What is this season called Epiphany?

When we think of the seasons of the church year, we usually attach something of a theme to them

ADVENT            Waiting or Preparation

CHRISTMAS      Celebration Jesus’ Birth

LENT                  Penitence

EASTER              Celebrating  the Death & Resurrection

PENTECOST      The birth of the Church

So what do we make of this season called EPIPHANY?

The BIG IDEA for Epiphany is REVELATION or DISCLOSURE and I think that our special work for this season is to be on the lookout for those things that reveal to us who Jesus was and is and what he’s about.

Each week we are given a selection of readings from our sacred texts, and generally we seem to focus on the ideas that come out of the Gospel reading – which makes a lot of sense, given that we are followers of THE WAY OF JESUS.  The other readings, however, sometimes give us hints at a bigger idea than just trying to stick with the narrative or make sense of a miracle, etc. and that is very much the case today.

Let’s begin with the Gospel and see what there is to think about.

Now, here is the nub of the story:

Six stone jars where standing there, each holding 80 to 100 litres. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them to the brim. He said to them: “Now draw some out and take it to the MC.” So they took it. When the MC tasted the wine........ he said: “Usually they serve the best wine first, and when men are a little drunk they then serve poor wine; but you have kept the best wine until now.” John 2:6-11

Was Jesus overdoing it?

What would you think of someone who near the end of a wedding feast produces another 500-600 litres of wine?  Now I can’t let this opportunity pass without telling you that any guy who can turn water into wine is a friend of mine.

Because this story deals with things that we really can’t prove – miracles – I think that it may be more helpful to think of it as a kind of parable-in-action – and remember that John wants us to notice something very important about Jesus from this story.  Indeed, John says so explicitly right at the end – “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

So, this story of turning water into wine points us to a God who is an extravagant Creator and Redeemer.  The God of Jesus Christ holds nothing back.  This God goes over the top, persistently over doing it.  We see this pre-eminently displayed in the life and teaching of Jesus.  But it is also present in the Old Testament.

The God of the Bible is most generous.

You may think 500-600 litres of wine are excessive, but that is the kind of God in whom we place our trust.  This story is a sign post pointing us to a remarkable, holy Friend.

THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF CREATION

Think with me now for a while about the extravagance of God in creation.

My wife and I enjoy walking on Mullaloo Beach in the mornings during summer – in fact, if I am not doing church somewhere, we are very inclined to worship at what we call Mullaloo Cathedral – there are generally hundreds of worshipers of all ages.

Every day it is different – the waves make the water different colours, the sand has moved around, exposing or covering rocky outcrops, seaweed has been washed up or washed away and if you were to stay until sunset, God would paint a different picture with the sky every night.

We often stop to inspect a shell or even a small microbe on the shore.  And we marvel at the antics of birds and the many different birds we see.  We are always on the lookout for dolphins just off-shore because we have seen them from time to time and once we even saw a sea-lion on the beach.

I am sure I don’t have to remind you of the amazing diversity – even extravagance – of the plant and animal kingdoms that surround us on planet earth, and if any of you are into the physical sciences you, too, will be amazed at the enormity, complexity and beauty of the universe that we inhabit with God.

On one level you could say that we don’t need all this abundance, but perhaps we do, if only to keep us in awe of the God in whom we live and move and have our being.

In her celebration of God’s enthusiasm, Annie Dillard wrote in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.  After that one extravagant  gesture of creation itself in the first place, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusion on profligacies with ever fresh vigour, the whole show has been on fire from the word go!” 

I recognise who this profligate Creator must be!

It is characteristic of the One who in Christ Jesus confounds people towards the end of a wedding feast by producing about 600 litres of choice wine. The God who excels at overdoing generosity!

THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE KINGDOM

This extravagance is evident in our Corinthian reading this morning, too, but in a Kingdom setting.

The work of the Holy Spirit, enlivening the Church with the Breath of Life as well as Signs and Wonders, gives to us gifts such as will build up the life of God’s people.  These gifts range from very mundane gifts to the supernatural gifts – but all are given; none are withheld.

And cast your mind through so many of the parables and miracle stories of the Gospels and you can see a kind of sub-text there of God’s extravagance towards us.

The more readily remembered being those of the prodigal son and the surprising wages paid to the workers in a vineyard.  Time does not permit me to expound on them.  It is enough to recognise that in Jesus’ parables of the kingdom we have the same prodigal grace that is reflected in 600 litres of wine.

Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx writes that God is luxury:  

“For believers, God is the luxury of life..... Sheer, superfluous luxury.”

As John’s Gospel has it: “Out of his full store we have received grace upon grace.”

WHY IS IT SO?

I am not sure how you would describe the purpose of your life as a Christian.  I think that as a younger man I was very much caught up in a quest to do the right thing and so satisfy God.

These days I am more inclined to a view that my Christian life is about living in the way Jesus showed us, The Way as it was called in some early non-Christian references to the Christians. 

In spiritual terms I would say my work is to become more Christlike every day, and what this looks like at its best is when I am able to be authentically human – caring about others fully and generously, as Christ has shown us.

Have you ever surprised yourself by exhibiting a similar generous spirit? 

To go back to where I began, if the BIG IDEA for Epiphany is REVELATION or DISCLOSURE then I think this story of Jesus’ e[generosity and extravagance is a call to us to live our lives with similar generosity towards others – not that we can turn water into wine for a wedding, but we can live lives that are disentangled from the materialism of our day and so leaving us free to share our abundance with others as Jesus did.  

Baptism, the Holy Spirit and Liberation

Last week I trust that you will have celebrated in fine form the 12^th and final day of Christmas.  It is called the feast of the Epiphany and marks the episode in Matthew’s birth narrative in which some foreigners – those wise men from the East – paid their homage to the infant Jesus in recognition of his special status for the whole world.

So we call the season from now until Shrove Tuesday the Season of or after Epiphany and while this word has slipped out of our vocabulary by and large the BIG IDEA for this season is REVELATION or DISCLOSURE. 

So, during this season we are called to be on the lookout for those things that reveal to us who Jesus was and is and what he’s about.

The week before last I was addressing the short episode in Luke’s birth narrative in which Mary & Joseph observed the customary practices of their day by taking Jesus to the Temple on the eighth day of his life to name him properly and have him scarred for life as one of God’s people – he was circumcised. 

When we look at these early stories of Jesus life it is important for us to consider what Matthew or Luke wanted us to notice from them, and in some ways this is tricky. 

You are probably aware that Mary wasn’t keeping a diary of all the things that happened when Jesus was born and as he grew up – even though Luke says she pondered on these things deeply in her heart.

There are two important elements to remember about the way these stories were created.  Firstly, they were all created after they knew the end of the story; and secondly, they lived in oral form for a long while before they were written down.

This meant that by the time Matthew or Luke got to writing the stories down they felt at perfect liberty to build all sorts of code language and symbols into the narrative so that it passed on what they wanted us to know about Jesus.

So, as we listened to this story of the baptism of Jesus, today, I wonder what it is that Luke really wants us to pay attention to, to notice in particular because it will show us, reveal to us, something very important about who Jesus was and is and what he’s about?

Eira and I use a particular version of The Daily Office for our prayers in the morning and as an invitation to sing a short song they sometimes have these words from Psalm 95:

     “Come let us bow down and bend the knee,

             Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”

We stop there, but the next verse in the Psalm is a good one to ponder:

             “for he is our God.

We are the people he watches over,

the flock under his care.

If only you would listen to his voice today!”

That is what I trust we are doing every day, but also in a special kind of way when we gather here together on Sundays.

SO, what is it that Luke wants us to take notice of in his story of the baptism of Jesus.

Luke could have told the story differently.  Matthew, Mark and John all thought it was important that John, Jesus’ cousin, was the one who baptised him, but that is not important for Luke.  Jesus was simply baptised along with everyone else.

This, I think is picking up on something very similar to what I suggested about Luke’s story of Jesus’ naming and circumcision – it is a way of emphasising the essential humanity of Jesus – he was like us in every way. 

This is a common aspect to many of Luke’s versions of the stories of Jesus, and yet he is not afraid to embed some amazing code language in this story that emphasises is divine status and origins.

In the Orthodox traditions of the church, the story of the Baptism of Jesus has become far more significant than it perhaps is in the West.  Most of us are happy to see this as an example of Jesus fulfilling all the requirements of the law (even though, as I used to hear said when I was a young Christian, he never sinned so he did not need to be baptised for the forgiveness of sins, like we do).

The orthodox regard this as a “Theophany” story – etymology similar to “Epiphany” – one that Reveals God to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit all in one story.  The Son is in the water, the Spirit descends upon him in bodily form as a dove and the Voice of The Lord is heard from the heavens saying:  “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

So, for the Orthodox, this story has embedded in it all the symbols of a most glorious Theophany of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the first Christian hint at this idea of the Trinity that is so important to us as Christians today.

Another key symbol that Luke embeds in this and the following stories of the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry is the Holy Spirit.  Luke is the story-teller of the Signs and Wonders Holy Spirit. 

In all of the stories by Luke of the work of the Holy Spirit the evidence of the Spirit is found in signs and wonders – powerful events that point us to the Glory of God.  The story we read from Acts (written by Luke) has echoes of this and the Psalm we read today is calling all of creation to speak in praise of God’s glory.

I am not sure about you, but I have to confess that I am not a great one for the Signs and Wonders stuff of the Holy Spirit – they have never been part of my experience, and I am very glad the John’s Gospel gives me a completely different way of understanding the work of the Holy Spirit; but this confession leaves me with a dilemma:  “What sense do I make of this story if the Holy Spirit – in power and glory – is the central idea?”

I don’t think it is possible for us to read this story of Jesus’ Baptism without giving some thought to our own baptism, and as you may recall, there are some very special words and gestures within the Baptism/Confirmation liturgy concerning the Holy Spirit.  When the water for Baptism is blessed the Holy Spirit is invoked to sanctify the water and those baptised, the priest later signs the person with the sign of the cross to show that you are marked as Christ’s forever, using CHRISM OIL – made holy at Easter as a symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and at Confirmation the Bishop prays with the laying on of hands “Strengthen, Lord, your servant with your Holy Spirit.  Empower and sustain them for your service.”

So, whether or not I am into a Signs and Wonders view of the Holy Spirit, something about the Spirit is central to this story.

This is where the Lectionary helps me, and I hope this will give you something to take away from our reading of the Scriptures today.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote an amazing piece of poetry for us which we read this morning.  The second verse has some clear allusions to baptism, as well as expressing something of the glory of God.

          When you pass through the waters,

     I will be with you;

          and through the rivers,

       they shall not overwhelm you;

          when you walk through fire

     you shall not be burned,

          and the flame shall not consume you.

John the Baptist, like most of the prophets was good at reading the political and social context of his day, and he describes the work of Jesus as like one who was “clearing his threshing floor to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  I think that Luke has John here hinting at the probability of a fiery end to the Roman occupation of Jerusalem – but with an assurance that the faithful would not be overwhelmed but would be saved, redeemed, liberated.

So Luke is saying to us that this Jesus is the one who will really get you through the mess of the world we live in.

I suspect if I was to ask you “What does Jesus save us from?” most of you would say “Our sins!  He forgives us!” and in many ways this is an important message of the Gospel of Jesus.

But I think Luke is opening a door here for us to add something quite different to our understanding of who Jesus was and is and what he’s about.

I think he is wanting us to consider that one of the big things he is about is our liberation:- freeing us to live fully and authentically human lives that glorify God.

We all easily acknowledge the struggle we have being the good people we know God wants us to be, and our inability to do this is not so much about sin as it is about an inner urge to look after ourselves before we look after others – and that messes things up all too often.

What Jesus comes along and offers is the transforming power of grace that assures us of God’s love for us thus freeing us from the tyranny of trying and failing to meet his expectations.  This freedom then transforms us so that we are able to live more authentically and for the good of others.

Perhaps such a transformation is a little less dramatic than the Holy Spirit signs and wonders that Luke likes to tell us about, but it is no less miraculous.

May you know this Holy Spirit power of transformation and liberation every day.

MY JESUS

I became a grandfather during the year; quite a milestone really.  When people approach their 60s their friends of similar ages are generally passing this milestone.  I suppose it is an important mark of moving on to the next generation – wherein our immortality lies in a sense.

One of the things that I have enjoyed about this experience is that the progress of my granddaughter through her milestones (she is 7 months old) has reminded me of experiencing those same milestones when my own children were babies:

·        The first smile response.

·        Sleeping through the night.

·        Holding onto something in the hand.

·        Holding the head steady.

·        Crawling.

·        Pulling themselves up on furniture (the scariest bit).

·        The first clearly enunciated word. 

·        Walking.   Etc.  etc. 

I think it is fascinating to realise that while these may achieve these milestones in a slightly different order from each other or over a different timeline there is sufficient predictability and pattern to make us really take notice if one is missed out or seems delayed too long; we check to see if there might be some underlying problem that needs attention.

CHRISTMAS MILESTONES

Because we compress the Jesus story of 33 years into a single cycle over 12 months, especially that within 3 months of our celebration of his birth we will be celebrating his death and resurrection, some of these things get a bit distorted, or overlooked.

The readings we are addressing today related to events a week after Jesus’ birth; the official readings for today relate to events when he was 12; and next week the readings will relate to events when he was perhaps 3 or 4 years old.  And then we have nothing of his story until he is about 30.

So the question that comes to my minds is:

“What does the gospel writer or the Church want us to remember or take not of by writing this story down?”

I want to suggest that while some of the supernatural events that surrounded the birth narrative might want us to know that this little baby was so special he was perhaps divine, this story wants to make it very clear that he was a little Jewish boy, like millions of other Jewish boys, who when he was 8 days old was formally given a name (usually related to his father’s name) and he was circumcised – scarred for life as one of God’s people, Israel.

In all the 2000 years of Christian history no theological debate has been more frequently and fiercely contended than the issue of the humanity and divinity of Jesus.

What gets us into trouble most often is when we try to explain the coexistence of these things using logic and empirical knowledge. 

No wonder, really, too, when you look at the Nicene Creed that we recite each week.  The middle section about Jesus begins with 11 lines that emphasise his divine origins and leads into a single line, simple statement that “he became truly human”.  His trial and his death are mentioned in two further lines and these are followed by 7 lines recounting his resurrection and ascension etc.

Anyone who tries to have these things coexist by any other means than “MYSTERY” is headed for tough times, because none of it is self-evident, logical or provable.

HISTORY AND FAITH

Modern biblical scholars generally manage this by speaking of Jesus in two ways – the Jesus of HISTORY and the Jesus of FAITH.

When you think about the processes by which the stories of Jesus life and teaching were recorded, I think you can accept that it wasn’t until the end of his life that people really recognised that there was something special about this man. 

No-one was keeping a diary of his birth and childhood.  Those stories came into circulation afterwards and so they tell us more than what actually happened.  Embedded in the narrative of what happened are things about who we believe Jesus is because we know the end of the story.

Albert Schweizer was the first modern scholar to try and pare away the Jesus of Faith bits so that we might begin to see something about the Jesus of History, and over a hundred years later scholars are still trying to unravel the puzzle.  Marcus Borg’s recent publication “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time” sums this work up very succinctly in the title.  We all have well-founded ideas about the Jesus of Faith, but we know much less about the Jesus of History.

THE ESSENTIAL HUMANITY OF JESUS

I think we in the church live in constant danger of losing the essential humanity of Jesus, and thereby lose the profound mystery of the incarnation of God, and the wondrous brotherliness of our Christ.

I have heard people comment when confronted with some of the tough challenges and complexities of life: “But of course Jesus had the advantage over us; he was God’s Son.”

Not so! That is heresy.

This story and others emphasise for us that Christ Jesus was truly human.  He lived in the same real world that you and I live in.  He was very poor.  He experienced fear and pain and sadness just like we do, and to me, that makes him far more accessible than if he were simply a divine in human clothing.

Here is one of the ironies of my life as a minister of the Gospel: 

·        It is very hard to get non-Christians to confront the fact that Jesus was Divine,

·        yet it is almost as difficult to convince Christians that he was truly human.

Some of you may be familiar with the series of novels written by Fr Joseph Girzone called “Joshua”.  One of the attractions of imaginative books like these about Jesus is that they underline the common humanity of Jesus.  They are read mainly by church goers who have been in danger of losing the down-to-earth reality of the incarnation.  They warm our hearts by depicting a Christ who was one of us; really one of us.

This year I would encourage you to explore what you can of the Jesus of History and let his self-identification with our humanity fill you with hope that your life can be truly transformed by the grace and love of God.  This is not because I want you to ditch the Jesus of Faith, but because in him the human and the divine become beautifully and awesomely aligned and we need to take hold of both dimensions to fully understand him.

SO TRUST THIS MYSTERY 

This is the Mystery!  That Jesus is for us both fully human and yet divine.

·        Hold on to the Mystery.

·        Or better still, let the Mystery hold on to you.

Throughout all the year, with the special Christian festivals of Christmas, Epiphany, Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost –

·        for goodness sake don’t let go of the hand of the human Jesus;

·        only in the human hand do we find the Divine hand;

·        and only in the Divine hand do we find our own destiny.

AMEN

Divorce and Remarriage

The whole issue of marriage is very topical these days as various parliaments in Australia are giving consideration to the issue of Marriage Equality — but that is a topic for another day.

We in the church have been grappling with the issue of divorce and remarriage for much longer, haven’t we'?  First of all it was an issue for general society and then for the church in particular. 

As I think about my own history with this issue I am reminded that as a young person, whose father was a minister in the church, I saw my dad move from a general opposition to the idea of divorce, to an accepting understanding of it – all in the context of the issue of divorce entering into the lives of his children.  My brother was first divorced and then remarried and is now divorced again.  One of my sisters married a divorce man, and then my other sister was divorced and is now remarried.  By entering into my close family experience, the opinion of my whole family about this issue shifted.

Perhaps this has happened in your family.  When we are confronted with difficult issues in real life — not as a theoretical reality — we often end up with different views in the matter.

THE TEXT - Mark 10:1-12

In this story, the discussion that follows between Jesus and the Pharisees it appears at first glance that Jesus utterly forbids divorce.  Jesus said that Moses only allowed divorce because of the hardness of men’s hearts.  He went back further to the beginning of the Bible, to Genesis, where it is written that man and woman "shall become one flesh," and "They are no longer two but one. What God has joined together let no man put asunder.”

From this, some churches have totally forbidden their members to undertake divorce.  Others have tried to side step it by the device of "annulment" instead of divorce.  Other churches accept divorce as an unfortunate but necessary option where a marriage has irretrievably broken down.

If Jesus utterly forbids divorce, on what grounds can our church tolerate divorce and remarry divorcee’s?  I will attempt to make this clearer in what follows.

THE SITUATION IN JESUS’ DAY

I invite you to keep in mind two things when this passage from Mark’s Gospel is read.

First, it’s a man’s game.  The conversation started with the Pharisees asking if it were lawful for a

man to divorce his wife. It was a question about men’s rights.  In that era in Jewish culture, divorce was largely the prerogative of men, not women.

As far as I am aware there were only three grounds on which a woman could divorce her husband:

1.     lf a Jewish man wanted to leave the holy land and go an live in a pagan country, she could refuse and seek divorce.

2.     If the man embraced another religion, the wife could divorce him.

3.     The third ground for divorce l think was if the man committed blasphemy.

On the other hand, men had numerous grounds.  Women had no right of reply. If a man found anything "unseemly" in his wife, all he had to do was to write out a statement of divorce, listing the grounds, get it witnessed by another man, and then send the wife away.  This put a woman in a perilous situation.  She was disgraced in the community; her family were not likely to take her back.  lf she could not quickly find another husband, her options were either to become a servant, a beggar, or turn to prostitution to keep alive. So when Jesus speaks about divorce in his social environment; it should be heard as a vigorous protest against a grave social injustice.

Secondly, back to basics. Jesus immediately drives the Pharisees back to basics.  They wanted to have a discussion about their rights under the regulations of Moses; their right to divorce a woman.  Jesus pushes them back to Genesis and the basic intention of God: From the beginning a woman and man were intended to stay together in mutual respect, trust and love.  Basically marriage was meant to be a life-long commitment.

Jesus takes us away from the compromises and confusions that happen when relationships do not work well, and he moves us back to God.  That is the only valid starting point as far as Christ was concerned. 

What does God see as the best possible way of life?

Togetherness: an ever-growing love through a life of mutual cherishing. That is the goal.

SO WHAT IS OUT OF PLACE HERE?

This text is a bit like the story of Jesus refusing to heal the story in Mark 7 where Jesus refuses the request of a Gentile woman to heal her daughter.  There Jesus speaks in uncharacteristically racist language.

Here Jesus speaks in uncharacteristically legalistic language.  His words seem to echo what you would have expected the Pharisees to say; but do they?

There is a yawning gulf between Jesus and legalistic religion.  The Pharisees came asking ‘Under what circumstances is it right for a man to divorce his wife’?"

Like their imitators in today’s world, these Pharisees just wanted to be in the right - always.  They expected to get from Jesus a list of conditions under which they could divorce their wives and feel very righteous about it.  That was their thing; the thing that gave them a buzz. They had to be in the right.  It was not only in matters of divorce that they saw things this way.  It applied to every other moral and religious issue.  They were fanatical about justifying themselves.  Therefore they were continually looking for ‘mitigating circumstances’ – excuses that were deduced from the laws of Moses that allowed them to maintain their high and mighty self-righteousness.

There we have it.

In a society where marriage was in a mess, and where men were divorcing their wives for trivial reasons, these paragons of virtue wanted to talk about rights. Jesus stumped them by in effect retorting:  "It is never right to divorce your wife."

The only thing that God intends and the only thing in God’s eyes that can bear the load of being called "right," is a life-long relationship of committed love.  Such can only happen in an environment of shared grace, where forgiveness and respect is ever present.

So, Jesus is not so much forbidding divorce as driving us to recognize our inability to fulfill the perfect law of God, and then offering us grace.  Grace is the remarkable alternative to legalistic self-righteousness.  In matters of marriage and divorce, as in all other ethical issues, we fail often, yet can gladly avail ourselves of the liberating grace of God, through Christ Jesus our Saviour.

Let me quote from one of my favourite New Testament scholars Eduard Schweizer:

"A legalistic requirement forbidding divorce does not help...but also a freedom in which a man can avoid the confession of guilt is even less beneficial.”

He then goes on to say:

“Divorce can be a sign of repentance by which two people face up to their failure. It can be a confession that they have not succeeded in living according to God’s will.  Divorce can therefore set one free to experience the mercy of God."

SUMMING UP

I believe that at one level, Jesus was confronting the male arrogance which had made divorce primarily a male privilege.  He was angry with their treatment of women.  His words about divorce and the hardness of men’s hearts are fundamentally a social justice protest.  Jesus was not putting a ban on divorce.  He was putting a ban on self-righteousness.

At a basic level, all of us has have committed adultery.  That is, we have watered down the perfect, beautiful, loving will of God on a dozen different moral issues.  Every one of us has compromised thousands of times.  Only when we stop trying to put ourselves in the right, when we cease asking "when is it lawful to do less than the best?" do we open up our minds and hearts the renovating mercy of God.  Then we are enabled to get on with life, gratefully and gracefully.

   

This is the Good News.   

The Authority of the Bible

A few Sundays ago I was preaching on Divorce and remarriage, and was confronted by the words of Jesus that said in effect that divorce was never right, and yet in most western Christian communities it has almost disappeared as an issue.  

Now if any of you are a bit like me, and have moved from being quite legalistic about divorce and remarriage into a position of understanding and permitting it, I wonder if you, too, have struggled with a wondering if you have done a bad thing to the Bible by disregarding something that Jesus seems to have said very specifically.

This strikes at our sense of the authority of the Bible and raises a question for us — "How can we

do what seems to be the opposite and not undermine the authority of the Bible?"

I have struggled with this question, mainly because l have never clearly thought through a framework for understanding what authority the Bible has.  For most of us there are two central planks in the

authority of the Bible - God wrote it, and it is infallibly correct. Anyone who disregards the text or its plain meaning is undermining its authority.

My seminary training taught me a different view of the text, but it didn't give me an alternative

understanding of the authority of the text; and just recently someone wrote something that makes so much sense about it that I want to share it with you before l unpick this issue of divorce and remarriage.

Clearly, the text of the Bible was written by men (there is some suspicion that Priscilla may have

written Hebrews, l think), but as an easy example, when Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians he

was not writing Holy Scripture.  He was writing a letter to some friends to help them as a

community of Christians.  For him The Psalms and the Prophets were the Scriptures. 

Similarly, when King David and others wrote the Psalms, they were not writing Scripture. For

them, only the first five books of the bible were Scripture.

The process by which these texts were elevated to sacred texts was progressive and took a long

time.  In the case of what we call the Old Testament, at first there was just the Torah -— Genesis to

Deuteronomy — then they added the Psalms and some of the Prophets and finally some of the

later prophets and the writings like Job and Esther.  This took about 600 years and even then

some people want to leave bits out that others wanted in.

In the case of the New Testament the decision to include post-Jesus writings to the Old Testament

didn't happen for several hundred years, and it all took three or four goes at deciding on the in-group of texts, and then Luther and others wanted to get rid of James and we still have a difference of opinion in the church about the Apocryphal books.

So, what is it that gives these texts their authority?

I was recently reminded that the authority comes from the determination by our forefathers in the faith that these texts should be regarded as sacred texts.  They were not saying they were written by God, as some religions do with their texts - the Quran and The Book of Mormon, for example - but they were saying these texts give us a great basis for discovering what God wants of us.

The task we have, as have God’s people have had throughout all time, is to discern from these texts how we should then live, and because the texts are constantly being considered in different times and places to when they were written, we have a complex task of interpretation.

What must I do to Inherit Eternal Life?

Some years ago I came across a series of CD recordings from a conference by Franciscan Monk, Richard Rohr and a lay-woman writer, Paula D’Arcy.

The theme of the conference, to which they spoke, was “A Spirituality for the two halves of life” and I have listened to those talks over and over again because they speak into a very deep part of my life and experience.  In some ways they gave me a vocabulary for things I knew without having the words to express or even understand them.

Many of us understand the image of life as a journey and perhaps even more so when we give some consideration of our spiritual life as a journey – and I think it is fair to say that this could be a theme common to the readings we have had today and which I would like to explore with you.

Richard Rohr and Paula D’Arcy explore the idea that when we are young, or young in the faith, we need a structure for our spirituality that is very much based or rules and good order.  It is about developing the confidence that we know we are in the right place with God.

So it is that when we were young, what we needed for our faith to flourish, was good teaching, strong community and a set structure for our spiritual life such as regular times daily for prayer and devotion, strong obligations to be along at everything happening at church and the like.

All of this gave us a great foundation to build our life of faith on – Rohr would call it a strong container.

The interesting thing is that it is almost universally the case that after a while something will happen on our journey of faith that will break the container.  We will find ourselves in places where the old rules don’t work any more.  There are now too many inconsistencies in life or contradictions that we were once blind to but which are screaming in our face for attention – the rules and structure of the old container can’t cope with them any more.

Paul D’Arcy is the speaker who tells very graphically how her container was broken.  She had grown up in a devout Catholic family where their life in Christ was the rich seedbed of their family life. 

When she was just 27 years old and expecting her second child, she was involved in a traffic accident that killed her husband and daughter.

In her grief, the container broke.

This was not supposed to happen.  She had been a good person of faith.  She had done all the right things.   This was not supposed to happen.

It took her a long time, but she gradually discovered that there were some new ways in which she could be with God, in which her spiritual life was nurtured that didn't rely on everything fitting in according to the rules.

It is into this kind of faith that Job is being called through the most incredible suffering.

It was into this kind of faith that David was called as he struggled with his sense of failure and abandonment.

And if you study the lives of the great saints of God you will generally find that there has been a transformative moment for them that is born out of suffering but in which their container was broken but they went on to discover new dimensions of life in God.  St John of the Cross is a great example – he joined a monastery at a young age and was really very good and obedient.  But something went wrong and his Abbott put him in the monastery dungeon for two years – that really broke his container.

The Hebrews reading and the Gospel tell us something about Jesus that lines up with this.

One of the themes that Hebrews emphasizes is that Jesus was fully human and experienced all the highs and lows that we count as the human journey.

In this context, I can’t help wondering what might have happened to Jesus before he took on his public life and ministry as a thirty year old.

I am sure Mary & Joseph brought him us a good Jewish boy – he would have learned the Torah by heart and known the law as well as anyone, but it is very clear from his teaching that he has moved beyond that kind of “goody-two-shoes” kind of faith that is so full of confidence because he has kept all the rules. In fact a large part of his teaching ministry seemed to be railing against those who were using the rule-keeping as a means of maintaining their own self-righteousness and burdening others for whom it no longer worked.

I don’t think Jesus could have arrived at that kind of wisdom without some kind of transformative moment born out of great trouble or grief – but we will never know what it was.

So, a man runs up to Jesus and asks:

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Most of us resonate positively with that question, don’t we?  I am not sure that we all understand it in the same terms, but I think we get the idea – “How can I be sure?”  He wanted some reassurance that he was getting it all right.

It is interesting that Jesus starts with the rules – the Ten Commandments – and the man is able to say that he has kept all of these from his youth – he really was a “goodie-two-shoes” wasn’t he?

And then he gets to the heart of the matter – keeping the rules doesn't matter if your heart is set on things less important than God.  This man was rich and Jesus said “Let it all go – give it away to the poor.” 

This is the pathway to life in God – driving through the rules to the things that are most important.

For some people the distraction is money, but for others it is their job, or their social standing or their power.  All sorts of things can get in the way – things that we think will make us happy, but which invariably do not.

So, Jesus’ suggestion here that the man give away his money to help the poor is much more about the man than it is about the poor – not that Jesus doesn't always seem to have his eye out for the poor.

If you listen to the teaching of Jesus you do not find him often siding with the priestly style that emphasizes the law and the rules – most often he sides with the prophetic tradition that invariably involves a challenge to the establishment and the rules.

In Micah 6:8 we have three very simple filters through which to decide what is expected of us:

            Do Justice

            Love Compassion

            Walk Humbly

Jesus was inviting this man into that space and was saying in effect that if he did that, he would find peace with God – a much better peace than he gets from keeping the rules.

If I could remind you of last week’s Gospel story where Jesus seems to have a very legalistic response to the question about divorce and remarriage.  If you look carefully at the story you will discover that Jesus’ concern was not that the Pharisees wanted to be able to divorce – with him responding that you cannot do that.  Jesus’ concern was the sense of self-righteousness that the Pharisees wanted to maintain while they were doing what was clearly unjust and unkind – condemning a woman to a life of destitution because they wanted a new wife.  Jesus ran those filters over the situation and came up with what seemed like an unexpected answer.  I don’t think he would give the same answer to a woman of today who has been beaten and abused asking if it is right for her to divorce and remarry; or to a couple who have just lost it for so long now that they really are bad for each other and need to be free to start again with someone else.  They need grace and forgiveness – and Jesus offers a freedom to receive that and move on.

But I digress.

I really like the work that Richard Rohr and Paula D’Arcy have done, although there are times when I feel like they are simply describing two different kinds of spirituality, rather than one into which we are best suited to grow into.  So long as the structure of rules and the like is not having a negative impact on a person’s life, so long as they are not just papering over the things that don’t work in order to keep the rules-framework, then they are okay and they are in the right place for the moment.

But I wanted to use these readings today to introduce you to the idea, if you didn't know it already, that there is another way of living our life in God, that generally comes out of the tragedies and struggles we have in life and that is grounded in grace and freedom. 

More than once Jesus made it clear that no amount of rule-keeping is going to get us over the line – even the best rule-keeper will have failed to satisfy the demands of the law just as much as little old you and me – and we both know we aren't very good at the rules.

And the good news is that this new way, this way of freedom and grace, enables us to respond with compassion and inclusion to all the people we meet in our journey and be willing to travel with them for a while.

The Lord be with you.