2nd May 2008 : Lent 4 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
1 Samuel 16:1-13 : Ephesians 5:8-14 : John 9:1-41

It’s many years now since I, my kids and the world enjoyed the fascination of the Where’s Wally? phenomenon. For those who missed it, Wally was a dorky guy who sported a beanie, thick glasses and a red-and-white horizontally-striped jumper. He was then inserted into a more or less complex picture containing dozens upon dozens of other faces and bodies – and you had to find him. Thus – Where’s Wally? For a while Wally became so popular that even a TV cartoon show came into being. Wally was an engaging character – and a miraculously harmless piece of entertainment in what even then was a violent world.

These days I still enjoy pitting my eye and brain against pictures that appear strange, absurd or impossible. Like those very clever creations that depict two or more faces or people or horses or houses or whatever in the one picture. Mind you, it doesn’t even have to be as sophisticated as any kind of optical illusion – I continue to enjoy “spot the difference” pictures.

It’s all, of course, about looking and seeing, or not seeing, as the case may be. Which is what we have in today’s readings.

Exactly like the difference between hearing and listening, looking at someone or something does not guarantee, even for a lifetime, that we will ever see who or what is really present.

At the risk of sounding like a foreign film caricature, we have a saying: He can’t see the wood for the trees … Looking but not seeing.

In our everyday world, the world of physical “reality” or experience, the spiritual constantly intersects or is simply present in ways that elude our ordinary perceptions. We look without necessarily seeing. Not always because we’re oblivious. Sometimes we know the spiritual reality is within reach but we try too hard or we input the wrong data or run software that’s inappropriate for the task at hand.

Samuel was doing that when God commissioned him to select the new king to replace Saul. Sam basically went for a Saul look-alike, using a pre-determined formula based on assumptions about what a king should look like. So he looked at the handsome, hunky sons of Jesse and time after time sed to himself and God, Yep, this is the guy. Just look at those pecs! Ooh, I can just see the oil glistening on those muscles ..

And God hit the WRONG!!! buzzer and told Sam to look again. God lets Samuel know early enough what the score is but it’s still a process fraught with more error than success. And what God sez, as we might suspect, gives it to us pretty precisely:

Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have
rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward
appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.

The LORD looks on the heart.

It’s this ability of the Living God to see beyond appearances that leads to the choice of David as Saul’s successor, even though Dave is the youngest son and considered so insignificant and unlikely that he’s left out in the paddock looking after the sheep.

But isn’t that a significant little fact? Looking after the sheep. Isn’t this the persona of the true king of Israel? The shepherd, the one who ensures the safety and well-being of those in his care? “The Lord is my shepherd” is not a sentimental, throwaway line but a profound theological and spiritual insight.

Throughout the pages of the Hebrew scriptures the Living God chooses the unlikely to lead and care for God’s people and we can safely say that these choices come from God’s habitual and unerring practice of “looking on the heart”.

We can turn all this into a neat spiritual game, turn God and the spiritual into a sort of divine Where’s Wally – Where’s Yahweh?. And let’s face it, no self-respecting spiritual director or anamchara, soul friend, would be without the question, Where’s God in all this? in their spiritual toolkit.

And that IS a useful – even essential – thing to do, don’t get me wrong. We DO need to ask ourselves, constantly, where God is in all our experiences, especially because we find it so easy to look without seeing.

The writers of the Christian scriptures saw the matter in terms of darkness and light. We are unable to see because we are looking in darkness. But Jesus has brought light into the world so that now we CAN see, if not exactly clearly, at least with greater insight than before. This is where Paul comes from in the passage from his letter to the “worshipping community” at Ephesus.

And it’s the essential spiritual point that emerges from the well-known story of the man born blind in John’s gospel.

In neither case are we wrong to think or speak of spiritual blindness or darkness. It’s part of our reality and something we have to work at either overcoming or dealing with through the surrender and impoverishment of deep, silent, attentive prayer, sitting in the presence of the Living God – what Brother Laurence famously called “the practice of the presence of God”.

But it’s so easy for this to become another throwaway line, a self-conscious and self-deluding excursion into another world separate from empirical reality. As Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Mind-Based Stress-Reduction Clinic points out, “There is not a single one of our senses that CANNOT be fooled.” So much for empirical reality.

But part of our desire for faith and heart for Jesus is the experience of the spiritual intimately involved with the ordinary, daily lives we experience. Is this not the very basis of that question, “Where is God in all this?” …Because we DO believe that God is in “all this”. And yet it’s a belief constantly tested, and rarely more so than when tragedy becomes a personal experience.
Because of the prayer chain messages that have wended their way through our Parish since Friday many, possibly most of us will be aware of the car accident outside Southern Cross involving very close friends of one of our parishioners. Three young men are in Royal Perth Hospital with injuries more serious than initially suspected. Hard against that came the news of a mother, Anita, whose 14-month-old son was on life-support in Princess Margaret Hospital after falling into a home pond. The life-support system was to be turned off last night. Anita is the work supervisor of another parishioner, the first parishioner’s sister, who has developed a close bond with Anita.

And it’s not that long ago that E died, then Allan’s mum and dad within a week of each other.

Arguably, we all fear or have faced these kinds of unimaginable events at some point, exactly the kind of lived reality that demands that we see beyond the thing we are merely looking at, where finding the spiritual in our present-moment reality is not a game but an essential demand to which we need to pay attention.

So often we are left watching and waiting, feeling totally helpless because of it. But that is not true. Watching and waiting are among the noblest and most selfless actions we ever pursue. Remember the courageous faithful who watched and waited silently, even helplessly, at Jesus’ cross. Watching and waiting bear witness not only to our concern but to our love, which expresses itself in our willingness to stop our busy and burdened lives to think about someone else.

Or, in our helplessness, we say, “I can only pray”. I know I’ve heard myself utter those words at times. But, really, ONLY?? We say it as if it’s inconsequential, that it doesn’t do anything to help – and beneath it lies the dark and desperate demand for the divine Mr or Ms Fix-it to swoop down and magic it all away.

That’s not prayer. That’s wishful thinking. It’s better to think of what prayer does than what it might be. And what prayer does first and always is put us in God’s place. Prayer, as with watching and waiting, takes us from the realms of mere dispassionate spectators, and puts us in God’s place. In the relative frailty of our humanness we may not be able to see very clearly beyond what we’re looking at but the more we make the attempt, the clearer will become our sight.

In our anger and fear and panic in the face of life’s innumerable injustices we may well demand to know where God was on such-and-such a day, between the hours of this-and-that. What we end up with is one of the classic cases of looking and not seeing.

Where was God at Southern Cross? Where was God when Anita’s baby fell into the pond? God was in the hands and feet and bursting hearts of the people who brought aid, rushed to hospitals, picked up the phone. And God is now in the hands and feet and bursting hearts of those who wait and watch and pray; in the skill of the surgeons; in the compassion of the nurses; in the kindness of the tea lady; in the arms that hold Anita; in the care and thoughtfulness of her loved-ones and friends.

These are not accidental things. These are God present, here and now.

And perhaps as we desperately seek a fix or an answer, it’s disappointing to hear all this. That’s okay. But we do need to understand that just as classically this is where we do precisely find the presence of the Living God – in these apparently mundane and ordinary things, events, people.

May we not only look upon the tragic moments of our lives but also see the love and compassion of the Living God within and beyond them.

TRANSFORMATION!

17th February 2008 : Lent 2 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Genesis 12:1-4a : Romans 4:1-17 : Matthew 17:1-9

Today we get a second dig at Matthew’s version of the Transfiguration story. It gives me an opportunity to reflect on something that struck me after our celebration of the Transfiguration on the last Sunday before Lent – the notion of transformation as a third dominical sacrament.

I had better explain that the Anglican Church recognizes seven sacraments, the standard definition of which is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. In other words, the Church does something that is plain and visible for all to see but the internal changes are God’s action and business. For instance, in Holy Baptism we use water and oil and candle light as the outward and visible signs of what we believe is a divine action that bestows both the Holy Spirit and gifts of the Spirit upon the person who is baptized. We see the water but we don’t see the Spirit …

Of these sacraments, two are specifically labeled Dominical – Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism – because the Church believes that Jesus himself took part in them. We know, for instance, that Jesus celebrated a so-called Last Supper and commanded us to “do this in remembrance of me”; we know that John the baptiser baptised Jesus at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

So, what about this “third dominical sacrament”?

It seems to me that Jesus invites us all into sharing the same experience of transformation that he underwent, though we will change far more slowly and over a far longer period than did Jesus!

I should point out here that transfigure and transform are the same word in the Greek text. The authors of the Christian scriptures obviously didn’t feel the need to distinguish between the two.

As with Baptism the Christian scriptures do not record a direct statement from Jesus commanding us to embark on this journey of transformation. However, other passages, in the Letters, do counsel transformation or becoming Christ-like.

That said, the whole idea of undertaking a spiritual journey at the command of the Living God finds several obvious examples in the Hebrew scriptures. The Abraham Saga, so-called, is perhaps the greatest of these – and we happily get a glimpse of this seminal journey’s beginning this morning.

Abram and his wife Sarai and their extended family set out from Ur in what is modern-day Iraq at God’s command, with the promise of blessing and growth ringing in Abram’s ears. Abram has no real idea where he is going but he places his life and that of his family into God’s hands and sets off on what will become a great adventure that eventually leads to the foundation of the Hebrew people and their settlement in Canaan.

Abram himself never sees the fulfillment of any of God’s promises but he journeys on nevertheless. Centuries later, Abram’s remarkable act of faith cause Paul to uphold him as the great example of faith – a faith that led to the Living God considering him to be in relationship with God.

Abram learns much about the Living God during the course of his journey – but, again, he never sees the end that God apparently promised.

But that’s not the point of a spiritual. It’s not about getting somewhere or achieving something. It’s about traveling and learning about God along the way.

I’m reminded of the words of a song Art Garfunkel sang several decades ago called Wo-ya-ya:

We are going, heaven-knows where we are going;
We’ll know we’re there.
We will get there, heaven-knows how we will get there;
We know we will
…

It will be hard, we know,
And the road will be muddy and rough
But we’ll get there –
Heaven-knows how we will get there:
We know we will …

Our journey following Jesus into transformation is like that, as was Abram’s journey. We don’t know where we are going but we will know when and if we arrive; we don’t really know how we’ll get to where we are going but if we continue in faith, returning again and again and again to the Living God despite the pot holes and detours and avalanches and quicksand and whatever else, then we know we will arrive.

And in the process of journeying, Jesus will transform us. The transformation will happen inwardly but the fruit of that transformation will be apparent in our lives. It – we - will be an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. A sacrament.
But how will Jesus transform us?

The best clue is in the words of the Living God on the Mount of transfiguration:

"This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

Immediately we have a reminder of Jesus’ baptism when the voice spoke almost exactly the same words – “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” Here, however, we have the all-significant additional imperative – Listen to him!

And that’s the clue – Jesus transforms those who take the time to listen to him. Jesus will transform those who listen to him because they will form a relationship with Jesus.

Just as our own human relationships crucially depend upon our willingness and ability to listen to another, whether a friend or husband or wife or anyone else with whom we seek a relationship, so too our relationship with the Living God, with Jesus the Son, requires the same attitude of attentiveness, and desire and willingness to listen.

We do our very best, most effective listening by coming into God’s presence in silence, putting aside our almost natural desire to regale God with our wants and needs – or even the world’s wants and needs. This silence is never easy. But the out-working of our faith is our returning again and again and again to God despite the extraneous material that surfaces while we are doing our darnedest just to listen.

Silence isn’t something we’re used to or comfortable with at the beginning. That’s okay. We do it a bit at a time. You’ll have noticed the silence following the sermon and after Communion. It’s a small but important opportunity to absorb what we have just received, to be conscious of God’s presence.

In that small moment, are we listening to God? Are we willing to create some space and time in the daily round of activity to sit similarly at home and just be silent with God?

Perhaps we even need to ask ourselves a very serious prior question – do we want Jesus to transform us? If the answer is, Yes, then we need to start listening. If it’s, No, or we’re not sure, that’s okay. Maybe it isn’t the right time. But if not, then we need to think about what will make the time right, knowing that we will never enjoy the depth of relationship with God, through Jesus, if we cannot begin to listen to what God has to say to us.

We are going, heaven-knows where we are going;
We’ll know we’re there.
We will get there, heaven-knows how we will get there;
We know we will …

But we won’t find those answers on the back of the proverbial Weeties packet. We’ll only know if we’re listening. Silently, faithfully listening. Silently being transformed in the continuing journey of the third dominical sacrament.

INSECUIRTY

Sunday, 10th February 2008 : Lent 1 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 : Romans 5:12-21 : Matthew 4:1-11

A man was granted three wishes. Because his wife was nagging him mercilessly he
said in a moment of frustration, “I wish my wife was gone!” Poof! She was gone.
After a week or so the man realised he missed his wife and so he said, “I wish I
had my wife back again.” Poof! She was back. He now realised that he had only
one wish left and that he had better use it wisely.

So he consulted
a friend, who told him to wish for money. “You can buy almost anything if you
have the money,” said the friend. But another friend said, “What good is money
if you haven’t got your health? I’d wish for good health if I were
you.”

Confused, the man went to see the Enlightened One, who said,
“Ask to be contented no matter what you have …”

This story could illustrate several themes but the pertinent one for today is security and insecurity. We live in a society that constantly bombards us with the hissed whisper that we can never be secure enough. We need to plan for the future. We need more “super” – and we get enough advice on television alone to thoroughly confuse us.

We’re told we can’t be content or secure unless we have the biggest or the bestest or the rightest. If our cars don’t rate enough stars we risk serious injury or death, one advert implies. Or if we don’t ask for and insist on ESC then we might skid into a bus because our car won’t be able to re-adjust immediately.

All over the place we covet security. All over the place the disembodied voices tell us we don’t have enough of this, that or the other. We need more. And we are definitely NOT content with what we have. We know we are not content because the voice on the TV or radio told us. Or we read it in the newspaper or any number of magazines.

What a contrast, then, to hear Jesus calmly knocking back the first-Century ad-guy, popularly known as The Devil, among other names. I have long-imagined that Jesus, after forty days of fasting, had something of a struggle, especially when tempted to do magic tricks with the rocks and hoe into some freshly-baked bread. No doubt modern cinema has helped with that!

But reading this now we see a Jesus who is assured and in control of his desires and needs. His first – and apparently only – thought is about the Living God. Clearly those forty days were not wasted!

So even after extreme physical deprivation Jesus shows that relationship with God remains possible. Mark’s gospel is rather light on details but Luke reflects Matthew in showing an assured Jesus dealing with the Devil’s temptations with apparent ease.

What underlies Jesus’ assurance is his security in the Living God. Though he might be hungry he won’t damage the natural order simply to satisfy a human need, however understandable it would be if he did. Far more significantly, Jesus does not bite – he does not even nibble – when the Devil insinuates that he is not the Son of God. Jesus knows exactly who he is and does not have to prove anything to anyone. I reckon most of us would just about kill or do some pretty serious damage to share that equanimity and personal security – I know I might!

So the Devil tries it on again, upping the ante by inviting Jesus to play loose and fast with his life and God’s forbearance. Maybe Jesus just wasn’t into bungee-jumping without a bungee but it’s far more likely that, as before, he simply didn’t need to prove to anyone, let alone the Devil – whatever that might be – who or what he was.

At this point yon Devil sounds uncomfortably like our ego playing one of the thousands of miles of negative tape we all have going through our heads. You’re not good enough. You need to prove yourself. Who do you think you are? Show us, then! Go on – do something to prove it!

But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Nor does he snap at the offer to rule the world. Nowadays we tend to scoff at such notions and we satirise the notion as insane, emanating from the twisted minds of characters like Dr Evil. But in Jesus’ time it was a real aspiration. They weren’t that far in history from Alexander the Great, the legend who “wept because there were no more worlds to conquer”. It was a great age of empires and empire-building – and here was Jesus declining the opportunity to rule the world.

We don’t know for certain what Jesus knew or believed about God but we can say that he seems to have drawn his security from his relationship with the Living God because that was not only far more important but far more stabilising. When we imagine the good Jesus could have done as ruler of the world, the global justice he could have introduced, feeding the hungry, curing the sick of every land – when we imagine that and more, it’s quite a thing he refuses.

But that’s always the way it is with insecurity. In the words of John Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts Mind-Based Stress-Reduction clinic, “The mind likes to hang out in the future.”[1] If our minds are not constantly making plans to shore up our fundamental dis-ease and secure the mythical future, then they’re wading woefully through the past, filled with regret and guilt and anger and bitterness over opportunities squandered, tasks unaccomplished, injustices perpetrated against us …

Jesus advises us: Give us today our daily bread. Live in the present moment. Here and now is the only place we can live, here and now is the only place we can find everything we need to get us through to the next moment. And as Laurence Freeman, a Benedictine priest and Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, puts it: “God is here and now. I am here and now …” Can any of us have a better chance of connecting with the Living God than in each present moment of our lives?

The Genesis story offers one explanation for how the “lie” of the future came into being, via the duplicity of a talking snake – not identified as the Devil, by the way – and the insecurity-fuelled gullibility of humankind. And suddenly the two child-like adults, Adam and Eve, become street-wise earth-people, literally disconnected from the Creator.

But Paul reminds us that Jesus restored the connection. All that talk about justification and righteousness is relationship talk. Though we use two different words in English – justify and righteous – they have the same root in Greek and convey a totally related meaning.

That meanings is relationship – restored relationship. What righteousness and justification mean is being back on speaking terms with God. After centuries of living in fear of God, regretting the stupidity of listening to talking snakes, or planning for a future that never seems to arrive, this Jesus comes along and shows that our security is here and now, and that God-with-us, here and now, STILL yearns to hold us, cuddle us and share the security that only the Living God can provide.

So we think that what we’ve done in the past is too awful even for God to deal with? Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Jesus is God’s gracious – free-given, no-strings-attached – love and welcome every day of our lives. As far as we who follow Jesus are concerned, Jesus is the only security we can know or need. And it’s a daily gift.

But we have to be in a place, mentally and spiritually, where we can receive this gift. This means focusing on God, and focusing on God means spending time in the kind of prayer that does not make demands of God – demands that too often emerge from our insecurities rather than an authentic desire to commune with God.

We need to spend these crucial moments in silence, in God’s presence, asking for nothing, while past and future fly through our minds, letting go the “stuff” and returning faithfully, again and again and again, to God. Whether we call it “meditation” or “contemplation” or “silent prayer” or some other name doesn’t matter. What does matter is spending the time with God, entering the Mystery that is God, into which God invites us.

Out of this silence we find our moment of security. And it is only a moment. But it is a God-given moment. And God’s moment will always seem to last a lifetime.

May our prayer this Lent be deepened immeasurably as we draw closer to God through focused prayer that seeks to listen rather than tell or demand, that is content with the security of God’s presence allowing us simply to be.

[1] Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness meditation. CD.

27th January 2008 : Epiphany 3 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 9:1-4 : Matthew 4:12-25

I must confess I like candles. I’m not exactly sure what it is about them that I like but I do know that I’m not alone in my fascination. Perhaps it’s their utter simplicity as a means of providing light – and maybe in an age that has not slowed down its discovery and development of technological miracles candles remind us that simplicity remains a powerful and yet vulnerable force in our world.

I suspect also that people who lived in the ages before electricity understood things like fire and light and candles and torches far better than most of us do today. Nevertheless we still know that what the part-time wise person sez is true – that in a pitch-black room the striking and lighting of a single flame floods every corner with light, to some degree at least.

It’s perhaps a minor miracle that in the 21st century we still understand the simplicity of flame and out of that understanding can recognise the power of Isaiah’s imagery when the prophet speaks of a light that shines in darkness and deep darkness. Maybe we’ve all had more than a few doses of night-time power-cuts and know the inexpressible gratitude we feel when we lay hands on matches and a batch of humble household candles!

Over the centuries many have insisted that Isaiah is talking about Jesus as this light that shines in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali. That’s not very likely even thought Matthew’s gospel also wants to point us in that direction.

What’s more likely is that Isaiah is using a powerful counter-pointing image. The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali were not well-regarded. If location, location, location is the key to getting a good price for your dwelling then a mansion in Zebulun or Naphtali would sell for considerably less than the exact same mansion in Jerusalem. Fast-forward to century 21 Western Australia and we’re talking the difference between Balga and Lockridge on the one hand, and Peppermint Grove on the other.

So this is a deep deep darkness Isaiah is drawing to our attention – so deep that the introduction of light is not just welcome but completely life-changing, mind-altering, hope-bringing.

By the time Jesus came along the social and spiritual power-cut in Israel had lasted a long, long time. Foreign troops occupied and controlled the land and religion had gone to pot. This was deep darkness.

So what does God do? Send in a brigade of gig watt-bearing rescue-teams from Jerusalem? I don’t think so. Would you believe a hundred Synergy technicians with authority to reconnect the main grid? No? How about a boy scout with a battery-powered torch?

No, of course not. God doesn’t send rescuers from the centre of power but instead has a child born in an obscure village, part-raised in non-Jewish enemy territory and brought up in a place that the rich and famous despise, a place that as far as they are concerned is the heart of darkness.

This guy is Jesus and he becomes the match struck in the pitch-black room. He becomes the prime and leading example of how God operates in our world, using the simple and unlikely, the weak and vulnerable and powerless to do mighty deeds.

We know that Jesus had a few unfair advantages that we don’t seem to have – like being Son of God. But here’s the thing. Jesus sed back then and he continues to say it right now, here, today – You guys and gals, you go and live like me, you go and do what I did. Heal the sick and stuff like that. But above all be light in deep darkness. Bring hope where people have forgotten what hope is.

It’s been going on for centuries now. People following Jesus, doing what he did, bringing hope. And all the while the deep darkness has followed, trying to smother the light at every turn, sometimes with remarkable effect.

But again and again the Living God calls people to follow Jesus and bring that light into the pitch-black rooms of the world. And that’s precisely what we’ll see in a short while as S, G and L are baptised.

They become in this small ritual that uses very ordinary stuff like water and olive oil and candle light signs of God’s continuing presence and above all the continuing light illuminating the deep darkness of our world with hope.

That’s a big ask for a toddler and a couple of young children. But they don’t have to make it happen immediately. They will have the Holy Spirit to guide them and equally importantly their parents and godparents – and the members of this congregation. In the words of Sean Connery in Entrapment “it’sh imposshible – but doable - ” so let’s do it!

20th January 2008 : Epiphany 2 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 49:1-7 : 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 : John 1:29-42

One of the questions that frequently excites my curiosity is this: If Jesus were to appear today or tomorrow or any time walking down Lake Road, or Westfield or Ypres Road, or any one of the labyrinthine streets and thoroughfares of our Parish – would I recognise him? Would I, as does John the Baptiser in this day’s gospel, be able to announce with the same certainty, Look! The lamb of God!?

I don’t know that I could do that. I could claim in my defence that John had a huge advantage that I don’t have – namely an explicit statement from the Living God describing, not the physical details of the man who would come, but his special and particular spiritual character.

These spiritual characteristics are so important that they take precedence over Jesus’ actual name. We learn that the descending and remaining dove-like Holy Spirit will identify him. We learn that Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, recognises him as the Messiah, the Christ. This gospel implies that in common with John the Baptiser and his disciples, Andrew and Simon are expecting him, looking, watching, waiting, maybe even actively seeking him.

But John accords Jesus another title – lamb of God. And he says it twice. First it’s, Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then simply, Look! The Lamb of God …

It’s no mere honorific because towards the conclusion of John’s gospel Jesus becomes the sacrificial lamb of Passover, crucified, in John’s gospel only, on the day of preparation, that is, the day the lambs “without spot or blemish” were slaughtered. In other words, John does not have Jesus sharing a final Passover, as do Matthew, Mark and Luke. Instead, the Romans execute the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and they remove his body before Passover begins.

What John’s gospel achieves in that one phrase – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – is to bring together succinctly and brilliantly two different pieces of biblical anthropology.

Taking the second one first, we have the notion of the scapegoat. The scapegoat was an animal – a goat, duh! – that, once a year, had symbolically laid upon it the sins of the Hebrew nation. They then drove the goat out into the wilderness to fend for itself. But the point was that the goat took away the nation’s sins in what was paradoxically both a symbolic and literal manner. It was a moment of catharsis in which the Hebrew people freed themselves of their sense of guilt, individual and communal, for another year, until the next year. The scapegoat was – nor could it ever be anything but – an imperfect and limited solution to corporate and individual sin.

When John’s gospel gives us the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world we finally have a permanent answer. But John tweaks the scapegoat anthropology very significantly.

First it’s no longer “sins” – acts of sinning – but sin. Singular. This is like the main pod from which all the other minute spores of sinfulness spew forth. Jesus the Lamb of God provides a definitive answer to the whole question of sin and sinfulness by cutting out the middle goat and dealing directly with the source. And second it’s no longer about a single and particular people but extends now to the whole world and every people. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, not just the sins of Israel.

But the divine solution isn’t the removal of sin as such from the world, or individual sins. It’s more elegant than that. It allows us humans to retain our free will to choose God or not-God but in the event that we choose not-God and therefore sin we now have recourse to an ever-present solution when we change our minds and return to the Living God.

That solution, quite simply, is grace. Gone is the delusion that we ourselves can deal with the sin thing – because we can’t. Instead God devises a way through that Jesus mediates through the Holy Spirit: every time we wander away from and then return to God, God simply forgets whatever it is we feel guilty about. And that’s grace.

And it’s worldwide. It’s nation-wide and people-wide and religion-wide. You heard me. It’s not restricted to Christians. If it was, then it wouldn’t be grace. It would be some kind of client-centered favour doled out to particular people, to some but not others. It would mock and make a foul lie of Paul’s assertion that God has no favourites. So let no one live with the cruel delusion that Christians are better or more favoured than anyone else in God’s universe. We aren’t. Because if we were then grace would not be grace!

Jesus the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.

And that’s the second part of John’s exquisite conflation. As the Passover Lamb, Jesus becomes the living symbol of God’s salvation. The Passover is about liberation from bondage to the promise of freedom – a freedom not exactly handed to anyone on a platter, silver or otherwise. Rather, it’s a freedom we have to work for, if only to that extent that we consciously choose to seek it and accept it.

But the point is that for each one of us Passover through Jesus now becomes a global phenomenon also. Liberation is available to all who choose it, through exactly the same mechanism of grace.

But wait! Let’s remember that the lamb is generally a gentle creature. Jesus isn’t the Lion of God who takes away the sin of the world. He’s the Lamb. And the Lamb not only refuses but actively negates the violence implicit in the whole scapegoat thing by absorbing that violence on the cross and showing us how possible it is.

We see the shift from a single people – Israel – to a universal plan as early as Second Isaiah:

He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.

Perhaps God toyed with the idea of allowing Israel to meet violence with violence. But even in that intermediate phase God puts the sharp sword and polished arrow on the back burner and then decides that the way to go is global:

"It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

God decides to give Israel a shot at being the agents of a new, redemptive, non-violent approach.

Ultimately the new approach failed. Israel simply could not do it. No nation could have done it. So, in Johannine theology, the Living God sends the Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

It’s still universal. But this time it succeeds. This time we have a lamb of freedom instead of a violence-smothered goat. This time the solution to sin is ongoing and timeless. Through the grace and, as Paul rightly adds, peace of Christ, the Lamb who absorbs the violence in every human heart.

And maybe that’s the answer to my question. Maybe we should all, as we leave here today, be truly attentive to those people casually strolling about out there on Lake Road or St George’s Terrace or wherever we happen to be during the week. Maybe what we’re looking for is someone who exudes grace and peace, someone whose demeanour speaks of love and invitation and welcome, no matter who we are or what the colour of our flesh or the manner of our encounter with the divine.

Who knows? maybe someone out there might see one of us and quietly and hopefully think to themselves, That person reminds me of someone … the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world …

Grace and peace be with you all -