were they were being punished by God?

Jesus gave his verdict:  I tell you, NO!

2/  Or those eighteen men who were crushed when that tower in Siloam fell, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?

You can easily picture this construction accident. Builders’ labourers toiling on the erection of a tower near the pool of Siloam.  Something goes wrong; the tower collapses and eighteen men die.  Were these builders’ labourers scum that deserved to die?  Worse sinners than the other residents of Jerusalem?.

Again Jesus gives an emphatic verdict: I tell you, NO!

This old superstition is a lie.  The old gods of retribution and reward who lurk in the dark corners of our minds, are false deities.  The world of the God that Jesus called "Father" doesn't work by giving blessings and good things to those who are good, and heaping punishments and "bad luck" on those who are bad.  Dismiss this superstition.   You have Jesus’ word on it.

Ah! But I have not completed the statement of Jesus have I?  So far I have left something out.  I must not be allowed to get away with that, eh?

After describing each incident and giving a resounding NO! Jesus went on to say:

      But unless you repent you will perish as they did.

      But unless you repent you will perish as they did.

Now I am sure that some of you will see that word REPENT there and think that Jesus is telling us we have to stop being bad people, or stop sinning, or else we will perish like those people.

I want to suggest that Jesus had a much deeper understanding of both human nature and the meaning of REPENTANCE. 

At its deepest level, the Good News that Jesus came to proclaim was that even though there wasn’t a single person whose life was good enough to merit God’s good favour, God reaches out to us and invites us into relationship with him.  When we turn-around in response to that – stepping into the relationship – that is REPENTANCE. 

There are two prongs to this:

Firstly there is a clarion call for us to enter into that relationship with God right now.  Don’t wait for some future day – you never know what is around the corner.

Then there is some sense of discouragement for us all from adding a sense of judgement to the tragedies and stories that happen around us – it only encourages our own self-righteousness or our self-mortification depending in the nature of the tragedy.  Neither response reflects the nature of God and our relationship to God.

This discouragement of judgementalism leads us nicely into the second story that is part of the text we considered today.

Nine or ten years ago I was on a work related trip in the country and as I was about to leave Wongan Hills I drove past a Nursery that was closing down.  There was a scruffy sign declaring huge discounts on citrus fruit trees.

I turned around and went in to see what they had.  I came away with a Mandarin, Grapefruit, Tangello and Navelino.

The Navelino, struggled and died over the winter. But the Grapefruit and Tangello settled in and went gangbusters.

That left me with a Mandarin that didn’t look like it was stressed or dying, but just didn’t seem to flourish.  Every spring, with it still showing no signs of vigour, my wife would say shall we dig it out and get a new one?  And I would say “Give it one more year, then we might pull it out.”

This past winter into spring has seen that Mandarin finally starting to flourish.  The central branches are shooting forth and maybe next year it will flower and set some fruit.

My story and Jesus’ parable both remind us of God’s grace and willingness to wait. 

It is very easy for us to nurture a judgemental attitude towards people who aren’t the flourishing Christians we think they should be, and we write people off and condemn them as lost. 

But in truth we are all lost.  Jesus calls us to follow in his way – out of our lostness and into a deep relationship with God – and each of us is at a different mile-peg along that road.

When I was working with Scripture Teachers for YouthCARE I used to spend a lot of time encouraging new Teachers to try and avoid that subtle attitude we often have that looks down on people who are not IN – who don’t believe and/or don’t go to church.  Kids will get those subtle messages even if we are trying to avoid passing it on.

I said to them, “Never write off a kid, no matter how hard they might be.  You don’t know the end of their story yet.”

And the same is true for you and me and everyone we come across in life.  If we write someone off as having been cut out of the Kingdom of God I think we are in danger of putting ourselves in more jeopardy than they are.

These two stories are, for me, an invitation to allow God to be much bigger than we generally allow him to be, and welcome others into our company as children of God all in need of God’s grace and acceptance.

And there is a sense of urgency in the stories – we don’t know what is around the corner, so let’s make sure our lives are connected to God right now.

The Real Jesus - The Real Me!

Epiphany has rather sadly slipped out of our everyday vocabulary but the BIG IDEA for this season is REVELATION or DISCLOSURE. 
So, during this season we should be asking ourselves “What do I need to take notice of here that reveals something special about who Jesus was and is and what he’s about?” 

This becomes the filter through which we listen for the word of God as we read our sacred scriptures and even other texts – devotions and the like.  And so we come to this amazing story.

 As Jesus was praying, the look on his face altered, and his clothes became radiant white........... and a cloud came over them, and a voice  spoke out of the cloud: “This is my own Son, the chosen one; listen to him.”                                           Luke 9:29 & 35

If you reckon the story of the transfiguration is a bit way out, then you are definitely on the right track.

If your mind gags when you try to understand it, then I think Luke would be delighted.  You should mentally gag, you should puzzle over the picture that Luke frames for you.  You should feel out of your depth, because you are out of your depth!

Luke, in telling the transfiguration story, is attempting to convey the confounding mystery of Christ Jesus.  A mystery which in the final analysis is: “inaccessible to human mind and tongue.” (To quote one of my favourite New Testament commentators, Eduard Schweizer.)

It is a story of revelation.  That is why some churches use this Gospel reading at the end of the Season after Epiphany – a fitting climax to the Season.  But I will explain a bit later why it is also a fitting starting gate for the period of Lent leading up to Easter. 

What Luke wants us to take notice of in this story is this:  “We have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

And that has to be Good News.

But this shining “otherness” which they saw in Jesus of Nazareth, was not a one-off event.

Peter, James and John experienced a brief break-through; they saw the Holy Light in Jesus’ face, but it had been there all the time.  The glory is mostly hidden, but on the mountain they were given a blinding glimpse.

We have been hearing stories from Luke over the past couple of months and this God-light had always been there from the very first.

·         Of course it was there in the star of Bethlehem.

·         It was there when then the boy Jesus went with his parents to the Temple and he ended up asking hard questions of the rabbis.

·         It was present when he was baptised in the Jordan.

·         It was there when he went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

·         The God-light was focused in him when Jesus began his public in the villages and synagogues of Galilee province.

And I could go on.  As we have developed our understanding of God with us over the two millennia since Jesus was here we have come to believe that this God-Light has been shining since before the foundation of the universe, and it will still be shining when this cosmos is no more.

But why does Luke want us to take notice of this?

Firstly, and perhaps most clearly, Luke is pointing to what is to be the greatest controversy in human history – that somehow God has dwelt fully in humanity in this man we know as Jesus of Nazareth, whom we proclaim Lord and Saviour.

Over the centuries theologians and heretics have tried to explain how this can be but ultimately it is a mystery.  Science gets you nowhere, logic and reason don’t cut it, and even theology gets caught up in either circular arguments or dead ends. 

What we are left with is MYSTERY.  This wonderful word is what we use in our faith context for those things that we can’t understand or explain – BUT WE KNOW THEY ARE TRUE!

This is not the stuff of fantasy as Richard Dawkins would have it – we are simply saying there are some things that exist outside of the physical and scientific realm we call the real world – and they are still TRUE!

Luke is telling us in this amazing story – here is a glimpse of the Real Jesus.  I don’t think he really understood what he was saying, and here 2000 years later we are still trying to unpack the consequences of it.

But there is another really important thing that Luke wants us to understand out of this story and he has used other stories for the same purpose. In this story we find the essence of why it ended up that Jesus was publicly executed by both the Roman and Religious leaders.

Firstly – the Romans.  You will know that in the imperial theology of the day Caesar wore many titles that are familiar to us – Son of God, Lord, Saviour of the World and the one who brings peace on earth.

Then the early Christians and the Gospel writers gave these titles to Jesus they were engaging in a particularly subversive thing – they were saying that for them Caesar was no longer Son of God, Lord and Saviour of the World.  A new light had dawned in Jesus and he was the only one worthy of these titles.

In this and many other ways the things that Jesus said and did and the things that his followers said about him really got under the skin of the Romans, such that they happily colluded with the Jewish religious leaders to see him executed.

But in this story these things are just hinted at in the voice from heaven saying “This is my own Son.”

I think Luke is really keen for us to understand something very important about Jesus that really got up the noses of the religious leaders of his day.

Jesus was not a priest or a scribe or a Pharisee – in fact he often railed against them and the ways they used religion to abuse and distort what God intended.

Luke wants us to be sure to understand that Jesus speaks to us out of the prophetic tradition – Moses and Elijah were regarded as the two great prophets of Israel, and they were followed by many others who established quite a tradition.

Out of this prophetic tradition Jesus reminds us of the same things that the prophets did – that what God really wants from us is not religious rituals and obedience to a code of laws but:

·         A passion for JUSTICE;

·         A commitment to COMPASSION; and

·         The humility to walk with GOD allowing God to decide.

You see this when Jesus rails against the abuse and oppression of the poor in the name of religion.

You see this when Jesus reaches out in compassion to the lepers and the marginalised in society.

You see this when Jesus says there are some things that ONLY GOD KNOWS.

Living by these three filters – Justice, Compassion and Humility – was what caused Jesus to get into trouble with the religious authorities.

But it was in living by these three filters that we see the Real Jesus – and I dare to suggest that if we learn to live by them people will more and more see the Real You and the Real Me. 

The interesting thing about this, in my view is that as we choose to make these principles more and more a part of our lives, what Luke said about Jesus could also be said of us:

… the look on (our) face (is) altered. 

This is the pathway to the radical kind of discipleship that set the first century on fire and which has flared up again and again in the two thousand years since.

The Fall and the Death of the Earth

I was led to an interesting observation today by these works of the Native American, Seattle, who was chief of the Suquamish people:

“We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.”

It seems to me that there is an almost universal common thread in the primordial stories of indigenous cultures by which the earth is characterised as the "mother" of the people and they they had "obligations" to care for and nurture the land - on pain of death.


The western world has been founded on many aspects of the Judeo-Christian world-view and when it came upon the period we call The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, I wonder how much these words from the Judeo-Christian primordial stories have shaped the world-view of the White Man described above:

    He told the Man:
    "Because you listened to your wife
        and ate from the tree
    That I commanded you not to eat from,
        'Don't eat from this tree,'
    The very ground is cursed because of you;
        getting food from the ground
    Will be as painful as having babies is for your wife;
        you'll be working in pain all your life long.
    The ground will sprout thorns and weeds,
        you'll get your food the hard way,
    Planting and tilling and harvesting,
        sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk,
    Until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried;
        you started out as dirt, you'll end up dirt."  Genesis 3:17-19

 From these words I think many have developed the view that the earth is a resource to be exploited.  "The earth is not our brother, but our enemy, to be conquered, and when done we move on."

I recognise some of the deep wisdom in "The Fall" story of my faith tradition, but in light of this observation I can't help wondering if the world would have been in better shape today if we had been given a primordial story more akin to those of our indigenous brothers and sisters who try desperately to care for the land on pain of death.

It's worth thinking about!
   
   

An Inclusive Vision

Now often have you gotten into trouble for doing what you thought was the right thing?

It has happened to me a few times.  As if it was to a be a sign of things to come for me this happened in the first parish I ever worked in.  It was an aging congregation and there was a growing number of young families moving back into the suburb, and we had a kindergarten and a toy library in the church buildings so it seemed natural that a fair bit on my energy would go into gradually including these young families in the church.

I noticed some resistance but pushed on with what I thought was the right thing – I thought they just didn’t like change, but when things came to a crunch and I asked them “Don’t we need to get more people coming from our community to help the church grow?”  Their response was clear cut – “Yes! But we don’t want those kind of people…!”

Some months later I was asked to leave.

I remembered the words that we read from Jeremiah today:

“Now I have put my words in your mouth.

               See, today I appoint you over nations  and over kingdoms,

               to pluck up and to pull down,

               to destroy and to overthrow,

               to build and to plant.”

This text along with a couple of others was for me the voice of God in calling me from my chosen profession of teaching into the ministry – and you can see there that doing the right thing isn’t always going to be what people like. 

Poor old Jeremiah really got into trouble, too.  He ended up being put under a peculiar form of house arrest – he was put down the well, to wallow in the mud at the bottom.  The religious and political leaders didn’t like what he had to say about the best future for Israel.

And so it was for Jesus, again and again.

I remind you again.  Luke tells this story the way he does because he wants us to discover something very important about who Jesus was and is and what he is about.

You may have noticed in this story an amazingly quick turn-around in public opinion by the people:

²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

And …

²⁸When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

It is like a hint of Holy Week a little way ahead – acclaiming him King one week and demanding his execution the next.

So, what are we to make of these texts today?

I wonder what it was that turned the crowd against Jesus on this occasion.

Jesus said something that clearly provoked them.  He challenged one of their foundational beliefs.  He wanted them to begin to understand that God was much bigger than they had ever thought of before.

In the world of Jesus’ day there was a strong sense of national identity linked to the national God.  That is why so often, when an imperial power over-ran a nation they would take the people away – into exile – because they believed that away from their homeland their God would be of no effect to them.

During the period of the Babylonian Exile, the prophets and others had tried to break down this idea that YHWH was geo-stationary, with the stories of Daniel being the best examples of it.  If the God of Israel could protect Daniel from the lions then no wonder King Darius could write to his whole Kingdom commanding them to worship the God of Daniel as the greatest of all Gods.

Yet, the idea that the Jews were God’s special people, and that God’s favours were for them alone was deeply ingrained in the people – in their DNA as we might say today.

So, in the context of having just said to the people that the Spirit of God was upon him and that he now had a mission to the poor, the prisoners, the disabled and the oppressed, (which they all seemed to think was pretty good), Jesus reminds them of two little episodes from their history in which YHWH’s good favour was withheld from them and offered to gentile neighbours.

The ministry of the two great prophets – Elijah and Elisha – left Jewish widows destitute and lepers dying of that crippling disease, and yet through them God reached out to the Widow of Zarapheth and Naaman.

By putting these two examples into Jesus’ mouth right here at the beginning of his ministry, Luke wants us all to begin to see that Jesus had a much bigger inclusive picture in mind than could be contained within Israel – that God’s love and grace was to be seen as a gift for all.

It is hard for us to imagine how outrageous this proposition was to the good citizens of Nazareth.  These were good people.  They were in their place of worship as they should have been. 

But what they saw in Jesus that day was not a good fellow-citizen of their beloved town – here they saw a man who had gone off the rails; in fact his scandalous suggestion was almost blasphemy, and he deserved to die – ALREADY.  Remember, this is day one of his public ministry, according to Luke.

And they ran him out of town!

You can see this scenario again and again in the lives of the prophets in our sacred texts as well as in the stories of Jesus. 

In fact, the execution of Jesus by the Romans was a very clear declaration that the state found the things he had to say about our life in God was repugnant – scandalous is the actual word used most often.   The involvement of the High Priests and the Pharisees was also a declaration by the Religious Authorities that the things Jesus had to say about our life in God was also scandalous.

And so it is that when I preach “Christ Crucified” as Paul says, I am not drawing on any allusion to the Jewish sacrificial system, I am drawing attention to the scandalous fact that this humble Jewish carpenter who knew his God better than perhaps any other human being we have known, was such a threat to the “principalities and powers” of his day that they could only respond in one way – “Crucify him!”

It is this humble Jewish carpenter and The Way that he showed us to live in God that I preach – he’s my hero.

And he got it in the neck for speaking out of that simple prophetic tradition I spoke of last week by which he declares that God has an inclusive view of the world in which we are all called to:

            Do justice

            Love compassion

            Walk humbly with our God

When we lose sight of these simple things we are in danger of becoming like the Priests and Pharisees who were more concerned about protecting their positions of power and influence and so could not see that gracious hand of God that was extended to them.

I think that the challenge of our day when we consider this message is how do we give expression to this idea of an inclusive church.  Some of us feel really uncomfortable with the stance of some churches that say emphatically they want to be inclusive of gays and lesbians, and some churches that go so far as to want to be inclusive of people regardless of their religion.

Somehow it offends our sensibilities.  We like to be able to say who is in and who is out (and so has to do the right things to come in). 

Those who promote an “inclusive” idea of church are taking seriously the simple prophetic tradition that Jesus proclaimed by challenging the injustice that people who are “different” so often suffer, offering a compassionate welcome to those who are too often marginalised by society, and being humble enough to allow God to be the one who really knows the heart of people who seek him.

I have enjoyed these three Sundays with you here at St Mary Magdalene’s and it is fitting, I think, that I conclude with these remarks because Mary in the tradition of the Church has been identified with the marginalised – if you consider the 7 demons from which Jesus released her as a sign of mental illness then she stands alongside all those with mental illness who have been shunned by the church and Jesus draws them in. 

I am sorry that a pompous Pope in the 6^th Century took it upon himself, without a shred of evidence, to say that she was a fallen woman – a prostitute – but at least her association with these outcasts, even of our day, declares an incredible thing – that they too are welcome in The Way. 

She should be a symbol and a call for us to be inclusive in our thinking about The Way.  None of us is good enough to be counted as “IN”.  We all stand as equals before God, and every day we are like beginners.

Jesus Shows the Way!

Begin as you intend to continue!

I have had people say that to me on a number of occasions, usually as I was setting out in a new job.  I like it.  It made me think about how I might do things differently in this place, or because of this job or whatever.

When you begin like this it creates a kind of overture like you have at the beginning of an operetta – something short and sweet that gives you a taster of what is to come.

Marcus Borg, who is an Anglican Priest in America is big on seeing overtures in the Gospels, and he suggests in a book he wrote with John Dominic Crossan called “The First Christmas” that the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke constitute overtures of the Jesus Story that will follow.

I am going to suggest that the very first theme that Luke develops after his Overture in the Birth Narrative is itself a kind of overture – in that it seems to be saying right from the outset “This is what Jesus’ ministry is all about.”

Luke gets right into it.

He begins with the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and I think the Lectionary will deal with that on another day. 

He moves decisively from that story with the words:

“Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.   He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

Of course he was heading to his home town, Nazareth, and the guts of our story today and next week occurs there and I am rather glad that I will be here with you again next week to be able to make my comments in the light of what I say to you today.

So…

He goes to synagogue, like a good Jewish man.  This may well have been the place were as a lad he learned the Torah off by heart.  It would certainly have been his spiritual home if he had actually grown up in Nazareth.

I have no idea how it is decided who will read from the scroll at the meetings, but this story has it that it was Jesus who stood up to do so, and he reads what is now for us that famous passage from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim

release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Now, last week, I mentioned to you that we have to ask ourselves each day during Epiphany “What is it that God wants us to notice about who Jesus was and is and what he’s about.

Luke tells this story differently from Matthew and Mark and I think it’s because he wants us to notice something very important.  The story told this way is like a programmatic announcement that concerns both the nature of Jesus’ ministry and the character of the Church that would follow it in time.

By having Jesus say to everyone after he has read the scroll “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” Luke makes it very clear that Jesus’ ministry would be a prophetic ministry.   Actually, he had already given us some hints of that in earlier stories – the prayer of Mary that we call The Magnificat suggests very much a prophetic role for this child she is bearing, as well as the child her cousin Elizabeth was bearing; and the words of John the Baptist also point clearly to this as a descriptor of the nature of Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus was a prophet.

He was not a priest or a scribe or a Pharisee and we will explore some of the consequences of that next week.

But I hear a valid question forming in some of your minds already … “So what!?”

It is a good questions, and these are the two things I think we should take notice of as a result of it:

1.     It gives direction about what the rules will be in this new Way; and

2.     It sets out a framework for social policy in the church.

THE RULES

I am sure you are aware that Jesus was no fan of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees had turned the religion of Judaism into a Guinness Book or Rules with hundreds of rules about what you must do and hundreds of rules about what you must not do, and for every rule there were hundreds of little Mishnahs telling you what each rule really meant and how to keep it.

For example WORKING ON THE SABBATH is forbidden, but as you might expect, it is reasonable to ask “what is work?” So the Jews developed a definition involving 39 categories of creative activity that constituted work that could not be done on the Sabbath, some related to Temple work and some related to household work.

The trickiest one was the issue of CARRYING.  We all have to carry things – even the clothes we are wearing.  So they decided that carrying things around within a private place, or within a semi private place, or within a public place was okay but carrying something from one place to another was not.

Now the upshot of all this was that the Pharisees made it seem that their religion was a system of requirements (the Rules) and rewards (the Blessings), and the better you were at keeping the rules the more blessings you would receive.  And they, of course, worked out that you could say it the other way around too – if someone had lots of blessings (particularly if they were very rich) it must have been because they were very good at keeping the rules.

Jesus comes along and reminds everyone that it was the ways of the prophets that lead us into right relationship with God.

The work of the Spirit was an essential part of it – and our Second Reading today gave us the low-down about that – but at the heart of the prophetic tradition is that idea so clearly expressed by Micah

“What does the LORD require of you but to

do justice,

love kindness and

walk humbly with your God?”

This is not about a set of rules, but about a way of living and this can be as liberating for us in our day as it was in the days of the Prophets and of Jesus because there is no doubt that some in the church have turned our religion into a great long set of rules to be kept – when I grew up it emphatically included not playing cards, not dancing and not drinking or smoking.

Followers of The Way, then, are called to do justice and speak out for justice as an expression of their commitment to the LORD; and they are to so love kindness that it becomes the signature tune of their way of living; and finally, their relationship with God was to be one of humility knowing that nothing we receive is deserved but an outright expression of God’s grace; it also means that there can be none of the typical exclusiveness that religions often take on about who is in and who is out.

So, that’s a pretty important thing to take notice of.

But wait, there’s more.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

By citing the words of Isaiah, as he did, Jesus is saying that his ministry was going to be focussed on the seriously disadvantaged of his day:

The Poor

The Prisoners

The Disabled

The Oppressed

This should be a manifesto for the Social-Justice units of churches all over the world, and I am sure you will have observed what I have observed about these units in churches and that is that while they may be tolerated as “necessary” they can be rather discomforting and so are often marginalised in the systems of power within the church.  Nobody likes being told by the “prophets” that they are doing it wrong.

This goes for governments as much as church power-brokers, too.  The situations of greatest distress that I have experienced in our public discourse in Australia have related to failure by governments to act justly or even developing policies that perpetrate injustice:

Our current refugee policies;

The refusal of the Federal government to say “Sorry” to our first nations people;

Our failure to look after our children in care;

And I could go on…

The thing that I think Luke is wanting us to take notice of here is that things are not as they seem.  We look at those people who are respectable and doing well, and we think that this is because they are good people and that God is on their side.

Gods seems to have a preferential option for the poor, the imprisoned, the disable, the oppressed – in a word, the marginalised.  These are the ones that God cares about and God wants us to care about them, too.

Jesus demonstrated this very clearly again and again – and he got a reputation as drunkard and glutton, always hanging out with the tax-collectors, prostitutes and sinners, rather than the good citizens of Israel.

I think we have our marching orders in these words and I trust that you as a community of people who are followers of The Way will commit yourselves to discovering what that means for you right here where you live let alone here in WA and Australia.