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Lent 2
25/2/2024

Genesis 17:1-10,12,15-19
Psalm 22
Mark 8:27-38

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With the arrival of Jesus the messiah, almost nothing changes. But the “almost” matters.

Most of us know today’s gospel passage pretty well: from the lips of Peter, Jesus has just heard a declaration of his being the messiah, and now begins to speak of his approaching passion. And Peter rebukes Jesus, only to be rebuked himself.

Our familiarity with the story comes knowledge of how the exchange is to be understood, which runs something like this: the Jews expected the arrival of God’s messiah, but the idea that the messiah would suffer and be rejected as Jesus described was beyond the Pale. On this reading, the lesson is that the church now knows what the Jews then did not: that the messiah must suffer.

And yet this just creates another problem: why must the messiah suffer? No explanation is given in this immediate text, although other parts of the NT testimony and later Christian theological reflection attempt to provide a wide range of explanations – theories of the atonement, theories of how the death of Jesus brings salvation. Most of these involve sacrificial logic, constraints on God’s power to save without blood being spilt or some other price being paid, and so on. Yet all this tends to make the purported Christian understanding of the suffering messiah worse than Peter’s much neater, all-powerful saviour. Now, instead of a mighty God with a powerful messiah who is free to get in there and to set things right, the suffering messiah seems to have created the even greater problem of a God who is tied in knots by human sin and must go through the pain suffering of crucifixion to extract us – and himself – from the burden of sin.

Of course, we don’t actually hear what it is that Peter says to Jesus. Matthew’s account of this exchange gives a little more but doesn’t explain why Peter takes offence. The best indication of what was said, and why, is shown in Jesus’ response. Perhaps surprisingly, Jesus doesn’t reassert his forthcoming suffering and death in contradiction of Peter’s rebuke. Instead, he refers to the death of Peter and those others who would be his disciples: what will happen to Jesus will also happen to Peter himself.

Noticing this opens a new way of thinking about what is at stake here. Jesus effectively tells Peter: “Yes, as you have declared, I am the messiah. But nothing much is going to change. Persecution, suffering and death will continue – for me and for you.”

And so the crisis of the text is not that – or only that – the messiah will suffer and die; it is that Jesus’ disciples will experience just the same thing. Most bluntly, the crisis is that, with the arrival of Jesus the messiah, almost nothing changes. (Again – and we’ll get there in a moment – the “almost” is crucial.)

But what kind of messiah is this? What kind of salvation is this, which involves self-denial, taking up a cross, and following the seemingly impossible path Jesus walked? It doesn’t help to invoke resurrections at this point; the gospel is not about what might happen in 10, 25, or 60 years. The gospel is a word for the world as it is, here and now. And, though Jesus mentions that he will be raised, he doesn’t add this to his account of the disciples’ own experience. He simply says, it’s going to be pretty tough for me, and for you too. But there is life in that.

We might consider last week’s reflection here for a moment. There I spoke on the volume – the sound volume – at which divine voice spoke from heaven and of Jesus’ own proclamations. The point there was that God does not shout. But there is a difficult word about the cost of discipleship in our text today. I suspect most of us experience it as a shout, if only because on hearing it, we want to cover our ears with our hands. It is challenging and confronting, and in that sense loud. But if God doesn’t shout, and there is in all this a word from God, then it is not a loud word. It is uttered gently, as an observation on the lives we live and an invitation to reflect on what those lives might be. The heart of the Christian confession is not that Jesus died; it is that he lived. He lived with us, among us, so intimately connected to us that what we are killed him. And yet it is the living which matters and not the dying because, for Jesus, the form of his death just reflected the way he lived. It was fullness of life which resulted in his crucifixion.

And this brings us finally to the “almost”: With the arrival of Jesus the messiah, almost nothing changes. That is, there might be very little change in the form of life. Peter and the wider circle around Jesus already knew persecution and suffering and death. And we’ve seen that while Peter takes offence at the notion of a suffering messiah, this is in no small part because of the prospect of his own suffering continuing: what kind of salvation could this be?

To borrow from our Lenten study book this year, it is a salvation which gives the gift of “with”. Hardship need not but suffered alone. The gospel has Jesus with us: experiencing just what we experience, and yet experiencing it against a different background, in a different key. The gift of the gospel might be described thus (and strangely): we are now able to suffer because Jesus has suffered; we are now able to die because Jesus died.

That is surely a strange thought. Most people most of the time suffer and die without obvious reference to Jesus. The difference it makes that Jesus died – if Jesus is indeed the messiah – is that the suffering and death we endure now becomes resistance against death having the last word. Jesus calls us to refuse to live under death’s shadow, as he did. We are accustomed to saying in funerals something to the effect of , “in the midst of life, death”. This is true enough as a simple observation on the normal order of things. But the gospel is a different thought: in the midst of death, life. In the midst of death, not at the end of death, not as a one-day-overcoming of death, but surrounded by death, life.

Are we not already dying – literally and metaphorically? Because this is the case, the call to self-denial and taking up our cross is not a call to more death. It is a call to begin to live in the midst of death. This is salvation, the gift of Jesus: death put to death.

Let us hear then, his call:

“Lift up your hearts.

The kingdom of God is come near.

Repent, believe, and live”.

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Lent 1
18/2/2024

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25
Mark 1:9-15

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Those things it is most important to say must be said softly.

We live in a noisy world. The wind howls, the waves crash, the thunder trembles, the lorikeets screech. And then, of course, there is the noise of life together: the streets, the alarms, the notifications, the arguments, the wars. The sheer sound volume of life is very often overwhelming, whether that noise is real or metaphorical. In such spaces, it seems that we must get ever louder if we are to be heard.

Given all that, at what volume do we imagine the voices speak in our reading this morning? The voice from heaven: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. And Jesus’ own voice: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.

These are crucial words at the beginning of the Story of Stories. Spoken into a noisy word, they are not to be missed. In this clamouring world, then, does God shout to be heard? Does the voice from heaven thunder? Does Jesus cry out in the marketplace, to be heard over the clamour of store-holders and customers haggling over price and quality?

Speaking loudly, even very loudly, certainly has its place. With a shout we warn or threaten, we grab attention, or we lament or rejoice. And yet, when we hear an expectedly loud noise or voice, our immediate response is, “What? What’s that?” This is because what is said loudly is rarely articulate; it is just loud. The greater the volume at which a conversation is conducted, the less we can say. Nothing subtle can be communicated with a shout. It may be a jubilant Yes or an alienating No, but that’s about as far as yelling can go.

Still the temptation is strong, to raise our voice in order to be heard, to be seen, to be given attention. Within the church, the question is constant: how to attract new members? What is to be done, how are we  to attract attention, as if shouting were ever attractive. Social media is a cacophony of voices seeking be noticed, to commented upon, watched, shared. Look at this, look at me, cry a thousand voices.

And yet perhaps the gospel is proclaimed this way: (whispered) This is my son; listen to him. In him is my kingdom come. If God is love, so that we are properly God’s lovers, we want to keep in mind that lovers don’t shout at each other. The voice which is open and receptive, and which gives and creates, is softly spoken. The world is filled, of course, with its thunderous tempests and its earth-shaking explosions but it is the still, gentle voice which touches and claims us: You are my son, my daughter; believe, turn to me.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a loud word. Of course, it has its own noise – the noise of the demon-possessed, the lament of the ill, the anger of the authorities, a loud cry from a cross. But, ending in just this way – in death – God’s voice is not silenced but set in contrast.

The big thing God does in the world is – so far as the big world can see – a only small thing. The loud clarion call we wish would usher in the age of peace, the leader who will finally set all things right, the idea which is the solution to the equation of life – all of this turns out to be a quiet thing, a small thing, a thing which might be missed: one of us called to live a life of truth in the midst of untruth, to be quiet when the world is loud, to be himself.

This one God says, over here, almost out of sight, this one is my chosen; here I reign.

Come and see.
Come and believe.
Come and be changed.

Come and listen for God’s small, quiet beginning, where there is whispered
a word of peace
for this loud world.

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Epiphany 5
4/2/2024

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147
Mark 1:29-39

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The news the disciples bring to Jesus: “Everyone is searching for you”. In the immediate context of the drama, this is the result of the impressive impact Jesus’ ministry is having on those around him. They want more: Everyone is searching for you.

The gospel as a whole, however, makes a greater claim for this declaration. The “everyone” who seeks Jesus is not just those in the story but those who read the story – and indeed even those who don’t. This Jesus, the gospel declares, is the one you are searching for. The church’s faith is that Jesus is the answer to a question we all ask, the missing thing we seek. We are all on a quest for something, and that something is Jesus.

This is rather a big claim. Between us, we search for a thousand different things in a thousand different ways: the job you want, the book you’re reading, the endless scrolling through TikTok, the lover you hope to find, the chocolate you crave, the country you invade, the country you defend, the holiday you desperately need – these are, in the end, all searches for something, for some one thing. The gospel proposes that Jesus is the secret hidden in any specific thing we seek.

This is scarcely believable, of course. Jesus is surely a “religious” thing, and most of what we do most of the time has little to do with what we call religion. And yet, the concern of the gospel is not one part of us but the whole of us. We are not made up of many parts, and also a religious part; we are a unified whole. The gospel’s concern is either everything – what we call “religious” and not – or it is nothing.

Yet, even if we grant this, to say that Jesus is what we seek remains deeply problematic because the implication seems to be that there are some – Christians in particular – who have found what everyone is looking for, and there are many – everyone else – who haven’t. There is here the possibility of a deep arrogance, and indeed a possibility which has been realised in much violence through the ages: you infidels must become what we are and believe as we believe, if you are to be whole. And we might have to kill you if you don’t.

The claim that Jesus is what we all seek, then, is eminently corruptible and can become deeply inhuman. But this doesn’t falsify the gospel’s own nuanced version of the claim. The full sweep of the gospel story reveals that those around Jesus, though they have “found” him, continue to be quite lost about what they have found. At this early point in the narrative, they are the enthusiastic followers of Jesus, who is the latest pursuit-worthy thing and perhaps even the final thing, the one thing needful. And they watch as others find in Jesus the answer to some quest – “Everyone is looking for you”. But as the story continues, Jesus’ circle of friends discover more about him, such that the more they know, the less found he becomes. “Who do you say that I am”, Jesus will ask half-way through the gospel story, and the confused answer of “Simon and his companions” is that they don’t really know. They have sought him, and found him, but he is not what they thought they were seeking.

And so, seeking Jesus is not like seeking a lost coin or sheep. He is not the answer to a question which might be found and popped into its proper place. To find in Jesus what we most earnestly seek is rather more like looking in a mirror and not recognising myself because this special mirror shows me what I’ve never seen before. What I have never seen before is what I will be, and not what I still am, which I usually see in the mirror. This strange image is both me and not yet me. For it is, finally, a reconciliation to ourselves that we seek, a recognition of ourselves: yes, that’s me, finally. But, strangely, I don’t yet know what I look like – what I should look like. This is, then, a strange seeking. We both know and don’t know what we seek, which make the process endless. What can make this restless search bearable?

“Everyone is searching for you”, announce the disciples. But Jesus responds, “Let us go to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do”. Our looking for Jesus is met with his seeking us out. It is as if, though we seek Jesus, in the end it is he who finds us. This is to say that our finding ourselves is not limited by our knowing where to look or our capacities to understand. While we search, God actively seeks us.

This means that what we do and what is done to us are the forms in which God will find us, and we will find God. Though our searching might cause us to leave home, or to steal something, or to turn vegan, faith expects from any such thing that God will meet us there. The gospel’s promise is that God longs to find us more than we long to find God, and that God’s finding of us is how we will find ourselves.

We seek Jesus because he is the point at which the many things a person does are found in the one divine heart. This is what I came out to do, Jesus says: to be the one who finds God in all I do. “This is what I came out to do”, Jesus says: I came to reveal all those who seek wholeness, completeness, and reconciliation as found in God.

Our lives – all that we do – are a journey to God. To believe this is to open ourselves to the possibility that in every act, every encounter, and every word, we might meet God and become a bit more ourselves.

Would not such a life be worth living, in which everything we did, enjoyed, and suffered was part of the whole of God, and the means by which we continue our journey into that completeness?

“Everyone is searching for you”, the disciples tell you. “I know”, he responds, and I have come that I might be found, and you might be found too.