HONOURING OUR PLEDGES - MATTERS OF FAITH AND TRUST

Sunday, 4th November 2007 : Pentecost 23 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 : 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 : Luke 19:1-10

Alistair and Parish Council,

To the Westfield Anglican Parish of the Holy Spirit in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.

We might recognise that as a complete rip-off of the opening to the second letter to the Christian community in Thessalonika …

But the reason I lifted it is because it fits perfectly with our Parish. Among the many blessings the Living God has showered upon us is a growing faith and genuine, observable love for one another, as well as a remarkable steadfastness that sees us continuing God’s work into our twenty-third year.

Perhaps our afflictions and persecutions are not quite as physically life-threatening as those the Thessalonians likely encountered and endured.

But they are real nevertheless – afflictions of financial shortfall and struggle; persecutions or perceived persecutions from ecclesiastical bureaucracy demanding financial compensations or reasons or both.

Those bureaucratic demands are not gratuitous – nor is Westfield alone in facing them: other parishes have similar – and greater – issues with which to contend.

Nevertheless, we, as God’s people in this particular part of Westfield, need to reckon up the balance sheet of faith and blessings and address the issue raised in the pewsheet – namely the shortfall in pledges.

Pledges are the amount of weekly, monthly or annual offering we promised when we received our envelopes. We need to remember that we promised this offering to God – not primarily to a parish or institution or priest – but to the Living God.

And we made the promises based on prayerful reflection and consideration of God’s own blessings to us individually.

A moment ago we heard Zacchaeus promise to give half his income to the poor and to recompense anyone he’d defrauded fourfold. The Greek text is actually written in the present tense so it is likely Zacchaeus was already do what he promised.

Either way, what if he went back on that promise? What would that imply about him or his faith or his trustworthiness?

These are the same sorts of questions we need to ask ourselves as well. What we promise to offer for God’s work in our Parish represents first a thank offering that recognises God’s blessings to us. We are saying, Thank you, Lord, for your blessings. I now return those blessings so that my Parish may be a blessing to others.

And as part of our responsible economy of God’s blessings we prayerfully decide what is enough and make sure it is not too much. While God and Parish Treasurers may desire a certain sacrificial generosity in our offerings, God at least doesn’t want anyone to starve or have their electricity or phone disconnected! (I should hasten to add that our own Treasurer doesn’t want that to happen either.)

So if we promise to offer God, say, $10 a week, then our faith tells us clearly and unambiguously that this is the amount we need to set aside for God before anything else. When that doesn’t happen – when we promise God $10 a week and only hand over $5 – then we have a few problems to wrestle with.

First is the question of faith and trust in God. We all know what it’s like when someone promises to do something and then doesn’t follow through. We feel hurt, maybe even betrayed or angry. It becomes an indication that the person who broke their promise really doesn’t hold us in any esteem.

God, fortunately, is infinitely forgiving and handles these matters far better than most of us seem to. But God’s sadness at broken promises of any kind arises from what it actually sez about our faith and trust in God.

At the entirely mundane level we need to understand that among the Treasurer’s many responsibilities is that of making budgets and forecasts. The Treasurer does that on the basis of what we tell him we are intending to offer to God.

If, however, our offering is less than what we promised then something happens that Treasurers in every time and place abhor – their books don’t balance! And when a Treasurer’s books don’t balance Treasurer’s start weeping, groaning and gnashing their teeth – and I can assure you this is not a pretty sight!

Fortunately, even Treasurers know that circumstances change for the worse. That’s okay – provided we let the Treasurer know that because of those changed circumstances we can’t offer as much as we originally promised.

I’ve recently resigned my chaplaincy at the Mount Hospital. My stipend won’t be as much as it was. I will be writing a note to the Treasurer explaining that because of my reduced stipend my offering to God will also be reduced. I will slip that note into my envelope in a week or two, or maybe put it in an envelope with my envelope number on it. Either way the Treasurer will know that the offering from the holder of envelope number XX is going to be reduced.

The Treasurer can then recalculate his budget and forecasts. He won’t necessarily sing Alleluia! at having to do so – but at least he won’t have unbalanced books …

Likewise, when I secure another position and my stipend or income increases I will revise my offering to God accordingly. I will let the Treasurer know that envelope number XX’s offering to God will increase. And this time the Treasurer may well sing Alleluia!

This is one the great virtues and values of having our envelope system. It’s completely anonymous and it allows us to communicate with the Treasurer when things do change.

It also allows us to put aside our offering to God in advance, so that if we go away for a while we can still ensure that what we promised God is always offered exactly according to our promise.

At the last Parish Council meeting the Treasurer wept, groaned and gnashed his teeth because what we had promised to offer to God was more than we were ACTUALLY offering to God. I doubt if God’s blessings have decreased – but it may be that our circumstances have changed for the worse. If that’s the case, let the poor man know!

If it’s complexly a matter of trust and faith, that’s slightly more difficult – but not insurmountable. Perhaps it is only a matter of remembering that if we have promised to offer to God a thank offering for God’s blessings then of course we expect ourselves to honour that promise – just as we would expect anyone else to honour any other promise they made to us.

Let’s pray.

Loving and generous God

Your blessings fill our lives to overflowing.
Help us always to use those blessings
so that we in turn may be a blessing to others.
Help us to remember also that what we offer to you
we offer in faith, trusting your promise
to look after us in every single circumstance.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son our Lord. Amen.

HEAVEN, HELL, THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES

30th September 2007 : Pentecost 18 : Year C
8:00am and 9:30am High Wycombe-Maida Vale
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 : 1 Timothy 6:6-19 : Luke 16:19-31

An Anglican priest dies and goes to heaven. S. Peter greets him at the pearly gates and tells him that he’s lived a good and faithful life and he’s now welcome to enjoy all the fruits of heaven. “Why don’t you have a look around?” sez Pete. “We’ve given you this lovely new VW. Have fun!” The priest is of course so overwhelmed he can hardly stutter Thank you but he gets into the VW and off he goes.

He heads north and is amazed at what he sees: perfect weather; people blissfully happy and enjoying every moment. He turns east, reveling in the breathtakingly beautiful scenery. And so it is when he drives west and south.

But as he’s driving along he sees a car coming in the opposite direction. It’s a long, lean, open-topped chauffeur-driven limousine, and in the back seat is a man he recognises. He’s sitting back, Hawaiian shirt, a huge Havana cigar between his lips, two drop-dead gorgeous women next to him. It’s none other than the local Rabbi! “Good to see you, Reverend!” sez the Rabbi on his way past.

The good Reverend slams on the breaks, turns round and drives at break-neck speed back to the pearly gates. He rushes up to S. Peter. “How was your trip?” S. Pete asks. “Fine,” sez the Rev, “Apart from one thing.” “Oh?” sez Pete. “I just saw the local Rabbi. He was in a magnificent limousine with every conceivable luxury, and here I am driving around in VW. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I lived a good life, faithful, loyal, read my bible every day, gave to poor, etc etc etc. How come I get the Vee-Dub and the Rabbi gets the limo?”

“Ah,” sez S. Peter, “he’s related to the Management …”

In the world of comedy Pearly Gates jokes have their own weighty section. The thing is that even in Jesus’ time they told stories about heaven and hell, maybe even jokes.

Here we have one such story that scholars believe Jesus may have adapted to illustrate the extreme, devastating poverty of human life in the absence of the one person who can bridge the gap between what our soul experiences as hell and heaven. That person of course is Jesus.

We need to be very clear: this is not a factual, encyclopaedic treatise on heaven and hell. It’s a story. It speaks to our souls far more than our heads. It’s told because Jesus knows our soul will recognise and understand the deeper meaning. It’s told despite the huge risk of it being interpreted as doctrine and dogma.

Many of us of course like to believe in a literal hell because it’s a handy place to assign our enemies. It helps us feel good about ourselves – we’re going to heaven because we’ve been good; they’re going to hell, where our good, loving God will make sure they suffer unspeakable agonies for eternity! Yay, God!

Not a nice picture. And not very Christ-like.

Want to know what IS Christ-like? Paul tells us something worth hearing again and again:

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made n the good confession
in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the presence of God, who gives
life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius
Pilate made the good confession

Or consider the story in Jeremiah. What is that telling us? It’s saying that despite the very worst of situations, the Living God will always provide hope. Here’s Jerry in Jerusalem. It’s besieged by the Babylonians. The walls are about to come down and the Babylonians are going to send the Jewish people into exile for a long time.

What does Jeremiah do? He does something – buys a field – that speaks of the future. He does something that suggests there WILL be a future for the Jewish people in Jerusalem. He makes plans. While all around him is chaos and terror, he’s buying dirt for his retirement!

No wonder he got the land! They must have thought he was crazy. Well, they did think he was crazy. It must have looked like the deal of the century.

But again, that’s what our heads tell us. Our souls understand that this is saying that it will not always be chaos and terror, God is still present, God will remain present and God will guide us through the worst of times.

We may well remember that because we likely all have had or will have our own times of terror and chaos. For some of us experiencing it now, it may seem never-ending and without the proverbial light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel.

A terrifying place to be.

But Jesus reminds us that he is the one who bridges that particular abyss between the hell of terror – be it sudden unemployment, cancer, the death of loved-ones, divorce, whatever – and whatever heaven might look like by comparison.

And Paul? What he sez is “doable” no matter what our circumstances. We don’t, for instance, have to be one hundred per cent fit, healthy, wealthy, wise, wonderful and full of beans to be kind or gentle or righteous or loving or faithful or enduring. We can actually do those things in the worst of times.

That’s the point. And that’s what marks our faith. That’s what makes us people who are on that exciting and yes, sometimes traumatic journey towards Christ-likeness.

May we always remember this same Jesus, even in the worst of calamity – and especially during the BEST times of our lives!

The Lord be with you!

Alistair P D Bain
Rector, Anglican Parish of the Holy Spirit
Westfield -:- Western Australia

sermon preached as guest presider

GOD: THE GOOD COP?

16th September 2007 : Pentecost 16 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 : 1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-19a : Luke 15:1-10

It doesn’t matter which TV channel we watch – every one of them has some sort of “cops n robbers” show. The ABC has excellent programs like The Bill and Cracker, among others; the commercials serve an unending platter of American and, occasionally, Australian fare. We can even tune into SBS and see the marvelous Inspector Montalbano capturing crooks in smooth Italian.

As expressions of the heresy of dualism – good versus bad, right versus wrong – these shows continue the trend we can witness even in holy scripture. Not, of course, cop shows as such; rather, the good guy triumphing over the bad guy – the more blood and violence the better!

Little wonder that we cast God in the role of the Avenger, the Super Cop, the Great Police Commissioner in the Sky, with Chief Inspector Jesus on the ground to hunt down the remaining bad guys and train up a crack squad of Sinner-Seekers.

And boy does this seem to be the case first-up when Jeremiah smacks us in the chops with a divine soliloquy outlining God’s anger at Judah’s faithlessness. This is God Super-Cop in action, the Punisher, the Revenger – the One who visits pain and suffering upon all who fail to conform to the divine design.

They say the devil is in the detail. In this case it’s the divine in the detail, in one small clause that signals hope and something of the true nature of the Living God:

yet I will not make a full end

Yet I will not make a full end, sez God. In other words, God will not eradicate Judah, not wipe them off the face of the earth, erasing every record and social security number as if they never even existed.

Yet I will not make a full end signals God’s intention to find a peaceful and merciful resolution. Judah has chosen a particular course of action and, as I suggested a week or so ago, God ensures divine control over the situation by accepting full responsibility for what will happen.

Over the centuries and still today Christians have gleefully purloined passages in the Hebrew scriptures as somehow being predictive of future events, especially Christ-events. Yet I will not make a full end could become one of those chrystal ball phrases even though it refers only to the ultimate restoration of the Jewish people centuries before Jesus.

Even so, when we DO encounter the times of Jesus we find a truer, far more accurate picture of the God of mercy, love and compassion than the projections of the Hebrew scriptures. Paul gives us these straightforward statements to ponder:

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me,
because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I
was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I
received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of
our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the foremost. But for that very
reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might
display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to
believe in him for eternal life.

Paul contrasts his human behaviour – his violence – with that of the Living God, who displays qualities of mercy, love, grace and faithfulness, doing so with “utmost patience”. Here suddenly is the true nature of our God, the One who “will not make a full end” but will wait patiently for the opportune moment, when the people are ready to understand and receive God’s mercy.

This is very important. While we continue to act out of fear – while our behaviour and attitudes and endlessly-rewound tapes reinforce again and again and again and again that fear – we will continue to conceive of and portray the Living God as a ruthless persecutor who is out for revenge. Needless to say, being otherwise rational creatures, we will also continue to run away from such a God.

And rightly so. Because that ISN’T our God.

The fear we’re talking about is sheer terror. Fear as in the Dave Allen sketch: “Admiral! There’s fifty French froggy frigates on the horizon!” “Thank you, Mr Hardy. Would you kindly fetch me my brown corduroy trousers …”

We shouldn’t confuse this fear with the very appropriate awe and speechless amazement that the word fear indicates in many biblical passages. That’s entirely different.

This fear of the God of revenge keeps us running, keeps us hiding – and it’s often the final barrier God gently removes before we come to an understanding of God’s true nature.

What does Paul say? “Christ came into the world to SAVE sinners …” Jesus is not a bounty hunter. He’s the full human expression of the divine love, mercy, compassion and yearning for relationship.

And as the gospel confirms and emphasises, Jesus isn’t out there looking for sinners. He’s searching, patiently, for those who are lost.

Yes, the stories in this chapter of Luke do equate “the lost” with sinners and sin and sinful behaviour. But as the third story in the series – the lost son and the prodigal father – indicates, God isn’t hunting us down in order to punish us.

God is painstakingly searching for us in order to LOVE us fully. And such is God’s joy when we return, when we come out of our fear-based hovels and chuck out our warped, perverted fear-based distortions of God, that full-blooded celebration is the only option.

God sez, I’ve found Big Al – let’s PAR-TAY! Whoo-hoo!! And God becomes the divine DJ at the divine disco, out-boogey-ing the best of them.

Where does that leave us in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield? First, let’s do a reality check of our picture of the Living God. Are we terrified this disturbed deity is gonna get us and get us good? Or are we secure in God’s love – secure enough to speak about it and share it with confidence and authority?

Second, we have to remember that the Jesus business isn’t just about warm-fuzzies. It’s also about sharing this good news with everyone else who is lost, wounded, damaged, broken. If we’re still fear-based then we don’t have no good news to share. If we’ve come to trust the faithful love, mercy and compassion of the Living God, then boy do we have a good news story to tell and share!

And that’s the question –do we have bad news of a vengeful punisher? or good news of the ever-loving, ever-living Living God? And if we do – then who’s hearing it? Who heard it yesterday? Who’s gonna hear it today? Who’ll hear it tomorrow and the day after and the week after that and next month and next year and … You get the picture …

Alistair P D Bain

Rector, Anglican Parish of the Holy Spirit

Westfield -:- Western Australia

THE CROSS: BEYOND NARCISSISM

9th September 2007 : Pentecost 15 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Jeremiah 18:1-11 Philemon 1-25 : Luke 14:25-35

Narcissism is a term first used in relation to human thought and behavior by the
Austrian physician and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud.

Narcissism is a set of character traits concerned with self-admiration, self-centeredness and self-regard. Everyone has some narcissistic traits. However, narcissism can also manifest in an extreme pathological form in some personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder wherein the patient overestimates his abilities and has an excessive need for admiration and affirmation. This may be present to such a degree that it severely damages the person's ability to live a productive or happy life because the traits manifest as severe selfishness and disregard for the needs and feelings of others.[†]

That’s a quotation from Wikipedia[‡‡] , the “free online encyclopaedia”, and the reason I’ve begun with the topic of narcissism is because I suspect it’s one of the factors that contribute to my discomfort at this gospel passage.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a confession that I have Narcissistic Personal Disorder. At least, I don’t think I have it! But part of my discomfort here does come from taking this passage at an entirely personal level.

Again, don’t get me wrong. We ARE meant to take this very personally indeed. This IS about the personal cost of following Jesus and Jesus wants us to be absolutely clear about the implications of being one of his followers.

It requires commitment – wholehearted, full-bodied, lifetime commitment. It’s not something we might decide to do as a whim, thinking we’ll just pull out, drift away, fade into the sunset of the next appealing spiritual fancy that comes along.

We know Jesus is serious about this because he uses some pretty uncompromising language, talking for instance about hating our families. As Jesus did earlier in Luke, he boldly assaults one of the foundations of Judaism in telling us to HATE our father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters.

These days we might retreat to the perverse comfort of some throwaway line about how “dysfunctional” our family is but back then it was mighty challenging stuff. Because Jesus actually does say HATE. Not “dislike” or “feel mildly ticked-off every now and then” – but HATE.

As in “Nazis hate Jews, among others”. As in “most people who live with the delusion of normality hate paedophiles”. As in that disastrously unchristian Christian web site, “God hates fags”.

It’s a pretty good attention-grabber. …Talk about getting you round the throat in a vice-like grip!

And no, Jesus isn’t advising us to respond literally. But he is making a crucial – pardon the pun – point. He does want us to be clear that becoming one of his followers is the most serious commitment we will ever make and that it lasts a lifetime.

So he’s saying, Be absolutely sure what you’re doing. In the gospel words: “count the cost”. Yes, I AM asking you to choose between family and me; I AM demanding your undivided attention AND commitment; I AM telling you that this isn’t just a pastime, a phase, something to do when you feel bored or terrified or there’s nothing worth watching on the telly.

And all of that fundamentally disturbs the wee narcissist lurking, I suspect, in all of us. It certainly challenges me at two narcissistic levels: first because it demands that I think clearly, concisely and consciously about someone other than moi (despite today’s continuing obsession with the “most important person in the world – [ME]”); and second, because Jesus’ challenge makes me think that “taking up the cross” is something that ONLY affects me.

I’ve begun reading a book by Kent Ira Groff, Active spirituality: a guide for seekers and ministers. In the introduction Groff tells a story about a parishioner and his pastor, both of whom felt spiritual dry. So dry that they were unable to see the possibility of helping each other through that terrifying experience.

Groff makes the comment, sadly but without judgement, that neither was able to bring their burdens to the cross and lay them down for healing.

It got me thinking. It began to remind me of one of the late scenes in the movie Kingdom of heaven, in which the most arrogant of the Crusaders march to their doom. They leave Jerusalem boldly parading what was historically regarded as the True Cross, garishly decorated in plated gold, glinting at the desert sun, the symbol, ultimately of their folly and greed. Cut to the aftermath of the battle and we see the same cross, in the background, surrounded by the dead bodies of its erstwhile defenders, stripped of its finery but still standing – standing in the midst of pain and suffering, human misery piled high around it.

The irony and the paradox of that scene remains. The cross that stands in the midst of pain and suffering – the very symbol in our faith of pain and suffering – is EXACTLY where it should be. It is EXACTLY what it should be – the place where all who suffer come for hope and healing.

And when Jesus tells us to take up the cross he is doing so in the knowledge that if we truly hold HIS cross then those who suffer, those who are lost, the weak, the impoverished, the oppressed – will come to it sooner or later. It is and will continue to be, for them, the hope they need, the hope they crave, the hope for which they might not even know they yearn.

Are we who claim to be Jesus’ followers, cross-carriers, prepared to encounter and assist those kind of people? The lost, the broken, the damaged … Are we prepared to recognise and admit that we ourselves are among them? Are we willing to love the kind of people – society’s flotsam and jetsam – who inhabit places like the caravan park across the road?

Because that is what will happen if we really ARE carrying Jesus’ cross. That is what will happen if we really ARE being Jesus.

So the challenge is only partly about me and my response to the cross and the demands such a personal response might make. It’s also about being prepared to stand in the midst of suffering because THAT is the place where the cross of Jesus stands.

Let’s continue, then, to reflect on these twin challenges. Are we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, prepared to make a wholehearted – body, mind, soul and strength – commitment to Jesus? and are we willing to receive and accept those who come to his cross seeking hope and healing?

Alistair Bain, Priest-in-Charge, Westfield

[†] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder.
[‡‡] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

GOD'S GRACIOUS PARTY INVITATION!

PENTECOST 14 02-09-07
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:2, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1-14

I like parties. I like dinner parties, dancing parties, fancy dress parties, scruffy BBQ parties; I like meeting-new-friends parties, formal parties, impromptu backyard parties- if there’s a party, I’ll be in it. If we have a party, we’ll plan and shop and cook and re-arrange furniture and wear ourselves out; but thoroughly enjoy offering hospitality to our friends and family. Today we have family coming over for lunch to celebrate Father’s Day.

So when I was reading Luke this week, I had a few niggles of guilt. When I give a banquet- well, maybe a BBQ- do I invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind? Or do I invite my family and friends? I don’t invite my rich neighbours because I haven’t got any.

I thought back to all the parties we’ve given over the years and the people we’ve entertained, and couldn’t really think of any particularly disabled guests. (A few slightly odd ones, perhaps)

Of course, in Jesus’ time people who were disabled would most likely be in desperate straits, because if you couldn’t work, you didn’t eat: no disability pension in those days. So he was referring to those in society who were helpless and possibly starving.

OK then, I thought: but I haven’t entertained anyone who was starving either: I don’t personally know anyone who is so poor they don’t have enough to eat.

So are we wrong to have parties for our friends and families? I came to the conclusion that Jesus wasn’t saying that, because it would contradict his own lifestyle: the gospels present him as quite a party animal. Luke’s gospel has around eight different stories of Jesus at dinner with various people.

Surely then Jesus didn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever have a party for our friends: that isn’t the point of what he was saying.

The point is that we should give help to people who cannot possibly give anything back to us. The social scene in Jesus’ day was very different to ours, but perhaps similar in that if someone invited a guest to dinner, that guest would be expected to return the favour.

This principle of reciprocity was widely current and accepted in the ancient world, and to a large extent it still is today. We expect people to reciprocate. If I give you a Christmas present, I expect you will give me a Christmas present. If I invite you to my birthday party, I would be a bit miffed if you didn’t invite me to yours!

In business it can be the same: quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This appeals to our sense of fairness and justice: if I help you, I expect you to help me.

That’s all well and good, but does that mean that if I know you couldn’t possibly return the favour I won’t help you?

I think Jesus is telling us that we should seek to give to those who are so needy they cannot give anything in return. I may not be able to invite a hungry refugee to dinner but I can send money to an organisation that will feed her.

Jesus said ‘you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’ This still sounds like we’d be doing a good deed in the hope of a reward, even if the reward isn’t collected until after you die.

Perhaps Jesus is simply saying don’t worry about it, don’t think about rewards because God has it all in hand. And after all, think about how God acts: God gives to us without hope of recompense or reward, because what could we possibly do for God? The Creator of the Universe loves us but doesn’t need or want us to pay back all that we are given.

This passage is about an attitude that leads to action. My attitude should be one of humility: I am no better or worse than anybody else, so it doesn’t matter where I sit at the table. My attitude should be that God has given me everything I have, and I am free to give to those who are struggling without expecting anything in return.

How did the people at the leader of the Pharisee’s dinner respond to what Jesus said? We’re not told, but we can guess that they were not too thrilled. What Jesus said probably sounded quite strange; in those days, the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind were thought to be those from whom God had withheld blessing. Their afflictions were believed to have resulted from sin. They were excluded from the Temple and considered unclean, so why would any good Jew invite them to dinner?

Today, we don’t tend to believe that people are poor, sick or disabled as a result of sin, although sin may be a direct or indirect cause of affliction. A family may be living in poverty because of a corrupt government; a person could be crippled after being hit by a drunk driver. But we don’t look at a disabled person and say he or she must have sinned to be in that condition, as people seem to have done in ancient times. So is there an application of this for us today?

Who do we exclude from our hospitality? Are we truly an inclusive, welcoming church, parish, community, or family? Do we make the good news of the kingdom easily accessible to everyone? We need, as a parish, to take up the challenge of giving away the gospel to all who need to hear it. That includes people who would never darken a church door as well as those who might join us here.

May we go from here encouraged to think about how we can be like Jesus, ready to turn the values of society upside-down if they would have us limit our generosity to people like ourselves.

God’s grace is without limit: God’s parties are open to everyone. Let’s make sure we tell people.

Let us pray.
Loving God,
Thank you for everything, for it is all your gift.
Encourage us to share, to give, and to demand nothing in return.
Encourage us to have attitudes that lead to action.
Encourage us to see that, although our lives may seem small and insignificant, we can make a difference in the world.
When we are tempted to give in to the culture of greed that permeates our world, remind us of Jesus, whose life demonstrated self-giving at its greatest.
For it is in his name that we pray. Amen.

Lorna Green, Assistant Curate, Westfield

JESUS - MEEK, MILD OR MUSCULAR?

PENTECOST 12 19-08-07
Isa 5:1-7
Ps 80:1-2, 8-19
Heb 11:29 – 12:2
Luke 12:49-59

‘Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to him belong;
we are weak, but he is strong.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon this little child.
Pity my simplicity
Suffer me to come to thee.

How many of us learnt such things in Sunday school or at our mother’s knee? Do you remember the pictures of Jesus, illustrating Sunday school material, which depicted him as blonde and blue-eyed, always smiling, looking- well, a bit wet, really! When you were a child, did you ever see a picture of a Jesus who was dark-skinned and semitic-looking? I certainly didn’t!

We all have a sort of picture or image in our minds of Jesus: we imagine him to be a certain way, depending on a number of things, including what we have been taught and what we have read. We might imagine him to be like a big brother or a favourite uncle. Our personal images of Jesus fulfil our own need for someone greater, better, stronger than ourselves who cares about us.

The trouble is, our images of Jesus can get stuck and become unhelpful. If, as adults, we cling to a child-like image of Jesus, we are in danger of worshipping someone who only exists in our imagination.

The real Jesus was not meek and mild; yes, he was gentle with people but he also got angry, sometimes very angry.

It’s the same with our images of God: is God an old man with a big white beard in a white toga who sits on a cloud, smiling benevolently down on the world? I don’t think so.

In our readings today we meet God as a lover who grieves the loss of loved ones. In Isaiah, we read the beginning of a love song that describes how God planted a beautiful vineyard, which in this case represents the land of Judah. God is bitterly disappointed, because this tenderly-nurtured vineyard produces only wild grapes that are sour and useless. The bitter fruit is bloodshed and injustice: God’s chosen people are behaving badly again, and God is pretty cross with them. So God warns them that they will be punished, like a vineyard that is turned into a wasteland.

Psalm 80 is a lament, as the psalmist pleads with God to restore the people of Israel. This was probably written after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE, and it also pictures God’s people as a vineyard that has gone to ruin. The invasion and conquest of the Northern Kingdom was seen as God’s punishment for the sin of the people, and the psalmist longs for God to look kindly on the people once again.

In the gospel of Luke we heard Jesus speaking to his disciples as he was on the way to Jerusalem and his death. He says he came to bring fire to the earth and wishes it was already burning, and talks about families being split because of him. Is this the gentle Jesus, meek and mild we know and love? What about the peace on earth the angels promised at his birth?

This is not a weak, tepid, quiet and unassuming Jesus: this is a muscular, angry, powerful Jesus who shouts to the crowds, “Read the signs of the times!” Look around you, look at your world and what you have made of it. What kind of fruit are YOU bearing?

The reading from the letter to the Hebrews that we heard this morning comes at the end of a long list of the heroes and heroines of the faith. The writer is at pains to tell his readers that all these people down the ages, although they suffered for their faith, did great things because they trusted in God and had hope. They lived and died long before the Messiah came, the fulfilment of hope. Therefore, we are told, with the encouragement of their stories, we can run the race and live our lives in faith because we have Jesus at the finish line.

After all, if those great ones of the Old Testament times could live in faith, how much more can we, who know the Saviour? We have the promised Holy Spirit to lead and teach us; we have the promise of eternal life.

Jesus spoke of bringing fire to the earth. Fire can burn and destroy, but it can also purify; and the Holy Spirit is represented by fire.

These readings speak to us of warning and of promise. They speak to us of a God who is angry with us when we are unjust, careless, greedy, selfish and violent. They speak to us of a God who loves us very much, who cares deeply about us and wants us to live in right relationship with one another and with God. They speak to us of the cloud of witnesses, the countless believers who have lived and died faithfully and courageously, whose lives are an example and an encouragement to us.

And they speak to us of Jesus the man, who felt despair and anger, sadness and pain, who longed for people to wake up, look around and start making changes.

Are we ready to listen to him: to put away our cherished images of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and see the real God-Man who so urgently calls us to change?

Are we ready to allow the fire of the Spirit to burn away the rubbish in our lives, leaving us free to live lives of faith? Can we here in Armadale in 2007 produce sweet fruit that makes a difference in the lives of those around us?

Let us pray.
Holy God,
Help us to follow the examples of those who have lived lives of faith, who have gone before us;
Help us to read the signs and hear the urgency in Jesus’ words;
and show us how we can serve you and those to whom you send us: in Jesus’ name.
Amen

Preached by the Rev'd Lorna Green at the Parish of S. Matthew, Armadale

EXTRAORDINARY, GOD

19th August 2007 : Pentecost 12 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 5:1-7 : Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2 : Luke 12:49-59

We live in a world that seems to become more and more extraordinary day by day. This is especially so in the field of medical knowledge and advancement. Often enough I encounter hospital patients who are admitted for heart procedures that have become increasingly more sophisticated, increasingly less invasive, people whose second or third sojourn into the world of cardio-thoracic medicine introduces them to techniques that weren’t available or even dreamt of the first time around.

But we don’t have to look at anything as complex as medical science to see how technology in particular has advanced over the decades and, more commonly now, months. When I were a lad cassette tapes were the pinnacle of musical technology. The Walkman was a breath-taking innovation. (And for the younger folk who may be listening the Walkman I’m talking about played cassettes, not CDs … No one in the general population even dreamed of anything like a compact disc!)

The point is, the extraordinary – at least in the West – surrounds us and fills our thinking almost by default, and it’s tempting to think that we become so used to it that little surprises us any more and that this is one reason the Living God has to work overtime to attract our attention.

Tempting it is – but it is not a modern malaise, not some latter-day obstinacy that carefully, though automatically, cordons off God while we go about our quotidian tasks, accepting technological change with an appropriate, though short-lived wonder that quickly becomes blasé about the extraordinary, while the Living God patiently continues to do what the Living God does, older than history, longer than time.

It’s clear enough from today’s readings that humanity has long-failed to understand, let alone appreciate that extraordinary is not simply a word that defines the Living God’s actions in our world but, so far as we can use the phrase, is, from the human viewpoint, the normal and natural condition of the divine. This shouldn’t surprise us but constantly we are surprised. We could almost say that our failure of appreciation and understanding is equally part of what the philosophers call the “human condition”.

So when we meet God in Isaiah we see divinity wounded by a humanity that ignores the essence of God’s invitation to produce a fruit that God defines in the same terms as God’s own manner of dealing with creation – namely, with respect and care, even love. God tells the recalcitrant people of Israel that their enemies will triumph over them but accepts the responsibility and in doing so maintains control of the situation.

God does not withdraw from the scene and leave Israel to their fate. Extraordinarily, God remains, however great the displeasure.

So what is that God’s people have failed to do? Have they failed in their quota of attendances at church on Sunday? Have they fallen short of the minimum number of sacrifices? Didn’t they give enough money or serve on enough committees or belong to enough groups or organise enough sausage sizzles?

No and no and no. God expected justice, peace and the attempt to encounter God and live as Godly people. Instead, humanity gave God violence, injustice and disregard for the dignity of others. The irony is that how God’s people live – in ignorance of the essential reality and in-built extraordinariness of God – is how they will now live and die, consumed and subsumed in the perversion of everything that God stands for and asks of us.

So their cities and grand homes will lie empty and desolate. Violence, begetting violence, will overtake Israel and the will be sucked into the vortex of that violence simply because they are no different from those around them, even though God DOES call them – and us – to be different.

It’s like adding red paint to a puddle of red paint. We might increase the volume of it but we can no longer tell which bit of red paint is different from the next. Israel’s lack of regard for human dignity and worth makes them no different from their neighbours, who will suck them back into the cauldron of indifference from which their actions emerge.

However cleverly and intricately we may devise our human systems, those systems are meaningless if they do not reflect God’s concerns for creation and humanity. So when Jesus delivers a sober and frightening warning about family division he is deliberately striking at one of the unifying elements of the faith of his time.

Jesus is not denying or attacking the importance of the family. What he’s doing is pointing out that the things God stands for, the things God invites us to participate in, are more important than human constructs. Those constructs serve a useful and worthy purpose, without question, but if they do not reflect the ultimate concerns of the Living God then their usefulness is not only severely diminished but they become actually harmful.

In other words, if our human-defined and –invented structures are not showing God’s love and concern for peace and justice and respect for the poor, then, like the violence of Israel in Isaiah’s time, they simply become another part of the mix that is the whole churning, boiling mess of human despair and violence.

I’ll repeat a brief story I’ve used before: A particular priest gained a reputation for being a great preacher. His church was full every Sunday. On one particular Sunday, as he was greeting parishioners at the door after the Service, one of them somewhat gushingly remarked, “What a great prophet you are!” To which the priest wisely replied, “If I were a great prophet this church would be empty and its windows smashed by rocks and stones …”

We would rather merge into the prevailing culture than stand apart from it speaking of God’s love and Jesus’ compassion. It’s easier for us to tug our collective forelocks at the consumer world than to live in the Spirit of the Living God, seeking God and justice in the knowledge that ultimately they are same thing.

And when God comes near, the world reacts, even if that world has snuck its way into the hearts, minds and souls of the Church. It’s like adding a mere drop of water to a tweezerful of phosphorous: the reaction is loud, bright, violent and immediate!

So this is God’s call to us – to remember God’s ways, to remember how Jesus lived according to those ways, and to follow where Jesus leads us, strengthened and made bold in the power of the Holy Spirit.

As I said last week, we won’t have any trouble finding avenues for doing God’s work here in Westfield – or anywhere else for that matter. What IS hard is throwing out the influence of the world with its caution and fear and half-truths and lies.

But if we are seeking God, day by day, then we too, in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, can be part of God’s ways and plans for love and justice in our community!

ROAD RAGE AND OTHER SIN(S)

17th June 2007 : Pentecost 3 : year C
1 Kings 21:1-21 : Galatians 2:15-21 : Luke 7:36 – 8:3

I suspect I’ve used this illustration before but since we’re thinking about Sin today it’s worth repeating. Occasion: the “induction Eucharist” of a friend of mine and my wife’s into the Carmelite Order, in the surreal atmosphere of a convent not very many stone-throws away from the hectic pace of Stirling Highway, Dalkeith.

Came the sermon the priest arose, commandeered the pulpit and spake unto us on just this topic: Sin. Not just spake but dissected the sucker in all its grossed-out detail. I know I should have timed it but maybe I was wise not to because it felt like the preacher-man was giving us the benefit of knowing every type of sin it was possible to commit, from the obvious newspaper-headline stuff right down to stealing a paper clip from the office.

It’s a long list, I need hardly tell you. We were all implicated. Some of us were guilty-as. Boy, did we feel … bored out of our tiny minds …

Well, I did. I suspect it terrified a few of those of the True Faith, as it was probably meant to.

But ultimately, with the benefit of a bit of education and (sorry) Richard Rohr, I’d have to say the Carmelite-induction preacher and others of his thinking probably missed a greater point.

What the priest sed was indubitably not untrue but the overwhelming, all-encompassing sadness of Sin isn’t just about cataloguing the types, kinds and grades of it but about recognising how lost all of humanity becomes when we find ourselves, sometimes moment-by-moment, trapped in a cycle of sinful actions that often enter our minds at lightning speed, coming from places we can’t even begin to know the location of.

Among my many occasions for entering full-bloodedly into Sin is when I’m driving. I may seem kind, mild-mannered, even jolly, when I’m in the dress and the scarf and the poncho or whatever but put me on the road behind a steering wheel and who knows what it is or where it comes from but I’m as given to road rage as the next driver. You know the commercial about the Mum who picks her daughter up from school, scolds her for swearing and then proceeds to give a mouthful to some hapless driver who cuts her off as she’s leaving? Compared to me, she’s a pussy, a total wimpette. A mere apprentice road-rager.

Let’s be clear about this. I’m not proud of it but I confess it to illustrate the dynamic that Sin can assume – a suddenness that seems to come from the mythical “nowhere” and then engulfs us in actions we might not normally even think about.

Fortunately, one of the benefits of my listening to Richard Rohr is to understand that this phenomenon is simply a reality. It’s the way I am, at least at the moment. That doesn’t make it okay. It’s part of the large collection of things I “get wrong”.

But what I’ve found myself doing now is almost immediately reminding myself that, Hey, Alistair, you do stupid things too. You’re impatient and discourteous when you’re driving, too. And then I say sorry to God. I literally say, Sorry, Lord. I do stupid stuff too.

The point is that at the same time as putting human propensity for sinning into perspective we need to take it seriously enough sincerely to try to do something about it. In a nutshell, to seek the transforming love, acceptance and comfort of Jesus.

We become obsessed with Sin and its manifestations partly because we’ve secretly or otherwise bought the heresy of dualism and the moral universe created by conservatives. Of course the Living God wants us to live morally. But that’s not the criterion for entry into communion with God. It’s faith. And faith implies nothing about our moral standing.

As Richard Rohr points out several times, Jesus never – that’s NEVER – goes out looking for sinners. He’s not a one-man vigilante squad. He looks for the lost, the people precariously on the edge, the outcasts, the impoverished. The ones, effectively, who have absolutely nothing left to lose and who are therefore totally free to replenish their emptiness with Jesus’ love.

He doesn’t look for the anointing woman but she comes to him. Simon knows she’s a sinner. She knows she’s a sinner. Jesus knows she’s a sinner. Does Jesus judge her? Does Jesus recoil and say, “Whoa, sinner-woman, back off. Back off now. I have a seriously Lawful Pharisee on hand and I’m not afraid to use him!”

We know the answer to these and a legion of other questions.

No, the woman knows her state, she seeks Jesus and expresses her faith in him. He forgives her, it seems just because she needs it.

Ours is exactly the same dynamic. Yes, we need to acknowledge our sinfulness. But let’s not obsess about it. Jesus didn’t. He simply wanted people to come to him so that he could transform them. And the Christian scriptures show this happening time after time after time.

Likewise we need to do it time after time after time because we will probably never get it right all the time. Like the rest of the human creation, sometimes we get it right (Hallelujah!), oftentimes we get it wrong (so let’s sort it with God and get back on track).

We see the roots of all this radical acceptance and lack of judgement in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as this morning’s story of Naboth’s Vineyard. Too often we secretly cheer at the grossed-out image of the dogs licking Ahab and Jezebel’s blood but the real point is that God, though outraged at the abuse of power, at the total disregard of Naboth’s rights, nevertheless refuses to return the royal violence with divine violence.

The Naboth story finely indicates the dynamic of envy and greed that lie at the heart of personal and systemic violence. But what we see in the divine response is the seed of everything that finds fruition on the cross of Jesus – this divine refusal to take on the very worst of human distortions, to become violent, to seek revenge. God – unlike humankind – is NOT into payback. God’s version of payback amounts to saying, Do your worst. I still love you.

This is where Jesus calls us to be. Not seeking the sinner so we can judge them. Not running terrified from the Church’s self-appointed Sinner Squad. But coming to Jesus, acknowledging this weakness of our being and seeking his transformation.

This is what Paul means when he sez I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

This is the state of having come to Jesus. This is what happens when we allow Jesus to transform us: Christ lives in us and we act more and more out of this new reality, a reality in which Sin no longer enthralls us, or does so less and less, and in which we become less judgmental and more loving, open, accepting, welcoming.

Of course we need to take Sin and sinning seriously. But we do not need to let it be our master. We have the solution – our friend, Jesus. It sounds twee and quaint. Maybe it is. But it also happens to be true.

Why don’t we try it this week? At least, for those of us, like me, who still need to. Seek Jesus. Put away the judgements (note to Alistair: and the road rage) and allow Jesus to be the vision in our eyes.

A QUANTUM GOD

3rd June 2007 : TRINITY SUNDAY : Year C
Proverbs 8:1-4, 23-31 : Romans 5:1-5 : John 16:12-15

So I’m back at the University of Western Australia. I’m part of a rough band of what one of my Politics tutors would later call “young intellectuals” and I’m studying English, which in UWA-speak meant English LITERATURE. (We openly scoffed at Harold Robbins – and at anyone sub-literate enough to mention his name.)

But not all is well in the Garden. Rumour has it that in the Department of Philosophy they sit around discussing whether anything exists if they cannot apprehend it with one or more of their five senses. In other words, if yon philosophers can’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell it, does it exist?

Weird, man. Real freaky. I mean, like, “young intellectual” or not, I had no doubts at all about the existence of certain things or people that at any given point in the time-space continuum were beyond the capabilities of my sensory systems.

Flash forward to May and June 2007 and I’m sitting waiting for an appointment and getting real immersed in a New Scientist article on Schrödinger’s cat, the poor beast in a box that’s rigged up to produce cyanide gas if certain conditions prevail.
Schrödinger’s cat is an illustration of the New Physics – Quantum Theory. Deals with matter at sub-atomic levels. That’s small. Smaller than small. Smaller than the topmost atom at the peak of a pinhead small.

Here’s the thing. Schrödinger’s cat sez that until we know what’s happened to the cat by taking a peak inside the box, then at any given moment UNTIL we look, sed feline beastie is both dead AND alive!

Defies logic, doesn’t it? Reminds me of those philosophy students three decades ago.

Problem is, science, in its inimitable fashion, had long since demonstrated that these sub-atomic particles could – and did – exist in several different places ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Controlled experiments can demonstrate, for instance, that an atom can exist in three or more places AT THE SAME TIME.

If it reminds anyone of all those parallel universe stories and movies we keep seeing, don’t worry. It’s not accidental. Yes, we are talking about parallel universes, states of existence, etc. At least fictionally.

Scientifically, no one, apparently, has leapt from Quantum theory and sub-atomic particles to more complex collections of atoms, such as leaves or mice or humans but if I were a gambler I would bet someone’s thought about it …

All of which is a long-winded way of suggesting the Church has long had its own Quantum Theology, namely the doctrine of the Trinity – the One God who is three Persons AT THE SAME TIME; one in three yet three in one.

I have to admit Trinity reminds me again of those philosophy students, and now Schrödinger’s Cat and Quantum theory. Of course the Church doesn’t call it Quantum Theology or anything like that. This is just as well because Quantum theory, as opposed to theology, posits a well-nigh de facto infinity of possible states of existence whereas the Church in its conservative wisdom will only give us three possibilities – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For several reasons Trinity is a most confusing and aggravating doctrine, not least of which is because it IS a doctrine.
For one thing, as I’ve sed on other occasions, despite our best and most ingenious attempts we cannot conceive of or produce a single analogy that adequately describes Trinity. ALL our analogies ultimately fail because none of our analogies can restrict themselves to three and ONLY three different parts.

S. Patrick’s three-petalled clover has a stem, or can’t exist separately from its mother branch or twig. A peeled apple contains things like seeds as well as a peel, flesh and core. Ice, water and steam come close but they rely on external agents and cannot exist independently. That is, ice must have a drop in temperature; steam requires heat. We do not find them together at the same time but rather changing from one form to another.

But, in addition, for those of us who value such things, Trinity seems to exist outside holy scripture. Flashing back to my pew-warming days in the Parish of Christ Church, Claremont, I still remember the then-Assistant Curate, one Peter Basil Ratnam Manuel, now Rector of Bayswater, preaching a Trinity sermon in which he spoke the following sentence: “It’s not in the bible, you know.”

I remember feeling outraged. I felt cheated. I felt as if the Church had pulled a swifty and was operating under false pretences. Silently I screamed, Foul! but young Pete, having amused himself by this shock pronouncement, happily preached on, offering a pretty sound analogy of his own – the sun as heat, light and radiant energy.

At least Peter didn’t try to fob us off the old “it’s-a-Mystery-and-ya-can’t-understand-a-Mystery-or-it-wouldn’t-be-a-Mystery-any-more” line. Not that Trinity isn’t a Mystery but we so often miss the point about Mystery and use Mystery as an excuse to stop thinking about it. The point is that Mystery offers an invitation to participate in, to wrestle with, become involved in it.

And so we must. Because, just as we cannot have a healthy spirituality if we banish Trinity to our back-burners hoping it will fade away, equally we cannot in any healthy way dismiss it as a fanciful intrusion into our comfortable spiritual life by saying, Well, it’s not in holy scripture so it can’t be kosher.

The reason is, as I suggest in the pewsheet, that today, right now, we each have the same sorts of experiences of the Living God as the people of the Christian scriptures.
Namely, we do have those moments when God is for us a caring and protective parent-like figure. But sometimes we find ourselves filled with gut-wrenching compassion of Jesus and know God in that all-consuming way. At other times we move with the creative energy and passion of the Spirit, find words and ideas and strength that seem to come from nowhere.

This is the experience of the early Church. This is our experience. We cannot blame our ancestors in the faith for trying to make sense of it and ultimately creating the doctrine of the Trinity. Privately, I often suspect it was an ill-conceived enterprise but I do understand the impulse to carve out the doctrine.

What these people were doing was actually entering into the Mystery and engaging it, not side-lining it. But just as our Trinitarian analogies inevitably fail, so does our wrestling. But the point is never to win the bout. We ARE talking about the Living God here – and even though Jacob apparently won his wrestle with God, he left with a permanent injury and perhaps a life-long question about who really won …

The point is – and this is true for all of our spiritual journey, engagement and encounter – the point is that we learn and grow and become stronger by these very acts of participation. For instance, I’ve been regular at my local gym for a few months now and I can do more or do it more easily or for longer than I could when I first began. How many bicep-curls does anyone imagine I could do if I simply sed, It’s a mystery to me how anyone can lift that much weight??

But the fact is it IS a mystery how anyone can lift that much weight but by giving it a go, by engaging the dread machines, by continuing to participate in the mystery, who knows? maybe one day I too will be one of those hunky sweaty dudes who exude as much attitude as perspiration and ripple away as if they emerged from the womb that way!

As for valid objections that we don’t find Trinity in scripture, perhaps we expect too much wanting neat answers and ready-made, ready-formed conclusions. It’s as dangerous as missing the point of Mystery because when we get the pro-forma stuff laid out neat-as-a-pin and only have to go through the motions to make it work, then we’re simply acting automatically, without having to do any thinking or engaging.

The Living God is not a series of pre-defined propositions or spiritual templates that we simply call up and accept as-is or tweak to our liking. God asks for a relationship. We can only have a relationship with those beings to whom we bother to talk, with whom we walk, to whom we go to share our joys and sorrows and successes and aggravations. This is what makes a relationship LIVING. This is why I always refer to the LIVING God – to remind myself that God is not a theory but as complex and worthy of my full attention as any other person with whom I seek to be in relationship.

So where do we go with this? Honestly, I don’t know, except to say that the journey has not ended. As good as our relationship with the Living God may be, we ALWAYS have something more to learn, something to bring, offer and receive. Praise be to the Living God for that!

And, of course, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all!

LIFE OUT OF DEATH

10th June 2007 : Pentecost 2 : Year C
1 Kings 17:8-24 : Galatians 1:11-24 : Luke 7:11-17

The late comedian Dave Allen, as those of us who remember him and/or enjoyed his humour will recall, liked to send up the Church and anything or anyone else that took themselves a little too seriously. Thankfully, it’s one of the healthiest spiritual activities available to us because if we can’t laugh at ourselves and our strange and idiosyncratic ways then we’ve drifted far from the possibility of transformation through Jesus: we take on an aspect of certainty that precludes faith and God’s ability to influence us in whole and healthy ways.

But that’s another sermon. Cut back to Dave Allen and his penchant for, among many other things, funeral sketches. I remember one in which two funeral processions are on their way to the graveyard. When they become aware of each other’s presence they begin a Keystone Cops-like descent into slapstick absurdity as they fight to get to the cemetery ahead of their rival. Dave Allen was poking fun at the Irish superstition that if two people are buried on the same day, only the first gets into heaven: the second one has to wait till the next day …

I was reminded of that sketch when I began perusing the gospel. No, we don’t have competing funeral processions. Just the one. But one was enough to ring in the associations. And I can see the point of the website, Girardian reflections on the lectionary, which asserts that Jesus crashes headlong into the funeral procession.

I hope the point will become clearer before too long because although Jesus doesn’t literally come into physical contact with the procession what he stands for, what he’s about, certainly does.

It’s one of those points that seem quite obscure until someone mentions it or explains it – and then it becomes so obvious you wonder why on earth you couldn’t see it in the first place. At least, that’s how it was for me.

The “crash” is between death and life. Life, AKA Jesus, collides with death – the funeral procession of a man whom the town clearly held in some regard, given the large crowd. It’s quite possibly a loud and noisy event, with wailing women and percussive noise-makers giving death a centrality and importance in human culture and thinking that is totally at odds with the view of the Living God.

Well might the people mourn, especially the mother. She’s a widow, therefore reliant on her only son to provide her with sustenance. This was social security in Jesus’ time – and even now in many countries of the world. Without her son the widow may have had to resort to begging on the streets in order to live. She was a woman with very bleak prospects indeed.

Enter Jesus and we know the rest – the only son of God brings back to life the only son of the widow of Nain. Death and life clash with each other and life wins.

Happily the story – unique to Luke – echoes the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Unlike the uber-cool Jesus who simply issues a command to rise, Elijah engages in one of those weird roundabout exercises that result in more questions than answers.

But the result is the same. The sons live and the widows get to enjoy life in a new way, a way that the Living God now infuses with energy and hope.

These parallel stories are not, of course, mere happenstance. It’s not as though our intrepid lectioneers chose the gospel for today and then came across Elijah and the widow of Zarephath by accident. Chances are Luke has modelled his story – found only in his gospel – on the passage from the First book of Kings. He’s already done something similar with Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel and the Magnificat in his infancy narrative.

What it suggests in both cases is that what Jesus does in his own gospel days is not so much unique as the full and proper outworking of the Living God’s desires that have existed for all time and will continue to exist for the rest of it.

In other words, God offers us life. God will not allow us to descend into the closed-off world of death and the creepy boredom of the shadowland, Sheol, where no one can praise God’s name.

And for us as we enter the period after the Easter season with these Sundays after Pentecost, it’s a reminder that life emerging from death is NOT just a groovy jaunt reserved for the Son of God, but is available and promised to all of us, any time, anywhere.

Life clashing with death and being victorious is the ultimate meaning of the good news.

But as Paul’s letter to the community of faith in Galatia reminds us, we can and should see the same dynamic at metaphorical levels also. For Paul, he was in the dead-end business of persecuting the infant Church. Every indication is that he yearned to eradicate the new Jewish sect that had sprung up from the chaos of Jesus’ execution.

Paul was himself a purveyor of death and violence, a complete Hebrew scriptures dude who clearly believed that he was doing God’s work in persecuting the Church. The same Living God turned that around by introducing Paul to Jesus, the peaceful purveyor of life, and so Saul the persecutor became Paul the preacher, and the rest is pretty much as they say …

But the point remains the same: out of death the Living God creates or recreates life. God offers that life to us as a free gift, available with every proclamation of belief and act of faith. I suspect the only reason we don’t get steak knives and fries with that is because the gift of life is probably pretty much secure at the top of the tree.

What, then, are the situations of death we find ourselves battling in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield? I suspect those situations are plentiful. But the question – as we know - really isn’t how many death-dealing and violent places we find ourselves in but whether we have enough faith to accept God’s gift of life.

Our readings today make clear the movement of the Living God in world history and ours. What do we need to do in order to accept the gift of life so that we in our turn can share it with those round about us who so desperately need it?

RESURRECTION FORGIVENESS

Sunday, 15th April 2007 : Easter 2 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Acts 5:27-32 : Revelation 1:4-8 : John 20:19-31

At sunset yesterday the Jewish holy day, Yom Hashoah, began. Yom Hashoah translates as The Day of the Holocaust, as western Gentiles call it. But Bishop Mark, in an address at the clergy conference in Mandurah, pointed out that Shoah really has the sense of calamity or catastrophe: "holocaust" is a mediaeval term coined from a couple of Greek words, meaning a whole burnt offering, or a sacrificial offering wholly consumed by fire.

It was out of the horrors of Ha Shoah, from the Auschwitz death camp, that the following prayer of forgiveness apparently came:

O Lord,
Remember not only
the men and women of good will
but also those
of evil will. And in
remembering the suffering they
inflicted upon us,
honor the fruits
we have borne thanks to this suffering
--- our
comradeship, our humility,
our compassion, our courage,
our generosity,
the greatness of heart
that has grown out of all this;
and when they come
to the judgment,
let all the fruits that we have borne,
be their
forgiveness. Amen.

It’s a prayer that we can well imagine on the lips of Jesus himself, who even from the torture chamber of the cross sought forgiveness for those responsible for his agony. The post-resurrection outpouring of forgiveness confirms that those words were not the delirious rambling of a man near death after suffering barely-imaginable torments.

It’s part of the scandal of the cross that even after it’s all over and God achieves the ultimate victory over what Paul calls the "last enemy", death, God does not react in a way that humankind might expect, least of all in the manner that humanity has chosen century after century, decade after decade, year after year …

After all that brutalising and torture, God does not come out fighting, hurling thunder-bolts at the major players in the drama. No all-encompassing earthquakes or tsunami swallowing or sweeping away innocent and guilty alike. In short, no acts of vengeance, even though the God who can raise a Son from the grave would have no trouble at all in sorting out the villains in a very seriously permanent way indeed!

But that’s part of the point. We humans like to scapegoat, point fingers, blame and accuse. That’s how Jesus got himself the best view at Golgotha, hammered onto a couple of pieces of wood.

But not God. Jesus began his ministry preaching forgiveness, he demonstrated that forgiveness throughout his ministry, he preached at the most dire moment of his waning life – and after resurrection he’s still urging us to exhibit the attitude and behaviour of the forgiving spirit.

And so we find Peter proclaiming the message in the temple and John reinforcing it, albeit in different form, in the Book of Revelation. Equally, the risen Jesus gives a clear, though ambiguous, instruction to the ten apostles skulking in their locked room, to be agents of God’s forgiveness.

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

It’s no accident that Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the apostles before giving them the instruction to forgive sins because no human can achieve the kind of blanket, no-matter-what forgiveness that Jesus espouses by invoking mere will-power.

We can squeeze our eyes tight enough to pour with sweat or concentrate our forgiveness energy hard enough to give ourselves the mother of all migraines but without the Holy Spirit we will never get to the kind of radical forgiveness that, in the post-resurrection world, is the mark of Jesus’ good news avalanching upon the whole creation.

But here’s the problem and this why Jesus’ words are ambiguous. Priests in our tradition and those who’ve attended enough ordinations know those words very well because they’re an integral part of a priest’s ordination: .If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Almost immediately, it sometimes seems, we translated that statement into exactly the kind of power-playing, authoritarian weapon that Jesus spent so much time trying to destroy. For centuries the Church has used this power over people to terrorise them, to fill them with guilt, to blackmail and extort, to control.

Priests and bishops took Jesus’ words as a gifting of well-nigh ultimate power even though we knew that Jesus clearly forbade his followers to exercise what Richard Rohr calls "dominative power". Jesus’ terminology is more familiar – he called it "lording it over others", and he wasn’t planning to make exceptions when he told his followers, You are NOT to do that.

So that’s exactly what the priesthood did! You’re all a bunch of wormy, totally-depraved sinners – but don’t worry, chasps, just see me after the Service and I’ll take it all away from you. Until next time. (I reckon a statement like that ought to conclude with eerie church-organ music and a manic laugh!)

But here’s the good news – remember the good news? the stuff Jesus came to disseminate in wildly extravagant, prodigal container-loads? And it’s this, an interpretation I came across only recently.

It’s a reading that is exactly in keeping with the God of peace, the God of non-violence, the Jesus who refused to fight back, the Risen One who did not seek revenge for his maltreatment but offered forgiveness instead.

According to this reading, forgiveness is what I like to call the "normal and natural" demeanour of all followers of Jesus. Forgiveness is to be our hallmark, one of the qualities that distinguish us as Jesus’ own people, truly following Jesus because we are doing exactly what Jesus himself did.

For all of us it’s an enormous power. I suspect that many Christians regard forgiveness as a nice idea but deep-down nurse a suspicion that it’s actually a sign of weakness. In a sense, of course, it is – in a worldly, secular sense. Think of tough-guys like John Wayne throwing away tough-guy advice like, "Never apologise, son. It’s a sign of weakness."

Then consider Jesus’ words and realise that something apparently simple and free that we puny humans do on this planet can have a corresponding effect in heaven, however we define heaven … Consider also that if forgiveness is the normal and natural behaviour of all of Jesus’ followers, then the only way we and heaven can retain sins is if we actually FAIL in our task to spread and practise the good news of forgiveness.

Seen in this light we have an action – forgiveness – that is unquestionably consonant with Jesus’ message and behaviour from beginning to end – even on the cross, which may be the most powerful exposition of the message Jesus ever made. When we retain sins – when we do not forgive – then, far from exercising a rightfully-given power, we are actually and very illegitimately confounding and preventing the good news and the kingdom from operating.

It is only by making the authority to forgive universal, in other words, allowing all followers to access, exercise and participate in the spreading of this good news, that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection make sense and can begin to move towards accomplishment. When the authority becomes part of the power-package of a discrete sub-class then it defeats the purpose of Jesus and mangles the message something terrible.

Who in our lives, who on those streets out there, in Westfield and beyond, needs to hear a message of authentic good news today? Something to ponder deeply; something to offer prodigally. The authority is ours: let us use it with love in all places, at all times, for all people!

THE TRUSTWORTHY GOD OF LIFE: Easter Sunday C

8th April 2007 : EASTER SUNDAY : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Acts 10:34-43 : 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 : Luke 24:1-12

A few days ago I watched the DVD film The prestige, which is about two magicians in Victorian England. The one, Algier, is the consummate showman; the other, Borden, is a gifted illusionist but a relative dullard when it comes to doing what we would call today "marketing" his act. Through various twists of plot and mind they become, as the saying goes, "bitter rivals", although the rivalry is more on Algier’s part than Borden’s.

The title of the film is a reference to the basic structure of a magic trick, or illusion. The first part is called "The Pledge", in which the magician sets up the trick – "I shall now make this caged dove disappear". It creates an expectation; our curiosity is piqued; we dare and demand the magician to fulfill the promise. Part Two is the "The Turn", in which the magician provides that fulfillment – the dove apparently does disappear.

The audience admits the cleverness but is ultimately unimpressed because, as the Michael Caine character observes, that’s not enough. A good trick must conclude with "The Prestige". The Prestige is where the magician makes the dove "reappear" from another place, perhaps from a coat pocket or a nearby hat. And so the audience is enthralled and captivated.

The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige.

It almost sounds like the basic structure of the resurrection story. We certainly find The Pledge in Jesus’ various announcements of his impending fate in Jerusalem. The incredulity of the disciples is understandable because this is a whole new ball-game, a world away from making a dove disappear!

The Turn comes when the terrible things Jesus has foretold DO happen – and they’re arguably far worse than anyone expected. The religious establishment and the Roman occupiers arrest, try and execute him on a Roman cross.

Well … ho and hum … Getting the Romans to brutalise and torture to death a Jew-boy from the country was probably not a real clever trick in 1st Century Judaea. The audience turns and leave in a mutter. Some demand their money back. Seen it all before …

Until we get to the Prestige. As we know, The Pledge wasn’t just, "I’m off to Jerusalem to suffer and die." Jesus’ Pledge was, "I’m off to Jerusalem to suffer and die AND [drum-roll, please] rise again on the third day!!!"

And this is what the most consummate of all magicians, the Living God, achieves. This is the ultimate Prestige: God raises Jesus from the dead on the third day.

Except for two things. It’s too big, too overwhelming, too beyond that part of human conception that realises it’s all a trick, too far beyond the audience’s psyche that willingly suspends its disbelief in order to allow the magician to override the audience’s logic.

And so The Prestige doesn’t quite happen. People doubt. Even Jesus’ closest friends and followers can’t believe it. No matter which gospel account we read, the closest of Jesus’ friends do not believe that God has pulled off the greatest Prestige of all time.

Because of course it isn’t a magic trick at all. That’s the second problem. The resurrection of Jesus demands far more than a willing suspension of disbelief, far more than an amiable willingness to go along with it.

From beginning to end the resurrection demands nothing less than our total, absolute, committed faith, and when we look back at The Pledge and The Turn we find that this same demand of faith is present. We find also that few of Jesus’ followers – certainly among the men – possessed that faith. At any time.

And no matter how many magicians, illusionists or peripatetic wonder-workers wanted to know "how God did it", they would never find out. Equally, no matter how many believers or non-believers want to know how it happened, we will never discover the secret. And all over the Anglican Communion, in every denomination, and likely in fish-and-chip-loads of newspapers preachers and the press will offer explanations and even proofs that resurrection happened that morning in Jerusalem.

But the mythical 60 Minutes or CNN team were never present. We have no eye-witness account of the event itself because resurrection happens in isolation, unseen, unheard, in the blackness of earliest morning.

And I think God does this deliberately. …Because it ISN’T a trick; because God is not trying to impress the audience. Enthrall and amaze, yes, I think so. But God is not trying to impress anyone because ultimately resurrection is not The Prestige but the outworking and making real of God’s yearning to draw humanity and all Creation back from the brink of self-created disaster by showing – quietly and without fuss – that even after humankind does the very worst we can do, the Living God, the God of the Living, the God of life, is still in control.

We waste our time, perhaps willfully, because resurrection is too large for logic, asking the wrong questions about it. We want to know, we demand the satisfaction of knowing WHETHER it happened, but as Richard Rohr points out in his spiritual commentary on Luke’s gospel if God is the God we claim God to be then something like resurrection ain’t no great shakes. Of course such a God can raise Jesus – or any of us – from the dead. This God created the universe. Not just our tiny planet but the entire universe. What’s resurrection compared to that?

No; the resurrection of Jesus shows us that we CAN trust this God. Remember, it was part of The Pledge, part of Jesus’ To Do list: Go to Jerusalem (tick); Suffer (double-tick); Die (treble-tick); AND Rise again on the third day. Four ticks and several exclamation marks.

That’s what Jesus told us God would do. And God delivered. And if God delivers in this pretty amazing thing then we can trust God to deliver in all the other things that God promises us. Resurrection tells us that we CAN trust this God. …Because, as Paul points out, if God didn’t do it, if God did not raise Jesus, then our faith is in vain and if we trusted Jesus in this matter and God did not raise him then we deserve the terrible pity reserved for the severely delusional.

Now, snuggling as we are into the 21st Century we have an immense advantage that the first disciples lacked. As I sed before doubt flows across all four gospel as the first reaction to the resurrection. We hear in Luke that the group of women who find the empty two and see the whiter-than-white vision of angels report this to the remaining eleven apostles, who dismiss it as "an idle tale, and they [do] not believe them". Peter at least is curious enough to check it out and is "amazed at what had happened".

But Peter’s amazement is ambiguous. We don’t really know whether he believed the resurrection at that point. We DO know that those who first believed – typical of Luke – were the poorest, the littlest, the least significant, the so-called anawim – the ones with whom Jesus consistently conversed, the ones so destitute and marginalised that they had nothing to lose, the ones to whom he gave that most precious gift of hope, the ones who socially or economically, had, to use the title of Richard Fariña’s ’60s novel, "been down so long it looks like up to me".

These women remembered Jesus’ words of promise that the angels happily remind them about. Not just a recollection, not just a biological, physiological, electric transaction of the brain, but a transformative moment in which they realise that the promise is made real – that Jesus’ words were trustworthy, that they can trust, have faith in the Living God.

But let’s not be too surprised, and certainly not judgmental, at the male apostles’ lack of faith. Like the overwhelming majority of men they operate at the level of brute logic. If it’s broke, honey-bunch, I’ll fix it for you. I’m sure part of their despondency following the crucifixion arose from their inability to find anything in their spiritual tool-boxes to fix this major problem.

Few things in life are sadder than the face of a man whose power tools won’t work …

More than that, they lack the one thing that ultimately allows us all to come to the grace of faith – the Holy Spirit. The women already remember Jesus’ words – which is precisely one of the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit helps us, as John’s gospel reminds us, to remember what Jesus sed and did.

And the reason we need to remember is not so that we can go around converting and dragging in legions of unbelievers – that’s God’s work, thank goodness – but so that we can realise, again and again and again, that what Jesus sed is trustworthy, we CAN believe it, we CAN believe the Living God, we CAN, ultimately, surrender ourselves sufficiently to this God to enable God’s transforming power to shape and re-shape us, time after time.

And when we take our pain and doubt and spiritually-carcinogenic feelings to the Living God for transformation we CAN, in an authentic way that all people recognise, really begin to do Jesus’ work right here, right now.

But that’s enough from me. In a moment we are to witness the manner in which the Living God offers us this gift of the Holy Spirit – through baptism. Tyrone and Cahill will receive the Spirit in what, despite our flouncy and wordy theological fumbling, is quite a simple divine-to-human transaction, using very simple elements – water and oil and light.

This is the same Spirit given to all who are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who reminds us of Jesus’ words, and gives us the ability to see beyond logic so that we can trust everything that God promises, so that whether we ultimately stand alone, puzzled or terrified, we can indeed have faith that the Living God stands beside us and brings us through to the other side – not of death, because death is defeated – but of life!