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